[airmondii]

Fear mongering? This isn't Sarah Palin and her death panels. I'm sure Hawking and Musk are smarter and more knowledgeable on the subject than either of us, so maybe it's worth listening to them rather than dismissing out of hand. I don't see what they would have to personally gain by raising the alarm here.

Read Superintelligence by Bostrom to help see where they're coming from. It doesn't think AI will be evil either (unless perhaps those who develop it and determine its goals are...). But AI could run out of our control, or have us fall victim of unintended consequences.

[crucialfelix]

> But AI could run out of our control, or have us fall victim of unintended consequences.

A lot of people didn't understand this about 2001: Hal was actually doing the logical thing, he was doing his job. The human was unreliable and was indeed endangering the mission. Hal was a tool of mankind, just like the bone that the ape uses to kill in the first scene.

In the same way when we talk about the dangers of AI we tend to personify them and expect them to be either intelligently nefarious (skynet, matrix) or out of control (bug, malfunction).

What we don't imagine is that we might end up being on the wrong end of a perfectly rational decision, or that we don't realize the consequences of the process that we set them to do.

[shittyanalogy]

I'm sure Hawking and Musk are smarter and more knowledgeable on the subject than either of us...

That is not a reasonable argument. They have demonstrated nothing but a fear and postulation and we cannot accept authority as evidence. Thus is the nature of science.

[airmondii]

The topic of AI and its implications is unavoidably speculative, because we are likely still many decades away from it being a risk and we don't yet know what path science will take to reach that point. So for now, we're mostly limited to thought experiments.

I never said we should defer to their 'authority' either. But it is a conversation worth having, and the sooner the better.

[sailingparrot]

Fear is a demonstration of non competency? So there can never be harmful technologies?

If someone more knowledgeable than me on a subject fears it, well I think it's worth at least listening to him. Not dismissing his concerns arrogantly.

And when those person are one of the greatest scientist and one of the greatest entrepreneur of our time, both with some kind of expertise in AI, well...