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I'm not sure I understand your point although I understand and partially agree with your arguments. Because we do not precisely know how intelligence works (bec

I'm not sure I understand your point although I understand and partially agree with your arguments. Because we do not precisely know how intelligence works (because surely we agree it exists) that means that we can never create an equally powerful version we have or you disagree about the creation of a better version. There is nothing to prevent us from doing the first

T-A 10y ago
I am saying that we do not know which algorithm to use in order to implement a general artificial intelligence. Even if somebody gave you unlimited resources to do it - all the computers and programmers you want - you would currently be unable to do it, because we don't know how to do it. That obviously does not mean that we will never know. It does not even mean that we necessarily need to know. In fact, a scenario which Yudkowski likes to worry about is that somebody will essentially make brain-like hardware and get something going without any real understanding of how it works. That "only" requires duplicating the structure of the brain, not understanding it. That is the scenario which I alluded to in my wild-assed guess. Whichever approach turns out to be the one that first gets to a human-level AI, the fact that we do not have a theory makes it impossible to predict how long it will take and how fast the result will be able to improve. Even if all we need to do is mass-produce a few million functional equivalents of cortical columns and hook them all up somehow, we are not currently able to guess how the resulting intelligence will scale. If we double the number of columns, will its IQ double? Quadruple? Or maybe only grow linearly, or logarithmically, or as the square root of the number of columns? Or maybe not grow at all, because it's not just a matter of quantity, but of certain architectural features which do not scale?
- arisAlexis 10y ago
  I see that we do actually agree. My assumption was that if somehow something we create artificially can better itself then it would then probably do very rapidly. My questions was that is it possible (sci-fi discussion) for it to do it so fast that we do not even realize it ever happened.

T-A 10y ago

I am saying that we do not know which algorithm to use in order to implement a general artificial intelligence. Even if somebody gave you unlimited resources to do it - all the computers and programmers you want - you would currently be unable to do it, because we don't know how to do it. That obviously does not mean that we will never know. It does not even mean that we necessarily need to know. In fact, a scenario which Yudkowski likes to worry about is that somebody will essentially make brain-like hardware and get something going without any real understanding of how it works. That "only" requires duplicating the structure of the brain, not understanding it. That is the scenario which I alluded to in my wild-assed guess. Whichever approach turns out to be the one that first gets to a human-level AI, the fact that we do not have a theory makes it impossible to predict how long it will take and how fast the result will be able to improve. Even if all we need to do is mass-produce a few million functional equivalents of cortical columns and hook them all up somehow, we are not currently able to guess how the resulting intelligence will scale. If we double the number of columns, will its IQ double? Quadruple? Or maybe only grow linearly, or logarithmically, or as the square root of the number of columns? Or maybe not grow at all, because it's not just a matter of quantity, but of certain architectural features which do not scale?

arisAlexis 10y ago
I see that we do actually agree. My assumption was that if somehow something we create artificially can better itself then it would then probably do very rapidly. My questions was that is it possible (sci-fi discussion) for it to do it so fast that we do not even realize it ever happened.