Replies

It's all crap. It's a bunch of people who read too much scifi and wish it were real. Not that I have anything against scifi, it's may favorite literature, but it's just entertainment.

When I was in school, I had a professor that was working a lot with robotics and AI. It wasn't a class in our computer science program, but he did talk about it a lot.

The problem you run into is that the self-aware human mind exhibits some qualities, some of which are difficult to put a finger on, that a solid-state electronic computer is physically incapapble of reproducing, no matter how complicated it is.

A computer program can be theoretically modeled with something called a state-transition diagram. This diagram represents every single possible state the computer could be in, and how it transitions from state to state. As an academic exercise, you might design a state-transition diagram that causes a computer to go into an accept state when a certain string is input. This could be drawn on one page. The diagram for something like Windows XP, however, would be so large that I'm nearly certain no one has ever bothered making one. However, if they did, what they could do is describe, to the minute detail, every single possible thing Windows could ever do. And anything not in that diagram is something the program could not do, ever, under any circumstances.

The human brain does not work this way, unless we truly are the sum of our parts. Human beings come with some basic 'software' installed. We call them instincts. Unlike a computer, which has no choice but to obey its programming, we can ignore our own instincts if we choose to.

It's almost an issue of free will. Computers do the things they do because they literally have no choice. They can't choose what to do or what not to do anymore than the sun could choose whether or not to quit shining or the snow could choose whether or not to be cold. Human beings, however, have the ability to do this, which is almost paradoxical; the ability to choose anything you want suggests that true randomness exists and the universe is non-deterministic, or at least that the universe allows non-determinism. Computers, however, are remarkably deterministic. Even a random number generator in a computer isn't really random, it just generates a large enough set of numbers to be good enough in most cases. Feed it the same random seed value and you'll get exactly the same sequence of not-so-random numbers. If the universe, however, is deterministic and not non-deterministic, then human beings really don't have free will and any thought that you did is simply a lie, or rather you had that thought because you were programmed to and had no choice in the matter. As for me, I don't believe that. I think we do have free will, a precious gift granted to mankind by no less than God Himself. Anyway, that's my personal opinion. Your mileage will probably vary.

As long as computers are built with solid state components, I think it's physically impossible for them to have intelligence, short of divine intervention by God Himself (a possibility that I don't count out, but that's another thread). Computers that function on a non-deterministic principle have the potential to have intelligence or self-awareness. The only two ways to *maybe* accomplish this that I can see is to either use wetware or quantum computing.

Quantum physics is highly chaotic, and any computer based on it would have potential to be non-deterministic.

Wetware solutions would include using cloned brains instead of CPUs and hard drives to create a self-aware computer. However, once you do that, I don't really think it qualifies as a computer anymore.

Anyway, these people are a little crazy, in my opinion. Creating true AI is not as simple as they make it sound, and it may not be desireable either. I know we've seen plenty of scifi like the Matrix that deals with murderious AIs. We don't know for certain that any computer with intelligence wouldn't turn out to be a nice guy with a sense of civic responsbility that loves kids. OTOH, we don't know that it wouldn't go psycho on us either.

Honestly, we know so little about natural intelligence that we really can't even define it properly, much less manufacture it. These people are ahead of themselves.

Anyway, these people are a little crazy, in my opinion.

With them, it's an all or nothing situation. That's extremely dangerous, given that they don't account for the unfavorable outcomes at all, assuming everything will be rosy if THEY design the "seed" SI.

It's almost an issue of free will.

Computers do the things they do because they literally have no choice. They can't choose what to do or what not to do anymore than the sun could choose whether or not to quit shining or the snow could choose whether or not to be cold.

Human beings, however, have the ability to do this, which is almost paradoxical; the ability to choose anything you want suggests that true randomness exists and the universe is non-deterministic, or at least that the universe allows non-determinism.
If the universe, however, is deterministic and not non-deterministic, then human beings really don't have free will and any thought that you did is simply a lie, or rather you had that thought because you were programmed to and had no choice in the matter.

As for me, I don't believe that. I think we do have free will, a precious gift granted to mankind by no less than God Himself.
Anyway, that's my personal opinion. Your mileage will probably vary.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Aren't you ignoring the fact that all animals have free will, even though many are not self aware?

The ability to determine its next action [free will] may not necessarily indicate the level of an entities intelligence.

Anyway, these people are a little crazy, in my opinion. Creating true AI is not as simple as they make it sound, and it may not be desirable either.

"The Singularity will be a future period during which the pace of technological change will be so rapid, its impact so deep, that human life will be irreversibly transformed," said Ray Kurzweil, keynote speaker and author of the best-selling The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology (Viking, 2005).

I'm reading the book. About 1/2 way through. You knock the ideas that these people have but they are well thought through and documented in spades. Have a look at the book the next time you are in Borders. You may be surprised. In particular, Kurzweil isn't predicting that any of this is going to happen over night. The big changes are 30 to 40 years away. Look back 40 years and think about about the state of automatic voice recognition, pattern recognition, database indexing of billions of documents, instant and essentially free worldwide communication in any household that wants it and computers for $800 that are as good as anything that IBM had in 1966.

Things are changing. And fast.

I don't know. Ray Kurzweil has already revolutionized multiple areas of human endevour. I believe he did a lot of the foundational work around digital audio sampling, which led to electronic music synthesizers that accurately mimic instruments. He also invented a lot of the basic OCR (optical character recognition) technology. His web site has a robotic person with a synthesized voice on it that you can interact with.

We routinely interact with voice response systems that are able to understand our speech. In 1985 a friend who was an AI research PhD at a university told me that that 'might never be possible'.

I think the track record of Dr. Kurzweil is pretty impressive and I would not bet against him.

It's all crap.

Wow! That's quite a bold statement.

It's a bunch of people who read too much scifi and wish it were real.

No, it's not. As posted above Dr. Kurzweil is probably the closest thing we have to Thomas Edison in the 2nd half of the 20th Century.

The problem you run into is that the self-aware human mind exhibits some qualities, some of which are difficult to put a finger on, that a solid-state electronic computer is physically incapapble of reproducing, no matter how complicated it is.

So you say. But a AI need not neccessarily reproduce "some qualities" of the human mind to achieve sentience. Also, what it is possible to do with computers is constantly increasing. Today they can understand continuous human speech, as mentioned previously 20 years ago even AI researchers thought this might be impossible.

A computer program can be theoretically modeled with something called a state-transition diagram. This diagram represents every single possible state the computer could be in ... The human brain does not work this way,

Are you sure? What if you could disassemble a brain at the atomic level (atom by atom) and reassemble it.

unless we truly are the sum of our parts.

which I think many of the Singularity people would assert. My own take is we don't know enough to say with assurance either way.

Human beings come with some basic 'software' installed. We call them instincts. Unlike a computer, which has no choice but to obey its programming, we can ignore our own instincts if we choose to.

We can't ignore our instinct to breath, or have our heart beat. One of the requirements for AI is that computers or AI's have volition, the ability to choose things. This certainly seems possible that they will get to.

I think we do have free will, a precious gift granted to mankind by no less than God Himself. Anyway, that's my personal opinion. Your mileage will probably vary.

I think we have free will. I think we will build computers that have free will. I don't see the existence of a God as needed to hold these beliefs, nor do I see these beliefs as absolutely contradicting the existence of God.

As long as computers are built with solid state components, I think it's physically impossible for them to have intelligence,

You've stated that several times, but you haven't really explained why you have this belief. Or at least your argument seems circular to me.

Anyway, these people are a little crazy, in my opinion.

Probably. Most innovators are a little crazy.

Creating true AI is not as simple as they make it sound,

Here, I agree with you. Some of them talk about it like it is already accomplished. Then again no one thought computers would beat humans at chess when I was a kid. Now most people can't beat the $49 chess program you buy at Borders.

and it may not be desireable either.

True. But it probably won't be stopped. Nukes were perhaps not desirable, but we have them. Bill Joy has argued that we are so far ahead of our morality with our technology that we must stop work on this now. But, outside of the minds of one-world, UN utopians there is no controlling authority for scientific research. Thus, if it can happen, it will happen.

These people are ahead of themselves.

Well if there is even a chance that Kurzweil's predictions could be correct, self-aware turning test passing AI's by 2029, we need to be having a LOT more discussion about it, not less. These people may be ahead of themselves, but we as a society are probably lagging behind a bit.

Computers that function on a non-deterministic principle have the potential to have intelligence or self-awareness. The only two ways to *maybe* accomplish this that I can see is to either use wetware or quantum computing.

Before you get too far into your hypothesizing, you do realize that all these computing models (and vanilla silicon) are completely computationally equivalent, right? Not just at a handwavy high level but at a fundamental mathematical level. If we accept your assumption, then we can trivially prove that vanilla silicon is fully capable of all those things. And "non-determinism" does not really have the implications that you seem to think it does with respect to computation.

You might need to double check some of your assumptions and explore the mathematical relationships between some of the terms you are using.