The Singularity May Never Be Near
Toby Walsh University of New South Wales and Data61 (formerly NICTA) Sydney, Australia
Abstract
There is both much optimism and pessimism around artificial intelligence (AI) today. The optimists are investing millions of dollars, and even in some cases billions of dollars into AI. The pessimists, on the other hand, predict that AI will end many things: jobs, warfare, and even the human race. Both the optimists and the pessimists often appeal to the idea of a technological singularity, a point in time where machine intelligence starts to run away, and a new, more intelligent “species” starts to inhabit the earth. If the optimists are right, this will be a moment that fundamentally changes our economy and our society. If the pessimists are right, this will be a moment that also fundamentally changes our economy and our society. It is therefore very worthwhile spending some time deciding if either of them might be right.
中文速览
人工智能会不会在某个时间点突然"自我引爆"、以指数级速度超越人类智能，也就是所谓的"技术奇点"（technological singularity），是当下AI讨论中最受关注也最具争议的问题。作者作为AI领域的研究者，并不否认机器在未来三四十年内可能达到甚至超越人类水平，但他系统地提出了四条反对"奇点爆炸式增长"的论据：更快的计算速度并不等于更高的智能（"快思考的狗"论证）；人类智能并非什么神奇的临界点，超越它不会自动触发失控增长（"人类中心"论证）；能完成智能任务的能力与能改进自身学习算法的元能力是两回事，目前的深度学习系统在提升自身算法上毫无进展（"元智能"论证）；以及AI系统的性能提升往往存在收益递减，问题本身的复杂度也可能比智能增长更快（"收益递减"论证）。这些论证合在一起表明，技术奇点不是不可能发生，但远没有霍金、马斯克等人描述的那样不可避免，对AI风险的公共讨论需要更严谨的数学与认知科学基础。
原文 arXiv:1602.06462;中英对照 + 大白话阅读 https://aha.fim.ai/paper/1602.06462v1