Human Compatible
"In the popular imagination, superhuman artificial intelligence is an approaching tidal wave that threatens not just jobs and human relationships, but civilization itself. Conflict between humans and machines is seen as inevitable and its outcome all too predictable. In this groundbreaking book, distinguished AI researcher Stuart Russell argues that this scenario can be avoided, but only if we rethink AI from the ground up. Russell begins by exploring the idea of intelligence in humans and in machines. He describes the near-term benefits we can expect, from intelligent personal assistants to vastly accelerated scientific research, and outlines the AI breakthroughs that still have to happen before we reach superhuman AI. He also spells out the ways humans are already finding to misuse AI, from lethal autonomous weapons to viral sabotage. If the predicted breakthroughs occur and superhuman AI emerges, we will have created entities far more powerful than ourselves. How can we ensure they never, ever, have power over us? Russell suggests that we can rebuild AI on a new foundation, according to which machines are designed to be inherently uncertain about the human preferences they are required to satisfy. Such machines would be humble, altruistic, and committed to pursue our objectives, not theirs. This new foundation would allow us to create machines that are provably deferential and provably beneficial.
Stats for nerds
9recommend
20mentions
18people
2020–2026years
45% recommend50% neutral5% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- After he was demoted at DeepMind for poor performance as a manager, that is. Suleyman is no technologist. He's a marketing promoter. He attended one year of college before dropping out to help sell DeepMind.
You have to wonder what's going on in Gates' head these days to not recognize the lack of substance in such a book, and in its author.
Far better books on the possible futures of modern AI are Stuart Russell's "Human Compatible" or Brian Christian's "The Alignment Problem", both of which predate the boom in LLMs but still anticipate their Achilles heel -- the inability to control what they learn or how they will use it.
- Yeah; it is absurd hyperbole.
The only person I've seen talk sensible on these topics is Stuart Russell of "Human Compatible" (read the book, it's written with great clarity). He has his head firmly on his shoulders and eschews the breathless hype.
- > The CEO should not be allowed to try and orchestrate their own board as that would remove all checks against their decisions.
Exactly. This is seriously improper and dangerous.
It's literally a human-implemented example of what Prof. Stuart Russell calls "the problem of control". This is when a rogue AI (or a rogue Sam Altman) no longer wants to be controlled by its human superior, and takes steps to eliminate the superior.
I highly recommend reading Prof. Russell's bestselling book on this exact problem: Human Compatible: Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Control https://www.amazon.com/Human-Compatible-Artificial-Intellige...
- Stuart Russell's book Human Compatible articulates it well. He agrees that we can't predict how it would behave, and that's what he's worried about.
- * Philosophy
Arthur Schopenhauer - The World as Will and Representation.
Surprisingly readable and insightful, even if you don't buy his metaphysics. Einstein had Schopenhauer's portrait on his wall and considered him a genius.
* Poetry
John Milton - Paradise Lost
Powerful and beautiful writing.
* Fiction
Rabelais - Gargantua and Pantagruel. Funny and a real feast of words (the translation is a work of art in itself)
Thomas Mann - The Magic Mountain. Haunting and moving
Pierre Choderlos de Laclos - Dangerous Liaisons. Scandalous, gripping.
Ivan Turgenev - First Love. A masterclass in writing. Short, sensitive and exquisitely told.
Marcel Proust - In Search of Lost Time. Exceptionally rich and a beautiful study of love. Reading it is like living another life.
PG Wodehouse - the Jeeves series. Hilarious, perfectly frivolous, light and sunny
* Non-fiction
Stuart Russell - Human Compatible: AI and the Problem of Control. Potential bad outcomes from AI and what we might be able to do about them
Noam Chomsky - Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies. How public discourse is shaped and controlled
Karl Popper - The Open Society and its Enemies. How to work against totalitarianism
- Recommend Russel's Human Compatible. Three principles to guide AI development:
1. The machine's only objective is to maximize the realization of human preferences.
2. The machine is initially uncertain about what those preferences are but then is.
3. The ultimate source of information about human preferences is human behavior.
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The Humane Interface
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The evolution of cooperation
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