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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

While I don't think that throwing mips at biophysically detailed models of natural brains is a particularly elegant solution for practical AI, it could still help the understanding of how natural brains work. This understanding might help in the construction of equally powerful but less ressource-hungry models.In the end it will be the ones who simulate the relevant mechanisms at the "right" level of abstraction that will give the most bangs per buck, but projects like this might provide valuable insights what more abstract brain models could look like.

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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

Michael, I think there is a very real danger of emerging technologies such as AI giving certain groups of people huge amounts of wealth and power. Even if that power is granted through voluntary exchange, it can still be abused. People in power (i.e., in control of vast AIs) might not have many incentives to engage to trade with normal, less-powerful humans when other options (conquest of a sort?) are available to them. Trading with humans might become pointless for anything but manual labor if AIs became too intelligent.

I'm mostly afraid of what would happen if AIs of human intelligence or greater were created their distribution significantly restricted through regulation, patents, or outright nationalization. Instead of becoming a technology for the masses, AI could be a wielded by those already in power, who have few incentives to share the technology with others.

Can you imagine the anti-AI rhetoric politicians might spout in the future? I wonder if they'd think it unsafe to use for their own (Skynet?) purposes.

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