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Actually, getting to strong AI through math (rather than through mimicking humans) sounds more probable to me. We already have formalisms that can compute the m
by hugh3 15y ago
Actually, getting to strong AI through math (rather than through mimicking humans) sounds more probable to me. We already have formalisms that can compute the most accurate possible prediction and the most efficient possible way to optimize a a utility function (inferring the right physical laws in the process) if given tons of computing power, for example look up Solomonoff induction or Marcus Hutter's AIXI. These count as superintelligences, or at least superweapons that can destroy the world. Stross's argument does not demonstrate the unlikelihood of someone implementing a fast approximation to AIXI tomorrow.
While that'd be a nice thing to have, it doesn't seem anything like an AI in the usual sense... i.e. the sense in which AIs have personhood and their own thoughts and feelings and goals and so forth.
- cousin_it 15y agoSuch things may not have personhood but they do have internal reasoning, can be built to have real-world goals, can solve any "intelligence-bound" problem (like math or physics) better than any human, and can cause something like the Singularity to occur (which the essay was arguing against in the first place). It seems that conceptualizing AIs as human-like is the #1 top mistake that leads people to think AIs are impossible (or, alternatively, safe once they're built). It's more enlightening to think of an AI as a cold mathematical machine that uses computational power to achieve whatever goal the original programmer specified, possibly increasing its own power in the process. It will happily eat your babies if it needs more atoms. Its lack of personhood won't save you.
- loup-vaillant 15y agoEliezer Yudkowsky has a very good synonym for "AI" that doesn't trigger anthropomorphism: "Optimization Process". An example is Darwinian Evolution. And it is quite obvious that Evolution isn't alive, sentient, let alone human-like.
- klipt 15y agoGood old evolution. Humans are just one of its fruits, yet we think so highly of ourselves. If a superhuman AI exists, exactly what evolutionary niche are humans going to fill? Because there's a word for species which don't have an evolutionary niche: extinct.
- dmbass 15y ago"It seems that conceptualizing AIs as human-like is the #1 top mistake that leads people to think AIs are impossible (or, alternatively, safe once they're built). It's more enlightening to think of an AI as a cold mathematical machine" But really, even humans are just cold mathematical machines when you get below a certain layer.