[garbanzo]

One of the big problems with AI research was the belief that minds were algorithmic computational devices. However our brains are networks of simple "computation" devices if you will. The behavior of neural nets is vastly different from the behavior of processor-based algorithms and the limitations of algorithms don't quite apply.

[Helms]

Have you been to www.edge.org? This is for you guys:

Alter our DNA or robots will take over, warns Hawking

Special report: the ethics of genetics

Nick Paton Walsh

Sunday September 2, 2001 The Observer

Stephen Hawking, the acclaimed scientist and writer, reignited the debate over genetic engineering yesterday by recommending that humans change their DNA through genetic modification to keep ahead of advances in computer technology and stop intelligent machines from 'taking over the world'.

He made the remarks in an interview with the German magazine Focus. Because technology is advancing so quickly, Hawking said, 'computers double their performance every month'. Humans, in contrast, are developing much more slowly, and so must change their DNA make-up or be left behind. 'The danger is real,' he said, 'that this [computer] intelligence will develop and take over the world.'

Hawking, author of the best-selling A Brief History Of Time and a professor of mathematics at Cambridge University, recommended 'well-aimed manipulation' of human genes. Through this humans could 'raise the complexity of... the DNA [they are born with], thereby improving people'. He conceded the road to genetic modification would be a long one but said: 'We should follow this road if we want biological systems to remain superior to electronic ones.'

He also advocated cyber-technology - direct links between human brains and computers. 'We must develop as quickly as possible technologies that make possible a direct connection between brain and computer, so that artificial brains contribute to human intelligence rather than opposing it.'

While scientists are excited by the huge possibilities of genetic engineering and human interaction with machines, ethicists urge caution as the experiments could go wrong.

Sue Mayer, director of policy research group Genewatch, rounded on Hawking's remarks. 'He is trying to take the debate about genetic engineering in the wrong direction,' she said. 'It is naive to think that genetic engineering will help us stay ahead of computers.'

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[beckett]

Penrose takes neural networks into account, of course. You have not understood the argument Barr and Penrose are making if you think otherwise. Gödel's theorem plays exactly the same role in a neural network as it does in a simple algorithm.

[The_Reader_David]

Sorry to disillusion you, but the class of computations possible for a neural network with finitely many neuron each of which has finitely many states is describable by a formal system. Goedel's result applies. The only thing you get by going to neural networks is run-time efficiencies. The materialists last refuge is a notion of mind (or brain capabilities) which are strongly dependent upon quantum mechanical or quantum gravitational phenomena as yet not understood. This is the point: when materialism approaches consciousness, it becomes a faith in the gaps. This, however, is not very satisfying for the materialists, since quantum phenomena are inherently non-local. A non-local quantum mechanical mind interacting with the large (and therefore classically describable) body sounds dismayingly like a soul. That it may not exist without a body to support it could be trouble for faiths which profess a transmigration of the soul, but leaves "I believe in the resurrection of the body" and all of traditional Christianity unscathed.

Incidentally, I have worked through the proof of Goedel's theorem, and am familiar with neural computation from a mathematical point of view. I am reporting mathematical facts, not interpretations, conjectures or suppositions.