"Elon Musk? Really? Why do you even think his opinion on AI is worth anything?"

To be fair, he funds the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, which is devoted to mitigating existential risk from AI, and is surely getting very detailed reports from them, making him a highly knowledgeable layperson at worst (a direct expert at best).

He means shifting research away from US labs to labs in other countries, not moving resources to other fields.

Agent Smith plz.

I know! Why didn't they just use plutonium for fuel? Everyone knows you can get that in any convenience store!

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. There are things out there a LOT more like a BttF2 hoverboard, though they only work on metal surfaces: http://hendohover.com/

But those people are all idiots. All people are idiots compared to the ASI. The only way that something can make high quality decisions for a group of others is for that person to be smarter than all of those people PUT TOGETHER. This is not possible with humans beyond the level of nuclear family. When you have an ASI that has an IQ higher than the rest of humanity put together, then it becomes possible.

The thing about an ASI running your economy is that 99.99999% of interactions will be invisible. Good things "just happen", whether you find yourself standing in line next to just the right person to help you start your business, or just happen to have your car break down right in front of the house of the person who will be the love of your life. Luck that was previously neutral becomes overwhelmingly good, for everyone, simply by subtle manipulations of people and objects by a device with unimaginable predictive power.

I think we are doing much the same, it's just that computers have caught up to theory and are able to perform now. Now it is no longer a question of theory, but one of technique, and what is described in the article is a new technique--one that will likely have many, many applications in the near future.

In the late 80's/early 90's, they were able to use some of their theory, but it just wasn't super-robust because things just took too darn long. You couldn't have your system analyze at a million images in a minute, hence allowing them to go through hundreds of generations in a day.

At least that is my view, as an educated layperson.

I don't want humans, who are subject to weird, petty shit, to have ultimate power. I'd rather start fresh with an impartial God. Of course, a deified human would be less likely to have some insane value function that causes it to completely wipe out humanity, so that would be the hedged bet.

I would bet that we get an ASI long before we can raise ourselves up to that level, unless we as a species push to delay the former and focus on the latter. But when have we as a species ever come together to do anything without some direct incentive?

" An automaton can be neither benevolent nor have free agency."

But Anon, humans are automata.

"I don't want to see us talk about machines having "agency" when most people struggle with it for themselves."

Birds struggle with flying above a certain ceiling, or beyond a certain speed. Human made flying machines breach those limits easily. The same will likely hold true with human made thinking machines. These will not be a slave to evolution, though they may utilize evolution as a force for optimization. If we don't talk about these things now, they are going to happen, and very, very fast (30 years from Kitty Hawk to jet aircraft--only computers advance a LOT faster than engineering). By the time computers reach human level in all aspects, they will be so far beyond us in some that they will look more like gods than men.

Because we are figuring out the building blocks of agency, a vital stepping stone on the path to building a benevolent (hopefully) God who will actually take care of us.

If that doesn't matter, then I don't know what does.

Wow, so pointing out the appropriate word to express a concept makes me a "MRA retard". Good to know.

"The people who represent your point of view"

Please spell out what exactly you think my point of view is. It looks to me like you have it completely wrong, as I am advocating that people do as I do use ad blockers on sites with obnoxious ads, while allowing those with passive or unobtrusive advertizing to make a little money off your or my eyeballs.

"If every third advertising agency in America were to go bankrupt tonight, society wouldn't collapse."

No, because all the ad business would be redistributed to the other 2/3rds. If they ALL collapsed because ad blockers were MANDATED at the ISP level (as some governments are now pushing for), then the FREE CONTENT CREATION industry would, in fact, collapse. I'm sorry if it hurts your feelings that people need money to live.

"If the working class notified congress that they would no longer tolerate the shit forced on them by advertisers, and congress passed meaningful laws restricting what advertisers can do, society wouldn't collapse either. In fact, society would be much better off."

I'm afraid you are completely delusional on multiple levels.

"And, if you personally are put out of a job because of it, well, tough shit. You can go compete with all the Mexicans for a job digging ditches, or picking avacados."

Oh, and evil, hateful, and spiteful as well I see. If you hate ads so much, might I suggest that you simply call up your ISP and cancel your service? You know, rather than destroying something that other people like (ie the free internet).

Freedom works because the closer you get to it, the better the outcome. Centralization (ie slavery where everyone and everything is owned by the state) DOESN'T work, because the closer you get to a perfect implementation of THAT, the more people die.

Reductio ad absurdum suggests that free markets actually do work, even for the harder problems of governance. IE it really is better to just not have arbitrary authority in everyone's business.

But SO was empirically good for the people, improving quality and decreasing price by 90% over the life of the "monopoly" (they never reached more than about 90% market share, with the other 10% improving to keep pace with them, and keeping them honest).

But why cite reality when we can make decisions based on our feelings? That's how science works, after all! FEELINGS!

No, England had a de facto free market during its industrial revolution, and "Northern Asia" was completely void of people. "Tenants" under their system owned the land in all but name, but that is much the same as in modern society. Try not paying your property taxes and see how long you retain sole enjoyment and use of your land.

Stop making shit up. You are literally killing people with your lies.