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What is the strongest argument for impossibility being a possibility?

by sambe 10y ago

Quarrelsome 10y ago
my point being that some people treat AGI as an inevitability and I think we're a fair way off a proof.
arethuza 10y ago
There are arguments, notably in "The Emperors New Mind", that assert that consciousness must be based on quantum mechanics in some ill-defined way and therefore that "algorithmic" computers can't therefore be conscious. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor's_New_Mind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor's_New_Mind NB I didn't find this argument particularly strong, but it's a long time since I read it. The brain would have to be doing something spectacularly strange for it to be impossible for us to emulate in one way or another.
- sambe 10y ago
  Out of context it indeed sounds rather fuzzy and weak. It's not even intuitive to me that consciousness comes first. Maybe they are even independent. I should probably read the book though. More generally, I don't think invoking quantum effects is an especially strong argument for impossibility in the general case. We already use quantum effects to some extent and make progress on quantum computation. It may be evidence of greater difficulty, but not of impossibility. Unless there is a strong case for some particular quantum effect being unharness-able.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - k_vi 10y ago
    "It may be evidence of greater difficulty, but not of impossibility"
- adrianN 10y ago
  The argument is particularly poor considering that normal Turing machines can simulate quantum TMs (albeit with an exponential slowdown).
  - logophobia 10y ago
    At the scale an actual brain works, an actual exponential slowdown because of "quantum brains" would make the problem flat-out impossible. An actual human brain has an average of 100 billion neurons. To simulate an actual brain, you'd get an 'additional' slowdown of 2^100,000,000,000. The problem would go from possible in maybe 20-50 years to impossible unless we manage invent some sort of quantum/neural computer. Not that quantum mechanisms in brains are likely, so probably not an issue.
- m-i-l 10y ago
  Pretty much everyone I've talked to who knows about AI (including a former Penrose student who was a classmate on my postgrad AI degree) strongly refute the claims in The Emperor's New Mind. I believe Penrose was at Oxford when he wrote it (in 1989), in which case he would surely have come across David Deutsch's universal quantum computer (from 1985).
baboun 10y ago
It's that possibility is not an impossibility.
ebbv 10y ago
That's approaching it from the wrong angle. That's like saying "What's the proof that unaided human flight is not possible?" (Edit: Note the unaided part. As without a plane or something. I guess I should have chosen something less easy to confuse like walking through walls or something.) The issue is that we do not have proof that general AI is possible. We conjecture that it is based on the assumption that our brains could be simulated by enough artificial neurons, (or some other method) but we don't know that for a fact. And so far we can't even fully simulate a mouse brain, let alone a human brain. We can make something that imitates aspects of mouse behavior, but we can't actually simulate a mouse brain. All the hype around General AI being "just over the horizon" right now is just like it was back in the 80s (or the 60s.) It's a bit over the top. If you look at it from a critical perspective there isn't a lot of solid reason to be so bullish.
- zamalek 10y ago
  Flight is where one argument for the possibility of general AI comes from: the assumption is that we can do whatever nature has demonstrated to us. This argument makes the process seem trivial, though. Rephrasing it to use fusion as the example instead of flight is more realistic. Even so, we know how fusion works and have no idea about intelligence. It's a very long way off.
- sambe 10y ago
  I'm not following completely – surely there were people arguing that human flight was impossible, without strong reasons, and they were wrong? EDIT: missed "unaided". I think you can make a strong case for that impossibility that isn't being made against GAI. Based on everything else we know about the world now, we can "just" simulate a brain. "Just" may mean "after another 200 years of work", of course. The alternative is "the brain is magical somehow", which is not a strong argument on its own – we don't often end up finding magic to be the answer. Where do you see hype about General AI being just over the horizon? Most popular discussion I read is about two things: a) the replacement of human work by increasingly-improved specific AI; b) the possibility of rapid advancement of general AI once invented. I haven't seen anyone say b) is imminent – only that it is likely to be fast/dangerous when it happens.
simonh 10y ago
I think it's entirely possible it's too complex a problem for us to solve. After all, if you think about it by definition a more intelligent being than us would be able to solve problems we can't. Maybe this is one of those, so there might not be any way for us to bootstrap to a general AI. I don't really buy that argument (even though it's mine, I've not seen anyone else argue this). We design systems so complex and built from learning algorithms and neural nets such that ultimately we don't actually know precisely how they are doing what they do. We could brute force it by evolving a solution maybe. But it's at least plausible that we won't be able to engineer and design an AI architecturally because we're not up to the task.

What is the strongest argument for impossibility being a possibility?

by sambe 10y ago

What is the strongest argument for impossibility being a possibility?

Quarrelsome 10y ago

my point being that some people treat AGI as an inevitability and I think we're a fair way off a proof.

arethuza 10y ago

There are arguments, notably in "The Emperors New Mind", that assert that consciousness must be based on quantum mechanics in some ill-defined way and therefore that "algorithmic" computers can't therefore be conscious. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor's_New_Mind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor's_New_Mind NB I didn't find this argument particularly strong, but it's a long time since I read it. The brain would have to be doing something spectacularly strange for it to be impossible for us to emulate in one way or another.

sambe 10y ago
Out of context it indeed sounds rather fuzzy and weak. It's not even intuitive to me that consciousness comes first. Maybe they are even independent. I should probably read the book though. More generally, I don't think invoking quantum effects is an especially strong argument for impossibility in the general case. We already use quantum effects to some extent and make progress on quantum computation. It may be evidence of greater difficulty, but not of impossibility. Unless there is a strong case for some particular quantum effect being unharness-able.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- k_vi 10y ago
  "It may be evidence of greater difficulty, but not of impossibility"
adrianN 10y ago
The argument is particularly poor considering that normal Turing machines can simulate quantum TMs (albeit with an exponential slowdown).
- logophobia 10y ago
  At the scale an actual brain works, an actual exponential slowdown because of "quantum brains" would make the problem flat-out impossible. An actual human brain has an average of 100 billion neurons. To simulate an actual brain, you'd get an 'additional' slowdown of 2^100,000,000,000. The problem would go from possible in maybe 20-50 years to impossible unless we manage invent some sort of quantum/neural computer. Not that quantum mechanisms in brains are likely, so probably not an issue.
m-i-l 10y ago
Pretty much everyone I've talked to who knows about AI (including a former Penrose student who was a classmate on my postgrad AI degree) strongly refute the claims in The Emperor's New Mind. I believe Penrose was at Oxford when he wrote it (in 1989), in which case he would surely have come across David Deutsch's universal quantum computer (from 1985).

baboun 10y ago

It's that possibility is not an impossibility.

ebbv 10y ago

That's approaching it from the wrong angle. That's like saying "What's the proof that unaided human flight is not possible?" (Edit: Note the unaided part. As without a plane or something. I guess I should have chosen something less easy to confuse like walking through walls or something.) The issue is that we do not have proof that general AI is possible. We conjecture that it is based on the assumption that our brains could be simulated by enough artificial neurons, (or some other method) but we don't know that for a fact. And so far we can't even fully simulate a mouse brain, let alone a human brain. We can make something that imitates aspects of mouse behavior, but we can't actually simulate a mouse brain. All the hype around General AI being "just over the horizon" right now is just like it was back in the 80s (or the 60s.) It's a bit over the top. If you look at it from a critical perspective there isn't a lot of solid reason to be so bullish.

zamalek 10y ago
Flight is where one argument for the possibility of general AI comes from: the assumption is that we can do whatever nature has demonstrated to us. This argument makes the process seem trivial, though. Rephrasing it to use fusion as the example instead of flight is more realistic. Even so, we know how fusion works and have no idea about intelligence. It's a very long way off.
sambe 10y ago
I'm not following completely – surely there were people arguing that human flight was impossible, without strong reasons, and they were wrong? EDIT: missed "unaided". I think you can make a strong case for that impossibility that isn't being made against GAI. Based on everything else we know about the world now, we can "just" simulate a brain. "Just" may mean "after another 200 years of work", of course. The alternative is "the brain is magical somehow", which is not a strong argument on its own – we don't often end up finding magic to be the answer. Where do you see hype about General AI being just over the horizon? Most popular discussion I read is about two things: a) the replacement of human work by increasingly-improved specific AI; b) the possibility of rapid advancement of general AI once invented. I haven't seen anyone say b) is imminent – only that it is likely to be fast/dangerous when it happens.

simonh 10y ago

I think it's entirely possible it's too complex a problem for us to solve. After all, if you think about it by definition a more intelligent being than us would be able to solve problems we can't. Maybe this is one of those, so there might not be any way for us to bootstrap to a general AI. I don't really buy that argument (even though it's mine, I've not seen anyone else argue this). We design systems so complex and built from learning algorithms and neural nets such that ultimately we don't actually know precisely how they are doing what they do. We could brute force it by evolving a solution maybe. But it's at least plausible that we won't be able to engineer and design an AI architecturally because we're not up to the task.