5 ms·

Here's a crazy thought. What if we never get human-like artificial intelligence?

by vlunkr 10y ago

JoeAltmaier 10y ago
Likely. Intelligence is molded by the container. Much of our self is shaped by being mammals, with two eyes and two ears and limited perception of the world. An artificial creature could be completely different from that. It will perceive the world in a different light, literally. It will need different language to describe what it experiences, and we will have only indirect referents to appreciate what its talking about. E.g. an intelligent drone might want to express what it felt when hovering at 5000 ft over Manhattan in a slight crosswind during a cell tower outage - the EM spectrum image shifts in such an utterly sublime way when your sensors are vibrating and the low band is uncluttered!
- sillysaurus3 10y ago
  See also: the paperclip maximizer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_convergence#Paperclip_maximizer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_convergence#Paper... I like it because it illustrates the idea that digital AI probably won't be like us. Earth's animals are similar thanks to evolution on Earth. We have a fear of dying, a need to reproduce, and an inability to prevent genetic diversity. What will happen when these constraints are removed?
- jupiter90000 10y ago
  I totally agree with this. A significant part of what shapes human perception of reality is not just 'nature' but 'nurture'. How would we be able to fully re-create all the social creation of a version of collective reality that a human experiences due to being indoctrinated for years by parents, family, friends, the community, and society? I doubt this is something that could be trivially re-created by scientists in a lab-setting, much less fiddling with algorithms. It seems once the basis for human-like learning was in place for a machine, to approach human-like 'intelligence' the machine would need the appropriate social environment to learn the socially appropriate symbols and constructs to effectively relate to the world and function in a given community and society. This assumes we care about having human-like intelligence. If not, it perhaps won't apply.
  - SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
    There's a very interesting question of if we can have a human-communicating, non-human intelligence. It's likely that our first AI will be something like that: a mind which is internally very unlike our own, but which has a substantial fraction devoted to being able to explain the human understandable versions of its thoughts. The scary part is that to us, it likely will feel very human, but to it, we'll likely be nothing but steering ants by laying out sugar.
- freyr 10y ago
  > Much of our self is shaped by being mammals, with two eyes and two ears and limited perception of the world. Of course we've built visible light cameras and microphones, which mimic our own sensory inputs. Machines will likely have these same sensors. They can have additional sensors (IR, radar, etc.), or not. That's up to us. Touch, taste, smell, and physical sensations of pain and pleasure are not yet modeled in machines, but presumably this would be possible. Human intelligence is molded by hundreds of thousands of years of evolutionary pressure to hunt, procreate, attack other tribes, avoid being eaten, avoid being cast out of the community, etc. Our emotions are likely closely tied to these functions. It's not clear that machines can or should be designed according to these same environmental pressures.
Ygg2 10y ago
It's completely possible. We wipe ourselves and all other high IQ candidates in a cataclysm.
overcast 10y ago
Crazier thought, what if WE are the AI, and whatever race of higher intelligence developed us?
- vlunkr 10y ago
  Then we have to decide what the difference is between artificial intelligence and plain intelligence.
- simonh 10y ago
  So if we follow the same rate of progress we'll have something in, oh, maybe another 4 billion years. Take that Ray Kurzweil!
criddell 10y ago
I was thinking the same thing, but from a different angle. What if after studying how the human brain thinks, we find that our experience doesn't match reality? I might believe I just decided to drink some coffee, but that "decision" was really just a consequence of the million things I did before that time and was entirely predictable. So basically, what if we find human intelligence is similar to what we call artificial intelligence?
- zardo 10y ago
  Isn't this all pretty much already found? At least for the simple sorts of tasks we can analyze with fMRI, unconcious processing predictably leads to certain conscious actions. AI is a misnomer, we are trying to produce artifacts that can act intelligently. Is that is genuine or artificial intelligence? Does a submarine genuinely or artificially swim? Does an airplane genuinely or artificially fly?
  - criddell 10y ago
    But do humans act with genuine intelligence? Can genuine intelligence arise from a mechanical system? My gut says no. How about from an electronic system? My gut still says no. How about from a biological system? That's where I'm stuck.
empath75 10y ago
What if the internet is already a massive artificial intelligence that we can't even begin to comprehend?
unabst 10y ago
Human-like intelligence entails many things. Some of which are harder than others, of which some have already been accomplished. The main issue is with treating the problem as one problem and equating our simulation as one simulation. They will never be equal with that approach. The brain is not one monolith, but we tend to reason so because words are monolithic. If we deconstruct our own intelligence and brain into all of its smaller components, and those components further into smaller components, we will find the parts we can build immediately, and identify the real roadblocks. We must deconstruct and deabstract more to understand. Only with proper understanding can we achieve successful construction and abstraction, or even have meaningful and truthful conversation.
boznz 10y ago
Based on some people I know, its already passed us :-)
leonroy 10y ago
I'm certain we'll see AI which is smart enough to replace a lot of tasks which humans currently perform. For example paralegal work, medical diagnosis, logistics solving for cargo and military applications etc. What I cannot wrap my head around though is at what point AI will reach a level where it can have that 'Eureka!' moment and come up with a novel concept like humans do. Humans are governed by an array of emotions and evolved behaviours which work in tandem. For example depression or recklessness are both pretty negative and debilitating. One might expect they'd be evolved out of the species. Depression however can be useful in that it causes us to evaluate the reasons behind our depression and (hopefully) strive to change them. Recklessness can cause us to throw caution to the wind and shoot for the stars - make that move abroad or sell everything and setup a new company. I think that AI will rapidly reach a level where it is self aware enough to demonstrate human behaviour like self-preservation or even harbour malignant feelings towards us and some of our behaviours (environmental damage, torture etc.). But whether it will posess that yearning curiosity which causes humans to strive for self improvement, to look to the stars or deep within the atom, I don't know if we'll see that anytime soon.

Here's a crazy thought. What if we never get human-like artificial intelligence?

by vlunkr 10y ago

Here's a crazy thought. What if we never get human-like artificial intelligence?

Likely. Intelligence is molded by the container. Much of our self is shaped by being mammals, with two eyes and two ears and limited perception of the world. An artificial creature could be completely different from that. It will perceive the world in a different light, literally. It will need different language to describe what it experiences, and we will have only indirect referents to appreciate what its talking about. E.g. an intelligent drone might want to express what it felt when hovering at 5000 ft over Manhattan in a slight crosswind during a cell tower outage - the EM spectrum image shifts in such an utterly sublime way when your sensors are vibrating and the low band is uncluttered!

sillysaurus3 10y ago
See also: the paperclip maximizer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_convergence#Paperclip_maximizer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_convergence#Paper... I like it because it illustrates the idea that digital AI probably won't be like us. Earth's animals are similar thanks to evolution on Earth. We have a fear of dying, a need to reproduce, and an inability to prevent genetic diversity. What will happen when these constraints are removed?
jupiter90000 10y ago
I totally agree with this. A significant part of what shapes human perception of reality is not just 'nature' but 'nurture'. How would we be able to fully re-create all the social creation of a version of collective reality that a human experiences due to being indoctrinated for years by parents, family, friends, the community, and society? I doubt this is something that could be trivially re-created by scientists in a lab-setting, much less fiddling with algorithms. It seems once the basis for human-like learning was in place for a machine, to approach human-like 'intelligence' the machine would need the appropriate social environment to learn the socially appropriate symbols and constructs to effectively relate to the world and function in a given community and society. This assumes we care about having human-like intelligence. If not, it perhaps won't apply.
- SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
  There's a very interesting question of if we can have a human-communicating, non-human intelligence. It's likely that our first AI will be something like that: a mind which is internally very unlike our own, but which has a substantial fraction devoted to being able to explain the human understandable versions of its thoughts. The scary part is that to us, it likely will feel very human, but to it, we'll likely be nothing but steering ants by laying out sugar.
freyr 10y ago
> Much of our self is shaped by being mammals, with two eyes and two ears and limited perception of the world. Of course we've built visible light cameras and microphones, which mimic our own sensory inputs. Machines will likely have these same sensors. They can have additional sensors (IR, radar, etc.), or not. That's up to us. Touch, taste, smell, and physical sensations of pain and pleasure are not yet modeled in machines, but presumably this would be possible. Human intelligence is molded by hundreds of thousands of years of evolutionary pressure to hunt, procreate, attack other tribes, avoid being eaten, avoid being cast out of the community, etc. Our emotions are likely closely tied to these functions. It's not clear that machines can or should be designed according to these same environmental pressures.

Ygg2 10y ago

It's completely possible. We wipe ourselves and all other high IQ candidates in a cataclysm.

overcast 10y ago

Crazier thought, what if WE are the AI, and whatever race of higher intelligence developed us?

vlunkr 10y ago
Then we have to decide what the difference is between artificial intelligence and plain intelligence.
simonh 10y ago
So if we follow the same rate of progress we'll have something in, oh, maybe another 4 billion years. Take that Ray Kurzweil!

criddell 10y ago

I was thinking the same thing, but from a different angle. What if after studying how the human brain thinks, we find that our experience doesn't match reality? I might believe I just decided to drink some coffee, but that "decision" was really just a consequence of the million things I did before that time and was entirely predictable. So basically, what if we find human intelligence is similar to what we call artificial intelligence?

zardo 10y ago
Isn't this all pretty much already found? At least for the simple sorts of tasks we can analyze with fMRI, unconcious processing predictably leads to certain conscious actions. AI is a misnomer, we are trying to produce artifacts that can act intelligently. Is that is genuine or artificial intelligence? Does a submarine genuinely or artificially swim? Does an airplane genuinely or artificially fly?
- criddell 10y ago
  But do humans act with genuine intelligence? Can genuine intelligence arise from a mechanical system? My gut says no. How about from an electronic system? My gut still says no. How about from a biological system? That's where I'm stuck.

empath75 10y ago

What if the internet is already a massive artificial intelligence that we can't even begin to comprehend?

unabst 10y ago

Human-like intelligence entails many things. Some of which are harder than others, of which some have already been accomplished. The main issue is with treating the problem as one problem and equating our simulation as one simulation. They will never be equal with that approach. The brain is not one monolith, but we tend to reason so because words are monolithic. If we deconstruct our own intelligence and brain into all of its smaller components, and those components further into smaller components, we will find the parts we can build immediately, and identify the real roadblocks. We must deconstruct and deabstract more to understand. Only with proper understanding can we achieve successful construction and abstraction, or even have meaningful and truthful conversation.

boznz 10y ago

Based on some people I know, its already passed us :-)

leonroy 10y ago

I'm certain we'll see AI which is smart enough to replace a lot of tasks which humans currently perform. For example paralegal work, medical diagnosis, logistics solving for cargo and military applications etc. What I cannot wrap my head around though is at what point AI will reach a level where it can have that 'Eureka!' moment and come up with a novel concept like humans do. Humans are governed by an array of emotions and evolved behaviours which work in tandem. For example depression or recklessness are both pretty negative and debilitating. One might expect they'd be evolved out of the species. Depression however can be useful in that it causes us to evaluate the reasons behind our depression and (hopefully) strive to change them. Recklessness can cause us to throw caution to the wind and shoot for the stars - make that move abroad or sell everything and setup a new company. I think that AI will rapidly reach a level where it is self aware enough to demonstrate human behaviour like self-preservation or even harbour malignant feelings towards us and some of our behaviours (environmental damage, torture etc.). But whether it will posess that yearning curiosity which causes humans to strive for self improvement, to look to the stars or deep within the atom, I don't know if we'll see that anytime soon.