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The main assumption amongst Superintelligent AI-phobes is that the transition will happen quickly, but that is an assumption that is extremely questionable. Wh

The main assumption amongst Superintelligent AI-phobes is that the transition will happen quickly, but that is an assumption that is extremely questionable. Why wouldn't we go through phases of increasing intelligence (along multiple dimensions) while working towards an intelligent AI? Yes, someday we may produce an AI that is leaps and bounds more intelligent than humans, but before that we will have experience dealing with various human-level and sub-human-level computer intelligences. The idea that AIs will be self-improving is kind of ridiculous -- there are lots of intelligent people, and the idea that an intelligent AI will happen to be good at designing AIs is negligibly small, much less that they will have some kind of immediate breakthrough that enables a higher level of intelligence. It's not obvious that the path from moderate-intelligent AI to super-intelligent AI is a matter of "just adding more memory and compute"; intelligence as we know it relies too much on associative memory to think that a simple capacity increase will elevate beyond a certain point. If the intelligence takes a different form, then it's hard to make concrete statements about in any capacity, but ultimately the path will be started on by humans, or possibly emerge from sufficiently complex systems. Either way, we're so far out from this that it is laughable to speculate. When we can simulate the intelligence of a cockroach, then maybe we can start to think about what human-level intelligence will look like. The most likely case is that at some point someone creates a system that is arguably conscious or intelligent in a meaningful way, and then we will devolve back into discussions of consciousness and identity and memory while we try to figure out what it means to think about intelligence now that we have something to benchmark against. I wrote this comment [1], that I still enjoy, in response to a similarly alarmist narrative; posed as fiction in that case rather than masquerading as journalism as in this one. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15420699 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15420699

zzz_ 7y ago
We can already simulate the compete brain of a fruit fly: https://neurokernel.github.io/ https://neurokernel.github.io/
- twic 7y ago
  No we can't (my emphasis) [1]: > Building an accurate emulation of the fly brain is an interdisciplinary effort that requires data, algorithms, and insight from (but not limited to) the fields of neuroscience, computer science, and systems engineering. Researchers interested in working towards this goal are invited to join the Neurokernel project. [1] https://neurokernel.github.io/about.html https://neurokernel.github.io/about.html
  - Animats 7y ago
    OpenWorm is still struggling to simulate the simplest organism with a nervous system - the simplest nematode.[1] This is hard, even though the complete wiring diagram of the nematode is known. Still, it's probably the most honest project in synthetic biology. [1] http://openworm.org/ http://openworm.org/
    - russdill 7y ago
      Speaking of S curves, progress in these areas is pretty slow (simulating existing biological structures), I think it's likely they are on the bottom of the S curve. The exponential growth phase is coming up and a lot will happen really fast. Curious if a deep learning application that builds neural networks from gene sequences is a possibility one day. All the information is there, but it may not be possible to learn what it builds without actually "running" it.
deleted 7y ago
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zzz_ 7y ago

We can already simulate the compete brain of a fruit fly: https://neurokernel.github.io/ https://neurokernel.github.io/

twic 7y ago
No we can't (my emphasis) [1]: > Building an accurate emulation of the fly brain is an interdisciplinary effort that requires data, algorithms, and insight from (but not limited to) the fields of neuroscience, computer science, and systems engineering. Researchers interested in working towards this goal are invited to join the Neurokernel project. [1] https://neurokernel.github.io/about.html https://neurokernel.github.io/about.html
- Animats 7y ago
  OpenWorm is still struggling to simulate the simplest organism with a nervous system - the simplest nematode.[1] This is hard, even though the complete wiring diagram of the nematode is known. Still, it's probably the most honest project in synthetic biology. [1] http://openworm.org/ http://openworm.org/
  - russdill 7y ago
    Speaking of S curves, progress in these areas is pretty slow (simulating existing biological structures), I think it's likely they are on the bottom of the S curve. The exponential growth phase is coming up and a lot will happen really fast. Curious if a deep learning application that builds neural networks from gene sequences is a possibility one day. All the information is there, but it may not be possible to learn what it builds without actually "running" it.

deleted 7y ago

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