Forget ANI, AGI, and ASI: think about ABI and ASlI


 

 

If you read about artificial intelligence research and AI safety these days, you'll likely come across some acronyms:

ANI: "Artificial Narrow Intelligence" is the type of artificial intelligence we already have.  Machine learning has been used for many years for a variety of tasks.  For instance, Netflix has an algorithm to notice what kinds of movies and shows you watch, and to recommend more entertainment based on what you've previously enjoyed.  This is "narrow" intelligence: it is very very good at a very, very specific task.  We have programs that are better than any human at playing chess, at playing go, at playing a wide variety of video games and board games.  But outside of that specific domain, the software is useless.

AGI: "Artificial General Intelligence" is, in theory, a form of AI that can do everything a human can do.  It can adapt itself to many kinds of tasks and therefore has a wide or unlimited range of skills and expertise.  This probably doesn't exist yet - although some (a minority of researchers) would argue that with the dawn of GPT-3, we are witnessing the dawn of AGI.  The exact boundary between ANI and AGI is is a matter of some dispute: just how narrow is "narrow"?  There's an old joke that goes, "AGI is whatever computers can't do yet."  The goalposts keep moving.  At one time, it was thought (even by brilliant minds like Douglas Hofstadter) that a computer wouldn't beat a grandmaster at chess until it had learned a lot more about what human life and human culture were like.  Various tests have been proposed - most famously, the "Turing Test," (or the "Imitation Game" as Alan Turing himself called it).  Some chatbots are already capable of tricking some people into thinking that they're human (not just chatGPT), though experts (and many other people) can see the difference fairly easily.  But it's not too hard to imagine that truly convincing chatbots are coming very soon.  Then there's my favorite, Steve Wozniak's test for AGI, the Coffee Test: a piece of software has developed AGI when you can put it in someone's house, and it can figure out where the kitchen is and make coffee.  

ASI: "Artificial Super Intelligence" is what science fiction speculators have imagined: an intelligence that is far beyond any human intelligence.  But many people have pointed out: wouldn't AGI already, more or less instantly, be ASI?  It would do everything a human can do, plus much more: it would be able to calculate (at least) as fast as a calculator, it would process information very quickly, it would never have to sleep, it would have focus and memory retention and recall far surpassing humans, and so on.

So these acronyms are unsatisfying in various ways.  Therefore, I propose a couple new acronyms:

ABI: "Artificial Broad Intelligence."  This is somewhere between "narrow" and "general" intelligence.  I think this is where we are now, especially with OpenAI's GPT research.  We have machine learning algorithms trained on datasets to the point that they have quite a wide, and quickly growing, range of skills.  They are remarkably adaptable - they are certainly miles beyond the algorithm in Netflix that can predict your movie preferences (badly, in my opinion).  And yet they cannot do many things that most humans can do.  They cannot run, jump, walk, see, smell, play tennis, find the kitchen or make coffee.  I think we will have ABI for a long time, and ABIs will be considerably different from humans in a variety of ways, yet they will be astonishingly powerful and will totally transform our civilization.

...and I have one more proposal for an acronym:

ASlI: "Artificial Slender Intelligence."  Baked into the distinction between ANI and AGI is the implication that AGI is what we're seeking.  But should we really be striving for AGI?  I think the opposite may be the case: we should be figuring out ways to keep AI narrow.  What I call "slender" intelligence should be our goal, NOT AGI or ASI.  This is intelligence "on a diet," so to speak.  It is a variation on ABI, but in this case, we are actively working to prevent AIs from having certain human capabilities.  I think we should actively work to prevent an AI from feeling things like greed, rage, envy, and the will to power.  Thus we should actively work to prevent AIs from being capable of passing the Turing Test.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Liquefactionism

Image
“To Dissolve Man” An Investigation into the Liquefactionist Party In the 21st century, we will have to deal both with the odious Liquefactionists and with a confused and reactionary anti-Liquefactionism, which is far more apparent and obviously horrifying. I borrow the term “Liquefactionist Party” from William S. Burroughs, who writes about the Liquefactionists in the “Parties of Interzone” section of Naked Lunch - which, as a political policy guide, is unmatched in its insight and accuracy.  He writes that, “ The Liquefaction program involves the eventual merging of everyone into One Man by a process of protoplasmic absorption. ”  He goes on: “It will be immediately clear that the Liquefaction Party is, except for one man, entirely composed of dupes, it not being clear until the final absorption who is whose dupe.” Paradoxically, Burroughs goes on to tell us that “Liquefactionists in general know what the score is.”  If they know the score, how can they be dupes?  Perhaps thi
Read more

Why Capitalism is Ending

Image
THE PRODUCTIVITY BOMB Sorry, Ray Kurzweil , there will be no singularity.  As much as Moore’s Law has become a cliche, it has also become a cliche to point out that exponential growth has no "knee" - that is to say, that an exponential growth curve has no inflection point.  It goes up faster and faster, so that not only is the value rising but the derivative of the value is also rising (that is, the rate of increase is itself increasing) yet at any given point it is still a gradual increase.  Growth that gets indefinitely huger as it approaches a specific point of time, a limit known as a singularity, is not exponential growth but rather hyperbolic growth .  There’s no evidence that technology is growing hyperbolically; it is “only” growing exponentially.  Gordon Moore himself has stated that he doesn't believe in the singularity, or even in the continuation of Moore's Law.   (And Moore's Law is starting to fail, anyway ... )  But it hard
Read more

Why Ayn Rand was Wrong

  It is a pet theory of mine that the "greatness" or "importance" of a philosopher is mostly determined by that philosopher's subsequent degree of influence on a government leader.  Would we still talk about Socrates, if his student Critias had not taken over Athens as the leader of the Dictatorship of the Thirty?  Would we talk about Aristotle, had he not tutored Alexander, who later became Alexander the Great and took over a vast part of the ancient world?  Would we remember Rousseau, had not Robespierre declared him "divine"?  Or Locke and Montesquieu, had not the founders of the United States revered them?  The esteem given to the philosophy by professional professors within the academy matters less, and its internal coherence, or insight, or truth matters less still.  By this measure, Ayn Rand is, unfortunately, the most important philosopher of the 20th century.   Even though she is barely noticed by philosophy departments, Ayn Rand is massively
Read more