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Comment by jacobwilliamroy | Hacker News Reader

I can build an AI with common sense reasoning in about 9 months. The problem has already been solved. Why do we care so much about making computers more like people? Isn't that excessively cruel? Part of the utility of computing is that computers don't have needs for fulfillment, companionship, communion. We deploy them in awful conditions to do the most horrible, tedious time-waster jobs. Why do such minds need to be human?

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AI researchers have been attempting to build common sense into software for decades and have largely failed. So if you think you can do it in 9 months then you're naive or uninformed. But hey if you've figured out a better approach then go ahead and do it, then show us running code. Talk is cheap.

I suspect that by “in 9 months” they meant “by having a child”

Edit: whoops, didn’t see the other reply

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infant

Hey, no fair, the "A" in "AI" stands for "artificial"!

9 months - got it. But you're missing the point of what it would mean to have machines sort out cause and effect - not merely like humans, but like billions of humans, simultaneously. And if sentient at all, at least not objecting to their "awful working conditions" (which would probably be far better than those we subject humans to come to think of it).

I wonder how it could even be considered "cruel"? Cruel to other living human beings, perhaps. To the machine or its simulation software? No.

Any human-like AI is still a "fake" - any notion of emotion, pain, empathy etc. we attribute to them is only a simulation. It simply doesn't matter. It amazes and amuses me to think that people might actually give a damn what the machine is "feeling". I think people who truly believe this are out of touch with reality and frankly, with other human beings. The machine doesn't really care about us, it's a bunch of ones and zeroes no matter how you slice and dice it.

Even after training them on cause and effect, they still don't care. I don't buy the "if it looks like a human, sounds like a human, it's human" argument at all.

Cruel is also in the mind of the one doing the cruelty. People worry about being cruel to plant, to pets, to their cars. Its natural and normal, because we are empathetic beings. Not something to try to unlearn or avoid; its a big part of our humanity.

A plant or an animal, yes. A car though? Only reason to worry about being "cruel" to a car is that mistreating it will result in larger repair bills and a need to replace it earlier. Same thing with a computer. But each to their own I guess.

When your car is smart enough to assemble Ikea furniture, it'll also be smart enough to quietly resent you for making it assemble furniture all day.

No, it would probably enjoy it. If you were making it clean the toilet all day then it would start to resent you.

So do you think that the true laws of physics are uncomputable, or that even if a perfectly accurate physical simulation of a person were simulated, that while it would be entirely accurate in predicting what such a person would do if they were physically real, that they would have no internal experience nor moral worth?

Edit: alternatively, perhaps you only mean that any AI that realistically speaking might eventually be made would not be a person, not that no AI that could in theory be made would be?

I apologise in advance, but I have tried to parse your question multiple times, and I am still finding it unintelligible.

I'm in the middle of rewatching Battlestar Galactica, and this subject is at the core of the series.

Where do other mammals fit in your schema? Do you believe in some sort of biological essentialism? Or are only humans with caring about?

Many mammals are delicious? Other than that, I like animals a lot.

Machines deserve no such empathy, just a flick of the power switch as required. And I watched Automata (2014) last night. Didn't feel a single thing for the robots, as much as the film tries to goad you into doing so.

Sure it is. Sure it is. Whatever helps you sleep at night.

What is cruel about that? Has anyone actually ever implemented true pain in a computer AI? Does attaching a speaker with pre recorded screams to a Roomba count as pain? Does a number that keeps increasing count as pain? Is a boolean value pain/no pain enough to implement pain? What does it even mean to be in pain for a computer?

Scaling to meet the workload using machines may be as simple as paying the AWS bill. Scaling up people, even at profitable well-functioning companies, is hardly a solved problem.

If you can that means you must have done so already. Please show your work.

answer for your question: To be able to do the job

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