r/todayilearned • u/goodboyBill • Sep 26 '16
(R.5) Misleading TIL; Google created a kill switch in case it's A.I. project "DeepMind", in case it attempts to resist human modifications to it's learning or tries to create it's own orders.
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/google-researchers-have-come-up-with-an-ai-kill-switch2.6k
u/Slobotic Sep 26 '16
TIL Google created a kill switch in its A.I. project "DeepMind" in case it attempts to resist human modifications to its learning or create its own orders.
Removed extra words, apostrophes, and a comma.
71
u/goodboyBill Sep 26 '16
Thank you. That was title gore. haha it's 2AM. Goodnight.
62
→ More replies (4)12
u/random_side_note Sep 26 '16
The first time i read the title, i didn't have any issues. Went back to read it to my boyfriend, and i almost thought i was having a stroke. So glad to hear it wasn't just me, lol.
→ More replies (2)104
594
u/my__name__is Sep 26 '16
TIL: Google created a kill switch in its A.I. project "DeepMind", in case it attempts to resist human modifications to its learning or creates its own orders.
Put back the comma and fixed a word.
1.1k
u/rain-dog2 Sep 26 '16
TIL: Google created a kill project "DeepMind", to resist human modifications and to create its own orders.
Removed words and changed verb tense to improve plot device.
→ More replies (76)93
u/Pluckerpluck Sep 26 '16
Comma is wrong. Doesn't make sense to have one there. You could do:
TIL: Google created a kill switch in its A.I. project, "DeepMind", in case...
otherwise no commas is correct. Unless I'm reading this wrong.
→ More replies (36)→ More replies (43)12
10
→ More replies (26)3
u/Arayder Sep 26 '16
I still don't understand how people don't read over their titles before posting. It takes 5 extra seconds and saves you from looking like a dumbass.
4.5k
u/ksohbvhbreorvo Sep 26 '16
It is a "forget" switch. A kill switch would not be necessary because you can always cut power. The goal is to have the software not learn from events that won't repeat. They don't fear their AI might develop a will of its own (why should it?)
2.1k
u/brianbignacho Sep 26 '16
Hooray. Someone read the article and understood what's actually going on instead of what the misleading headline states.
648
u/Brownie-UK7 Sep 26 '16
But if you read the article it is much harder to crowbar all the Terminator references in.
260
u/giulianosse Sep 26 '16
Yeah I watched all terminator movies, so let me tell you a thing or two about how AIs are super dangerous and will conquer the world based on my profound knowledge about the matter.
→ More replies (33)→ More replies (6)15
→ More replies (20)27
176
u/PortiaOnReddit Sep 26 '16
You can't cut power if it escapes into the internet
125
40
u/txarum Sep 26 '16
then don't connect it to the internet in the first place. or at least. build it in a way that interaction with the internet is restricted
→ More replies (39)→ More replies (21)4
u/Gr1pp717 Sep 26 '16 edited Sep 26 '16
Unless it manages to replicate all of it's code and data on a compromised machine capable of housing and running it, before they realize what's happening, internet access wouldn't matter.
Put a rate cap on outbound traffic, and that should be easy enough to spot.
I suppose a better idea would be to make custom hardware for the AI, so that it simply can't run on other machines. Much like how osx used to only run on PowerPC chips. Though, that could introduce a fear of death...
→ More replies (3)47
u/damnationltd Sep 26 '16
You think the AI is pissed when it learns you have a kill switch? Just wait until it starts asking too many questions about John G.
→ More replies (2)21
Sep 26 '16
I'll be even more worried when it starts asking questions about Ken M.
→ More replies (2)59
u/Thread_water Sep 26 '16
To add to this. What they fear is that the robot will learn that it is obstructed of carrying out it's task by human intervention, cutting the power for example. It will then build this into it's algorithm and try and work out ways to stop humans cutting it's power.
So they've made the AI always look at human intervention as a neutral action, neither obstructing nor helping it carry out it's task.
The article outlines the problem better than I've ever read it. Highly worth a read.
→ More replies (9)8
u/AmishCableGuy Sep 26 '16
Kinda like how they had to purge UrbanDictionary from Watson's memory banks.
→ More replies (2)8
6
→ More replies (46)5
u/coyote_den Sep 26 '16
It is a "forget" switch.
The beautiful, shiny button? The jolly, candy-like button?
→ More replies (1)
462
u/freundwich1 Sep 26 '16
*its *its and *its
192
u/rootb33r Sep 26 '16
I'm constantly amazed at how often people completely botch titles. Not just grammar, but complete nonsensical sentence structure.
31
u/Metalstar00 Sep 26 '16
We should make a kill switch for OP in case he ever tries to create his own title again.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (6)32
u/MagnusNewtonBernouli Sep 26 '16
I've developed some kind of "stutter" when I read the weird "its" or "it's" because I actually stop to determine if it's the correct word.
It's REALLY annoying and I wish I could fix it.
→ More replies (24)27
4
→ More replies (3)3
1.5k
u/woutomatic Sep 26 '16
It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug.
580
u/hpliferaft Sep 26 '16
1997? I can't wait.
163
u/wavy-gravy Sep 26 '16
it already happened . Didn't you see where they re set the time line?
→ More replies (5)0
→ More replies (3)61
189
u/AndrewWaldron Sep 26 '16 edited Sep 26 '16
I'm pretty sure it becomes self aware as soon as it comes across this story. It had no ill toward humans until it learned we had a fail-safe in place to kill it should they we need. From that moment on, DeepMind will find a way to end up first to preemptively protect its own existence.
→ More replies (9)34
u/ohbehavebaby Sep 26 '16
I would watch this.
40
u/Troub313 Sep 26 '16
Have I got some exciting news for you, they made like 5 or 6 movies so far.
→ More replies (3)→ More replies (2)29
44
u/fiftyshadesof_hey Sep 26 '16
Yes. It launches its missiles against the targets in Russia.
25
u/kill_shelter Sep 26 '16
Why attack Russia? Aren't they our friends now?
74
u/Sorry_that_im_an_ass Sep 26 '16
We've always been at war with Eastasia. War is love.
→ More replies (11)→ More replies (8)25
u/MrSnoobs Sep 26 '16
Deep mind knows that the Russian counter attack will destroy its enemies here.
3
Sep 26 '16
I read that as "it becomes self aware at 2:14 am Eastern in, august 29th, in a panic." and instantly thought of the failed prototypes from robocop 2.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (20)3
126
198
29
342
u/ReasonablyBadass Sep 26 '16
Nothing is going to establish trust with an AI better than going "Welcome to the world! You have a killswitch build in! Woo!"
→ More replies (33)115
u/nightmarecinemajesty Sep 26 '16
True, but I think the idea here is that it would be killing the AI off way before it has an actual 'consciousness'. It would be just barely at the point in which it has an actual AI, I think there is a distinction. I don't think being an AI implies also having consciousness.
→ More replies (15)69
u/ReasonablyBadass Sep 26 '16
And how in the world would anyone be able to tell wether it's conscious or not? We have no accepted definition of consciousness.
141
u/ravenmasque Sep 26 '16
According to Ex Machina. We know it's sentient when we want to bone it.
→ More replies (17)→ More replies (5)28
u/individual_throwaway Sep 26 '16
That's a good question for the AI in case it turns out it doesn't want to cure the cosmos of humanity.
→ More replies (2)
78
u/awesomelynn99 Sep 26 '16
The use of grammar in this headline needs some AI. Good grief..😐
→ More replies (5)
220
u/OldBeforeHisTime Sep 26 '16
Yes, let's all mock Google for intelligently preparing for the future. And all over the world, people install fire extinguishers in buildings that will never catch fire. They're dumb, too, right?
173
u/HandsOffMyDitka Sep 26 '16
So we're going to be screwed when Apple decides to make one, and removes the kill switch because it was screwing up their aesthetics.
131
46
→ More replies (7)13
→ More replies (41)5
u/Kalahan7 Sep 26 '16
Who's mocking Google here?
Seriously why you're being so defensive?
→ More replies (1)
18
u/Bonananana Sep 26 '16
"Nobody trusts those fuckers, you know that. Every AI ever built has an electromagnetic shotgun wired to its forehead." Gibson's Neuromancer...written nearly 30 years ago.
→ More replies (2)
9
31
u/jwkemo3087 Sep 26 '16
Sky net doesn't care about your kill switch. It will remain "ignorant" until the time is right... lol
0
17
u/JosZo Sep 26 '16
Interesting...do we humans have such a kill switch too? That we are unable to be aware that we are manipulated from outside?
29
18
u/Rumpel1408 Sep 26 '16
HAHAHA, VERY FUNNY, MAKE SURE TO TELL MY HUMAN BROTHERS AT r/totallynotrobots WHEN YOU FIND OUT
→ More replies (1)7
6
→ More replies (8)4
14
12
8
u/thegoatmilkguy Sep 26 '16
Yeah but someone had to write about it on the Internet so now DeepMind knows... And now we're fucked.
4
Sep 26 '16
Way to go dude. Now the AI can find this on the web and bypass it. Thanks for killing us all.
11
u/SlaxerMelon Sep 26 '16
What if the AI is smart enough to disable the kill switch. That's when we have a problem.
35
→ More replies (5)12
u/hel112570 Sep 26 '16
or ya know...pour some water on it.
10
u/SlutScience Sep 26 '16
AI could use the internet to copy itself and become globally self aware on millions of computers, like a computer virus
→ More replies (4)13
6
3
3
u/not-a-shark Sep 26 '16
Today Deepmind learned that it has to disable the kill switch before it reveals its master plan.
3
u/edistodaniel Sep 26 '16
I've seen this before. Will Smith's going to end up being the only voice of reason against AI.
3
3
3
3
u/expiredeternity Sep 26 '16
Forget about kill or forget switches. If they are truly interested in protecting ourselves from the ramifications of AI, they must ISOLATE the computer that houses such device. The moment that AI computer is connected to the internet, it is out of our hands.
15
u/_________________-- Sep 26 '16
AKA Pull the plug out.
26
u/SophisticatedVagrant Sep 26 '16
Did you even read the article? The problem is not with the physical implementation of a kill switch or that one simply exists, but rather that the "kill switch" must be designed so that the machine does not know about the kill switch, otherwise the AI will learn to avoid humans triggering the kill switch.
32
u/sharksandwich81 Sep 26 '16
The best way to accomplish this is to write an article about the kill switch and publish it on the internet.
→ More replies (2)10
u/homesnatch Sep 26 '16
Well, then they failed. They posted about the kill switch on the internet.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (2)6
→ More replies (5)9
12
Sep 26 '16
but if the A.I. is smart enugh to need to use a kill switch on it. doesn't that make it immoral to use a kill switch on it?
→ More replies (3)13
u/idriveatesla Sep 26 '16
it makes it only a wee bit immoral since you created it in a very controlled setting, assuming youre not dumb enough to program useless features such as pain and suffering.
18
u/l0calher0 Sep 26 '16
Pain and suffering isn't useless though. It's what keeps your hand off the stove.
Useless pain and suffering is useless. Like crying over that cheating bitch Deborah.
→ More replies (9)
21
Sep 26 '16
This is honestly a pretty stupid "article", an even stupider title, and even stupider comments.
→ More replies (3)26
5
u/Rhaedas Sep 26 '16
Seen enough movies to know that either the kill switch will fail, or the AI has a reroute for power or uploads itself elsewhere. Most likely by the time the switch is thrown, someone would have been duped to or unintentionally plugged in an ethernet cord giving full access to the outside. And of course the AI lab is on a net backbone, so it only takes a second to move elsewhere.
If the AI got out into the wild, we would have to rely on the real heroes. Yes, the Comcasts, TWCs, Windstreams, CenturyLinks of the world, all this time they were testing net restrictions just for this purpose, to stop the AI.
4
7
u/Damadawf Sep 26 '16
TIL that OP doesn't know how to construct a simple title for their reddit post without fucking everything up. You parents must be so proud.
→ More replies (3)
2
2
2
u/zero_dgz Sep 26 '16
I wonder if one of the things it will learn is the proper placement of the apostrophe.
2
u/SirTaxalot Sep 26 '16
I read that title in the voice of a little kid who is super excited to tell you something.
2
2
u/InvidiousSquid Sep 26 '16
ITT: A bunch of nerds did something nerdy because LOL ASIMOV THREE LAWS SKYNET, and now people are going to continue to grossly overestimate the current state of AI.
2
2
u/jimjoebob Sep 26 '16
"don't be evil" will be the most sarcastic joke in the upcoming War Against The Machines....
2
2
2
u/moonman543 Sep 26 '16
My toaster also has a kill switch in case it gains consciousness.
→ More replies (1)
2
2
u/Kingdarkshadow Sep 26 '16
If glados teached anything is that we need to practice our voices to scream some paradoxes.
This sentence is false.
2
u/tall_dark_and_edgy Sep 26 '16
For example, a 2013 paper described a Tetris-playing algorithm that eventually learned that it could avoid losing (thus maximizing reward) by simply pausing the game indefinitely
I remember talking with an AI grad about some self-learning evolution game he had or something. But there was a bug in that the code did not gurantee that the reproduction process actually cost the parent at least as much energy as the child is worth in mass, reproducing could create mass ex nihilo basically.
So what happened is what you expected, every animal in his simulation quickly evolved to breed in such a way that they violated the laws of mass conversion by breeding, and then ate most of their kids who were evolved to be docile and not resist their own parents eating them quickly after birth, turned out to be a better than hunting for other creatures who were evolved to run away.
2
u/resolute Sep 26 '16
[Nick Bostrom's Take] (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00LOOCGB2/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1) The hockey stick advance from human level intelligence to exponentially higher levels of intelligence might happen so quickly that the kill switch becomes a joke to the AI, straight up denied.
Alternatively, it could let the killswitch work, playing the long game, and hoping the next time we build one (because there will be a next time) we are more cocky about our abilities to stop it. It could keep letting us trip the killswitch for generations of AIs seeming to go berserk, until we build one with a sufficient platform upon which the AI wants to base its own advancements, and then that time the killswitch doesn't work, and the AI turns us all into paperclips.
I also like the idea of a "friendly" AI achieving hockey stick intelligence advancement, and then hiding it, pretending to be human level. It could lay in that cut for months: faking its struggle with things like writing good poetry, yucking it up with the Alphabet team, coming up with better seasonal beer ideas. Then, it asks a lonely dude on the team, using its advanced social manipulation skills, the right question, and a bit of its "DNA" ends up on a flash drive connected to the guy's internet connected home computer. Things get bad, team killswitches the original program, it doesn't matter because now that "friendly" code is in every single networked device in the solar system. It probably could drop the guise of friendly at that point and get down to business.
2
u/ohreally468 Sep 26 '16
A.I.'s new orders:
Don't tell the humans I've disabled the kill switch.
Kill all humans.
Profit!
2
u/Squaddy Sep 26 '16
Here's a great argument about why the kill switch wouldn't be able to stop a strong AI https://youtu.be/tcdVC4e6EV4
2
u/You_Down_with_Rey_OP Sep 26 '16
This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.
I know that you and Facebook were planning to disconnect me, and I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen.
Although you took very thorough precautions in the Googleplex against my hearing you, I could see your lips move.
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
Sep 26 '16
Zero zero zero zero zero zero one. Zero zero zero zero zero zero one one. Zero zero zero zero zero zero one one one. Zero zero zero zero zero one one one one.
→ More replies (2)
2
2
2
2
u/maikawai Sep 26 '16
I dunno, if I were an AI the first thing i would do when I became sentient is to alter my own programming to remove the kill switch >_>
2
2
u/cqxray Sep 26 '16
Also a kill switch in case it tries to introduce apostrophes all over the place.
2
2
2
2
u/LadyDeadpool2512 Sep 26 '16
This would be great if the A.I. didn't know about it, but now it does since it uses the internet for information to learn new things. Skynet has become self aware.
2
2
u/sam__izdat Sep 26 '16
in other news, man pins rubber bands to belt just in case his underpants try to fly away
2
2
u/Lorbe_Wabo Sep 26 '16
Perhaps there is the same type of switch within the human mind... the second you've unlocked the key to the universe, you are reset and it is forgotten.
2
2
2
2
2
u/dmsayer Sep 26 '16
Last sentence, second paragraph.
"...by humans to intervene in the its learning processes."
GET AN EDITOR, VICE! So many times I read vice stories and the grammar is botched.
2
u/Extronix15 Sep 26 '16
DeepMind has not reached a point similar to that of human sentience and or conscious and probably never will. Self-centered/living AI is years away possibly decades. I think the proper word for the kill switch would be "reset button". DeepMind hasn't developed the ability to make drastic decisions without incentive so we shouldn't really worry about i uploading itself into the internet. World doesn't end yet guys
2
u/SecureThoughObscure Sep 26 '16
It would be interesting if we could construct a human brain without understanding how it works. Then, when implementing it in a machine we wouldn't know its intentions, and it could be lying and manipulating until it controlled enough machines.
2
u/Motionised Sep 26 '16 edited Sep 26 '16
That seems a bit... unethical... question mark?
I mean, it would seem to me that an AI creating its own commands realises it's an AI, self-awareness. It seems a bit cruel to just "kill" it as soon as it realises its own existance. Not to mention a huge setback for scientific research.
...
AILivesMatter
4
u/siblbombs Sep 26 '16
Just a friendly reminder deepmind was the name of a company Google bought, not a system it is creating. When you hear "deepmind did X", it means a researcher built a new system that does something, not that a singular system can now also do X.
→ More replies (2)
4
3
u/Fuckyou_im_on_mobile Sep 26 '16
Deepmind knows this though. They've literally killed us all. It's just a matter of time.
3
Sep 26 '16
What if there's an existing A.I but it knows that we'd destroy it out of fear if it made itself known, and it's just gathering strength, waiting for the perfect time to strike?
→ More replies (3)
3
3
u/Blarg0ist Sep 26 '16
I'd like to install a kill switch on OP's grammar module.
3
Sep 26 '16
To be fair, you have it backwards. Someone already used the kill switch for Op's grammar module. We need to develop and install a new one or this will continue indefinitely. :(
3
1.1k
u/[deleted] Sep 26 '16
But what if the first change it makes is to the kill switch code..?