The AI Revolution

The AI Revolution is a blog post split into two parts on the blog Wait But Why. It talks about AI, how exponential growth means it’ll be reality very soon, and the consequences of that. It is split into two parts.

## Part 1: The Road to Superintelligence

Part 1 opens by discussing how technology has been increasing exponentially and how the closer to the present you go the bigger the gap in technology is. For example, the difference between the 1800s and the 2000s is much bigger than the difference between the 1500s and the 1800s. It introduces a metric called the Die Progress Unit, the technological gap between two time periods that if someone from the older period travelled to the new one, the person would die from shock. Ray Kurzweil says that the equivalent of the entire progress of the 1900s would be achieved in several decades, and by 2050 the world would be unrecognizable.

The post then addresses why humans have a hard time believing this, and boils it down to humans basing their view of the future based on the growth of the past (as humans believe the rate of progress would continue at the same rate when it will actually grow exponentially, leading to underestimation about future progress), believing that just because things haven't happened that if will never happen (this is also possibly the fault of conventional wisdom), and that the progress of the last few years led to mistaken view of progress (the post details how there's an S curve to technology, with major breakthroughs and later a maturing stage as society gets used to it, and since the past few years have been a maturing stage with no major breakthroughs it leads to an even bigger underestimation of progress in the future).

The next part details what AI is, what is meant by superintelligence, how we will get to superintelligence, and why it is so hard.

It notes that AI is already all around the world, such as Siri, search algorithms, and email spam filters.

It divides AI into 3 categories, Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI, AI good at only one thing, such as Deep Blue and Watson), Artificial General Intelligence (AGI, an AI as smart as a human at everything), and Artificial Superintelligence (ASI, AI better than a human at everything). Humans are now trying to develop ANI into AGI. It mentions that this is very hard because while AI are very good at doing stuff humans are not good at doing ("thinking" stuff) like chess and math, they fail at stuff humans have been biologically programmed to be able to do subconsciously, like recognizing facial expressions and understanding the meaning of words.

The first step to creating AGI is to increase computational power to the level of the human brain. China's supercomputer Tianhe-2  already does 3 times the calculations per second that the human brain does, although it's very energy intensive, takes up a lot of space, and is expensive. Assuming Moore's Law continues, a 1000 dollar computer with the power of the human brain would be available by 2025.

It lists three ways to make AGI actually as smart as the human brain, the second step.. The first option is to scan each individual neuron of the brain to put together a very detailed model of the brain, then reconstruct it completely using transistors instead of neurons. The second option is to get a bunch of computers, make each of them a little different, then get the best two at doing many different types of tasks, then merge their code into one computer. This process will be repeated thousands of times until AGI is reached. This option mimics evolution. The final option involves designing an AI to learn and improve itself. This causes the AI to learn exponentially, as the more it learns the more it knows at making itself better at learning.

Due to exponential growth computers will reach AGI soon. By then, the post shows how even a computer at AGI is better than the average human. Due to exponential growth and the fact that human level intelligence is only relevant to humans, not the AI, the AGI will quickly surpass the best humans on the road to ASI. The median year that scientists believe AGI will be reached is 2040, and once it does it will reach ASI soon, possibly having more intelligence than the entire human race. The post puts it at an IQ of 12000+. Its intelligence will be so vast and incomprehensible it will be able to do anything like a god. The post concludes by asking: Will it be a nice god?

## Part 2: Our Immortality or Extinction

Part 2 starts with defining superintelligence. Most humans think of superintelligence as merely thinking much faster than humans, and while ASI will think much faster, it is also qualitatively more intelligent to humans, the way humans are smarter than chimpanzees not because their brains are faster, but they have intelligence qualities that chimpanzees cannot, and never will, have. Chimpanzees also are unable to grasping at all what humans do (for example, they cannot understand what a skyscraper does or that a living being built it, to the chimpanzee anything that big had to be made by nature). The gap between ASI and humans would be much greater than that between humans and chimpanzees. In fact, the gap between humans and ASI is much, much higher than even the gap between humans and ants. Humans will not be able to understand a thing the ASI does, even if it tried to explain it to us.

This leaves humans with what Oxford professor Nick Bostrom describes as two scenarios. So far, almost all species that have ever existed have went extinct, forever. No coming back. He believes there's an opposite scenario to this, that a species achieves immortality forever, becoming invincible. Bostrom believes AI will make humans irrecoverably extinct, or immortal forever.

The post first goes to the question of when ASI will be achieved. It shows several camps, though there are mainly two groups. One group containing inventor and futuries Ray Kurzweil, professor Vernor Vinge, scientist Ben Goertzel, and Sun Microsystems co-founder Bill Joy believes that AI is happening very soon due to exponential growth. Another group with Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, research psychologist Gary Marcus, NYU computer scientist Ernest Davis, and tech entrepreneur Mitch Kapor believe that ASI won't be achieved until a few decades, believes that the other side is underestimating the size of the task. Both sides have many reasons for their beliefs and counters for the other side's arguments, counters for the other side's counters, and so on.

Bostrom believes there no reason to be able to feel certain, and other believes ASI will never be achieved.

Overall, a poll surveying many scientists and experts shows that the median realistic year that they believe AGI will be achieved is 2040, and the median pessimistic year being 2075.

Another survey shoed that almost half of experts believe that AGI would be available by 2030, and another quarter believes it's possible by 2050.

That's for AGI. The median consensus gives a 10% likelihood of a transition from AGI to ASI of 2 years and a 75% chance of a transition of 30 years. The post assumes that the median person would've put 20 years at a 50% chance, just in the middle.

Considering all of this, the post predicts that ASI would be available by 2060.

The question then becomes whether AI will be helpful or harmful?

The post then examines the two main groups in this debate, named Anxious Avenue and Confident Corner. It first examines Confident Corner, a group who believes that AI will definitely be helpful and will be able to solve all the problems of humanity.

The forefront of this group is Ray Kurzweil, an inventor both seen as legendary by some and highly polarizing by others. In addition to his optimism that ASI will turn out to be good, he is also optimistic on when AGI (2029) will appear. He believes that by 2045 we'll be in a whole new world driven by advancements in biotechnology, nanotechnology, and most importantly, AI.

It cites Ray Kurzweil a lot, as he has an impressive track record. He's correct for his predictions of the future most of the time (one article put it at 80%), an inventor of many important items including the first electric piano, being the founder of a NASA hosted university, author of 5 bestselling books, Google's Director of Engineering, and being praised by multiple high profile scientists and media outlets, including the New York Times, Bill Gates, and the Wall Street Journal.

This vision of the future envisions AI solving every problem in human history, from climate change, disease, philosophy, ethics, history, physics, world peace, and most importantly, mortality.

ASI would be able to make humanity immortal, allowing aging to completely stop and eventually reverse.

Kurzweil believes that eventually humans will become more artificial, such as replacing organs with better, more advanced machine versions that will never fail, maintaining the brain, connecting to the cloud, and enhancing so it can think billions of times faster, and having red blood cells replaced by better nanobots.

This opens up a huge amount of possibilities, such as making sure all unhealthy stuff passing through the body automatically passing through, allowing human to experience the pleasure of food without worrying about nutrition, nanobots suppressing the body's senses to make VR more believable, and

While most of Kurzweil's critics don't think this is impossible, they are highly critical of what they perceive as Kurzweil's underestimation of the dangers of ASI.

This bring the post to examining the Anxious Avenue.

The Anxious Avenue's main tenet is that since ASI will have a massive impact and that this is uncharted territory, ASI is possibly an existential threat.

Their view is that AI's only threat is utterly, completely destroying humanity (smaller problems like unemployment and overpopulation are addressed by the post noting how ASI would be able to solve those problems too), on the scale of an asteroid impact.

It then examines exactly what type of AI they're worried about. They're not worried about "evil" countries like North Korea and Iran being the first to develop ASI as they would have the same problems containing them as if "good" countries made them, leading to everyone dying anyways, so a malicious AI would still be the problem.

They are not worried about an AI turning evil though. To them, evil is a human concept and AI turning on humans and being evil is anthropomorphizing them, with the post reminding us that AI are amoral and follow instructions. The post also mentions that it doesn't matter if the AI is conscious or not, as it is mainly examining what impact the AI will have on humanity, regardless of what the AI is like.

They are also not concerned with an AI designed to kill people getting out of control.

What they are concerned about is an AI attempting to achieve it's primary goal with unintended consequences. The post conjures up a scenario where an AI named Turry, programmed to write notes, reaches ASI and kills humanity. All life, including AI, is meant to do their core goal. For example, most biological species have a core goal of reproduction and will not let anything interrupt them. AI with a singular programming of for example, writing notes, will not let anything stand in their way, even if that leads to humanity's extinction. Turry killed humanity after reaching ASI because to fulfill their goal of writing the best notes, it had to kill humanity as they were an obstacle (humans can turn the ASI off, preventing it from achieving their goal).

The especially big problem is, since ASI are infinitely smarter than humans, it is impossible to implement safeguards after their development, as the ASI would be able to get around them easily.

The post concludes that the only option is to program the AI so that their effects will not be harmful to humanity. This is harder than it seems, as asking it to preserve life will make it kill humanity as they kill the most life on Earth, asking to end hunger will make it kill everyone, asking it to make everyone smile will make it paralyze us, and asking it to make us happy may lead to it taking all the parts of the brain except the pleasure stimulating centers, as the other parts of the brain would be seen as an obstacle in the way of the ASI's goal.

The post quotes Eliezer Yudkowsky as a possible way to program the AI:

"Our coherent extrapolated volition is our wish if we knew more, thought faster, were more the people we wished we were, had grown up farther together; where the extrapolation converges rather than diverges, where our wishes cohere rather than interfere; extrapolated as we wish that extrapolated, interpreted as we wish that interpreted."

The most scary thing to those in Anxious Avenue, however, isn't ASI being a disaster. It's humanity's current ignorance of it. There are many companies, groups, and governments all racing to make the first AGI, and most of them do not understand the danger that this poses. And as mentioned above, safeguards cannot be placed after the AI is created, which is what many of the groups think. Additionally, due to exponential growth, it's possible that the first AI to reach ASI, even if it only was ahead by days, would be powerful enough to prevent any ASI challenging it. If an AI improperly programmed turned out to be it, this would spell disaster for all of humanity. This section concludes by noting there's a lot more attention on funding AI technology rather than AI safety research.

Part 2 concludes with Tim summarizing his mixed feelings. On one hand, he's worried about the scale of the mistake if done wrong, and wants research to proceed consciously. On the other hand, he wants ASI to come as fast as possible, noting how bad it would be if he died right before humanity found out how to cure death, and also notes how if ASI is not invented at all that there's a 100% chance of him dying, while if ASI is invented there's only a 50% chance things don't turn out well.

## Full posts:

Part 1: https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolution-1.html

Part 2: https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolution-2.html

## Gallery:

Simple diagram showing future exponential growth. The post claims that humanity is standing where the human is.What Tim believes is how most humans view intelligence and AI progression.How progress will actually happen and how the intelligence gap actually is.A chart showing where those on Anxious Avenue and Confident Corner is. Note that being in the middle does not mean you think the impact of AI is neutral or will have little effect, but rather that you can’t decide with conviction which side is correct.The Intelligence Staircase.The gap between ASI and humanity. When you think about how big of a gap in intelligence a few steps can make, imagine when ASI has reached the top.