2015年1月29日 星期四

Bill Gates on dangers of artificial intelligence: ‘I don’t understand why some people are not concerned’

Bill Gates on dangers of artificial intelligence: ‘I don’t understand why some people are not concerned’

 January 29 at 10:55 AM  
Bill Gates is a passionate technology advocate (big surprise), but his predictions about the future of computing aren't uniformly positive.
During a wide-ranging Reddit "Ask me Anything" session -- one that touched upon everything from his biggest regrets to his favorite spread to lather on bread -- the Microsoft co-founder and billionaire philanthropist outlined a future that is equal parts promising and ominous.
Midway through the discussion on Wednesday, Gates was asked what personal computing will look like in 2045. Gates responded by asserting that the next 30 years will be a time of rapid progress.
"Even in the next 10 problems like vision and speech understanding and translation will be very good," he wrote. "Mechanical robot tasks like picking fruit or moving a hospital patient will be solved. Once computers/robots get to a level of capability where seeing and moving is easy for them then they will be used very extensively."
He went on to highlight a Microsoft project known as the "Personal Agent," which is being designed to help people manage their memory, attention and focus. "The idea that you have to find applications and pick them and they each are trying to tell you what is new is just not the efficient model - the agent will help solve this," he said. "It will work across all your devices."
The response from Reddit users was mixed, with some making light of Gates's revelation ("Clippy 2.0?," wrote one user) -- and others sounding the alarm.
"This technology you are developing sounds at its essence like the centralization of knowledge intake," a Redditor wrote. "Ergo, whomever controls this will control what information people make their own. Even today, we see the daily consequences of people who live in an environment that essentially tunnel-visions their knowledge."
Shortly after, Gates was asked how much of an existential threat superintelligent machines pose to humans.
The question has been at the forefront of several recent discussions among prominent futurists. Last month, theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking said artificial intelligence "could spell the end of the human race."
Speaking at the MIT Aeronautics and Astronautics department’s Centennial Symposium in October, Tesla boss Elon Musk referred to artificial intelligence as "summoning the demon."
I think we should be very careful about artificial intelligence. If I were to guess like what our biggest existential threat is, it’s probably that. So we need to be very careful with the artificial intelligence. Increasingly scientists think there should be some regulatory oversight maybe at the national and international level, just to make sure that we don’t do something very foolish. With artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon. In all those stories where there’s the guy with the pentagram and the holy water, it’s like yeah he’s sure he can control the demon. Didn't work out.
British inventor Clive Sinclair has said he thinks artificial intelligence will doom mankind.
"Once you start to make machines that are rivaling and surpassing humans with intelligence, it's going to be very difficult for us to survive," he told the BBC. "It's just an inevitability."
After gushing about the immediate future of technology in his Reddit AMA, Gates aligned himself with the AI alarm-sounders.
"I am in the camp that is concerned about super intelligence," Gates wrote. "First the machines will do a lot of jobs for us and not be super intelligent. That should be positive if we manage it well. A few decades after that though the intelligence is strong enough to be a concern. I agree with Elon Musk and some others on this and don't understand why some people are not concerned."
Once he finished addressing the potential demise of humankind, Gates got back to answering more immediate, less serious questions, like revealing his favorite spread to put on bread.
"Butter? Peanut butter? Cheese spread?" he wrote. "Any of these."
The Microsoft co-founder's comments on AI came shortly after the managing director of Microsoft Research's Redmond Lab said the doomsday declarations about the threat to human life are overblown.
"There have been concerns about the long-term prospect that we lose control of certain kinds of intelligences," Eric Horvitz said, according to the BBC. "I fundamentally don't think that's going to happen. I think that we will be very proactive in terms of how we field AI systems, and that in the end we'll be able to get incredible benefits from machine intelligence in all realms of life, from science to education to economics to daily life."
Horvitz noted that "over a quarter of all attention and resources" at Microsoft Research are focused on artificial intelligence.
[This story, originally posted on Wednesday, has been updated.]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2015/01/28/bill-gates-on-dangers-of-artificial-intelligence

2015年1月21日 星期三

“behavioural economics” 。 Make policy for real, not ideal, humans Martin Wolf

Herbert Simon 是行為經濟學大師,從不同意"理性 vs 感情"的二分法,而是探討它們在人之所以為人的關係。



December 16, 2014 7:19 pm

Make policy for real, not ideal, humans

Many believe dysfunctional behaviour in finance is due solely to distorted incentives
Ingram Pinn illustration
O
ut of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made. This famous remark of the German philosopher, Immanuel Kant, is particularly relevant to economists. “Homo economicus” is far-sighted, rational and self-interested. Real human beings are none of these things. We are bundles of emotions, not calculating machines. This matters.
The World Bank’s latest World Development Report examines this territory. It notes that “behavioural economics” alters our view of human behaviour in three ways: first, most of our thinking is not deliberative, but automatic; second, it is socially conditioned; and, third, it is shaped by inaccurate mental models.
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The Nobel laureate, Daniel Kahneman, explored the idea that we think in two different ways in his 2011 book Thinking, Fast and Slow . The need for an automatic system is evident. Our ancestors did not have the time to work out answers to life’s challenges from first principles. They acquired automatic responses and a cultural predisposition towards rules of thumb. We inherited both these traits. Thus, we are influenced by how a problem is framed.
Another characteristic is “confirmation bias” — the tendency to interpret new information as support for pre-existing beliefs. We also suffer from loss aversion, fierce resistance to losing what one already has. For our ancestors, on the margin of survival, that made sense.
The fact that humans are intensely social is clear. Even the idea that we are autonomous is itself socially conditioned. We are also far from solely self-interested. A bad consequence of the power of norms is that societies may be stuck in destructive patterns of behaviour. Nepotism and corruption are examples. If they are entrenched, it may be difficult (or dangerous) for individuals not to participate. But social norms can also be valuable. Trust is a valuable norm. It rests on one of humanity’s strongest behaviours: conditional co-operation. People will punish free-riders even when it costs them to do so. This trait strengthens groups and so must raise members’ ability to survive.
Mental models are essential. Some seem to be inbuilt; and some can be damaging — as well as productive. Ideas about “us” and “them”, reinforced by social norms, may well lead to results that range from the merely unfair to the catastrophic. Equally important may be mental models that create self-fulfilling expectations of who will succeed and who will fail. There is evidence, notes the WDR, that mental models rooted in history may shape people’s view of the world for centuries: caste is an example. Such mental models survive because they are reproduced socially and become part of the automatic rather than the deliberative system. They influence not just our perceptions of others, but perceptions of ourselves.
To illustrate the relevance of these realities, the report analyses the policy challenges of poverty, early childhood development, household finance, productivity, health and climate change.
On household finance, for example, the report notes that it makes a difference whether would-be borrowers are told explicitly how much more expensive is a payday loan than an equivalent loan on a credit card. Revealing the status of low-caste boys in a mixed-caste classroom depresses the performance of students from lower castes compared with what happens if caste is not revealed. The boys respond to how they are presented. Again, poverty is not just a lack of material resources:it undermines the ability to think deliberately.
We are all made of Kant’s crooked timber: nobody has godlike wisdom and self-control
The way people think may also affect their productivity. An example is the benefits of contracts that penalise a worker for failing to meet the output targets she has chosen for herself. This is a way of closing the gap between good intentions and actual performance, such as when we agree to put money in the swearbox when we curse. We often disappoint ourselves. We may wish to bind ourselves to better behaviour, like Odysseus to his mast.
Health creates vital examples. One is the importance of mental models. An obvious one is the anti-vaccination hysteria. Another, illustrated by the WDR, is the tendency of poor women to believe that the right treatment for diarrhoea is to cut fluid intake, to stop their child “leaking”. Another is the tendency of people to be put off by even a very small charge for health products. The explanation for the reluctance to pay anything may, it suggests, be because free provision underpins the norm that everybody ought to take the medicine.
These then are intriguing examples of a more nuanced approach to policy. Another area where a narrow focus only on incentives is likely to be misleading is financial regulation. Many economists believe that dysfunctional behaviour in financial markets is due solely to distorted incentives: deposit insurance, the perception that institutions are “too big to fail” and a host of other explicit and implicit subsidies. Equally important, however, are behavioural norms, such as the view that the primary duty of bankers is to themselves not their customers; or inappropriate mental models, such as the widespread pre-crisis belief that house prices could not fall across the US. Regulation needs to be built on an understanding of such human frailties. It must focus on norms and groupthink, as well as on distorted incentives.
How far should policy be based on these perceptions, particularly since those who make policy are, as the WDR admits, prone to all sorts of biases in their own decision-making? We are all made of Kant’s crooked timber: nobody has godlike wisdom and self-control.
Yet policy must be made. It is surely better to make well-informed and realistic policy than base it on a grossly simplistic view of our true capacities. Moreover, nudging people in the direction they already want to go — by encouraging them to save, learn, behave healthily or bring up their children better — is hardly a gross violation of liberty. Yet encouragement should not slide too easily into coercion. Adults are not to be treated as children. That, too, is a social norm and quite a fundamental one.
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2015年01月20日 07:45 AM

經濟政策的人性基礎


2015年1月9日 星期五

a way for a computer to never lose at poker

How much would you wager playing cards against a machine? Think again. Scientists have now discovered a way for a computer to never lose at poker: http://econ.st/1tR25R4
NOUGHTS and crosses (known as tic-tac-toe in America) is one of the first games children learn. The more inquisitive among them soon realise there are strategies that always win if your opponent makes a mistake, and...
ECON.ST

2015年1月3日 星期六

尼克著 [哲學評書]中的Herbert Simon


蘇錦坤Ken Su 贈書。他還將書中的Herbert Simon 作索引。所以這篇獻給他。

尼克讀過Herbert Simon的回憶錄Models of My Life。不過,尼克可能沒注意到第17章頁277Simon說他贏了NEAL Koblitz (1988 詳下)的case。同樣的,該書也說明他的科技預測力之輸贏。

(六合叢書)  尼克著,[哲學評書 :講述維特根斯坦、羅素、哥德爾、奎因等哲學家的思想和逸事!]  ,杭州:浙江大學出版社,2014.

尼克,職業讀書人,業餘投資者,作品主要發表於《上海書評》。

目錄

自序
王浩師友記
pp.8-10討論Simon等人的定理証明之限制。
謎一樣的圖靈
p.29     1957年Simon預測計算機國際象棋程序很快會贏棋王,到1996年才實現。
萬·海恩諾特:革命的代數
羅素在中國
小說張申府
維特根斯坦是誰
維特根斯坦和圖靈
哥德爾軼事
附錄:蒯因論哥德爾
塔爾斯基:不邏輯的私生活
《皮爾士傳》及其翻譯
雷·蒙克談哲學家的傳記
郎VS亨廷頓
pp.181-83
  • Challenges - Page 72 - Google Books Resulthttps://books.google.com.tw/books?isbn=0387948619Serge Lang - 1998 - ‎Mathematics
    Huntington circulated the Boston Globe article with his endorsement in June 1987, ... A Paper by Herbert Simon The Economics Nobel Prize winner, computer  ...Random Curves: Journeys of a Mathematicianhttps://books.google.com.tw/books?isbn=3540740783NEAL Koblitz - 2009 - ‎Mathematics
    However, Lang decided to oppose Huntington at the annual meeting. ... member Herbert Simon, who “explained in the debate that...his mathematical reasoning  ...EconoSpeak: Economists As Bullying Witch Doctorseconospeak.blogspot.com/.../economists-as-bullying-witch-doctors.htmlFeb 9, 2008 - Samuel P. Huntington, an exceedingly eminent political scientist from Harvard ... I would not be at all surprised if Herb Simon "made an ass of  ...
  • Economists As Bullying Witch Doctors

    Esther-Mirjam Sent has a work in progress regarding how Herbert Simon made an ass of himself in debating with progressive mathematicians, who did not approve of Samuel Huntington joining the National Academy of Sciences. She included two wonderful quotes from one of the mathematicians, Neal Koblitz regarding economist misuse of mathematics.

    Sent, Esther-Mirjam. 2008. "Mathematical Verbiage as a Witch Doctor's Incantation? Herbert Simon vs. The Mathematics Community." unpub.

    Koblitz, Neal. 1988. "A Tale of Three Equations: Or the Emperors Have No Clothes." The Mathematical Intelligencer, 10: 1, pp. 4-10.

    10: "Mathematical verbiage is being used like a witch doctor's incantation, to install a sense of awe and reverence in the gullible and poorly educated."

    Koblitz, Neal (1981) "Mathematics as Propaganda." in Lynn Arthur Steen, ed. Mathematics Tomorrow (New York: Springer-Verlag): pp. 111-120.

    Koblitz (1981) had noted: "Mathematics can be used to mystify and intimidate rather than to enlighten the public."
    中國人的數學好過其他人嗎?
    濕的湯顯祖和乾的翻譯
    計算歷史學,大數據時代的讀書
    圖書館,維基百科和大數據
    百科全書死了,百科全書萬歲!