Episode 303 Scott Adams: Talking About Robots and AI Because it Must be 4:20 Somewhere
Date: 2018-11-16 | Duration: 13:54
Topics
What does it mean to be alive and intelligent? Human intelligence is an illusion A guiding principle we should give AI robots
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> [!note] Rough Transcript
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## Transcript
[0:11]
hey everybody come on in here it's a very special afternoon version of coffee with Scott Adams this time without coffee but if you'd like to enjoy a beverage get in here fast because it's time for a sip of water with Scott Adams let's call that the simultaneous up join
me ah good morning China good morning Lindy Colleen and Molly and auntie and uh Mike and all the rest of you all right now one of the things I think is the funniest thing in the world and literally it's just one of the funniest things is that scientists and the smartest people in the world can't figure out yet how to create artificial intelligence and I think I know the problem the reason you can't produce
[1:14]
problem the reason you can't produce artificial intelligence is that there's no such thing as intelligence at least not what we imagine it is so in other words we're trying to reproduce something that doesn't work that doesn't exist in the first place you can't reproduce something that's never been produced and that's what AI people are trying to do in other words they're trying to reproduce human intelligence but if I've taught you nothing human intelligence is largely an illusion in in a practical sense we are largely not using intelligence but imagining that we are so we're actually literally imagining our own intelligence and so the reason you can't build it into a robot is that the thing you're trying to reproduce has never been produced you can't copy something that doesn't exist literally that's the problem and I want to talk about that a little bit by a little thought
[2:17]
little bit by a little thought experiment in which I ask you what does it mean to be alive and intelligent now there is a definition of what it means to be alive in scientific terms but I propose that that will not be a good enough definition in a world of robots and computer life that we'll need to update what it means to be alive and we're also going to have to update what it means to be intelligent and here's a little uh mental experiment and the question is this what would you have to add to a robot to be satisfied that it was a l alive and intelligent not just a robot anymore in the sense of being an object but crossing over into being a life form what would you have to add to it to get to that on the other hand what would you have to take from a human to turn it
[3:17]
have to take from a human to turn it into not alive anymore and if you if you work both ways you might find out something surprising so take for example this human what could I subtract from that human and still say well he's still intelligent and he's you know still alive so let's let's see what we could remove from this person we could remove all of his skills because if he suddenly forgot how to do stuff you'd still say well you know he doesn't know how to play baseball but he's he's still a living intelligent creature so you you couldn't you know I'm not talking about removing the skill of walking and talking but you can you could get rid of most of the skills you can get rid of most of the body but not all of it and you'd still have you right if if this person were a brain in a jar it would still be the person it just could
[4:18]
would still be the person it just could do less stuff you're not really your actions because you could change your actions and you'd still be the same person you're not not really your you could say that you're your DNA but that's something uh that the robot can essentially copy because the DNA is like the source code for the robot so that that part is not as special right it's really just the the mechanism that allows you to do what you're doing doesn't really Define you as intelligence I I don't think it's really your thoughts because no matter what you're thinking you're still alive and you're still um you're still intelligent it doesn't matter specifically what you're thinking but there has to be some kind of thought process going on so I'll get to that in a moment obviously there has to be something like thinking but I'll I'll get to that um you probably need something likes your senses I don't think memories are necessarily important
[5:20]
think memories are necessarily important because if I erased all of your memories up till today you would still be alive and you would still be intelligent so I don't think that's the important part I think it comes down to this I think the thing that makes you human somebody said emotions um we we all have very different emotions but they're it's kind of a a feedback loop with our senses and our brain and stuff it's an emergent sort of a thing I don't think emotions Define you do they if if you if you could uh let's say let's take somebody like a psychopath a psychopath would not have much in the way of emotions uh not in the normal sense but would still be alive and would still be intelligent so I'm going to make a case for the most important thing that makes you human is this and here here's my little rule that I want to run by you so
[6:22]
little rule that I want to run by you so my rule that I wrote Today is anything that can develop preferences through experience is both alive and intelligent so anything that can develop its own preferences through living and experiencing in ways that are not predictable to other people is effectively alive and effectively intelligent now here's the trouble if a robot starts developing preferences we should be concerned because those preferences might not be in in our best interest as humans so you would need to give us some kind of guiding principle so you might say you can develop any preferences you want about how to act you know within within reason but they H they all have to be compatible with some larger guiding principle and I would suggest that the best guiding principle for our AI of the future is that it maximizes human
[7:26]
future is that it maximizes human reproduction in other words uh it does whatever is best for human reproduction which is slightly better slightly different from don't hurt anybody if you have the rule don't hurt anybody you you get into more um ambiguous situations because there are lots of cases where you have to hurt somebody to help somebody else but the way human beings um figure that out is they they usually choose what's best for human reproduction if they have a tough choice and somebody's got to die and somebody's got to live they're going to choose the one that's best for human reproduction let me give you an example if you had a choice let's say you're a bus driver you're a bus driver and your bus is filled with uh senior citizens they're 80 years old so everybody in your bus is 80 years old and suddenly a young mother with a baby carriage goes in front of the bus if you're a human
[8:27]
in front of the bus if you're a human being you in instantly make the decision that's best for human reproduction meaning you'll kill everybody in the bus to save the baby and the young mother you'll you'll go right off the road and the reason you'll do that and you'll do it instantly is because the people in the back of the bus can't have babies now you don't process it that way but the fact is that there's a reason that women and children go first right in disasters they they have a higher value to
to reproduction so you could easily build into your robots and your AI that as their guiding principle so that when the robots get into ambiguous situations where somebody might have to die or at least you're putting a risk of somebody dying but somebody else might be saved that the robot says this one is more likely to reproduce and have you know healthy good Offspring this one is likely you know past the the age of reproduction boom now I'm not talking
[9:30]
reproduction boom now I'm not talking about Eugenics here you know the robot would treat everybody as as equally valuable except for are they likely to reproduce or not that's it now and I would argue that that would be that would be very close to the way humans uh make decisions I would even go so far as to say that most of our human decisions are some kind of subconscious expression of our reproductive impulse you know lots of smart people have said that so that's not new but the fact that you dress a certain way that you make money that you show off that you do things to protect your ego your health all of that directly or indirectly goes toward reproduction so if you said to the robots here's the deal robots you robots don't have egos as a robot nobody gave you an ego so you have no reason to protect yourself but you need a an organizing
[10:31]
yourself but you need a an organizing principle around which to make all of your ambiguous decisions and that principle will be whatever is best for the health and reproduction mostly the reproductive health of the human species um somebody says pure Darwin that is evil I'm not sure why that's evil it might be but I like to hear the argument all right so for those of you joining late let me summarize in my opinion the the difference between a human and a and a robot is going to shrink over time and that lots of things we think that make us alive and make us intelligent are actually kind of optional you can lose an arm you could you could even you know what happens if you edit your DNA CU we'll be able to do that right I think we already can suppose you're born and then somebody edits your DNA are are you a different person right so I say an entity which can
[11:33]
right so I say an entity which can develop its own preferences in an unpredictable way based on its experience in the environment is alive and intelligent and that we would actually see it that way if you saw a robot that you could tell was learning and specifically what it was learning is what works and what doesn't and it's learning what keeps people alive and what doesn't now let's say that the robot is also connected to the internet so that it it learns from all of the other robots experiences so every robot is going to learn what every other robot is learning as soon as they're learning it if they're networked
uh does the robot run over the skay I'm sorry that was a terrible question I don't even want to repeat it but it was funny it's funny that you would ask the question it's not a funny question um
why are you ignoring sensient um I think senscience is
[12:35]
sensient um I think senscience is largely an illusion it just has to do with the way we're wired and that I think this thing called Consciousness is little more than being able to predict what's going to happen and then measuring that against what actually does happen and that that's all it is it's the difference between what you think is going to happen and what's happening and then that gets through your senses and processed in your brain and what you feel while that's happening is your sensient cuz remember I'm talking about living and in the concept of living a plant is alive but it's not sensient um if you were to watch a robot developing preferences you would say it was
was intelligent yeah yes that is Christina uh she's practicing her uh her Christmas songs all
all right
[13:39]
um Bo she's really good all right that's uh all I have for today I just wanted to talk about robots for a while and now I got more stuff to do I got to decorate the house with Christmas stuff I'll talk to you talk to you later