An “AI Apocalypse” Scorecard

Yeah, we’re all talking about ChatGPT and friends this year, and I’m no exception.  While some of us have enjoyed the unintended comedy, many pundits are sure that these large language models and their variations are (a) approaching “Artificial General Intelligence” and (b) will soon wipe out all the puny Carbon-based units.

This summer Eliza Strickland and Glenn Zorpette assembled the first iteration of an AI Apocalypse Scorecard, documenting the views of 22 actual experts [1].

Glancing at the list, there isn’t a consensus, but there doesn’t seem to be a big panic.  A majority of these pundits don’t see current ML models as close to AGI, and only a handful are concerned about extinction.

I think these results reflect, in large part, disagreements about how the heck to define “Artificial General Intelligence”, assuming that is even a meaningful concept (which is really isn’t IMO).

It is also clear that even if extinction isn’t immanent, pretty much everyone is concerned about potential harms of many kinds from these AIs.  For obvious reasons.

In fact, there seems to be an inverse correlation in this group between worrying about the obvious shortcomings of these models and the fear of extinction:  if AGI involves, like, getting right answers, then current AI has a long way to do.  A long, long way.

I’m going to book mark this score card, and check back for future updates.

---

1. Eliza Strickland and Glenn Zorpette, The AI Apocalypse: A Scorecard, in IEEE Spectrum – Artificial Intelligence, June 21, 2023. https://spectrum.ieee.org/artificial-general-intelligence

The Argo Program: “4,000 Robots Roam the Oceans”

I love the headline about “4,000 Robots”. [1] : – )

The Argo program has been going for quite a while now, providing a long stream of measurements of temperature and salinity from the open ocean.  The Argo fleet is thousands of autonomous robot “floats”, which drift in the ocean.  Each float drifts underwater and every 10 days sinks to a depth of 2000 meters, and then rises to the surface, measuring a column of water.  It then transmits the data back to land via Iridium (remember Iridium?), where it is processed and made available in a day or so.

During a typical 10-day cycle, an Argo float spends most of its time at a depth of 2,000 meters, making readings before ascending to the surface and then transmitting its data via a satellite network.Image credit: ARGO PROGRAM From [1])

Cool!

These robots are so valuable because the only other way to get this data is from ships—which is far too expensive to achieve continuous global coverage. 

This summer Glenn Zorpette interviewed Susan Wijffels of Woods Hold on the state of the program, and upgrades that are being planned [1]. 

Wijffels notes that the Argo data is important because other measures, in particular, Earth Observation satellites, only measure the top of the ocean.  The Argo floats measure farther down, and all over the planet. 

The flow of heat from the surface is critical to the climate.  Warm water from the surface and in the tropics moves down to the depths and out to the poles.  These flows are complicated and chaotic, but make a huge difference not only to sea life but to winds and the overall heat of surface.  Also, warm water flowing to the poles accelerates the melting of ice sheets and glaciers.

This data makes it possible to map ocean currents, and also to detect global trends despite the noisiness of individual samples.

Wijffels discusses three big goals for a next generation of floats. (The current fleet dates back to 1998!)  One target is to increase the depth, with a new design that can go down to 6000 meters—which is the ocean bottom most places.  (Of course, pressure increases by 1 atmosphere every 10 meters, so tripling the depth triples the pressure the robot will have to endure.)

Another goal is to extend coverage into the polar oceans, which the current floats cannot.  There are also tropical areas that need special, denser sampling.

I gather that the rather extended, slow motion observation cycle is largely constrained by the onboard batteries.  So, improvements in batteries would make a huge difference.

When will the next generation of instruments deploy?  It’s hard to say.  The Argo program is a cooperation of 60 governments, so there will be a lot of politics to navigate.  It’s hard to be optimistic on that front.

---

1. Glenn Zorpette, 4,000 Robots Roam the Oceans, Climate in Their Crosshairs, in IEEE Spectgrum – Robotics, June 17, 2022. https://spectrum.ieee.org/ocean-engineering-robots-climate

Robot Wednesday