Staring into the Singularity

Sysopmind.com ^ | 11/18/1996-05/27/2001 | Eliezer Yudkowski

[sourcery]

FYI

[Libertarianize the GOP]

It looks interesting, when I finish a couple of left over debates and eat some dinner I will come back and try to digest this.

[Jaxter]

[Brett66]

Applying a math equation to the acceleration of intelligence seems naive at best. We may develop sophisticated AI, but whatever these AI's invent will have to be made into a product. That requires convincing people of the merit of the idea and funding the idea. The age-old human element can't be left out or ignored. Technological advancement will occur faster no doubt, but our ability to convince people to accept it will not. This puts practical limitations on the concept of singularity. That's my two cents.

[tet68]

Skynet

[Larry Lucido]

Man, and I thought those essays in the Religion section ran on forever!

[B-Chan]

At some point in the near future, someone will come up with a method of increasing the maximum intelligence on the planet - either coding a true Artificial Intelligence or enhancing human intelligence.

No one has yet defined human Consciousness in any real sense. No one has yet demonstrated that Consciousness is a phenomenon of electrochemical computational processes in the brain. No one has yet demonstrated that it is possible to emulate these electrochemical processes digitally. Therefore, any speculation about creating "artificial brains" that can emulate the human brain -- let alone become Conscious -- belongs to the realm of science fiction.

Dr. Vinge and his disciples assume that human Consciousness is a material process that can be perfectly modeled in a computer -- a big assumption considering no one has the foggiest notion of what Consciousness really is. The Singularity faith proceeds from the naturalistic assumption that a Person is nothing more than a stack of electrified meat -- a biological robot -- that ultimately consists of nothing more than atoms and energy.

Obviously, I disagree. Computing power is not the same as thought. A human being is more than mere electrified meat. We have something in us that can't be simulated by a computer, no matter how sophisticated.

Lacking a definition of Mind, the prospects of creating an artificial Mind are extremely slim.

[Billy_bob_bob]

I am excited by the prospect of superintelligent computers arriving within the next ten years. However, I think the notion of "uploading" human consciousness into a machine is one of those ideas that in retrospect will seem as quaint as believing that a machine that can play chess would be a truly sentient machine.

The good news is that every time we are faced with new answers to the big questions we have to go back to the drawing board and come up with better questions. Eventually we'll figure it all out, but not within the next ten years or so. Perhaps within the next thousand.

Still, an interesting article.

[Tokhtamish]

OK, we solve the Social Security problem by uploading aging baby boomers to the Singularity. We could call it Carousel and they would simply renew.

As for machines designing themselves, remember "Westworld" where the resort robotics engineers lost control because the robots had been designing themselves so long that they had no idea how they really worked anymore ?

[B-Chan]

My plan is to hide out somewhere until the last of the Extropians "uploads" himself to the Net. Then I emerge from my mountaintop hideaway, jerk the plug out of the wall, and spend the rest of my life enjoying their stuff.

Uploading can't come soon enough! I've always wanted to take a bath in Dom Perignon...

B-chan

[wafflehouse]

bookmark for later

[Ferris]

At the end of this ride is biological immortality for conscious beings on this planet...

Death is a disease... And it is temporary...

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

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[Consort]

The human gene, like everything else, has a finite existence — it can replicate a finite number of times. Eventually, it will stop replicating and mankind will have reached its final generation. Genetic engineering is speeding up or slowing down that process.

[sigSEGV]

Maybe getting my head frozen when I die (assuming they don't figure it all out before then) isn't such a bad idea after all.

Imagine the possibilities. Think about space travel to anywhere in the universe at whatever speed you like. Simply slow your mind down so that time passes extremely fast. Of course, why would you think about such things if you could just simulate anything in your own mind...

[sigSEGV]

The human gene does not have a finite existence. It is merely digital information encoded into four different proteins. If I have a copy of that sequence, it is no different than the original. If I have a complete gene sequence from a human being, I can completely reproduce that human being from that sequence.

Did you read the story about the guys that downloaded the "source code" (DNA) for a virus (not a computer virus) off the Internet and made their own?
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992539

[Sir Gawain]

What, you didn't fix all the links?

[Consort]

I think consciousness is the carrier wave of existence. I also think that people often confuse awareness with consciousness.

[Consort]

If I have a complete gene sequence from a human being, I can completely reproduce that human being from that sequence.

I see what you're saying, but that human donor of the gene sequence exists within the finite timeline of human existence and can be duplicated over and over. Does that change the end result or does it merely increase the population by adding human duplicates?