Posts
On the short list of potential existential threats to humanity is an explosive increase in the power of artificial intelligence (AI).
The people warning us about this argue that the first AI to reach a superhuman level of general intelligence--often referred to as artifical general intelligence or AGI--could rapidly create an even smarter AI, which in turn could create a still smarter AI, etc. This exponential, chain-reaction increase in machine intelligence could quickly leave humanity in the dust, with unpredictable but quite possibly devastating consequences.
Image credit: TOPBOTS
Skeptics say that super-smart AGI still lies far in the future, if it will ever be achieved. They also assert that human-positive values could be built into any such system, or that just as we're able to tell current computers and AI systems what to do, we will be able to set goals for and control any artificial general intelligence.
We can reserve a discussion of those issues for a different post.** Today's note is stimulated by the achievement of one of the steps often cited as a lynchpin of a potential artificial intelligence explosion--an AI system designing even smarter "offspring."
James Vincent, writing in The Verge, reports that Google is now using AI to create the "floor plans" for next-generation tensor processing units, or TPUs, chips that Google builds to, among other things, power its most powerful AI systems.
Reportedly, a new and more potent TPU architecture that would have taken a team of human designers months of intense work to design can now be generated in as many hours by an AI trained to view chip creation as a kind of game.
Vincent optimistically writes, "The virtuous cycle of AI designing chips for AI looks like it's only just getting started.
A pessimist might point out that what we've just seen is a speed-up of an important part of AI progress--by an AI--by a factor of more than 700. That's precisely why those pesky AI worry-warts foresee us ever-so-slow humans sooner or later being left wondering what just happened.
REA
---
** You can view some related posts via these links:
zerospinzone: Advanced Artificial Intelligence--Friend or Foe
Article: Google's AlphaZero is now scary smart | OpEdNews
Article: Self-aware artificial intelligence? Coming soon to a robot near you | OpEdNews
No comments:
Post a Comment