"The people who think superintelligent robots will destroy humanity [...] should worry about associating with the people who believe fake videos might fool people on YouTube, because the latter group is going beyond what the evidence will support [...]"
(https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/01/30/book-review-human-compatible/)
posted on January 31, 2020 01:59 PM by
u/DegenerateRegime
Algorithmic bias has also been getting colossal unstoppable
neverending near-infinite unbelievable amounts of press lately, but the
most popular examples basically
boil down to “it’s impossible to satisfy several conflicting
definitions of ‘unbiased’ simultaneously, and algorithms do not do this
impossible thing”.
After spending last week reading live-tweets from the FAT*2020
conference on algorithmic fairness, accountability and transparency,
this is the kind of refreshing steelman take I visit SSC for.
> the most popular examples basically boil down to “it’s impossible to satisfy several conflicting definitions of ‘unbiased’ simultaneously, and algorithms do not do this impossible thing”.
Scott is one Kenneth Arrow away from becoming a monarchist.
The smartest human in the world be biased if fed biased data.
No amount of fancy reasoning, even at the *super-AI* level, is going to make "garbage in, garbage out" not apply.
As a bonus, check out this weird mishmash of political beliefs scott
thinks are bad:
I think the actual answer to this question is “Haha, as if our
society actually punished people for being wrong”. The next US
presidential election is all set to be Socialists vs. Right-Wing
Authoritarians – and I’m still saying with a straight face that the
public notices when movements were wrong before and lowers their status?
Have the people who said there were WMDs in Iraq lost status? The people
who said sanctions on Iraq were
killing thousands of children? The people who said Trump was
definitely for sure colluding with Russia? The people who said global
warming wasn’t real? The people who pushed growth mindset as a panacea
for twenty years?
And there’s a sense in which this is all obviously ridiculous. The
people who think superintelligent robots will destroy humanity – these
people should worry about associating with the people who believe fake
videos might fool people on YouTube, because the latter group is going
beyond what the evidence will support? Really? But yes. Really.
Deepfakes aren’t worrying - to anyone except the journalists who can
see their jobs wobbling on the edge of irrelevance - because of what
they can show, but because of what their presence can hide. “What, the
scandal where the president…” - alright I can’t think of anything our
current leaders could say or do that they would actually bother lying
about it being faked to cover up, at this point. Fuck, I guess Scott is
right, we need to panic but also not, like, in a way that might result
in any restraints at all being externally applied to the robot
overlords’ nonrobot overlords. Just, you know, hope their hearts are in
the right place, send some money, that kind of thing.
>If we get a reputation as the people who fall for every panic about AI, including the ones that in retrospect turn out to be kind of silly, will we eventually cry wolf one too many times and lose our credibility before crunch time?
This is actually an interesting point, really impressive levels of irony here.
Scott just doesn't see anyone else's worries as being even potentially justified. "I have serious concerns, you are suffering from hypochondria, they are crying wolf," that kind of thing.
timely reminder of my rants about how dumb the whole "crying wolf" thing is in Alexander's hands
https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/8vswlt/you_are_still_crying_wolf_has_been_updated/
https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/8zliwe/the_sneerer_enters_the_den_of_rationalists/
> Is it so hard to write "this is an accessible, well-argued book"? Apparently, yes.
If only somebody had written an article on not writing like a weirdo. A well, [sucks nobody has](https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/07/04/style-guide-not-sounding-like-an-evil-robot/).
(One of the things which really annoys me about ssc, all these nice rules and guidelines, and methods, but never using them in a consistent matter. Note the lack of epistemic status at the start of the article again for example).
Yes, a good example is this actual article, where Scott doesn't steelman the anti AGI standpoint (You can't compare GAN networks which generate things, or AI which can do chess very well to human intelligence), but just lifts up the sophistic (What about the apes, gotcha!) argument of Russel to a good thing.
E: also why do they think the control problem is solved by having the AGI look for the 'real hidden reason' for peoples commands? This will fail in the same way as the 'just follow commands' way. I don't see how this fixes things at all. (Esp when the AGI bumps into suicidal depressed people, and people who want to euthanize themselves).
> Ol' Scott "Philosophers using hypothetical scenarios to highlight salient considerations in moral debate is weird" Alexander is at it again!.
Interesting that this is the same guy who wrote [this](https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/03/26/high-energy-ethics/)
> Ol' Scott "Philosophers using hypothetical scenarios to highlight salient considerations in moral debate is weird" Alexander is at it again!.
Come on, most people *do* consider this weird. Hell most people don't even read anything nonfiction if they read books at all.
That's fair - SA was, in his own weird way, trying to draw a contrast between the accessibility of the two books. It just comes across as him saying "why would this person write like this, so strange!", when the writing in question is (based on SA's own description) extremely normal and conventional in its specific context. Moreover, I assume that it's a context he's familiar with, which makes the whole thing feel particularly stilted.
[edit] Thanks to /u/thetimujin who points out that SA literally wrote [this](https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/03/26/high-energy-ethics/).
After spending last week reading live-tweets from the FAT*2020 conference on algorithmic fairness, accountability and transparency, this is the kind of refreshing steelman take I visit SSC for.
As a bonus, check out this weird mishmash of political beliefs scott thinks are bad:
Only “No? Yes.” removed:
Deepfakes aren’t worrying - to anyone except the journalists who can see their jobs wobbling on the edge of irrelevance - because of what they can show, but because of what their presence can hide. “What, the scandal where the president…” - alright I can’t think of anything our current leaders could say or do that they would actually bother lying about it being faked to cover up, at this point. Fuck, I guess Scott is right, we need to panic but also not, like, in a way that might result in any restraints at all being externally applied to the robot overlords’ nonrobot overlords. Just, you know, hope their hearts are in the right place, send some money, that kind of thing.
And if you were temporarily duped by that Boston Dynamics parody video back in June, well then aren’t you a stupid piece of shit.
Ol’ Scott “Philosophers using hypothetical scenarios to highlight salient considerations in moral debate is weird” Alexander is at it again!.
Is it so hard to write “this is an accessible, well-argued book”? Apparently, yes.