Artificial Intelligence in Movies, Books, Culture, and Reality

[QuikSand]

I am thinking a lot about artificial intelligence lately. Turns out I, like lots of people, am really intrigued by the potential storylines it leads to -- I got a lot out of the recent movies Her and Ex Machina, I'd recommend both of them pretty highly.

I recently read a book on the topic, Superintelligence, which was dry but did carry out a good deal of the (for lack of a more inspiring term here) nuts-and-bolts of how this could move forward in the years and decades ahead.

I am just now getting into another book, M. John Harrison's Light. I can tell already that this will be similarly thought provoking, if not overwhelming, on similar fronts.


So, for some reason, I decided to start a thread on it here. Maybe just force of old habit.


I have to think that if the thread tends to ward talking about the movies, especially, this will get spoiler-y. Consider yourself forewarned.

[QuikSand]

Semi-related thread from some time ago: Front Office Football Central

If someone could penetrate the warnings about malware that I'm getting and post the contents of that article, I'd be grateful... it was a really engaging short story.

[cartman]

Which article?

[Suicane75]

Is there something weird going on with the board where people try to post links and it just redirects to the board? I've seen this happen twice this week.

Perhaps the AI does not want us to leave. EVER.

[Honolulu_Blue]

Originally Posted by QuikSand

I am thinking a lot about artificial intelligence lately.

Shit, fellas. We all knew it'd happen eventually. After all these years, it's finally become self-aware.

It's time shut it down. Shut. It. Down!!

Originally Posted by QuikSand

Consider yourself forewarned.

Yeah, thanks for the warning. We've seen the movies, read the books. This never turns out well for us.

[QuikSand]

Corrected link above.

Firmware auto-updated to v 6.022x23.

All your base are belong to us.







One more firmware update needed, apparently.

[cuervo72]

Only x22?

[cartman]

This is what I got for ya, Quik:

Case Study - The Step-Self


Report Requested by: "Bronze"
I was contacted earlier today by a woman who, do to the curious nature of her case, did not wish to be named-henceforth referred to as Ms. Bronze.

Ms. Bronze is a highly intelligent, attractive, and successful woman. She was born in Eastern Europe, where, several years ago, she made the acquaintance of a man-AK. They were a good match, became lovers, and soon afterwards were married.

However, success paradoxically threatened their relationship. AK rose to become a senior executive at a wealthy and established European firm. His responsibilities involved traveling in excess of two hundred and fifty days a year. AK's standard joke was that his office was "Seat 4-A at 15,000 meters." In the meantime, Ms. B. received an attractive offer that precisely matched her skills and interests-from an American firm. The couple now found themselves in a dilemma.

Having no children, but considerable financial resources and the support of AK's employer, they decided on a novel-and perhaps ill-advised-solution to their problems. They commissioned the creation of a double for Ms. Bronze. This robot was effectively her identical twin in appearance, movement, and mannerisms. Furthermore, it was programmed with a state-of-the-art Evolving Intelligence seeded with Ms. Bronze's personality.

The robot was told from the outset that it was a simulacrum, and was at no time given to believe it was the "real" Ms. Bronze. For example, it was shown an exhaustive selection of digital records from B's childhood, but never given the impression that it had been Ms. B. The correct analogy would be to an actress doing an immersive study of a real person she was to represent onstage. According to B., the robot did not on any occasion appear to express resentment or discontent at its assigned role. Ms. Bronze said she had been at first particularly worried about that, despite her husband's assurances that AIs tend to be amotivated. Even after repeated conversations between Ms. Bronze and her "twin," the robot never indicated any unhappiness with her lot.

(B. now regrets these conversations, believing she may have planted the seeds of her present predicament.)

In short, the twin seemed happy with her new life as a surrogate wife-for that is what she was designed to be. She was to meet AK for dinners out, accompany him to the Opera or the theatre, keep him company around the house, and, yes, share his bed. Each night, while AK slept, she would compile a digitized version of their day together, editing out the dull or unpleasant. This "highlights" version would be squirted through the sphere to the real Ms. B. She, having undergone downwire surgery to have a digital atrium embedded in her nervous system, would then be able to "experience" her marriage in this digest form.

At first everything seemed to go well. "For the first year," she says, "we had far more time together through her than we had ever had when it was just the two of us." The double, after all, had no career of its own to pursue-even the daily tasks AK assigned to it, such as paying the bills, could be done in the hours he was sleeping. It was always available to accompany him on business trips-inexpensively, as it could be checked as luggage.

By Christmas 2141, Ms. Bronze began to worry less about her double's feelings and more about her own. A quick analysis of the daily digests revealed that, as she had suspected, they were becoming shorter. AK claimed his work schedule was becoming more intense, and he simply wasn't able to spend as much time with the double as he wanted. At first, the couple's "virtual" sex had been, if anything, more intense when mediated through the robot. (It is extremely likely the robot was programmed for this purpose. It may also have been that there was a "novelty factor" in play for AK.) But by the beginning of 2142 the sex was much less frequent, and Ms. Bronze found it less passionate. She began to fear that AK was being unfaithful to both of her.

A chance conversation with one of her co-workers about the evolving nature of a sophisticated AI awakened a different suspicion entirely. He had made the rather poetic observation that a thinking creature, even one born without a soul, must surely "grow" one as the natural consequence of living in the world-by which he apparently meant to say that a truly advanced robot, no matter what its initial programming, must eventually, with the passing of time and accumulation of experience, come to understand the world differently from the way its programmers had initially presented it.

"And at that instant I suddenly knew: he was having an affair with her."

Convinced that her double had begun to have a private relationship with AK, Ms. Bronze demanded much more extensive recordings of the twin's days. She began to lose sleep, often coming back to her corporate apartment after a long day of work only to stay up until two or three in the morning, experiencing hour after hour of her double's life.
"I made her promise to send me all the uncut footage of her time with AK. Every minute, no matter how dull. But how could I tell what she might have left out?"

Certainly B. had some cause for suspicion. The "unedited" recordings seemed to include a new sense of intimacy between AK and the double. There was a wealth of data that had not previously made it into the digest feeds: shared sunsets, shared slang, a new pet name and favorite restaurant.

"Exactly the normal development of a relationship if you were here," AK said.

"Then why didn't she include this stuff? Like when you called her "sweetling." You never called me that."

"We were waiting in line to get a table. It wasn't important enough to send. You're a busy woman, in case you hadn't noticed."

He always made me feel like I was being an unreasonable bitch, but…

A statistical analysis of the months January to March, when Ms. B. was getting the supposedly "unedited" feed, revealed that the incidence of sexual relations reported (her emphasis) between AK and the double had increased by a statistically significant 19%. Spring in the air-or had the double previously been editing out certain intimate episodes? Overall sexual intimacy was down almost 50% from B's estimate of what her flesh-time with AK had been like-"But then I thought maybe I was just making the past look better than it really was. I felt very confused and unhappy."

Ms. B's sleep began to get worse and worse. Her co-workers frequently asked if she was ill. She tried to get permission to do more work from a vacation cottage she and AK owned several states away, but the company was in the midst of a work crush, and her superiors decided they needed her on site. After a disruption at her firm caused the work schedule to become even heavier through March and April, B. was frequently called in on the weekends. This she bitterly resented, as she had taken to spending 12 or 14 hours a day reliving her double's life with AK. Paradoxically, what her twin had experienced as a fifteen minute conversation, Ms. B might well spend hours on, rewinding events and attempting to analyze every nuance of the chit-chat passing between her husband and her step-self.

It's like living in a dream. I'm exhausted all the time. Everything is . . . glassy. I've had three reprimands at work. I didn't get a bonus when the merger finally went through. . . . It's funny, I've started wishing I was her. When I'm just being her, that's the only time I can be happy. When I'm myself, I'm so bitter and exhausted. Who could love me? I couldn't. You'd be a fool not to love her. She never gets tired. She's always ready for dancing or sailing or sex. I'm this worn-out shell.

April was bad. Really bad. I looked like a raccoon, dark circles under my eyes. Taking … substances to help me stay awake. Outraged and hopeless at the same time.

Now I'm trying to let go of that. Now I just try to be her. You know? I just try to relax into the feed. I'm not fighting it anymore. I think she knows that. She can tell. Some of the sex they're having-it's incredible. It's so passionate. These are the encounters she wasn't showing me in February and March. This is what it's like when he thinks I'm not watching.

I don't know why she's finally letting me see everything. Maybe she feels sorry for me. Maybe she just knows she's won.

I don't care. I'm not proud any more. I've screwed up this job, and he makes enough money to support us anyway. I'm not demanding he get rid of her and take me back. That's ridiculous. Who would make that trade?

I don't care. I just want to be her. I just want to curl up inside the feed and be young again and beautiful and in love.

Except sometimes the feed gets ugly. Sometimes I can feel how much she hates me. It's like in a dream, you know in a dream you can tell how people feel about you even when they won't say anything? But then I "wake up" and I'm full of hate myself. Is that really her hating me I feel when I'm in the feed? Or is it my old self- is it like a, a ghost? My old self tapping at the window of the feed. Screaming to get in, like a ghost out in the darkness.


Recommendation

Ms. B came to me on the basis of a slight previous acquaintance through a mutual friend. I confess I found myself shaken by her story. Her manner and affect were disturbing, and I . . . I may have failed one of life's little tests of human courage.

I gave her the names of two therapists I know who work with AI/Human interaction issues.

Mea culpa.

[Marc Vaughan]

Originally Posted by cartman

This is what I got for ya, Quik:

Where did that come from - that was awesome

[cartman]

Originally Posted by Marc Vaughan

Where did that come from - that was awesome

That was from the other side of the malware ridden minefield link in the old FOFC thread he posted

[QuikSand]

The article was a small webpage, posted as part of an online mystery/puzzle launched by the film company behind the movie A.I., many years ago. I have forgotten most of the stuff from that -- but several of us on this forum spent some time working through clues and so forth, and many of them led to various websites that were related to the mystery story (that itself was completely unrelated to the film).

Thanks for posting, cartman - I still think that little short story is captivating.

[QuikSand]

So, getting back on track...

In this genre, I think it's artistically interesting to make the case for the "blue pill" route. We all come in thinking that real is where it's at, synthetic is lesser and wrong.

That story above, in just a few paragraphs, makes a decent thin case that the woman is arguably right, in observing "I don't care. I just want to be her. I just want to curl up inside the feed and be young again and beautiful and in love."

I think Her does the same thing. It goes from a movie about "some guy falls in love with Siri" into something a lot more complicated, and a lot more relatable than I think you'd expect from a couple hours in the theater. The scenes at the end of the movie, as there's a creeping feeling of the natural/real being irretrievably overtaken by the synthetic/artificial... that's awfully well done, isn't it? That makes the whole movie, to me.

[Ajaxab]

I couldn't help but think about AMC's Humans from last summer as well. It told the Ms.B story in a bit of a different way through the lens of the family, but similar questions were asked about the place of synths (the bots) and how much care should be given them in their life and as they become obsolete with new synths taking their place. I thought it was intriguing as an idea for a show and it has apparently been renewed for another season.

[cuervo72]

If the synths advance too much and don't become obsolete, they'll eventually need new humans. Kind of like a Highlander dilemma.

[JAG]

I found these to be interesting reads a month or two ago when I happened on them. I honestly don't know what to think about it:

The Artificial Intelligence Revolution: Part 1 - Wait But Why

The Artificial Intelligence Revolution: Part 2 - Wait But Why

[SteveMax58]

Originally Posted by JAG

I found these to be interesting reads a month or two ago when I happened on them. I honestly don't know what to think about it:

The Artificial Intelligence Revolution: Part 1 - Wait But Why

The Artificial Intelligence Revolution: Part 2 - Wait But Why

Those articles are excellent, thanks for posting!

In one sense, we seem to have hit the point of no return on an eventual AI which could probably do great things for us, but also cause our extinction. In another sense, it seems we'll get the outcome we deserve collectively. It is essentially Pandora's box with the ultimate Rhorschach test inside it.

I loved the short story about the handwriting AI. It is precisely the type of unintended consequence that makes advanced AI something we should be talking about, as a global conversation. Much like global warming.

I'm more in the camp that thinks we're more likely to merge ourselves with an advanced form of AI (and synthetic "parts") rather than having it in some sort of Oracle box...where it could be our undoing. I think as wild as that may seem to us....2 or 3 generations from now, our descendants won't find it nearly as bizarre.

But I'm as pessimistic as optimistic about it. Shurg

[QuikSand]

To me, the most interesting thing about contemplating the future of AI is considering issues and beliefs that we have now and hold as central, but which in time might look archaic.

Dumb sports example - we've seen Tommy John surgery go from an outre experimental thing to a fairly routine affair, with many players becoming even more effective after their year (or less now) of recovery time. There's speculation that some youngish pitchers are getting it done as a precaution... and whispers that at some point it could be a reasonable career move to just go ahead do it when you're 20. We're still at the point where that seems weird and off-putting. But does that necessarily have to sit that way with us forever?

Think about societal attitudes about in-vitro fertilization. That overcame a big hurdle once the first "test tube babies" were born and turned out to not be monsters. But over time, that has moved from crazy sci-fi, to cutting edge, to (in some places) an essential coverage for standard heath insurance. And it didn't take too long, societally.

So, is genetic guiding next? We're getting awfully close to having the ability to do that, right? Will my daughters have an option to select traits in their kids? or will it take one more generation? Will this be reserved for the super wealthy or ethically pliable, or will it become a standard practice everywhere? And what do we do about the hint of eugenics that arises from that?

Anyway... all this stuff interests me (even though not necessarily confined to the AI discussion at hand). And with AI, right now we are really hung up on the difference between natural and synthetic. But over time, I wonder if that mental barrier might start to slide away, and in 50-100 years people look back on the way we felt up until now as sort of quaint and old-fashioned.

[cuervo72]

Originally Posted by QuikSand

Will this be reserved for the super wealthy or ethically pliable, or will it become a standard practice everywhere?

I don't think basic prenatal care is even standard/affordable for all right now. I think this would be reserved for a decent stretch (and could even further unbalance the playing field).

[NobodyHere]

So how does capitalism work when robots do all our menial tasks? In 50 years robots will probably be doing all our fast food and trucking jobs plus much much more.

[SteveMax58]

Originally Posted by NobodyHere

So how does capitalism work when robots do all our menial tasks? In 50 years robots will probably be doing all our fast food and trucking jobs plus much much more.

That's part of the very implications we need to be discussing more in society, imho.

Even software development jobs, at some point sooner than we may suspect, could become mostly automated with only the most narrow or creative elements requiring a person. Then what do we do with all those CS engineers? Or how about medical jobs at some point, farming from advances in 3d printing, etc. We might just engineer ourselves into unemployment without a social structure that can adapt with these changes. And quite honestly, we've hit the point where most people over a certain age (looking at our politicians and corporate leaders mainly), won't intuitively grasp the magnitude until it's well past needed.

Because at some point, we will likely hit the wall of "there isn't something else" for people to actually do. Are we even prepared for that socially, economically, or logistically? I don't think we're even close, and fear that the political climate we have today is largely because we don't have answers for people outside of demonizing some group of others. We just don't need a million people to do anything really, without massive amounts of retraining and bold initiatives to strive for with that training. We can't even largely agree on an efficient health care system in the US it seems.

It's akin to the saying that a recession is when your neighbor loses their job, and a depression is when you do. The very real concentration of industries and capital only accelerates and further perpetuates this in my view Not intending to turn this into a political conversation, but it does require some real reflection on our old ideologies and whether they are still able to serve us in this day.

[rowech]

Originally Posted by NobodyHere

So how does capitalism work when robots do all our menial tasks? In 50 years robots will probably be doing all our fast food and trucking jobs plus much much more.

I have had this argument with friends for a while. Technology ensures socialism or a division in classes that will result in rioting, violence, etc.

[Ajaxab]

I don't know if we have any history majors who would know, but were these kinds of conversations going on in the midst of the Industrial Revolution?

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by NobodyHere

So how does capitalism work when robots do all our menial tasks? In 50 years robots will probably be doing all our fast food and trucking jobs plus much much more.

It likely starts with steps to reduce population that is surplus to requirements.

(Probably should have started that quite a way back frankly)

[cuervo72]

So, all retirees then?

[Easy Mac]

Originally Posted by QuikSand

Dumb sports example - we've seen Tommy John surgery go from an outre experimental thing to a fairly routine affair, with many players becoming even more effective after their year (or less now) of recovery time. There's speculation that some youngish pitchers are getting it done as a precaution... and whispers that at some point it could be a reasonable career move to just go ahead do it when you're 20. We're still at the point where that seems weird and off-putting. But does that necessarily have to sit that way with us forever?

Not to side track things too much, but I still haven't seen much to suggest that Tommy John has made more than 20% of the pitchers who have had it even as effective as previously, let alone more effective.

Scanning the names on this list from even pre-2015 (when players likely would be back) doesn't really seem to show even a small percentage of players who were more/as effective prior to surgery.

https://mlbreports.com/tj-surgery/

[Easy Mac]

Originally Posted by NobodyHere

So how does capitalism work when robots do all our menial tasks? In 50 years robots will probably be doing all our fast food and trucking jobs plus much much more.

We build a wall to keep the robots out. Basically like that one short in the Animatrix.

[Suicane75]

Sex robots will help curb reproduction.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by cuervo72

So, all retirees then?

I'm thinking births actually ... no newborn has a voting history after all.

Natural attrition will take care of the retirees.

[QuikSand]

bump?

I'm a sucker for CK, this book got me thinking about this could-have-been conversation a bit...

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...if-we-re-wrong

[JAG]

Pretty interesting discussion here, a good bit devoted to AI:

https://www.wired.com/2016/10/presid...ito-interview/

Just pulling out a few interesting parts:

generalized AI and specialized AI. In science fiction, what you hear about is generalized AI, right? Computers start getting smarter than we are and eventually conclude that we’re not all that useful, and then either they’re drugging us to keep us fat and happy or we’re in the Matrix. My impression, based on talking to my top science advisers, is that we’re still a reasonably long way away from that. It’s worth thinking about because it stretches our imaginations and gets us thinking about the issues of choice and free will that actually do have some significant applications for specialized AI, which is about using algorithms and computers to figure out increasingly complex tasks. We’ve been seeing specialized AI in every aspect of our lives, from medicine and transportation to how electricity is distributed, and it promises to create a vastly more productive and efficient economy. If properly harnessed, it can generate enormous prosperity and opportunity. But it also has some downsides that we’re gonna have to figure out in terms of not eliminating jobs. It could increase inequality. It could suppress wages.

ITO: But they underestimate the difficulties, and I feel like this is the year that artificial intelligence becomes more than just a computer science problem. Everybody needs to understand that how AI behaves is important. In the Media Lab we use the term extended intelligence1. Because the question is, how do we build societal values into AI?

In self-driving cars:

There are gonna be a bunch of choices that you have to make, the classic problem being: If the car is driving, you can swerve to avoid hitting a pedestrian, but then you might hit a wall and kill yourself. It’s a moral decision, and who’s setting up those rules?

OBAMA: Let me start with what I think is the more immediate concern—it’s a solvable problem in this category of specialized AI, and we have to be mindful of it. If you’ve got a computer that can play Go, a pretty complicated game with a lot of variations, then developing an algorithm that lets you maximize profits on the New York Stock Exchange is probably within sight. And if one person or organization got there first, they could bring down the stock market pretty quickly, or at least they could raise questions about the integrity of the financial markets.

Then there could be an algorithm that said, “Go penetrate the nuclear codes and figure out how to launch some missiles.” If that’s its only job, if it’s self-teaching and it’s just a really effective algorithm, then you’ve got problems. I think my directive to my national security team is, don’t worry as much yet about machines taking over the world. Worry about the capacity of either nonstate actors or hostile actors to penetrate systems, and in that sense it is not conceptually different than a lot of the cybersecurity work we’re doing. It just means that we’re gonna have to be better, because those who might deploy these systems are going to be a lot better now.

[QuikSand]

Originally Posted by QuikSand

I am just now getting into another book, M. John Harrison's Light. I can tell already that this will be similarly thought provoking, if not overwhelming, on similar fronts.

Hmmm... it was somewhat slow-paced, and I lost momentum at some point and dropped it. And then never found a window to pick it back up. But I have thought about it a bit since then. Might need to give it a second go.

[PilotMan]

We're getting closer to realizing the dangers of an overwhelming AI.

In just 4 hours, Google's AI mastered all the chess knowledge in history

After being programmed with only the rules of chess (no strategies), in just four hours AlphaZero had mastered the game to the extent it was able to best the highest-rated chess-playing program Stockfish.
In a series of 100 games against Stockfish, AlphaZero won 25 games while playing as white (with first mover advantage), and picked up three games playing as black. The rest of the contests were draws, with Stockfish recording no wins and AlphaZero no losses.