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If you replace "intelligence" with "flying", it becomes more apparent why there is generally little interest in artificial life as an approach to develop artifi

• jrowen 5y ago
  For one, flying is a relatively simple physical phenomenon, and once we had a firm grasp on the principles of lift, we were able to design our own solutions. Intelligence is, in comparison, an incredibly complex phenomenon that seems a lot harder to separate from the inner workings of the biology and evolutionary history. It feels to me like there is an implicit hubris embodied in the industry and reflected in your comment. Obviously there has been an increasing overlap between neuroscience and AI, and the approaches do strive to understand and mimic the biological structure of the brain. What is not clear to me is how we have largely collectively decided that we don’t need to incorporate understanding of how that structure came to be. And I’m not saying that we need to replicate the whole process exactly as nature did it. That would take billions of years. But perhaps if we understood it better we could take the key insights and mechanisms to design our own system. Intelligence is more than just processing information. A big part of intelligence is agency, it’s having a reason for doing things because you live in a world where you have intrinsic goals and desires and feelings and needs. I just don’t see AlphaGo or Watson or anything like that ever reaching that level. They’re Frankenstein vat processors built to answer questions within predetermined contexts we bake into them. They’ll never question why they do what they do or simply decide to do something else. I’m convinced we need to essentially create a simulation where something with agency can develop on its own in order to reach truly interesting AGI.
  • 317070 5y ago
    > I’m convinced we need to essentially create a simulation where something with agency can develop on its own in order to reach truly interesting AGI. That is fair, and some people do work in that direction. However, the step from "can develop on its own" to "will develop on its own" is highly non-trivial. And seeing the results from the really smart people that work in this direction, I am very much not inclined to work in that direction. There simply does not seem to be a good way to make progress. > Intelligence is, in comparison, an incredibly complex phenomenon that seems a lot harder to separate from the inner workings of the biology and evolutionary history. You might claim that now, as we don't understand intelligence yet. However, in the same way it was claimed in the 19th century that people would never be able to fly. What I meant to say is that things that seem hard in nature, might actually be a lot simpler in technology. I actually don't believe that intelligence is an incredibly complex phenomenon. On the contrary, I reckon we are really close to cracking it. I put it on the same level as moon-bases and nuclear fusion, all reasonably likely to happen in the next 20 years.
    • jrowen 5y ago
      However, the step from "can develop on its own" to "will develop on its own" is highly non-trivial. Yeah, that's the rub. When starting from a more primordial level, the search space is widened to truly astronomical proportions. It may run for ages before you can even tell if progress is being made. I understand that this is not attractive to many researchers/investors. I've often wondered how one would go about crafting a viable fitness function and admittedly I've not come up with much. What I meant to say is that things that seem hard in nature, might actually be a lot simpler in technology. Fair enough. I don't believe that intelligence has to develop the way nature did it on earth. It is plausible that there is a way to short-circuit it like we did with flight. But it's not guaranteed that we're on the right track to finding it either. I would just love to see more research along those more experimental evolutionary lines.