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Comment by modi15 | Hacker News Reader

> The secret to keeping a nuke safe is to keep the radioactive material separate and below critical mass. The secret to keeping experimental AI safe is to keep is (relatively) network-isolated.

I absolutely agree. But NONE of this stuff that we see daily is on air-gapped machines. I am pretty sure that ALL of this stuff is on networked machines.

Accepting the fact that things can spiral out of control quickly is the first step. World wide ban is the second and mandatory air-gap for any further experiments is the third.

Our current AI is dumb but it is dramatically better than what we saw just five years ago. This capsule stuff and open AI announcements are taking us very close. There is a very clear liklihood of us conceiving sentience in a lab over the next five years - in which case the time to ban is right f..... now !

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None of the stuff we see today is even remotely advanced enough to "get out of hand".

You're exactly right about it being dumb. You're exactly wrong about "capsule stuff and open AI announcements taking us very close."

There is approximately zero chance of us inventing sentience in a lab over the next five years.

Have you had a conversation with a digital assistant lately? Don't believe the hype. It's just hype.

I dont go by the hype. I work in the field and I know whats what.

Digital assistants dont work at all and I know exactly why. And I also know that digital assistants which are indistinguishable from an domain specific expert are atmost 2 years away.

You can argue that I am going by the hype. Problem is that I am not the only one. Even Elon Musk has expressed similar fears. Most people didnt believe that a nuclear bomb was possible. They had to see a mushroom cloud to get around it. AI has been a dud for the last two decades. It is easy to believe that it will continue being so.

Siri promised to be that revolutionary digital assistant. After 7 years of Apple buying startups and spinoffs that make the same promise, Siri is as dumb as ever. Alexa works better because it's "dumber" - a very well trained NLP wrapped around a still largely human-curated rule/knowledge database. I've heard of more realistic dumb systems, but no murmurs suggesting a revolutionary step towards AGI.

Elon Musk is a brilliant man that could become an expert on AI... but right now he is not. I trust him about as much as I trust the people that believed the first nuclear bomb would ignite the atmosphere and end all life on Earth - well-meaning concerns without a true understanding of the domain.

> AI has been a dud for the last two decades.

What? No. We're in the middle of an AI renaissance and I expect nothing less than exponential progress. However, the goal of a digital sapient is still very far away.

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