AI + neural networks?

[madscijr]

I don't think we (in our life time) will ever see an artificial consciousness. This implies awareness and the actual creation of an artificial life form. AI right now is very specific task driven like driving a car or facial recognition or playing chess or collecting and analyzing data  ... very specific tasks .... its a very long way from doing what your brain can do. Some of the key people in the AI field, like Nick Bostrom, feel IF a computer can perform at the same level as our brains then this level is called Artificial General Intelligent (AGI). He finds it worrisome because once at this level there WILL a next level which is being called Artificial Super Intelligence.(ASI). A computer operating at ASI could spell the end of mankind. Bostrom has an interesting book on strategies an AI programmers should consider if we want a world where humans can co-exist with an ASI.

Oh yes, I am well acquainted with the issues around and the implications of AI. A super intelligent system becoming harmful independently is only one possibility - the other, more pressing, issue is that all these systems are (or will be) made up of programming and designs that ultimately go back to people and organizations where, at any point along the way, could include back door code or hidden agendas or programming, that could direct the bigger system to do whatever, open up a backdoor, etc. at any time. 

The way these deep learning or self-learning AIs work, once a system is doing its thing and learning and developing strategies to do whatever they do, even the designers can't make sense of the database or programming they have picked up. How are they going to hunt down deliberately hidden programs or agendas buried inside some sub-system? Especially in distributed systems made up of services, where each one could be built by a different third party, and each one depends on any number of other services. Debugging or detecting malware can become an exponential job. 

I do suspect we already have AGI and artificial brains - it's just a matter of building a huge network of neurons. People already assemble this much computing power to mine bitcoin and predict the stock market. But in a world where countries and companies are constantly competing for an advantage over the competition, the government agencies, corporations and think tanks developing this stuff aren't necessarily going to announce they have this capability to the world. 

Fun stuff!