Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era Hardcover (35 page)

mankind’s primary tool:
Schwartz, Evan, “The Mobile Device is Becoming Humankind’s Primary Tool,”
Technology Review,
November 29, 2010,
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/421826/the-mobile-device-is-becoming-humankinds-primary-tool-infographics-feature/
(accessed December 4, 2011).

you merely think of a question:
Carr, Nicholas, “When Google Grows Up,”
Forbes.com
,
January 11, 2008,
http://www.forbes.com/2008/01/11/google-carr-computing-tech-enter-cx_ag_0111computing.html
(accessed March 10, 2011).
You are never lost:
Kharif, Olga, “Google Uses AI to Make Search Smarter,”
Bloomberg Businessweek,
September 21, 2010,
http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2010-09-21/google-uses-ai-to-make-search-smarterbusinessweek-business-news-stock-market-and-financial-advice
(accessed April 5, 2012).
Siri will interact with online retailers:
Li, Wendi, “Improved Siri Will Do Everything for You, Including Shopping: Apple Patent Filing,”
International Business Times,
January 21, 2012,
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/285440/20120121/siri-shopping-apple-patent-filing-ipad-3.htm
(accessed March 10, 2012).

Andrew Rubin, Google’s Senior Vice President of Mobile:
Fried, Ina, “Android Chief Says Your Phone Should Not Be Your Assistant,”
All Things D,
October 19, 2011,
http://allthingsd.com/20111019/android-chief-says-your-phone-should-not-be-your-assistant/
(accessed November 13, 2011).

It may be that we need a scientific breakthrough:
Goertzel, Ben, “Editor’s Blog Report on the Fourth Conference on Artificial General Intelligence,”
H
+
Magazine
, September 1, 2011,
http://hplusmagazine.com/2011/09/01/report-on-the-fourth-conference-on-artificial-general-intelligence/
(accessed November 22, 2011).
LIDA scores like a human:
Biever, Celeste, “Bot shows signs of consciousness,”
New Scientist,
April 1, 2011,
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21028063.400-bot-shows-signs-of-consciousness.html
(accessed June 1, 2011).

committing the Holocaust:
Goertzel, Ben, “The Machine Intelligence Research Institute’s Scary Idea (and Why I Don’t Buy It),”
The Multiverse According to Ben
(blog), October 29, 2010,
http://multiverseaccordingtoben
.
blogspot.com/2010/10/singularity-institutes-scary-idea-and.html
(accessed June 1, 2011).

Converting an AI system to AGI through brute force:
Loosemore, Richard, and Ben Goertzel, “Why an Intelligence Explosion Is Probable,”
H
+
Magazine,
March 7, 2011,
http://hplusmagazine.com/2011/03/07/why-an-intelligence-explosion-is-probable/
(accessed November 25, 2011).

A lot of cutting edge AI:
“AI set to exceed human brain power,”
CNN Tech,
July 24, 2006,
http://articles.cnn.com/2006-07-24/tech/ai.bostrom_1_neural-networks-human-brain-turing-test?_s=PM:TECH
(accessed November 25, 2011).

easy to make computers exhibit adult-level performance:
Moravec, Hans,
Mind Children
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988), 15.

tell the difference between a dog and a cat:
Though this is about to change, thanks to Dartmouth’s Richard Granger, profiled in this chapter.
reasoning is much easier than perceiving:
Moravec, Hans, Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, “The Age of Robots,” June 1993,
http://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/~hpm/project.archive/general.articles/1993/Robot93.html
(accessed March 19, 2011).

formalization reveals hidden rules:
Granger, Richard, “How Brains Are Built: Principles of Computational Neuroscience,”
Cerebrum
(January 2011),
http://www.dana.org/news/cerebrum/detail.aspx?id=30356
(accessed June 3, 2011).

Every structure has been precisely shaped:
Allen, Paul, and Mark Greaves, “Paul Allen: The Singularity Isn’t Near,”
Technology Review,
November 12, 2011,
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/guest/27206/
(accessed November 25, 2011).

Our goal in computational neuroscience:
Granger, “How Brains Are Built: Principles of Computational Neuroscience.”

Intelligence will also win the day:
As Granger writes in his book,
Big Brains,
Neanderthals had larger brains than we do, and might have been more intelligent. However, that they were more intelligent isn’t by any means certain.

what indication of its existence might we expect:
Dyson, George,
Edge
, “Turing’s Cathedral,” last modified October 24, 2005,
http://www.edge.org/conversation
turing-395-cathedral (accessed April 20, 2011).

13: UNKNOWABLE BY NATURE

Both because of its superior planning ability:
Bostrom, Nick, Oxford University, “Ethical Issues in Advanced Artificial Intelligence,” last modified 2003,
http://www.nickbostrom.com/ethics/ai.html
(accessed April 24, 2011).

Basically, we are looking for:
Kurzweil, Ray, “Kurzweil Responds: Don’t Underestimate the Singularity,”
Technology Review,
October 19, 2011,
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/425818/kurzweil-responds-dont-underestimate-the/
(accessed November 1, 2011).

to get Watson to understand what people say:
Nuance Communications, Inc, “IBM to Collaborate with Nuance to Apply IBM’s Watson Analytics Technology to Healthcare,” last modified February 17, 2011,
http://www.nuance.com/company/news-room/press-releases/NC_008477
(accessed June 18, 2011).

Its hardware is massively parallel:
“What is Watson?” IBM, 2011,
http://www-03.ibm.com/innovation/us/watson(accessed
August 18, 2011).
parallelism can handle staggering computational workloads:
Ferrucci, David, Eric Brown, Jennifer Chu-Carroll, James Fan, David Gondek, Aditya Kalyanpur, Adam Lally, William Murdock, Eric Nyberg, John Prager, Nico Schlaefer, and Chris Welty, “Building Watson: An Overview of the DeepQA Project,”
AI Magazine
(Fall 2010),
http://www.aaai.org/ojs/index.php/aimagazine/article/view/2303
(accessed August 18, 2011).

A lot has been written:
Kurzweil, Ray, “Kurzweil Responds: Don’t Underestimate the Singularity.”

Searle said:
Blumenthal, Andy, “Watson Can Swim,”
The Total CIO
(blog), March 14, 2011,
http://andyblumenthal.posterous.com/watson-can-swim
(accessed May 1, 2011).
Can a submarine swim?:
Ibid.
a submarine doesn’t “swim”:
Ibid.
The computer’s techniques:
Jennings, Ken, “My Puny Human Brain,”
Slate,
February 26, 2011,
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2011/02/my_puny_human_brain.single.html
(accessed May 22, 2011).

Ohio State (17) and Kansas (14):
“Ohio State, Kansas, BYU headline poll,”
ESPN Men’s Basketball
, March 1, 2011,
http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/news/story?id=6167338
(accessed January 18, 2012).

people who have become paraplegics:
Solomon, Robert C.,
Thinking About Feeling, Contemporary Philosophers on Emotions
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 47, 48 (accessed January 21, 2012).

14: THE END OF THE HUMAN ERA?

The argument is basically very simple:
Perrow, Charles,
Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies
(New York: Basic Books, 1984), 4.
we are just a few years away from a major catastrophe:
Anissimov, Michael, “The Road to the Singularity,”
Accelerating Future
(blog), November 19, 2007,
http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/people-blog/2007/the-road-to-the-singularity/
(accessed March 10, 2011).

Thus, if we evolve a complex system:
Jurvetson, Steve, “The Dichotomy of Design and Evolution,”
The J Curve
(blog), July 13, 2006,
http://jurvetson.blogspot.com/2006/07/dichotomy-of-design-and-evolution.html
(accessed October 10, 2011).

a few “minor” accidents would be desirable:
Whitby, Blay,
Reflections on Artificial Intelligence
(Exeter: Intellect Ltd., 1996), 31.
it learns based on the right answers:
Ferrucci, David, “A: This Computer Could Defeat You at ‘Jeopardy!’ Q: What is Watson?” February 14, 2011,
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/science/jan-june11/jeopardy_02-14.html
(accessed October 10, 2011).

it will follow its own drives:
Omohundro, Stephen, “The Basic AI Drives,” November 11, 2007,
http://selfawaresystems.com/2007/11/30/paper-on-the-basic-ai-drives/
(accessed June 21, 2011).

none, except Omohundro:
Relative to scientists engaged in the pursuit, Yudkowsky and MIRI are not trying to create AGI, though they consider the ethics of creating it and how to control it. AGI maker Ben Goertzel has frequently written about AI ethics, but that’s not the same as focusing on solutions to AI dangers.

The scientists at Asilomar:
Barinaga, Marcia, “Asilomar Revisited: Lessons for Today?”
Science
, March 3, 2000,
http://www.biotech-info.net/asilomar_revisited.html
(accessed October 10, 2011).
10 percent of the world’s cropland:
International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications, “Crop Biotech Update,” last modified February 22, 2011,
http://www.isaaa.org/kc/cropbiotechupdate/specialedition/2011/default.asp
(accessed October 10, 2011).

programmed to
die by default:
Sterrit, Roy,
Apoptotic Robotics Programmed Death by Default,
“2011 Eighth IEEE International Conference and Workshops on Engineering of Autonomic and Autonomous Systems,” last modified February 11, 2011,
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=5946191
(accessed October 10, 2011).
Every time a cell divides:
Ibid.

all computer-based systems should be apoptotic:
Ibid.

Called the “Safe-AI Scaffolding Approach”:
Omohundro, Stephen, Self-Aware Systems, “Rational Artificial Intelligence for the Greater Good,” last modified March 30, 2012,
http://selfawaresystems.com/2012/03/30/rational-artificial-intelligence-for-the-greater-good/
(accessed July 10, 2012).
Given the infrastructure:
From a September 6, 2008, correspondence between Stephen Omohundro and Eric Baum.
powerful enough to address all the problems:
Ibid.

greater intelligence will always find a way:
Kurzweil, Ray,
The Singularity Is Near
(New York: Viking Press, 2005), 424.

15: THE CYBER ECOSYSTEM

The next war will begin in cyberspace:
Lopez, C. Todd,
WWW.ARMY.MILL
, “Next War Will Begin in Cyberspace Experts Predict,” last modified February 27, 2009,
http://www.army.mil/article/17561/Next_war_will_begin_in_cyberspace__experts_predict/
(accessed October 10, 2011).
I am selling a private zeus:
PHPSeller, OpenSC.ws, “Malware Samples and Information Forum,” last modified August 2009,
http://www.opensc.ws/malware-samples-information/7862-sale-zeus-1-2-5-1-clean.html
(accessed October 10, 2011).

the Internet’s immune system:
Kopytoff, Verne, “Deploying New Tools to Stop the Hackers,”
New York Times
, sec. technology, June 17, 2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/18/technology/18security.html?pagewanted=all
(accessed October 10, 2011).
malware passed good software:
Ibid.

Anonymous has attacked the Vatican:
Reuters, “Hackers group Anonymous takes down Vatican website,”
Huffington Post,
July 7, 2012,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/07/anonymous-hacks-vatican-website_n_1327297.html
(accessed July 11, 2012).
In 2011, botnet victims increased 654 percent:
Schwartz, Mathew, “Botnet Victims Increased 654 percent in 2011,”
InformationWeek
, February 18, 2011,
http://www.informationweek.com/news/security/attacks/229218944?cid=RSSfeed_IWK_All
(accessed July 11, 2012).
a one trillion-dollar industry:
Symantec, “What is Cybercrime?” last modified 2012,
http://us.norton.com/cybercrime/definition.jsp
(accessed July 11, 2012).

Cloud computing has been a runaway success:
Malik, Om, “How Big is Amazon’s Cloud Computing Business? Find Out,”
GIGAOM
, August 11, 2010,
http://gigaom.com/cloud/amazon-web-services-revenues/
(accessed June 4, 2011).
Zeus stole some $70 million:
Ragan, Steve, “ZBot data dump discovered with over 74,000 FTP credentials,”
The Tech Herald
, June 29, 2009,
http://www.thetechherald.com/articles/ZBot-data-dump-discovered-with-over-74-000-FTP-credentials/6514/
(accessed June 4, 2011).

21.3 percent overall, comes from Shaoxing:
Melanson, Donald, “Symantec names Shaoxing, China, as world’s malware capital,”
Engadget
, March 29, 2010,
http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/29/symantec-names-shaoxing-china-worlds-malware-capital
(accessed June 4, 2011).

cybertheft helps support China’s economy:
Gross, Michael Joseph, “Enter the Cyber-dragon.”
Vanity Fair
, September 2011,
http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2011/09/chinese-hacking-201109
(accessed May 1, 2012).
Why spend $300 billion:
Gorman, Siobhan, August Cole, and Yochi Dreazen, “Computer Spies Breach Fighter-Jet Project,”
Wall Street Journal,
sec. technology, August 21, 2009,
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124027491029837401.html
(accessed May 1, 2012).
From 2007 to 2009 an average of 47,000:
Sterner, Eric, “Retaliatory Deterrence in Cyberspace,”
Strategic Studies Quarterly
(Spring 2011),
http://www.marshall.org/article.php?id=933
(accessed May 1, 2012).