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The human brain doesn't need to build a smarter brain. It just needs to build something of equivalent smartness (which should be theoretically possible, there's

by swombat 16y ago

The human brain doesn't need to build a smarter brain. It just needs to build something of equivalent smartness (which should be theoretically possible, there's no reason to believe the human brain is the upper bound for all generalised reasoning ability) on a substrate like silicon which is subject to Moore's Law (and thus gets inherently faster with time) and which is immortal and duplicable. Build 1 functioning brain in silicon, and: - 18 months later you can build one that's twice as fast using the same principles - duplicate this brain and get the power of multiple people thinking together (but with greater bandwidth between them than any human group) - run this brain for 100 years and get an older intellectually functioning human than has ever existed before - duplicate whatever learning this brain has accumulated over 100 years (which, say, brings to the level of an Einstein) as many times as you have physical resources for (so, clone Einstein) All those are paths to super-human AI from the production of a human-intelligence brain in a non-biological form. So, if a human brain can make a computer brain, which is a reasonable assumption, then a human brain can make a brain smarter than itself.

gruseom 16y ago
Build 1 functioning brain in silicon, and [...] That reminds me of Chesterton's definition of Western science: "Give us one free miracle and we'll explain everything else." :) Edit: Wish I could remember where I originally got that. Googling it digs up not Chesterton but Terence McKenna.
- swombat 16y ago
  But (part of) the point is, building a human brain in a non-biological substrate is not a miracle. It would be a miracle in the same way that transistors and penicillin are, not in the way that Jesus' resurrection is. I.e., a fantastic, happy, unlikely but possible event that will change the world for the better. After all, we know that human brains can be built in some way: we have the evidence for that claim inside billions of skulls. The question is then not to push the theoretical boundaries of computational capability beyond some theoretical level - but merely to achieve it again artificially. We've managed to copy birds, fish, we've sent people to the moon, we've sent probes outside the solar system, we've beaten countless diseases, we've extended our own lifespans by decades, we've created monuments of human culture... why assume that we won't achieve this too?
  - rimantas 16y ago
    > After all, we know that human brains can be built in some > way: we have the evidence for that claim inside billions of > skulls Exactly. Skulls. With connection to living and feeling flesh. > After all, we know that human brains can be built in some way: we have the evidence for that > claim inside billions of skulls We cannot even model the brain of the simplest worm…
    - swombat 16y ago
      You completely failed to understand my argument. Exactly. Skulls. With connection to living and feeling flesh. The human brains provide a minimum theoretical limit, that's all. The existence of the human brain proves categorically that it is physically possible to build a computing device that fits inside a skull and has the computational capabilities of a brain. It exists, therefore it can exist. So, any argument that "it's impossible to build such a device" are refuted by our very existence. We cannot even model the brain of the simplest worm See Moore's law and the relationship between computational capacity and neural network modelling.
    - rbanffy 16y ago
      > Exactly. Skulls. With connection to living and feeling flesh. And, unless you claim there is something inherently magical and miraculous in that, it can be reproduced or abstracted. > We cannot even model the brain of the simplest worm… I don't believe that's true. I am quite sure we have some models of varying accuracy (as in "good enough") for those. Maybe we cannot run the most accurate ones (modeling the chemical processes within individual neurons) in real time, but, by 2012, we'll be able to run them twice as fast as we do now.

by swombat 16y ago

gruseom 16y ago

Build 1 functioning brain in silicon, and [...] That reminds me of Chesterton's definition of Western science: "Give us one free miracle and we'll explain everything else." :) Edit: Wish I could remember where I originally got that. Googling it digs up not Chesterton but Terence McKenna.

swombat 16y ago
But (part of) the point is, building a human brain in a non-biological substrate is not a miracle. It would be a miracle in the same way that transistors and penicillin are, not in the way that Jesus' resurrection is. I.e., a fantastic, happy, unlikely but possible event that will change the world for the better. After all, we know that human brains can be built in some way: we have the evidence for that claim inside billions of skulls. The question is then not to push the theoretical boundaries of computational capability beyond some theoretical level - but merely to achieve it again artificially. We've managed to copy birds, fish, we've sent people to the moon, we've sent probes outside the solar system, we've beaten countless diseases, we've extended our own lifespans by decades, we've created monuments of human culture... why assume that we won't achieve this too?
- rimantas 16y ago
  > After all, we know that human brains can be built in some > way: we have the evidence for that claim inside billions of > skulls Exactly. Skulls. With connection to living and feeling flesh. > After all, we know that human brains can be built in some way: we have the evidence for that > claim inside billions of skulls We cannot even model the brain of the simplest worm…
  - swombat 16y ago
    You completely failed to understand my argument. Exactly. Skulls. With connection to living and feeling flesh. The human brains provide a minimum theoretical limit, that's all. The existence of the human brain proves categorically that it is physically possible to build a computing device that fits inside a skull and has the computational capabilities of a brain. It exists, therefore it can exist. So, any argument that "it's impossible to build such a device" are refuted by our very existence. We cannot even model the brain of the simplest worm See Moore's law and the relationship between computational capacity and neural network modelling.
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    > Exactly. Skulls. With connection to living and feeling flesh. And, unless you claim there is something inherently magical and miraculous in that, it can be reproduced or abstracted. > We cannot even model the brain of the simplest worm… I don't believe that's true. I am quite sure we have some models of varying accuracy (as in "good enough") for those. Maybe we cannot run the most accurate ones (modeling the chemical processes within individual neurons) in real time, but, by 2012, we'll be able to run them twice as fast as we do now.