5 ms·

I think it's partly a problem of not having a roadmap to get from where we are now to where we want to be. Contrast AI with, say, interplanetary space travel.

I think it's partly a problem of not having a roadmap to get from where we are now to where we want to be. Contrast AI with, say, interplanetary space travel. We're a long way away from that too, but there's a more obvious path to getting there. We need better control of nuclear energy, more robust robotics designs, and more efficient environmental control. These are engineering challenges: for the most part, the science is already laid out. With AI the science isn't there. We don't know which direction to move in, let alone how to move in that direction.

stochastician 10y ago
I totally agree with this. In spite of a lot of the recent hype, we still have very limited understanding of intelligence as a science. I agree "never" seems like a strong claim given that we're walking around with 7B existence proofs that it's possible, but for most of us "never" and 300 years are functionally equivalent.
- logicallee 10y ago
  What makes you think that it would take 300 years, given that humans are being beaten at extremely creative computational tasks like playing Go, already? Machine learning using similar architecture (neural nets) seems to be making astounding progress every day. Why would it take 300 years to make a major breakthrough?
  - soVeryTired 10y ago
    We've made big advances in reinforcement learning and certain types of supervised learning. But most learning is unsupervised. Somehow a human baby bootstraps itself from being a tangle of neurons to sensing, walking, and talking with very little instruction on how to do so.
    - logicallee 10y ago
      But monkeys don't start talking (even when surrounded by humans), therefore would you agree that somewhere in our DNA must be the description for how our neurons need to do so? Therefore, that DNA must contain this information? (source code), at some level of abstraction or compressed in some way?
logicallee 10y ago
No!!! There is absolutely, 100% no roadmap for interplanetary space travel, certainly outside the solar system. (Within the solar system is arguable): the 7 planets just discovered are a good example, I love this comment on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13707775 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13707775 "If you had a near perfect hydrogen -> helium fusion engine, it'd take about 6 million tons of fuel (about the mass of the Pyramids of Egypt or 2,000 Saturn V rockets)". Does this sound like a roadmap? "If you had a near perfect hydrogen-> helium fusion engine"... "mass of the Pyramids of Egypt"? Contrast this with the hardware I'm talking about: by my estimation there are 1,000 clusters today, today, that can run the appropriate software if we had it. The idea that someone would call it "impossible" at a time when conventional human thinking challenges such as playing Go, are being mastered by machine using machine learning, seems crazy. I absolutely do not agree with you that we have any roadmap for interplanetary, certainly extrasolar, travel. Contrast this with the Human brain. We can count the neurons (100 billion or so). It uses as much energy as a 20 watt lightbulb[1] but doesn't have light-speed interconnects, unlike server rooms. The roadmap we are following, simulating neural nets on bigger and bigger hardware, is pretty much the exact thing you'd expect us to be doing. It's yielding amazing results in machine learning. Why would anyone think that the biological, slow-firing chemical analog process these huge, super-fast digital processes replicate, will be out of reach literally "forever". It is literally possible that not one human being will ever travel outside the solar system - not in the next 1,000 years; 5,000 years; or ever. The idea that we will "never" simulate a hundred billion analog neurons running at 20 watts seems childishly naive. It seems like saying "no machine will ever fly - period" when machines are already doing more than enough work to do so. Come on. Anyway I am really interested in stochastician's answer here - this is why I wrote them after they offered to answer any questions ("appy to answer questions."). [1] 20 watts

stochastician 10y ago

I totally agree with this. In spite of a lot of the recent hype, we still have very limited understanding of intelligence as a science. I agree "never" seems like a strong claim given that we're walking around with 7B existence proofs that it's possible, but for most of us "never" and 300 years are functionally equivalent.

logicallee 10y ago
What makes you think that it would take 300 years, given that humans are being beaten at extremely creative computational tasks like playing Go, already? Machine learning using similar architecture (neural nets) seems to be making astounding progress every day. Why would it take 300 years to make a major breakthrough?
- soVeryTired 10y ago
  We've made big advances in reinforcement learning and certain types of supervised learning. But most learning is unsupervised. Somehow a human baby bootstraps itself from being a tangle of neurons to sensing, walking, and talking with very little instruction on how to do so.
  - logicallee 10y ago
    But monkeys don't start talking (even when surrounded by humans), therefore would you agree that somewhere in our DNA must be the description for how our neurons need to do so? Therefore, that DNA must contain this information? (source code), at some level of abstraction or compressed in some way?

logicallee 10y ago

No!!! There is absolutely, 100% no roadmap for interplanetary space travel, certainly outside the solar system. (Within the solar system is arguable): the 7 planets just discovered are a good example, I love this comment on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13707775 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13707775 "If you had a near perfect hydrogen -> helium fusion engine, it'd take about 6 million tons of fuel (about the mass of the Pyramids of Egypt or 2,000 Saturn V rockets)". Does this sound like a roadmap? "If you had a near perfect hydrogen-> helium fusion engine"... "mass of the Pyramids of Egypt"? Contrast this with the hardware I'm talking about: by my estimation there are 1,000 clusters today, today, that can run the appropriate software if we had it. The idea that someone would call it "impossible" at a time when conventional human thinking challenges such as playing Go, are being mastered by machine using machine learning, seems crazy. I absolutely do not agree with you that we have any roadmap for interplanetary, certainly extrasolar, travel. Contrast this with the Human brain. We can count the neurons (100 billion or so). It uses as much energy as a 20 watt lightbulb[1] but doesn't have light-speed interconnects, unlike server rooms. The roadmap we are following, simulating neural nets on bigger and bigger hardware, is pretty much the exact thing you'd expect us to be doing. It's yielding amazing results in machine learning. Why would anyone think that the biological, slow-firing chemical analog process these huge, super-fast digital processes replicate, will be out of reach literally "forever". It is literally possible that not one human being will ever travel outside the solar system - not in the next 1,000 years; 5,000 years; or ever. The idea that we will "never" simulate a hundred billion analog neurons running at 20 watts seems childishly naive. It seems like saying "no machine will ever fly - period" when machines are already doing more than enough work to do so. Come on. Anyway I am really interested in stochastician's answer here - this is why I wrote them after they offered to answer any questions ("appy to answer questions."). [1] 20 watts