I don't think we can control AI much longer. Here's why.
Will we be able to control artificial intelligence if it becomes more intelligent than us? This debate heated up significantly last week after Geoffrey Hinton gave an interview in which he says he is very worried that we will soon lose control over superintelligent AI. Meta’s AI chief Yann LeCun disagrees. I think they’re both wrong. Let’s have a look.
Geoffrey Hinton is a computer scientist who played a key role in the development of deep neural networks that current large language models are based on. Last year, he left his position at Google to speak more freely about the risks posed by AI. In an interview with BNN Bloomberg he now explained his worries.
Hinton: “Most of the researchers I know are fairly confident it will get more intelligent than us. So the real question is, how long will that take? And when it does, will be still be able to keep control?”
Interviewer: “What are the risks associated with that, in your opinion?
H: “Okay, so how many examples can you tell me about where a more intelligent thing is controlled by a less intelligent thing?”
I: “Not a long list.”
H: “Right, not since Biden got elected, anyway.”
So basically his argument is that more intelligent beings usually control those of lesser intelligence. Meta’s AI chief Yan LeCun thinks that this is not so. Intelligence, he says, comes in many different types and does not imply an ability to dominate humans. He has also said on earlier occasions that AI researchers have made good progress in telling AI what they’re allowed to do, constraints that he refers to as “guardrails. “The question becomes one of designing appropriate guardrails. We are familiar with that.” He seems very confident and doesn’t worry that AI could get out of control.
Here’s what Geoffrey Hinton had to say about our odds of survival.
H: “I think we’ve got a better than even chance at survival.”
That’s very cheerful.
What are we to make of this? Well, first of all it’s arguably true that a species of higher intelligence doesn’t necessarily control one of lesser intelligence. We do not for example control viruses and bacteria, and it’s not for want of trying. So LeCun arguably has a point when he says that intelligence is not per se a tool of control. It doesn’t even necessarily bring a desire for control. No one really wants to control fish or birds. They do their thing, we do ours.
But I think that looking at it from the perspective of control is not particularly useful because it would require you to figure out what control means in the first place. Do we control cats, or do they control us? Sometimes I wonder.
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