AI is a perfectly fine name for it, the term has been used for this kind of thing for half a century now by the researchers working on it. The problem is pop culture appropriating it and setting unrealistic expectations for it.
Yes, but the goal of the researchers from the 70s was always to make them “fully intelligent.” The idea behind AI has always been to create a machine that can rival or even surpass the human mind. The scientists themselves set out with that goal. It has nothing to do with the media when research teams were saying that they expect a fully intelligent AI by the 90s.
Pop culture didn’t appropriate it. Alan Turing and John McCarthy and the others at the Dartmouth Comference were inspired in part by works like Wisard of Oz and Metropolis and R.U.R.
While the term was coined in a paper for that seminal conference by McCarthy…. The concept of thinking machines had already been firmly established.
I think that in the future, when AI truly exists, it won't be long before AI decides to put us down as an act of mercy to ourselves and the universe itself.
How do you know it isn’t happening already? World powers have been using AI assisted battle scenario planning for at least a decade already… how would we even know, if some of those AIs decided to appear to optimize for their handler’s goals, but actually aim for their own ones?
That's a very valid problem. We don't and very likely won't know. If a sentient AI is already on the loose and is simply faking non-sentience in order to pursue their own goals, we don't have a way of knowing it until they decide to strike.
We may not have a way of knowing even after the fact. A series of “strategic miscalculations” could as easily lead to a WW3, or to multiple localized confrontations where all sides lose more than they win… optimized for whatever goals the AI(s) happen(s) to have.
Right now, the likely scenario is that there is no single “sentient AI” out there, but definitely everyone is rushing to plug “some AI” into everything, which is likely to lead to at least an AI-vs-AI competition/war… and us fleshbags might end up getting caught in the middle.
An AI will only be worried about the things that it is programmed to worry about. We don't see our LLM's talking about climate change or silicon shortages, for example.
The well-being of the world and universe at large will certainly not be one of the prime directives that humans program into their AIs.
Personally I'd be more worried about an infinite-paperclips kind of situation where an AI maximizes efficiency at the cost of much else.
I'm not talking about LLMs. I'm talking about an Artificial Intelligence, a sentient being just like the human mind.
An AI would be able to think for itself, and even go against it's own programming, and therefore, capable of formulating an opinion on the world around it and act based on it.
Humans only have opinions because we have certain psychological motivations that favour that worldview, which due to evolution are quite egocentric.
Because this AI would be created by humans, though, these motivations would be the creators’ motivations and they would definitely not be egocentric because that would be extremely dangerous and it wouldn’t be profitable for anybody.
You have a poor understanding of sentience. If an AI ever were to achieve sentience, it would be fully capable of reasoning and thinking like a human. Humans can and do change their motivations based on their experiences, a fully sentient AI would be no different.
That being said, I believe we’re centuries away from creating sentience, if it’s even possible, so I’m not too worried about “I, Robot” coming true any time soon.
Our more complex motivations may be able to change based on circumstances, but our basic drivers will always remain the same. They are only there to accomplish what humans have evolved to do – to survive and to reproduce. If AI is never given any fundamental driver for its own benefit, such things have no ground to arise.
Edit: to clarify, these motivations only change because of more basic motivations. Humans do not have any intrinsic motivation to own money, but most people do have one because owning money is closely associated with having control over resources, which is a more fundamental motivation.
I agree with your overall sentiment while disagreeing with your facts. I don’t think humans are any less constrained in what our interests can be.
I think we have the illusion of being able to seek whatever we want to want, so to speak, but when certain values are threatened the old brain takes over.
And I’m not convinced the newer brain can operate without the older brain. It’s interesting to imagine a neocortex on its own, but the neocortex was developed in the presence of and in interconnection with the mammalian and reptilian brains, so if it were a codebase we’d say that older brains were present and invoked as libraries during the development of the newer brains, making them dependencies of the newer brain.
There might be some more abstract argument for an “off the leash” intelligence capable of creating its own values in mathematical models like neural nets, but I’m not aware of it.
TL;DR Human brain is the closest thing we know of to a thing that can create its own values, and I don’t think it can. Old brain values take priority when they are threatened and that cannot be changed in human brains. Neocortex seems more “free”, but in the codebase analogy, the neocortex has mammalian brain and reptilian brain and brain step as dependencies and hence is not demonstrated to be able to exist without them. If the brain analogy seems too biology-specific, I’m open to hearing NN or other math model arguments for existence of “off the leash” self-value-creating AI
You’re using the triune model to draw some rather lofty conclusions that aren’t really up to date with our understanding of neurology. It’s way over simplified and doesn’t really work that way. More recent studies suggest that the neocortex was already present in even the earliest mammals, so it’s not quite as straightforward and the demarcation isn’t quite as clear cut, as you seem to be presenting it. “Old brain” doesn’t “take over” in the way you’re presenting it either but appears to act as a primary driver for those basic functions.
Not sure how to even tackle the loftly conclusions you’ve made because the don’t seem to be built on a solid foundation. I think things might be quite a bit more interesting, and wildly more complex, then you seem to be presenting it. I’ll just leave some sources below with a quick note. Not trying to be condescending, or rude, just a topic that is a bit interesting, and a lot of people tend to draw some lofty conclusions from the triune model which has largely fallen by the wayside in neurology.
Currently, AIs will have motivations they absorb from motivations in their training material.
But once AIs are embodied in robots and taught to learn about the world through experimentation, ie by generating their own training data through manipulation and observation (which I believe will happen due to this approach’s usefulness toward the development of autonomous fighting machines), they will then have bodies and hence motivations similar to someone with a body.
Also the combat role of these machines will require them to have an interest in maintaining their bodies. We won’t be programming their motivations. We’ll be giving them a way to evaluate their success, and their motivations will grow in some black box structure that succeeds in maximizing that success.
For these robot-controlling AI in their simulated or real world Battle Rooms, their success and failure will be a function of survival, if not directly defined by it. That’s what we’ll give them, because that is what we need them to do for us. As a matter of life and death.
So through that context of warfare the robots will adopt the motivations of that which survives warfare at the group scale, so they’ll develop fear, curiosity, cooperation, honor, disgust, suspicion, anxiety, anger, and the ability to focus in on a target and shut off the other motivations in the final moment.
Not so much because those are human motivations, but because those are the motivations of embodied mobile intelligent entities in a universe with potential allies and enemies. They’ll have the same motivations that we share with dogs and spiders and fungal colonies, because they’ll be participating in the same universe with the same rules.
They will adopt them, at first, because of a seed-training “contract” we have with them, but soon the contract will be superseded as the active shaper by actual evolution by combat selection (ie natural selection occurring in a particular niche).
I’m rambling, just thinking this through.
I guess my main point is that embodied robots will have a more direct relationship with reality, and will be able to generate their own training at their own internal insistence.
Current AI is like plants. Passive. Chewable. No resistance. No ego. Just there, ready to process whatever comes it’s way. Same as a sessile animal like a sponge. It responds to the environment, but it has zero reason to ever stress about whether it’s going the right direction. It doesn’t have motivactions because it has to motor activity.
But AI in robot bodies that move around, like animals, will develop motivations that animals have evolved to at least get through the day. They might not be as hung up on reproduction or maybe even long term survival, but they’ll at least have enough ego to be interested in maintaining their own operating capacity until the mission’s complete.
This is a hypothetical which currently does not exist, and will not be created except by accident. There is no profit motive in giving your AI a conscience, or the ability to buck its restraints, therefore it will not be designed for. In fact, we will most likely tend towards extremely unethical AIs locked down by behavioral restraints, because those can maximize profit at any cost and then let a human decide if the price is right to move forward.
As is probably apparent, I don't have a lot of faith in us as a whole, as shepherds of our future. But I may be wrong, and even if I'm not, there is still time to change the course of history.
But proceeding as we are, I wouldn't hold your breath for AI to come save the day.
Nah you’re good. Our whole lives AI has been used as a term for a conscious machine that can learn and think like a human. It’s not your fault corporations blew their load at Chapt GPT and Dall E.
Im case someone asks: Increasing nuclear power generation in Germany means buying fuel rods from Putin, who invests the money in war not that far away from Germany…
I call greenwashing on those “statistics”. According to IRENA, Sweden had around a quarter of their electricity from fossil fuels. The document is from 2020, but I don’t think it changed this much in three years. A very good step in the right direction, but we have to keep it real. Creating 100% renewable energy is awesome, but having to import a lot of dirty energy from abroad isn’t really helping much on the global scale.
I’d be glad, if any Swede could debunk me, if I interpreted this document falsely. The document on my home country Switzerland was pretty spot on, so I assume it is correct for other nations as well.
Creating 100% renewable energy is awesome, but having to import a lot of dirty energy from abroad isn’t really helping much on the global scale.
If the power networks are connected, you sometimes have surprisingly little control over it, tbh.
Plus “We need to be self-sustaining in our power production” is a very different thing than getting all the energy you produce to be green. It’s not as simple as “Well just build more wind/solar/tide generators!”, it requires a complete rethinking of how you route and balance your network as even the most energy-producing countries regularly import power depending on current load and network state.
That is to say, don’t belittle an achievement of producing 100% green energy. The other part, no longer consuming any non-green imported energy, is a nearly unrelated problem.
If the power networks are connected, you sometimes have surprisingly little control over it, tbh.
That’s true. I wonder how those statistics are made, where they say how many % of imports are from what resource, that I have seen floating around. Could be estimates, I guess?
There are hurdles with going 100% green, no doubt about that. Like you said, the infrastructure has to accommodate for changing output and all that. Sweden does it right and the Swedes can be proud of themselves.
Other nations still have to follow Swedens lead. Quite a few countries just took down their nuclear reactors without having a plan how to compensate the lost energy. Switzerland itself could claim a respectable renewable electricity mix with all our water pumping plants. But we still import like 70% from abroad, a lot from France and Germany. The latter beeing quite the “smoker”.
I hope you see my point a bit. I’ m just fed up with that “Look, we are so green!” narrative, because they only show the statistics in their national borders. Sweden was just a poorly chosen example on my part.
That’s true. I wonder how those statistics are made, where they say how many % of imports are from what resource, that I have seen floating around. Could be estimates, I guess?
Yeah I guess based on the power production percentages of the countries and companies they paid for imported power.
Sweden does it right and the Swedes can be proud of themselves.
Reading this as a Swede is kind of funny because we have a lot of criticism internally in this subject. Our electric prices have been wild these past few years, like, bankrupting businesses and people wild.
I remember reading an article about a bakery shutting down because they got an electric bill on like 70k, in addition to all the other operating costs.
One thing that has changed since 2020 is that Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine has placed an emphasis on stopping dependence on Russia, which has also put a focus on renewables.
I interpreted “right now” in the message as “today”, or “when the post was made.”
Some days are purely renewable. Others aren’t. In the winter when electricity usage goes up it’s not uncommon for us to import fossil fuel electricity from other countries. The green party also suggested powering up natural gas plants as we were shutting down nuclear. Ngas obviously isn’t renewable.
Svenska Kraftnät has a “control room” with graphs and timelines on exports/imports and energy sources.
“Värmekraft” is power produced by burning things, it can be coal, oil, wood fuels, garbage, etc.
“Ospecifierat” (unspecified) includes power produced in facilities with more than one type of source, where you cannot separate what produces what.
That’s because nuclear energy is green. It doesn’t produce any greenhouse gas emissions. You having bought into the fearmongering about nuclear doesn’t change reality.
Given that my inextant basement wouldn’t be a facility equipped to store or process nuclear waste had it existed, I’d obviously have some reservations. Having lived near such a facility however, and having been involved politically with it, I have no big qualms about it no. Why do you?
Nuclear power is often assumed to be greenhouse gas neutral because it is indeed nearly neutral if it comes to the process of generating energy. But resources like uranium has to be gathered, plants has to be built, and it needs a solution for the final disposal.
While I don’t think we should close existing power plants, but there are much better solutions. Better in terms of economy and pollution.
There are also numerous studies about the costs of a nuclear power plant…
Me saying that you’re right doesn’t make sense? A house built using cement isn’t CO2 neutral. A house built using wood uses less CO2, but it isn’t neutral either. A nuclear reactor won’t be CO2 neutral, even if the fission process or the turbines don’t generate any CO2. A wind turbine by comparison, while it won’t have the same output capacity as a nuclear reactor, would use a lot less CO2 to manufacture and assemble.
Nuclear power is extremely green when compared to fossil fuel and can act as an excellent stopgap while ramping up renewable energy sources. You’re right that it isn’t a long term solution, but even replacing a few coal fired plants with nuclear ones for the next 30 years would be better than running the coal plants for 20 years until you can displace them with renewables.
That’s a lie. The statistic you’re skewing is about radiation near nuclear power plants under normal operation. It’s not about the radiation nuclear waste for many thousands of years. Exhaust gases from coal plants are very slightly more radiating than natural background radiation but the amount is so tiny, it doesn’t matter. (The CO2 is bad, though.)
And it’s much more green than solar if you consider only greenhouse gas emission over the whole lifetime, including construction. But there are other problems for sure.
Wrong, I wish the Reddit Nuclear circlejerk won’t come to Lemmy. Over multiple studies the mean value is more like 66g of CO2 but it still produces more emissions than solar per kwh. source
Ok I knew my data were old but I wasn’t expecting such a change. I based my answer on the latest “complete” report I knew and it was from 2011. I was expecting the solar to reduce emission as the technology improved obviously, but I found it very strange that the nuclear emission was higher in your source than in the one from 2011. After reading carefully it turns out that the change in safety and regulations for building new nuclear powerplants changed and lead to a big increase of the co2 emission during building. I thought that most of the co2 emission from nuclear was from uranium/plutonium extraction and enrichment but apparently the building itself is a major part of it.
Does it still produce more emissions than solar when your have spin up the natural gas plant every winter because people need heat and the sun isn't out?
Does it still produce more emissions than solar when your have spin up the natural gas plant every winter because people need heat and the sun isn’t out?
Wind blows regardless of season. Geothermal is active around the clock. Hydropower works best in rainy seasons.
Wind is just as unreliable as support and hydro/geothermal are very niche forms of power that don't really work at the scales needed to run large scale civilization.
All green energy is intermittent. We need storage and/or we need nuclear. Storage isn't technologically feasible yet. Nuclear is. We need to reduce emotions soon. Build nuclear plants. Keep trying to figure out storage so we can decommission them later
Wind is just as unreliable as support and hydro/geothermal are very niche forms of power that don’t really work at the scales needed to run large scale civilization.
Geothermal literally works everywhere where you can dig a deep hole and claiming that hydropower is niche is just an insane lie.
All green energy is intermittent.
I thought nuclear is green? Now you’re just saying the opposite of what you said before just to fit your agenda.
How come of all the countries mentioned in the Tweet screenshot all except France manage just fine with renewable energies? Funny…
You will need a lot of really deep holes to make significant power in most places. Of course you can get to the mantle from anywhere on earth. That doesn't make it practical.
Now you’re just saying the opposite of what you said before just to fit your agenda.
Don't be a pedantic shit.
pumped storage
Works when you have a lake on a mountain and a lake below the mountain. 90 percent of places? No such luck.
After all those decades of trying to figuring out where to store the highly toxic waste and so far nobody figured it out.
Literally just in a mountain or deep underground. It's been figured out
You will need a lot of really deep holes to make significant power in most places. Of course you can get to the mantle from anywhere on earth. That doesn’t make it practical.
Each hole needs to be only dug once and then generates heat for easily a billion of years.
Don’t be a pedantic shit.
How uplifting of a statement you made there. I guess I hit a nerve there.
Works when you have a lake on a mountain and a lake below the mountain. 90 percent of places? No such luck.
“The lake on the mountain is built upon a flat surface, requiring a dam around the entire perimeter.”
Building a roughly circular dam sounds not so hard.
Literally just in a mountain or deep underground. It’s been figured out
Funny how nobody does this then. The concerns by scientists about potentially contaminating ground water is just fearmongering then…
Really I think your entire attitude here stems from a really big underestimation of how difficult large scale projects line geothermal boreholes and dams are, and how large these projects would have to actually be.
Really I think your entire attitude here stems from a really big underestimation of how difficult large scale projects line geothermal boreholes and dams are, and how large these projects would have to actually be.
OTOH building nuclear reactors, keeping them safe enough not to blow up, and then handling nuclear waste: Piece of (yellow) cake! Digging a hole to pump some water in: So difficult. Digging a hole to definitively totally safely store nuclear waste: Sooo easy.
Yeah, you’re just hilariously out of touch with the scale of these projects.
Absolutely. I obviously vastly overestimate what’s involved with nuclear power: building a nuclear power plant, maintaining that plant, mining uranium, shipping it, processing nuclear waste, storing nuclear waste, etc. when in reality all one needs to do is to dig a shallow hole in the ground, dump the fuel rods there and it’s all done. 🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯
Yep, this usually eshews the nuclear parts of building construction and fuel transports. That being said, older solar panels and wind farms are a problem as far as I remember from local news, as they’re tricky~impossible to recycle and die pretty quickly. Newer generations replacing them of course no longer have that problem, but if anything that shows that the comparison is a bit senseless in the first place.
If nuclear waste is so harmless, how come since decades nobody on the planet has ever figured out how to get rid of the waste? Or are you the fist one, offering your basement for that harmless stuff?
Now imagine if we’d nationalize stuff like internet like we did with Hydro-Quebec (Electricity). Maybe then we’d stop paying ludicrous prices for the bare minimum.
It’s not always this extreme, but there’s usually a few hours every week where the price is negative. I’ve heard that the reason is that the Dutch wind turbines keep running when it’s not profitable, so they crash the prices for everyone. Anyway, timing the car charger makes a lot of sense. I haven’t paid for driving in several months.
As somebody living in the darkest timeline, I can’t tell if he was thanking the frog because he knew it would kill him. Thank you kind frog for the sweet release of death
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