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An important aspect that the author, in my opinion, doesn't touch is attention. Most of us, humans, tend to be capable of paying attention to a _single_ task fo

by legatus 10y ago

An important aspect that the author, in my opinion, doesn't touch is attention. Most of us, humans, tend to be capable of paying attention to a _single_ task for little time, such as some hour. Now, take a computer. A computer, given sufficient electricity is capable of paying attention to such a task until its hardware has problems. Imagine if someone such as Einstein or Schroedinger were capable of paying attention to a single task (such as unifying physical theories) without needing food, water, waste release, sleep, social life. Also the task is poorly defined: increasing an A.I. intelligence isn't a single task, it can be achieved by, for example, creating faster hardware, increasing efficiency, optimizing software, as well as much higher level tasks.

ianai 10y ago
That's an underlying motivation for AI research and development. If you have something that can improve simply through uptime then computational hardware will make it happen. Frankly what I'd like is a 1000 foot high overview of all current types of AI technologies. I.e. What exists and what it's useful to solve. I think it's all just training neural nets on large datasets though. I can't help think there's a lot more potential than that.
snowwrestler 10y ago
This seems to reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of cognition, which is that only the conscious part matters. In fact we don't really understand how the brain works on problems, but there is plenty of evidence for continuous background processing: ever heard of someone getting an idea in the shower? Ever had the answer to a question pop into your head when you were doing something else?
- robertk 10y ago
  The point stands that one can probably reduce the necessity for many daily actions when attention and willpower is unlimited. Even if you get an idea in the shower, you're still "wasting" time not being able to write a paper on it immediately, instead having to take time to dry and clothe yourself first. Whether this provides a few percentage points or an order of magnitude advantage is a different question.
pmyjavec 10y ago
The interestesting part of all this is how would a machine know how to stop and take a shower? Right now if I notice one of my programs is doing something silly I come along and stop it, find out why it didn't work and start it again. What if AI get's stuck on a (silly?) problem for an eternity, who will be there to help it out? Obviously I'm making some generationalisations about how The Singularity could potentially work. But maybe only being able to spend a certain amount of time on something is an important feature of our brains?

by legatus 10y ago

ianai 10y ago

That's an underlying motivation for AI research and development. If you have something that can improve simply through uptime then computational hardware will make it happen. Frankly what I'd like is a 1000 foot high overview of all current types of AI technologies. I.e. What exists and what it's useful to solve. I think it's all just training neural nets on large datasets though. I can't help think there's a lot more potential than that.

snowwrestler 10y ago

This seems to reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of cognition, which is that only the conscious part matters. In fact we don't really understand how the brain works on problems, but there is plenty of evidence for continuous background processing: ever heard of someone getting an idea in the shower? Ever had the answer to a question pop into your head when you were doing something else?

robertk 10y ago
The point stands that one can probably reduce the necessity for many daily actions when attention and willpower is unlimited. Even if you get an idea in the shower, you're still "wasting" time not being able to write a paper on it immediately, instead having to take time to dry and clothe yourself first. Whether this provides a few percentage points or an order of magnitude advantage is a different question.

pmyjavec 10y ago

The interestesting part of all this is how would a machine know how to stop and take a shower? Right now if I notice one of my programs is doing something silly I come along and stop it, find out why it didn't work and start it again. What if AI get's stuck on a (silly?) problem for an eternity, who will be there to help it out? Obviously I'm making some generationalisations about how The Singularity could potentially work. But maybe only being able to spend a certain amount of time on something is an important feature of our brains?