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How many particles make up a human, and how many transistors does it take to simulate the behavior and interactions of all those particles? How much energy does
by djakjxnanjak 7y ago
How many particles make up a human, and how many transistors does it take to simulate the behavior and interactions of all those particles? How much energy does it take to power that many transistors? How does that compare to the Sun’s output? There are a few of the questions we need to answer before confidently predicting that we will ever be able to make a physics-based human simulator.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 7y agoYep. This is not a strong proof that humans are simulable, and I don't intend it to be. And I don't meant to suggest that simulating a human particle for particle will ever be an efficient way to model human behavior. I suspect that even medium fidelity neural simulations will someday be sufficient. Instead, the list is meant to inspire an engagement at the level of: "which of these assumptions do I disbelieve?" For it to be the case that computers cannot mimic human-level intelligence, at least one of these items have to be false. And I consider the last one to be the weakest to attack, because all you're really saying there is that it will never be practical, not that it will never be possible. I think disbelieving any of the other assumptions makes a stronger statement, but I also think they are the harder ones to disbelieve.
- djakjxnanjak 7y agoI’ve thought along these lines myself, and I do wonder if we’re going to approach general AI by finding ways to “compress” a simulation of a human brain, or just by coming up with new neural net architectures. The second approach is the one everybody’s working on, and to me it seems more practical.