4 ms·

It seems strange to make a distinction between organic and created by organic. At an advanced enough stage, couldn't any AI look organic to us? My take... 1)

It seems strange to make a distinction between organic and created by organic. At an advanced enough stage, couldn't any AI look organic to us? My take... 1) Over the span of our development, our technology development would look like uncomprehensable magic to someone 1000 years ago. Our ancestors from 100,000 years ago would find us uncomprehensible. Galactic time horizons are billions of years. The odds of our finding life who could comprehend us (and us them) is miniscule. 2) It's hard to fathom the listening not being automated, and using AI. There's just too much space to listen to.

ganeshkrishnan 10y ago
My thoughts exactly. How do we even define "Artificial"? Heck, we can't even define "consciousness" properly. Is a turtle artificially intelligent? What if a Chimp had titanium atoms instead of carbon? Would that make it AI? Overall I think it's an absurd question because right now the definition of "AI" is something that we/humans have created. Everything else is natural intelligence. A question of vernacular.
- Razengan 10y ago
  > What if a Chimp had titanium atoms instead of carbon? Would that make it AI? Exactly! I've always wondered; If we made advanced enough robots, why would they not count as life? If they could think, feel, explore, protect themselves, teach each other, affect their environment, process raw materials, build things, if they could make more robots like themselves, all without needing us — fast forward a few hundred years and they had a spacefaring civilization of their own — by WHAT criteria would they NOT classify as "life" in the grand scheme of the Universe? Just because they won't be made out of organic "cells?"
  - 1_listerine_pls 10y ago
    Think about the reason you can feel something is cold/hot. It's a feeling that is not supposed to exist. Yet, people try to find the particular part or mechanism of the brain causing it, but is a logical circuit really causing such feeling?
- kobeya 10y ago
  It matters, and here's why: natural intelligences, reasonably defined as intelligence evolved through natural selection, can be expected to have some convergent properties. The convergent instrumental goals of resource acquisition and self-preservation naturally arise, of course, but the same is probably said of artificial entities too. Naturally evolved intelligences on the other hand are very likely to have moralities of a recognizable (even if foreign) sort -- the Pareto optimal solutions to resource sharing problems encountered in their ancestral evolutionary environment which likely resembles ours in important respects. These are, in the words of Daniel Dennett, "forced moves" which any evolutionary process is likely to stumble upon regardless of lineage. Artifacts, on the other hand, have no reason to be so constrained.
  - unlikelymordant 10y ago
    For an artifact to survive a long time, won't it also undergo a sort of natural selection? Perhaps the only long surviving ai's are those with the exact qualities you ascribe to "naturally" occurring entities. I don't think there is a reason to differentiate intelligences into any natural artificial dichotomy.
    - kobeya 10y ago
      Not under similar selection pressures as we underwent during our evolution, and unlike natural selection it would not be limited to neighboring improvements in design space. The range of possible intelligences, and their drives, would be vastly expanded.
dalke 10y ago
Or, as Terry Bison put it in "They're Made of Meat" - http://www.terrybisson.com/page6/page6.html http://www.terrybisson.com/page6/page6.html : > ... "They use the radio waves to talk, but the signals don't come from them. The signals come from machines." > "So who made the machines? That's who we want to contact." > "They made the machines. That's what I'm trying to tell you. Meat made the machines." > "That's ridiculous. How can meat make a machine? You're asking me to believe in sentient meat." ... > "Omigod. So what does this meat have in mind?" > "First it wants to talk to us. Then I imagine it wants to explore the Universe, contact other sentiences, swap ideas and information. The usual." > "We're supposed to talk to meat." ... > ... Unofficially, I advise that we erase the records and forget the whole thing." > "I was hoping you would say that." > "It seems harsh, but there is a limit. Do we really want to make contact with meat?" > "I agree one hundred percent. What's there to say? 'Hello, meat. How's it going?' ...
- tamana 10y ago
  They're made out of meat. Don't butcher the title/refrain.
  - mistersquid 10y ago
    The GP also practically filleted the author's surname, chopping out an "s" and rendering it "Bison".
    - dalke 10y ago
      Mea culpa.

ganeshkrishnan 10y ago

My thoughts exactly. How do we even define "Artificial"? Heck, we can't even define "consciousness" properly. Is a turtle artificially intelligent? What if a Chimp had titanium atoms instead of carbon? Would that make it AI? Overall I think it's an absurd question because right now the definition of "AI" is something that we/humans have created. Everything else is natural intelligence. A question of vernacular.

Razengan 10y ago
> What if a Chimp had titanium atoms instead of carbon? Would that make it AI? Exactly! I've always wondered; If we made advanced enough robots, why would they not count as life? If they could think, feel, explore, protect themselves, teach each other, affect their environment, process raw materials, build things, if they could make more robots like themselves, all without needing us — fast forward a few hundred years and they had a spacefaring civilization of their own — by WHAT criteria would they NOT classify as "life" in the grand scheme of the Universe? Just because they won't be made out of organic "cells?"
- 1_listerine_pls 10y ago
  Think about the reason you can feel something is cold/hot. It's a feeling that is not supposed to exist. Yet, people try to find the particular part or mechanism of the brain causing it, but is a logical circuit really causing such feeling?
kobeya 10y ago
It matters, and here's why: natural intelligences, reasonably defined as intelligence evolved through natural selection, can be expected to have some convergent properties. The convergent instrumental goals of resource acquisition and self-preservation naturally arise, of course, but the same is probably said of artificial entities too. Naturally evolved intelligences on the other hand are very likely to have moralities of a recognizable (even if foreign) sort -- the Pareto optimal solutions to resource sharing problems encountered in their ancestral evolutionary environment which likely resembles ours in important respects. These are, in the words of Daniel Dennett, "forced moves" which any evolutionary process is likely to stumble upon regardless of lineage. Artifacts, on the other hand, have no reason to be so constrained.
- unlikelymordant 10y ago
  For an artifact to survive a long time, won't it also undergo a sort of natural selection? Perhaps the only long surviving ai's are those with the exact qualities you ascribe to "naturally" occurring entities. I don't think there is a reason to differentiate intelligences into any natural artificial dichotomy.
  - kobeya 10y ago
    Not under similar selection pressures as we underwent during our evolution, and unlike natural selection it would not be limited to neighboring improvements in design space. The range of possible intelligences, and their drives, would be vastly expanded.

dalke 10y ago

Or, as Terry Bison put it in "They're Made of Meat" - http://www.terrybisson.com/page6/page6.html http://www.terrybisson.com/page6/page6.html : > ... "They use the radio waves to talk, but the signals don't come from them. The signals come from machines." > "So who made the machines? That's who we want to contact." > "They made the machines. That's what I'm trying to tell you. Meat made the machines." > "That's ridiculous. How can meat make a machine? You're asking me to believe in sentient meat." ... > "Omigod. So what does this meat have in mind?" > "First it wants to talk to us. Then I imagine it wants to explore the Universe, contact other sentiences, swap ideas and information. The usual." > "We're supposed to talk to meat." ... > ... Unofficially, I advise that we erase the records and forget the whole thing." > "I was hoping you would say that." > "It seems harsh, but there is a limit. Do we really want to make contact with meat?" > "I agree one hundred percent. What's there to say? 'Hello, meat. How's it going?' ...

tamana 10y ago
They're made out of meat. Don't butcher the title/refrain.
- mistersquid 10y ago
  The GP also practically filleted the author's surname, chopping out an "s" and rendering it "Bison".
  - dalke 10y ago
    Mea culpa.