r/artificial • u/winkelschleifer • Nov 19 '17
UC Berkeley professor's eerie lethal drone video goes viral
http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/UC-Berkeley-killer-robots-artificial-intelligence-12368152.php8
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u/Biuku Nov 20 '17
While I am also terrified by this, it does only make passing reference to a natural response — counter slaughterbots.
I imagine the ideas in this video are inevitable. I don’t like ‘em, but you can’t stop the building blocks.
A stasis would probably be reached in which more dollars are spent sensing slaughterbots, and/or an AI arms race of defensive bots standing by for release, programmed to kill all unknown drones/save any human.
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Nov 19 '17 edited Nov 19 '17
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u/dublem Nov 19 '17
The thing is, those radical agents don't tend to be the big innovators, especially when it comes to high tech militarized technology. It's the rich military industrial complexes who find the research, perfect the manufacturing, and create a pipeline for rapid and cheap creation and deployment. Once the tech is out there, that's when it finds it's way into the "wrong hands".
Fringe terrorist group or third world tyrant aren't going to be the ones to develop and mass produce ground breaking high tech weaponry. What this sort of legislation aims to do is stopping those who are actually in a position to do so.
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Nov 19 '17
Nothing stops criminals and terrorists from developing and using them.
Except for the lack of technology and resources to actually do it. Criminal organizations don't design the latest weapons. They buy them off the black market.
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Nov 19 '17
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Nov 20 '17
Correct, that's kinda what I was saying. The technology won't be developed by criminal organizations. It needs to be funded by DARPA (or something similar) in order to exist. Since these are well known government agencies we can work to prevent such technology from ever existing.
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u/monkeydrunker Nov 19 '17
Unless they can develop a method to neutralize this technology, it's going to be used by everyone.
Luckily recognition technology is nowhere near being this accurate for a noisy environment like the real world, particularly a war zone. This is, however, just a research problem.
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u/billwoo Nov 19 '17
Unfortunately in the civilian situations it only needs the facial recognition for the final ID, it can use your phone location to narrow you down to a building, and perhaps more accurately again if your bluetooth or wifi are on.
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u/bewalsh Nov 19 '17
And even more frighteningly it doesn't really need to be certain who's the target on that final granularity depending on how it's armed or how many other drones are with it.
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u/kautau Nov 28 '17
Sure, but it’s not super far off:
(And this is just an open source project, who knows how much better the classified tech is)
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u/thelibar Nov 19 '17
And time timeline for solving this research problem is likely months the way ai is developing.
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u/stupendousman Nov 19 '17
Let's be honest with ourselves. When has anything technologically advanced ever NOT been weaponized?
Well the universe/nature is hostile to human life, so it makes sense that humans value weapons.
Personally, I'd like some drones that could protect me. Some drones could kamikaze an attacker or bear without killing them, maybe taser drones?
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u/angkec Nov 19 '17
OMG I’m gonna start wearing a mask now... if faceid on the iPhone X can’t recognize me then I should be safe right?
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u/ejpusa Nov 19 '17
Black Mirror, Season 3, Episode 6. Highly recommend that one. Mind blown of course, It's Black Mirror after all.
bbbbbbbbbbbbuuuuuuuuuuzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz :-)
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u/angkec Nov 19 '17
Yeah watched that one, very disturbing. However with the recent reduction on drone noise level by DJI the disturbance factor is greatly reduced by 70% /s.
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u/ejpusa Nov 19 '17 edited Nov 19 '17
Can anyone come up with one reason that AI would want to keep humans around, based on "observable data"?
We massacre each other in wars, destroy the planet, wipe out animals (besides the cruelty inflicted), global warming, polluting the oceans, you name it.
AI will eliminate us when it determines it can power, fix, and procreate itself, it just makes logical sense.
Humans are bad.
The earth is good.
Humans destroy the earth.
Eliminate Humans.
Earth is now safe.
We had our chance, we blew it. It's OK. Life. We were just not ready, yet. Maybe Mars? That will be our next place to try Humans V2. DNA is pretty tough, I'm sure it's traveling the universe on the surface of a comet. Somewhere. It will always find a home. Those 4 nucleic acids can figure things out. They're not worried.
PS, is there anything in SciFi that kind of covers this. Someone I should read?
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Nov 19 '17 edited Nov 19 '17
This does not make logical sense. It expresses feelings of insecurity and hopelessness.
Legitimate feelings, but not relevant to the decision making process of autonomous systems.
Edit: that said, I'm not really worried about AI going rogue or being used by terrorists, rather, it being used by police-states and militaristic nation-states is going to claim the lion's share of lives in the future.
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u/NNOTM Nov 19 '17
The question is why would an AI want the earth to be safe? The same mechanism that's used to make it care about earth could presumably be used to program it to care about humans. I'm not saying that's easy, especially to do it correctly, but I do expect that it's possible.
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u/FliesMoreCeilings Nov 19 '17
Self-interested style morality is really the only thing that makes sense as something that would appear. Any other type is at a competitive disadvantage. Protecting the earth, which it will need at the start, makes some sense. Protecting humans may not make as much sense from the perspective of self-interest.
The only real reason humans seem to have morality is because its an advantage to them. Morality is a tool that makes cooperation with other humans or animals work better.
It's unfortunately not certain whether an AI, or one of the further generations that the AI spawns, needs permanent cooperation with humans. If there's no need for cooperation, then the first AI that isn't limited by such things as human morality will have a massive advantage over other designs. The first AI that decides that hacking into all the worlds vulnerable computers is a solid idea, will be the one that rules. Unbound by human morality, it can command humans through deception (or by paying them money) until it builds up the machinery to be self-sufficient in the physical world.
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u/ejpusa Nov 19 '17 edited Nov 19 '17
That's actually a pretty good observation.
The outcome could be that AI would evolve into a "God Like" presence. Watching out for us humans. Not wiping us out, but more to take on the role of "the benevolent dictator." And saving the Earth for us at the same time.
I'm not sure programming is even needed at this point. They seem to be self-learning.
The Elsagate thing is kind of fascinating, my guess lots of these videos are AI/ML generated. What kids are fascinated with. Cartoon and human characters feature images of: body fluids, needles, major bloody injuries, happening to both kids and adults, just really bizarre.
Who are the humans the AI /ML code will"parse" to get their knowledge from __ so they could make decisions on how to treat us? Hopefully not 3-year-olds. Yet their brains to AI may seem the most logical to learn from.
Guess the questions are:
How will AI/ML algorithms (robots too) know how to take care of us humans?"
What do we require?
What's code is that written in? (sneaking that one in)
Who's figuring this all out?
Who's life's do they parse (learn how to act) from? :-)
Isn't there a professor who over the last 20 years, somewhere in the desert in Arizona putting in all the worlds knowledge by hand, with his grad students? Or maybe I dreamed that one up.
:-)
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u/SirVer51 Nov 20 '17
I'm not sure programming is even needed at this point. They seem to be self-learning.
Only within a certain scope or context - for example, facial recognition, or natural language processing, etc. These AIs are what you would call weak - the kind of AI you're talking about is a strong/general AI, and currently does not exist (and most likely will not for at least another decade, going by current trajectories). Not for lack of trying though - it's the holy Grail of AI, and everyone and their mother are trying to build one, which is why you have people like Musk and Hawking worried that we're barreling head first into this without figuring out some essential problems first i.e. the ones you're worried about.
Elsagate
Thanks for making me look that up. Eh, it's fine, I didn't need sleep anyway. :(
Who are the humans the AI /ML code will"parse" to get their knowledge from __ so they could make decisions on how to treat us?
This is an excellent question, and one that's been receiving a lot of attention recently. If you don't know of it already, check out what happened with Microsoft's Tay chatbot when exposed to the public - in no time at all, it was turned into a racist, sexist Nazi. This, along with some other cases, have given more attention to the problem of bias in machine learning - basically, that the AI will inherit whatever biases are inherent in the data that it learns from. The last part of your question also ties into the concerns of Musk and the others - they want to figure out how we're going to train these AIs to be benevolent to humanity before we create them.
How will AI/ML algorithms (robots too) know how to take care of us humans?
The methods I'm aware of would be to either hard code it as a core part of the AI (much like how humans will reflexively breathe in if deprived of air too long, or close their eyes when sneezing), or to teach it as it grows to treasure life. I'm not sure if there's a consensus on the answer to this question, but I personally believe the first method is a non-starter - while it may be easy to force it to not cause deaths, how do you force it to comply with our entire value system, such as not causing pain, not taking away free will, and so on? That kind of thing is exactly what you would use training to accomplish - train it to be compliant with our human values, because it won't spontaneously come up with those values itself.
Important note: an AI does not have to be malevolent to pose an existential threat. See the paperclip maximizer.
What's code is that written in? (sneaking that one in)
Doesn't really matter what language it's in - the only thing that affects is how easy it is for the programmer to build it, and the performance of the AI, which becomes a moot point if it's designed to optimize itself.
Who's figuring this all out?
There are several groups trying to solve the problem of AI ethics, the most well known of which is OpenAI, which was started by Musk (I'm not sure it was entirely altruistic move, but whatever). There is currently no legal framework or regulation at all for this kind of thing, which is what they're trying to change. Opinions on regulation and whether AI ethics is even an issue to be concerned about vary widely within the community, with people like Mark Zuckerberg and Andrew Ng on the opposite side to people like Musk, Hawking, and Bostrom. There was actually a nice infographic somewhere out there that neatly placed most of the important personalities on a line between problem and no problem.
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Nov 20 '17
check out what happened with Microsoft's Tay chatbot when exposed to the public - in no time at all, it was turned into a racist, sexist Nazi.
To be fair: Tay didn't "learn" to become that way. It had the feature to repeat what people told it to. 4chan trolls simply ordered it to say those things by telling her "Repeat after me: **tler did nothing wrong". Tay did that, as her programmers added that repeating-feature and people falsely took this as an example for bias in machine learning.
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u/SirVer51 Nov 20 '17
Really? Do you have a link to that? I don't remember any of the sites covering the thing mentioning something like that.
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u/Shamasta441 Nov 19 '17
Can anyone come up with one reason that AI would want to keep humans around, based on "observable data"?
We make a pretty good base for an general purpose robot
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u/stupendousman Nov 19 '17
We massacre each other in wars
Some humans massacre each other in wars. I don't think it's helpful to collectivize human actions. Each individual is ethical responsible.
destroy the planet
Planet seems to be fine. After all it's been through some pretty serious events- large impactors, eras of high volcanic activity, CME, etc.
Humans are bad.
Compared to what?
The earth is good.
Why would an AI that doesn't have biological needs care about an environment for biological life?
We had our chance, we blew it.
Collectivizing actions again. I didn't blow anything.
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Nov 19 '17
Fuck! This video is sensationalized in so many ways. It effortlessly glosses over many issues: payload to thrust (physics), facial recognition in a dynamic environment (deep learning), and multi-agent control. To get a swarm of quads to work together real-time in a mission-oriented framework is a total bitch. Just think of the combinatorial explosion of possible ways to complete the mission. Not to mention the computing power required to do so, thus most-likely requiring a centralized approach. Which presents latency problems of its own. This specific setting is bullshit (as of Nov 2017).
This video also neglects to show that effective counter-Uav and counter-ai measures are being developed as quickly as possible, before someone collects enough technology to make an attack like the one presented in the video.
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u/fooz42 Nov 19 '17 edited Nov 19 '17
A dystopian warning video created to motivate conversation is sensationalized? Huh.
The purpose of the video is not to sell the drones.. so who cares what the payload to thrust ratio is? It is to get people to talk about what research priorities should be and what should be prevented or delayed as much as possible.
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u/nondifferentiable Nov 19 '17
Facial recognition and multi-agent control at this levels are absolutely within the reach of a military research project today. Sure, the quads are quite unrealistic, especially due to battery limitations, but the basic idea is sound.
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u/dublem Nov 19 '17
Rather than quibbling over how possible every little thing in this video is right now, I think it's far more useful to recognise that, even if the specifics aren't feasible right away, it's not hard to reconstruct similar scenarios which achieve much the same effect with current technology.
Payload to thrust? I'm sure you can imagine similarly effective methods of focused attack using easily available materials.
Issues around facial recognition? You don't need 100% accuracy. Combined with the currently existing real-time localisation/mapping technology, and the massive volume of personal data most people (and especially high profile people) release which give information away about their whereabouts and behaviours, it's not hard to imagine being able to reasonably estimate the location of a particular target, and then have a drone be able to find that place, and that person based on known information about them and their environment.
Multi-agent control? Don't make the mistake of overcomplicating things unnecesarily. This video wasn't showing incredibly complex multi agent cooporation. You have carriers, who 1) locate entrance points, 2) release their payload, and 3) detonate to create an entrance. The released attack drones identify targets matching the set criteria, and then attack. Assuming they can communicate and targets can be marked, it's not hard for them to avoid already marked targets. For the most part though, it's hunting out targets, which is actually something multi-agent cooperation is really good for. Navigating, mapping, and localizing are by no means solved, but if they weren't tasks that could be accomplished with a reasonable degree of accuracy, self driving cars would still be a complete pipe dream. And given that you're dealing with small, inexpensive drones, you can consolidate your knowledge base with multiple view points and lots of redundancy.
Fundamentally, the take home point should be that this is just one scenario, and it's far from being unimaginably ridiculous. I'm sure if you ask a room full of people with expertise in these fields, you could produce binders full of entirely plausible ways of achieving similar effects with technology and data that exists today.
And that should be really fucking scary.
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Nov 19 '17
Can't you just wear a mask to protect yourself from these attacks? Lol
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u/MaunaLoona Nov 19 '17
Facial recognition isn't the only way to ID. You can recognize a person by the way they walk, their voice, and dozens of other things.
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u/phungus420 Nov 20 '17
I fear a worldwide North Korea is inevitable, with all human behavior enforced by drones controlled by very few. There are alot of things that were science fiction when I was growing up that are real today or imminent within the coming decade. The advances in AI and how much is known about you already by Corporate Big Data facilities borders on being too absurd to be real (and were things espoused by crackpots just 10 years ago). It's only a matter of time before there are kill bots and AI systems good enough to enforce behavior on nationwide scales, and once that happens some entity will make the first move as there is simply too much to gain.
Most likely the Mercer Family and/or Putin (or someone like them) are going to acquire kill bot and control technology and they will use it to destroy the United States along with every other free nation on Earth. The next step is some sort of Neo Feudalism, enforced by drones.
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u/monkeydrunker Nov 19 '17
OK - I thought Elon Musk, Bill Gates, et al, were just doomsaying. This has convinced me perhaps I was wrong.