5 ms·

we do, after all, have a working example Which one?

by ez77 16y ago

dmd 16y ago
Hint: You're using it right now. Hopefully.
- ez77 16y ago
  Do you mean the Internet? How would that be intelligence? Or do you mean my brain? That's not artificial intelligence (at least not obviously artificial!). Edit: Maybe you meant a computer... but that would be quite a long shot. In short, spell it out, guys!
  - arethuza 16y ago
    Sorry - I did mean we have an example of a class of system that exhibits general intelligence, not "artificial" general intelligence.
  - ez77 16y ago
    Why the downvote? Was the last sentence considered rude? I can only hope I wasn't downvoted for 'lack of IQ' in not understanding a hint...
    - arethuza 16y ago
      Sorry, I think I downvoted by mistake - I went and upvoted a few of your other comments by way of apology. :-)
      - ez77 16y ago
        Thanks for explaining what happened. Upvote and downvote buttons should indeed be farther apart.
  - MortenK 16y ago
    he's talking about the human brain
- mechanical_fish 16y ago
  It did take more than a few decades to design, however. I wouldn't really expect a new model to ship inside of forty years. At best, that's like expecting the next version of Windows to ship in the next three hours. My theory of the singularity is that the concept is so popular these days precisely because (a) we've passed a critical knowledge threshold: A significant number of the best-educated people in the world have become aware that not only is a giant collection of self-replicating simple machines possible, it is old news -- billions-of-years-old news. But, (b), the majority of humanity still does not understand that. It is the very definition of irony, but most people -- even the educated ones -- have great difficulty conceiving of a vast, mobile, sentient colony of trillions of single-celled organisms working together with plan and purpose. Frankly, it's easier to believe in elves. Elves, we can grasp. That gap between hard science and magical thinking is fertile ground for fantasy. Singularity fiction bears the same relationship to modern molecular biology that Frankenstein bore to the work of Alessandro Volta.
  - bermanoid 16y ago
    It did take more than a few decades to design, however. I wouldn't really expect a new model to ship inside of forty years. At best, that's like expecting the next version of Windows to ship in the next three hours. That's true only to the extent that the evolution of machine intelligence proceeds via the same processes that led to human intelligence. Which is pretty much impossible, so if we ever get to AGI, we're going to be dealing with another type of evolution or design, and it's very possible that it will happen on a timescale much faster than that of biological evolution. IMO the reason the Singularity concept is popular these days is that we're the first generation that is, barring a massive disaster that both throws Moore's Law off and prevents us from increasing parallel processing power, going to be in possession of reasonably priced machines that have more compute power than the human brain. Which means that it's only a matter of discovering the right algorithms to run. Whether we're making progress on that is debatable, but don't mistake the slow progress at cracking "the" AI algorithm with the speed at which the intelligence explosion will take off after that - it took many long, slow years to figure out how to build a nuclear weapon, but once we figured out the trick and started a nuclear reaction, the thing blew up in a fraction of a second. AI is likely to be very similar, it may take us a long time to get there, but once we're there, watch out....

we do, after all, have a working example Which one?

by ez77 16y ago

we do, after all, have a working example Which one?

dmd 16y ago

Hint: You're using it right now. Hopefully.

ez77 16y ago
Do you mean the Internet? How would that be intelligence? Or do you mean my brain? That's not artificial intelligence (at least not obviously artificial!). Edit: Maybe you meant a computer... but that would be quite a long shot. In short, spell it out, guys!
- arethuza 16y ago
  Sorry - I did mean we have an example of a class of system that exhibits general intelligence, not "artificial" general intelligence.
- ez77 16y ago
  Why the downvote? Was the last sentence considered rude? I can only hope I wasn't downvoted for 'lack of IQ' in not understanding a hint...
  - arethuza 16y ago
    Sorry, I think I downvoted by mistake - I went and upvoted a few of your other comments by way of apology. :-)
    - ez77 16y ago
      Thanks for explaining what happened. Upvote and downvote buttons should indeed be farther apart.
- MortenK 16y ago
  he's talking about the human brain
mechanical_fish 16y ago
It did take more than a few decades to design, however. I wouldn't really expect a new model to ship inside of forty years. At best, that's like expecting the next version of Windows to ship in the next three hours. My theory of the singularity is that the concept is so popular these days precisely because (a) we've passed a critical knowledge threshold: A significant number of the best-educated people in the world have become aware that not only is a giant collection of self-replicating simple machines possible, it is old news -- billions-of-years-old news. But, (b), the majority of humanity still does not understand that. It is the very definition of irony, but most people -- even the educated ones -- have great difficulty conceiving of a vast, mobile, sentient colony of trillions of single-celled organisms working together with plan and purpose. Frankly, it's easier to believe in elves. Elves, we can grasp. That gap between hard science and magical thinking is fertile ground for fantasy. Singularity fiction bears the same relationship to modern molecular biology that Frankenstein bore to the work of Alessandro Volta.
- bermanoid 16y ago
  It did take more than a few decades to design, however. I wouldn't really expect a new model to ship inside of forty years. At best, that's like expecting the next version of Windows to ship in the next three hours. That's true only to the extent that the evolution of machine intelligence proceeds via the same processes that led to human intelligence. Which is pretty much impossible, so if we ever get to AGI, we're going to be dealing with another type of evolution or design, and it's very possible that it will happen on a timescale much faster than that of biological evolution. IMO the reason the Singularity concept is popular these days is that we're the first generation that is, barring a massive disaster that both throws Moore's Law off and prevents us from increasing parallel processing power, going to be in possession of reasonably priced machines that have more compute power than the human brain. Which means that it's only a matter of discovering the right algorithms to run. Whether we're making progress on that is debatable, but don't mistake the slow progress at cracking "the" AI algorithm with the speed at which the intelligence explosion will take off after that - it took many long, slow years to figure out how to build a nuclear weapon, but once we figured out the trick and started a nuclear reaction, the thing blew up in a fraction of a second. AI is likely to be very similar, it may take us a long time to get there, but once we're there, watch out....