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Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
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purpose AI is not going to do anything conceivable in order to attain a goal. All engineering systems
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https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:17:50.240
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Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
are designed to trade off across multiple goals. When we build cars in the first place,
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https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:17:57.760
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Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
we didn't forget to install brakes because the goal of a car is to go fast. It occurred to people,
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https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:18:02.800
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Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
yes, you want it to go fast, but not always. So you would build in brakes too. Likewise,
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https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:18:08.880
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Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
if a car is going to be autonomous and program it to take the shortest route to the airport,
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https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:18:13.920
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Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
it's not going to take the diagonal and mow down people and trees and fences because that's the
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https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:18:20.320
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Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
shortest route. That's not what we mean by the shortest route when we program it. And that's just
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https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:18:24.560
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Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
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what an intelligence system is by definition. It takes into account multiple constraints.
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https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:18:29.120
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Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
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The same is true, in fact, even more true of so called general intelligence. That is,
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https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:18:36.000
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Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
if it's genuinely intelligent, it's not going to pursue some goal singlemindedly, omitting every
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https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:18:41.280
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
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other consideration and collateral effect. That's not artificial and general intelligence. That's
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https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:18:48.080
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Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
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artificial stupidity. I agree with you, by the way, on the promise of autonomous vehicles for
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https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:18:54.400
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Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
improving human welfare. I think it's spectacular. And I'm surprised at how little press coverage
|
https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:19:01.120
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Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
notes that in the United States alone, something like 40,000 people die every year on the highways,
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https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:19:06.160
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Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
vastly more than are killed by terrorists. And we spent a trillion dollars on a war to combat
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https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:19:11.680
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Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
deaths by terrorism, about half a dozen a year. Whereas year in, year out, 40,000 people are
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https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:19:18.240
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
massacred on the highways, which could be brought down to very close to zero. So I'm with you on
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https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:19:24.160
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
the humanitarian benefit. Let me just mention that as a person who's building these cars,
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https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:19:29.920
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Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
it is a little bit offensive to me to say that engineers would be clueless enough not to engineer
|
https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:19:34.800
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
safety into systems. I often stay up at night thinking about those 40,000 people that are dying.
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https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:19:39.360
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
And everything I tried to engineer is to save those people's lives. So every new invention that
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https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:19:45.280
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Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
I'm super excited about, in all the deep learning literature and CVPR conferences and NIPS, everything
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https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:19:50.800
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
I'm super excited about is all grounded in making it safe and help people. So I just don't see how
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https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:19:59.280
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
that trajectory can all of a sudden slip into a situation where intelligence will be highly
|
https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:20:08.240
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
negative. You and I certainly agree on that. And I think that's only the beginning of the
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https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:20:13.280
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
potential humanitarian benefits of artificial intelligence. There's been enormous attention to
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https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:20:17.920
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Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
what are we going to do with the people whose jobs are made obsolete by artificial intelligence,
|
https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:20:24.320
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
but very little attention given to the fact that the jobs that are going to be made obsolete are
|
https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:20:28.720
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
horrible jobs. The fact that people aren't going to be picking crops and making beds and driving
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https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:20:32.560
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
trucks and mining coal, these are soul deadening jobs. And we have a whole literature sympathizing
|
https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:20:38.960
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
with the people stuck in these menial, mind deadening, dangerous jobs. If we can eliminate
|
https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:20:45.520
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
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them, this is a fantastic boon to humanity. Now granted, you solve one problem and there's another
|
https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:20:53.040
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
one, namely, how do we get these people a decent income? But if we're smart enough to invent machines
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https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:20:58.480
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Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
that can make beds and put away dishes and handle hospital patients, I think we're smart enough to
|
https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:21:05.840
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
figure out how to redistribute income to apportion some of the vast economic savings to the human
|
https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:21:12.400
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
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beings who will no longer be needed to make beds. Okay. Sam Harris says that it's obvious that
|
https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:21:19.200
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
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eventually AI will be an existential risk. He's one of the people who says it's obvious.
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https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:21:26.000
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Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
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We don't know when the claim goes, but eventually it's obvious. And because we don't know when,
|
https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:21:31.760
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Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
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we should worry about it now. This is a very interesting argument in my eyes. So how do we
|
https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:21:38.640
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
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think about timescale? How do we think about existential threats when we don't really, we know
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https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:21:45.680
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
so little about the threat, unlike nuclear weapons perhaps, about this particular threat, that it
|
https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:21:51.120
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
could happen tomorrow, right? So, but very likely it won't. Very likely it'd be a hundred years away.
|
https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:21:58.160
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
So how do we ignore it? How do we talk about it? Do we worry about it? How do we think about those?
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https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:22:04.560
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Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
What is it?
|
https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:22:12.480
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
A threat that we can imagine. It's within the limits of our imagination,
|
https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:22:13.840
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
but not within our limits of understanding to accurately predict it.
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https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:22:18.560
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
But what is the it that we're afraid of?
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https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:22:24.320
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
Sorry. AI being the existential threat.
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https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:22:26.880
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
AI. How? Like enslaving us or turning us into paperclips?
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https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:22:30.320
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
I think the most compelling from the Sam Harris perspective would be the paperclip situation.
|
https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:22:35.120
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
Yeah. I mean, I just think it's totally fanciful. I mean, that is don't build a system.
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https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:22:39.520
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
Don't give a, don't, first of all, the code of engineering is you don't implement a system with
|
https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:22:43.440
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
massive control before testing it. Now, perhaps the culture of engineering will radically change.
|
https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:22:50.080
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
Then I would worry, but I don't see any signs that engineers will suddenly do idiotic things,
|
https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:22:55.040
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
like put a electric power plant in control of a system that they haven't tested first.
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https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:23:00.320
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
Or all of these scenarios, not only imagine almost a magically powered intelligence,
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https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:23:07.360
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
including things like cure cancer, which is probably an incoherent goal because there's
|
https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:23:15.600
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
so many different kinds of cancer or bring about world peace. I mean, how do you even specify that
|
https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:23:20.240
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
as a goal? But the scenarios also imagine some degree of control of every molecule in the
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https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:23:25.600
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
universe, which not only is itself unlikely, but we would not start to connect these systems to
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https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:23:31.360
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
infrastructure without testing as we would any kind of engineering system.
|
https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:23:39.120
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
Now, maybe some engineers will be irresponsible and we need legal and regulatory and legal
|
https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:23:45.680
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
responsibility implemented so that engineers don't do things that are stupid by their own standards.
|
https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:23:53.920
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
But the, I've never seen enough of a plausible scenario of existential threat to devote large
|
https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:24:00.640
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
amounts of brain power to, to forestall it. So you believe in the sort of the power on
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https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:24:08.560
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
mass of the engineering of reason, as you argue in your latest book of Reason and Science, to sort of
|
https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:24:14.240
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
be the very thing that guides the development of new technology so it's safe and also keeps us safe.
|
https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:24:20.400
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
You know, granted the same culture of safety that currently is part of the engineering mindset for
|
https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:24:28.000
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
airplanes, for example. So yeah, I don't think that that should be thrown out the window and
|
https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:24:34.560
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
that untested all powerful systems should be suddenly implemented, but there's no reason to
|
https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:24:40.480
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
think they are. And in fact, if you look at the progress of artificial intelligence, it's been,
|
https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:24:45.520
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
you know, it's been impressive, especially in the last 10 years or so, but the idea that suddenly
|
https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:24:50.400
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
there'll be a step function that all of a sudden before we know it, it will be all powerful,
|
https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:24:54.160
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
that there'll be some kind of recursive self improvement, some kind of fume is also fanciful.
|
https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:25:00.080
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
We, certainly by the technology that we, that we're now impresses us, such as deep learning,
|
https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:25:06.800
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
where you train something on hundreds of thousands or millions of examples,
|
https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:25:13.200
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
they're not hundreds of thousands of problems of which curing cancer is a typical example.
|
https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:25:18.320
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
And so the kind of techniques that have allowed AI to increase in the last five years are not the
|
https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:25:26.000
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
kind that are going to lead to this fantasy of exponential sudden self improvement. I think it's
|
https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:25:31.520
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
kind of a magical thinking. It's not based on our understanding of how AI actually works.
|
https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:25:40.320
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
Now give me a chance here. So you said fanciful, magical thinking. In his TED talk,
|
https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:25:45.440
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
Sam Harris says that thinking about AI killing all human civilization is somehow fun,
|
https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:25:51.040
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
intellectually. Now I have to say as a scientist engineer, I don't find it fun,
|
https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:25:55.760
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
but when I'm having beer with my non AI friends, there is indeed something fun and appealing about
|
https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:26:00.400
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
it. Like talking about an episode of Black Mirror, considering if a large meteor is headed towards
|
https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:26:08.560
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
Earth, we were just told a large meteor is headed towards Earth, something like this. And can you
|
https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:26:14.640
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
relate to this sense of fun? And do you understand the psychology of it?
|
https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:26:20.640
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
Yes. Good question. I personally don't find it fun. I find it kind of actually a waste of time
|
https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:26:24.560
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
because there are genuine threats that we ought to be thinking about like pandemics, like cyber
|
https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:26:32.800
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
security vulnerabilities, like the possibility of nuclear war and certainly climate change.
|
https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:26:39.760
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
You know, this is enough to fill many conversations. And I think Sam did put his
|
https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:26:46.160
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
finger on something, namely that there is a community, sometimes called the rationality
|
https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:26:54.320
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
community, that delights in using its brainpower to come up with scenarios that would not occur
|
https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:27:00.240
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
to mere mortals, to less cerebral people. So there is a kind of intellectual thrill in finding new
|
https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:27:07.280
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
things to worry about that no one has worried about yet. I actually think, though, that it's
|
https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:27:14.560
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
not only is it a kind of fun that doesn't give me particular pleasure, but I think there can be a
|
https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:27:19.840
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
pernicious side to it, namely that you overcome people with such dread, such fatalism, that there
|
https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:27:25.440
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
are so many ways to die, to annihilate our civilization, that we may as well enjoy life
|
https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:27:32.400
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
while we can. There's nothing we can do about it. If climate change doesn't do us in, then runaway
|
https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:27:39.200
|
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason | Lex Fridman Podcast #3
|
robots will. So let's enjoy ourselves now. We've got to prioritize. We have to look at threats that
|
https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/0003-large.html#00:27:42.880
|
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