The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence

[Commodore]

1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

Yep, and it's going to get bigger. Bitcoin is completely shit as far as financial sector needs go - it doesn't scale well at all (by design, but that makes it suck), it isn't particularly good at adaptation or integration (witness most of the bitcoin startups have millions poured into them and have nothing to show for it) and is otherwise fairly unwieldy - but the tech to ensure contractual obligations and reception is absolutely hot shit, and got rightfully stolen and used all over. I expect that'll continue for any transactional processing that does not require instant or near-instant processing time. Financial transactions are absolute win for this sort of thing. 

Bitcoin : Blockchain :: Internet : Intranet

[Kalbear]

20 minutes ago, Commodore said:

Bitcoin : Blockchain :: Internet : Intranet

Yeah, not really at all. 

Blockchain is the real key here. Bitcoin restricts the currency to 21 million total coins which results in the actual price fluctuation and speculation that, well, sucks. Bitcoin is an actual currency. Blockchain is simply a means of determining a contractual obligation via a specific style of tech. 

The SAT style would be something like Bitcoin : Blockchain :: iPhone lightning cable : any communication cable

[Commodore]

1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

Yep, and it's going to get bigger. Bitcoin is completely shit as far as financial sector needs go - it doesn't scale well at all (by design, but that makes it suck), it isn't particularly good at adaptation or integration (witness most of the bitcoin startups have millions poured into them and have nothing to show for it) and is otherwise fairly unwieldy - but the tech to ensure contractual obligations and reception is absolutely hot shit, and got rightfully stolen and used all over. I expect that'll continue for any transactional processing that does not require instant or near-instant processing time. Financial transactions are absolute win for this sort of thing. 

This is exactly what was being said about the Internet in its infancy (can't scale, then can't do voice, then can't do video, blah blah blah). Scaling is a moving target, solutions are found when they are needed, and whatever capacity those solutions create gets inevitably consumed, and more scaling is needed. Scaling solutions for Bitcoin (segregated witness, the lightning network) are already being incorporated. 

Any new technology is clunky at first, because it has to bootstrap itself on existing infrastructure (cars had to use roads designed for horses, the Internet had to use phone lines). 

Private blockchains aren't that innovative (just a tool for internal bank settlement). The innovation is in the consensus mechanism that makes a public blockchain immutable, permissionless, uncensorable access, global. Nothing can replicate Bitcoin in that regard. That's what made the Internet innovative, and why closed equivalents (AOL, Compuserve, Prodigy) no longer exist. 

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Exactly. It isn't hard at all to shut down bittorrent. 

You can block an individual user's internet access, but you can't shut down a distributed network without shutting down each individual node (as opposed to say, Napster). You can send a cease and desist to Billy sharing Jurassic World from his parents' basement, but there are a million other torrent nodes sharing it all over the world. Literally every other file sharing service that came before BitTorrent was shut down. 

A bitcoin transaction can be transmitted over any medium (email, phone, Skype, short wave radio, tweet, westeros.org post, smoke signal, morse code, mp3). Good luck shutting that down. 

Once Artificial Intelligence can be programmed to earn/spend money (that can't be seized or frozen or blocked or reversed by any authority), we are entering uncharted territory. 

[Kalbear]

19 hours ago, Commodore said:

This is exactly what was being said about the Internet in its infancy (can't scale, then can't do voice, then can't do video, blah blah blah). Scaling is a moving target, solutions are found when they are needed, and whatever capacity those solutions create gets inevitably consumed, and more scaling is needed. Scaling solutions for Bitcoin (segregated witness, the lightning network) are already being incorporated. 

And they're still not particularly good, and the whole point on bitcoin is that it is specifically designed to NOT scale. That's the whole goal. That's even been stated by their designers.

Whereas blockchain tech can scale fairly easily, because it is outside the realm of bitcoin's self-imposed restrictions. Really, for a libertarian who promotes technological work trumping design restraints, you're heavily in favor of the most self-regulated cryptocurrency system out there. It's quite odd.

19 hours ago, Commodore said:

Private blockchains aren't that innovative (just a tool for internal bank settlement). The innovation is in the consensus mechanism that makes a public blockchain immutable, permissionless, uncensorable access, global. Nothing can replicate Bitcoin in that regard. That's what made the Internet innovative, and why closed equivalents (AOL, Compuserve, Prodigy) no longer exist. 

The same innovations that make Bitcoin those things (which are pretty debatable in themselves) are both fairly prevalent in blockchain tech (namely the immutable and global access) and are what make bitcoin unusuable by most financial institutions to actually do work. 

Given that you have a hard limit on how much currency exists, that is precisely like AOL and other closed equivalents. Again, you're making the argument that a specific implementation of a general technology is somehow MORE open than the basic one. That doesn't make a whit of sense.

19 hours ago, Commodore said:

You can block an individual user's internet access, but you can't shut down a distributed network without shutting down each individual node (as opposed to say, Napster). You can send a cease and desist to Billy sharing Jurassic World from his parents' basement, but there are a million other torrent nodes sharing it all over the world. Literally every other file sharing service that came before BitTorrent was shut down. 

Bittorrent is a tool, not a file sharing service. And that's the real rub. Again, the only reason bittorrent has not been shut down is that it has a legitimate, legal use as well as an illegal one. You don't have to block individual access or shutting down either node. You simply don't understand how internet traffic works. The easiest way to do it is simply block all traffic that is bittorrent-specific, and since bittorrent packets look a very specific way this is pretty trivial to do if you own the network that the bittorrent is running on. So the US can easily, in almost immediate action, destroy all bittorrent traffic if they choose to do so. It wouldn't shut down the nodes, you'd simply never get that traffic if you lived in that country.

19 hours ago, Commodore said:

A bitcoin transaction can be transmitted over any medium (email, phone, Skype, short wave radio, tweet, westeros.org post, smoke signal, morse code, mp3). Good luck shutting that down. 

Good luck providing the computing power for a bitcoin transaction via phone, shortwave radio, smoke signal or tweet.

19 hours ago, Commodore said:

Once Artificial Intelligence can be programmed to earn/spend money (that can't be seized or frozen or blocked or reversed by any authority), we are entering uncharted territory. 

Why? Who cares? I mean, I know that you do, but an AI spending and earning money is something that happens billions of times a day, automatically, with no real oversight. Transferring money isn't a big deal right now regardless. Freezing assets isn't particularly useful except against other governmental organizations. What you're saying is that criminals will have a way to transmit money without government ability to monitor - and you're saying this is a good thing. Save that they still have to be able to spend it, otherwise it's basically worthless. And unless everything is bitcoin - which is increasingly looking like it won't be the case - all you're doing is a fancy barter system.

 

[Mlle. Zabzie]

On 12/4/2016 at 2:53 PM, Kalbear said:

 

Why? Who cares? I mean, I know that you do, but an AI spending and earning money is something that happens billions of times a day, automatically, with no real oversight. Transferring money isn't a big deal right now regardless. Freezing assets isn't particularly useful except against other governmental organizations. What you're saying is that criminals will have a way to transmit money without government ability to monitor - and you're saying this is a good thing. Save that they still have to be able to spend it, otherwise it's basically worthless. And unless everything is bitcoin - which is increasingly looking like it won't be the case - all you're doing is a fancy barter system.

 

Actually I care whether AI spending and earning money should be regulated or have oversight.  Particularly in sophisticated, fast morning markets....

[Kalbear]

4 hours ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

Actually I care whether AI spending and earning money should be regulated or have oversight.  Particularly in sophisticated, fast morning markets....

I think that's a good point, and one that should be regulated quite heavily (and Clinton rightfully identified it as such because she's able to actually listen to experts who tell her what's up). But my point was simply that AI already does this, and it isn't a game-changer. It isn't that special. 

[Mlle. Zabzie]

12 hours ago, Kalbear said:

I think that's a good point, and one that should be regulated quite heavily (and Clinton rightfully identified it as such because she's able to actually listen to experts who tell her what's up). But my point was simply that AI already does this, and it isn't a game-changer. It isn't that special. 

Oh yeah - it totally does it and a lot of people make a lot of money on it (which unfortunately can cause the markets roil when it makes mistakes at volume).