9.7 KiB
QC's AI commentary on its mundane post-singularity comic: "Skynet is Bullshit"
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Author: u/notmy2ndopinion Concent of Saunt Edhar*
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Score: 0
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Created: 2016-06-10T02:55:09
Post:
Comments:
u/shadowstar731 [+17] (2 hours later)
"Unlimited power requires unlimited energy" (rephrased) isn't a valid argument against the proposition that a superintelligence would be extremely powerful.
That's like saying "Accelerating to the speed of light would require infinite energy, therefore it is impossible to travel faster than 5 km/h"
u/Towerowl [+5] (3 days later)
Guys, I know Yudkowsky is obsessed over AI, but that doesn't mean we have to post every single thing remotly related to AI on this subreddit. Btw, QQ ( the comic linked in this post ) is nowhere near anything rational, it's just an occasionally amusing comic where the author demonstrates his views on what is his vision of a healthy sex life. Also indie rock snobism.
u/notmy2ndopinion [+4] Concent of Saunt Edhar (5 minutes later)
Jeph Jacques' comic features hipsters in a coffee shop making snarky comics, who incidentally happen to have robot AI companions.
I think this is the first time that there is serious discussion on their post-singularity world, if it could be called that. Ironically, the combat droid Bubbles is the AI that has the most to say on the subject and I like her logic.
The follow-up comic "Happy Thoughts" takes it a step further discussing the Singularity AI p-zombie simulating the 'cold uncaring universe'
u/ArgentStonecutter [+9] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (5 hours later)
I think Jeph is misusing the concept of p-Zombies here.
If you can tell whether the singularity intelligence is conscious or not, it's not a p-Zombie. It might be one of Peter Watts or Karl Schroeder's non-conscious minds (like Artificial Nature, or Thalience, or the vampires of Blindsight), but they're not p-Zombies because you CAN distinguish their behavior from those of conscious minds.
And if Bubbles is bringing it up, that means that AIs have no better understanding of artificial intelligence than we do.
Oooh.
Now that actually makes sense.
u/tilkau [+2] (a day later)
Okay, THAT is a good explanation, especially given that they are modeled on human minds. If they were less human, they might be more consistent (and therefore presumably more transparent to self-reflection).
u/Bowbreaker [+2] Solitary Locust (a day later)
Bubbles: "but the spark that gives rise to emergent consciousness is not fully understood."
You might be right.
u/tilkau [+7] (an hour later)
Why do people think p-zombies is a valid concept? One of its essential premises is fundamentally magical thinking -- 'because I can think of a world where X is the case, X must be possible'.
Not really trying to prompt a discussion here, just disappointed that a discussion that started off credible ended up at p-zombies.
u/ZeroNihilist [+5] (2 hours later)
He also appears to conflate morality with consciousness in the second comic, where the entire point of p-zombies (as nonsensical as the concept is) is that they are externally indistinguishable from conscious entities.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+2] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (5 hours later)
Therefore whether a superintelligence was a p-Zombie or not wouldn't change its morality.
u/Bowbreaker [+3] Solitary Locust (a day later)
just disappointed that a discussion that started off credible ended up at p-zombies.
More importantly, it mentions the term p-zombies but shows that either the character or the author himself really doesn't understand what the term means, thus harming credibility even further.
u/sir_pirriplin [+3] (2 hours later)
'because I can think of a world where X is the case, X must be possible'.
It's a work of fiction, so in that case it's literally true. Philosophical zombies are indeed possible (in that fictional world) if the author imagines that they are possible.
u/tilkau [+3] (2 hours later)
That's true. However the rest of the comic (and I mean the entire comic, not just this strip) does seem to be focused near-exclusively on real world, current or relatively near future issues. That's why this reads to me as either a misinformed author, or one who's referencing p-zombies solely because it sounds interesting.
u/Chronophilia [+1] sci-fi ≠ futurology (7 hours later)
Things being interesting is a perfectly good reason to talk about them.
u/tilkau [+2] (8 hours later)
Not on its own. The list of things that it's constructive to discuss is an awful lot shorter than the list of things that it's interesting to discuss.
u/Bowbreaker [+2] Solitary Locust (a day later)
You think people should only ever have constructive discussions? Whoops, there goes our subreddit.
u/None [+1] (14 hours later)
It's a good thing the point of the comic is to be interesting.
u/sir_pirriplin [+1] (9 hours later)
It's true that most of the rest of the comic is like that, but in this particular pair of strips they are lampshading the possibility that it was all a simulation.
Bubbles says that an AI with different values simulating their world perfectly explained their uncaring universe but we as the audience know that that universe isn't uncaring at all. It cares about drama, humor, having interesting situations for the audience and so on. An alien intelligence simulating their world (i.e. the author writing the comic) perfectly explains the fact that the universe seems to care about such things, and it also explains all the weird stuff that breaks the law of physics.
u/Chronophilia [+0] sci-fi ≠ futurology (7 hours later)
Calm down. It's a valid concept in the Questionable Content setting, because the author uses "conscious" to mean "thinks like a human". Which, really, is all it's ever meant. Most AIs in the story, from sentient toasters to space stations still act like people, so they need a word for "human or AI" (it's important for discussions of AI rights). And once they settled on "conscious", it makes sense to discuss the possibility that someone will build a type of mind that isn't based off humans.
u/tilkau [+6] (8 hours later)
Calm down
A direct rebuttal does not imply upset.
It's a valid concept in the Questionable Content setting, because the author uses "conscious" to mean "thinks like a human".
That seems reasonable as a premise. But it doesn't fit with use of the term p-zombie at all. A p-zombie supposedly thinks it is human('conscious') but is not. There doesn't seem to be any compelling reason to presume a non-human mind would think itself to be human.
u/Chronophilia [+3] sci-fi ≠ futurology (8 hours later)
Yeah, Jeph's using the word "p-zombie" incorrectly. Just calling it "intelligence without conscience/consciousness" misses the entire point of the thought experiment.
u/Bowbreaker [+1] Solitary Locust (a day later)
because the author uses "conscious" to mean "thinks like a human".
So the author thinks that aliens would either be human-like in their thinking or non-conscious entities?
If instead he just picked that word for the sake of the dialogue then he is simply using the English language in a wrong and confusing way.
u/Chronophilia [+6] sci-fi ≠ futurology (7 hours later)
The creator of Questionable Content does like to troll his readers from time to time, so don't take anything he writes too seriously. Actually, don't take anything anyone ever writes too seriously, it's a good general principle.
Still, if you want to know if the comic actually contains godlike AIs that have hidden themselves from the world, this other comic is probably relevant.
u/noggin-scratcher [+3] I am a happy tree (9 hours later)
There's also a few either side of that one that somewhat address the "You have AI, why isn't this a bigger deal?" question.
u/Galap [+1] (a day later)
Yeah, this is partly why I don't agree with the 'AI intelligence expolsion' idea. The concept that making a self-improving system will allow it to extremely rapidly progress to omnipotence seems really simplistic. Ideas that sound like they're going to work are much easier to come by than ideas that actually do, and I think that applies to this situation in a couple of ways.
This would apply to the AIs as well. It seems to me that there's a very important property of the universe whose consequence is that many things are easy to undestand or verify after the fact but extremely difficult to arrive at from nothing. As one particular example of this, I would be EXTREMELY surprised if P=NP.
I suppose it's conceivable that the limitation is only a part of us, and not inherent to the universe, but that seems very unlikely. However, if for example, it was proved that P=NP, I would believe it more likely that intelligence explosion is possible.