3 ms·

>The only way it’s impossible in principle is if human intelligence (and a lot of non human animal intelligence) is due to some potent non-physical substance of

>The only way it’s impossible in principle is if human intelligence (and a lot of non human animal intelligence) is due to some potent non-physical substance of thought which can never be made by any work of artifice on the physical plane, AKA a soul. So I was thinking "eventually" as somewhat in next 100 years, otherwise even if you need a soul you could say shit like "eventually we will evolve to the next plane and become gods and we could create brains". Could it be impossible that we hit a tech limit for AI? I mean there is no sure what that we will invent something better then digital, silicon based computers. I am not that pessimist though, but is possible we get smart and realize that we could just put tracks and have self driving little trains on them to travel around: 100% safe (we could have actual scientist/engineers code the software for them) and much more green.

ben_w 5y ago
I think you may be underestimating the rate of progress — 100 years ago, transistors were hypothetical, now we have made more of them than there are stars in our past light cone, and they are smaller and faster than synapses to the degree to which wolves are smaller than hills and move further per day than continental drift. IMO we will probably hit the single-atom limit in consumer devices this decade, though researchers are already suggesting multiple q-bits in a single atom so perhaps we won’t even stop when we get 1Å process chips. The main limiting factor right now is that we don’t really understand the structure of our intelligence. If you will permit an analogy: perceptrons and convolution kernels are like bricks, while current brain scans (MRI, EEG, etc.) are like nighttime satellite photos of city lights — we’ve got a gap in the middle that would tell us we need steel reinforced concrete to make skyscrapers and why want to build them in the first place.

ben_w 5y ago

I think you may be underestimating the rate of progress — 100 years ago, transistors were hypothetical, now we have made more of them than there are stars in our past light cone, and they are smaller and faster than synapses to the degree to which wolves are smaller than hills and move further per day than continental drift. IMO we will probably hit the single-atom limit in consumer devices this decade, though researchers are already suggesting multiple q-bits in a single atom so perhaps we won’t even stop when we get 1Å process chips. The main limiting factor right now is that we don’t really understand the structure of our intelligence. If you will permit an analogy: perceptrons and convolution kernels are like bricks, while current brain scans (MRI, EEG, etc.) are like nighttime satellite photos of city lights — we’ve got a gap in the middle that would tell us we need steel reinforced concrete to make skyscrapers and why want to build them in the first place.