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While we can make such a quality distinction between human and artifical generation at the moment, it seems plausible that there's a future where such a distinc

While we can make such a quality distinction between human and artifical generation at the moment, it seems plausible that there's a future where such a distinction is either not meaningful, or perhaps even skewed against humanity. The human brain is, after all, a computer operating on input in the form of experience and biology.

college_physics 4y ago
> The human brain is, after all, a computer operating on input in the form of experience and biology. That is just a widespread analogy we use. The human brain is not a computer, although obviously some aspects of its function resemble the logical / mathematical model of a computer, which (I gently remind you) is a construction of the brain itself. > it seems plausible that there's a future where such a distinction is either not meaningful, or perhaps even skewed against humanity. I would not dispute that at all. The future of humanity is hopefully long and full of wondrous discoveries but arguing that we are "close" to "real AI" flies in the face of what is actually achieved on the ground with current approaches: clever utilization (where the one who is clever is the human) of rather limited algorithms to re-use productively the vast body of human generated information corpus. Not a useless exercise by any measure, but the mantle under which it is sold does not augur well for the sustainability of those efforts.
- mgaunard 4y ago
  It is presomptuous to think the brain is anything more than a computer. The algorithm is doing pretty much the same thing that a brain is doing, except it's a smaller and slower brain, so it's not that smart, and we hardwired some parts to fill the gaps.
  - esailija 4y ago
    The brain is nothing like a computer, for the brain doing things that computers do easily are even in the most trivial cases very hard and otherwise impossible. And vice versa. Yet these things that have effectively zero overlap in capability are the same?
    - ihatepython 4y ago
      Perhaps in your case, you are correct, the brain is not a computer, but in the general case, the brain is probably a computer, and in some cases, it's a super-computer.
    - danenania 4y ago
      The same could be said in comparing quantum computers to classical computers. It’s clear that computation is one of the brain’s primary functions. Does that make it a computer (albeit one that works very differently from a macbook)? I’d say yes, but it’s essentially a question of semantics.
  - college_physics 4y ago
    > The algorithm is doing pretty much the same thing that a brain is doing, this is just an idle extrapolation that is not based on any fact. if the brain was a computer in your sense of the word it would have been decoded by now. we don't need to get metaphysical (if that is your worry) to accept that we don't know yet exactly what is going on in the brain.
    - red75prime 4y ago
      > if the brain was a computer in your sense of the word it would have been decoded by now. Of course not. Existence of an equivalent computer program doesn't imply that it's easy to infer it. > we don't know yet exactly what is going on in the brain That's why it's an unreliable way to judge the distance to human level intelligence.
coldtea 4y ago
>The human brain is, after all, a computer operating on input in the form of experience and biology "In his book In Our Own Image (2015), the artificial intelligence expert George Zarkadakis describes six different metaphors people have employed over the past 2,000 years to try to explain human intelligence. In the earliest one, eventually preserved in the Bible, humans were formed from clay or dirt, which an intelligent god then infused with its spirit. That spirit ‘explained’ our intelligence – grammatically, at least. The invention of hydraulic engineering in the 3rd century BCE led to the popularity of a hydraulic model of human intelligence, the idea that the flow of different fluids in the body – the ‘humours’ – accounted for both our physical and mental functioning. The hydraulic metaphor persisted for more than 1,600 years, handicapping medical practice all the while. By the 1500s, automata powered by springs and gears had been devised, eventually inspiring leading thinkers such as René Descartes to assert that humans are complex machines. In the 1600s, the British philosopher Thomas Hobbes suggested that thinking arose from small mechanical motions in the brain. By the 1700s, discoveries about electricity and chemistry led to new theories of human intelligence – again, largely metaphorical in nature. In the mid-1800s, inspired by recent advances in communications, the German physicist Hermann von Helmholtz compared the brain to a telegraph."
- macguillicuddy 4y ago
  I don't mean that the brain is materially a computer in the sense we're used to computers in our day-to-day. That would be demonstrably false. Just as we can show humans are not formed from clay we can show humans are not formed of transistors. Instead I mean that humans are logically computers. Physical entities operating on inputs and producing outputs. They share this property with any other physical system. Now there may be some supernatural layer that exists beyond the physics and chemistry operating within the skull that would lead to that position being undermined, but in the absense of that my point is purely that the human brain is just computer in the sense that it's a physcical system producing output.
  - coldtea 4y ago
    >I don't mean that the brain is materially a computer in the sense we're used to computers in our day-to-day. That would be demonstrably false. Just as we can show humans are not formed from clay we can show humans are not formed of transistors. I don't think those using the gear metaphor, or the telegraph metaphor, and so on, believed the brain actually contains gears or has a real telegraph in the day to day sense either. The problem was the metaphor, not that they took it literaly.

college_physics 4y ago

> The human brain is, after all, a computer operating on input in the form of experience and biology. That is just a widespread analogy we use. The human brain is not a computer, although obviously some aspects of its function resemble the logical / mathematical model of a computer, which (I gently remind you) is a construction of the brain itself. > it seems plausible that there's a future where such a distinction is either not meaningful, or perhaps even skewed against humanity. I would not dispute that at all. The future of humanity is hopefully long and full of wondrous discoveries but arguing that we are "close" to "real AI" flies in the face of what is actually achieved on the ground with current approaches: clever utilization (where the one who is clever is the human) of rather limited algorithms to re-use productively the vast body of human generated information corpus. Not a useless exercise by any measure, but the mantle under which it is sold does not augur well for the sustainability of those efforts.

mgaunard 4y ago
It is presomptuous to think the brain is anything more than a computer. The algorithm is doing pretty much the same thing that a brain is doing, except it's a smaller and slower brain, so it's not that smart, and we hardwired some parts to fill the gaps.
- esailija 4y ago
  The brain is nothing like a computer, for the brain doing things that computers do easily are even in the most trivial cases very hard and otherwise impossible. And vice versa. Yet these things that have effectively zero overlap in capability are the same?
  - ihatepython 4y ago
    Perhaps in your case, you are correct, the brain is not a computer, but in the general case, the brain is probably a computer, and in some cases, it's a super-computer.
  - danenania 4y ago
    The same could be said in comparing quantum computers to classical computers. It’s clear that computation is one of the brain’s primary functions. Does that make it a computer (albeit one that works very differently from a macbook)? I’d say yes, but it’s essentially a question of semantics.
- college_physics 4y ago
  > The algorithm is doing pretty much the same thing that a brain is doing, this is just an idle extrapolation that is not based on any fact. if the brain was a computer in your sense of the word it would have been decoded by now. we don't need to get metaphysical (if that is your worry) to accept that we don't know yet exactly what is going on in the brain.
  - red75prime 4y ago
    > if the brain was a computer in your sense of the word it would have been decoded by now. Of course not. Existence of an equivalent computer program doesn't imply that it's easy to infer it. > we don't know yet exactly what is going on in the brain That's why it's an unreliable way to judge the distance to human level intelligence.

coldtea 4y ago

>The human brain is, after all, a computer operating on input in the form of experience and biology "In his book In Our Own Image (2015), the artificial intelligence expert George Zarkadakis describes six different metaphors people have employed over the past 2,000 years to try to explain human intelligence. In the earliest one, eventually preserved in the Bible, humans were formed from clay or dirt, which an intelligent god then infused with its spirit. That spirit ‘explained’ our intelligence – grammatically, at least. The invention of hydraulic engineering in the 3rd century BCE led to the popularity of a hydraulic model of human intelligence, the idea that the flow of different fluids in the body – the ‘humours’ – accounted for both our physical and mental functioning. The hydraulic metaphor persisted for more than 1,600 years, handicapping medical practice all the while. By the 1500s, automata powered by springs and gears had been devised, eventually inspiring leading thinkers such as René Descartes to assert that humans are complex machines. In the 1600s, the British philosopher Thomas Hobbes suggested that thinking arose from small mechanical motions in the brain. By the 1700s, discoveries about electricity and chemistry led to new theories of human intelligence – again, largely metaphorical in nature. In the mid-1800s, inspired by recent advances in communications, the German physicist Hermann von Helmholtz compared the brain to a telegraph."

macguillicuddy 4y ago
I don't mean that the brain is materially a computer in the sense we're used to computers in our day-to-day. That would be demonstrably false. Just as we can show humans are not formed from clay we can show humans are not formed of transistors. Instead I mean that humans are logically computers. Physical entities operating on inputs and producing outputs. They share this property with any other physical system. Now there may be some supernatural layer that exists beyond the physics and chemistry operating within the skull that would lead to that position being undermined, but in the absense of that my point is purely that the human brain is just computer in the sense that it's a physcical system producing output.
- coldtea 4y ago
  >I don't mean that the brain is materially a computer in the sense we're used to computers in our day-to-day. That would be demonstrably false. Just as we can show humans are not formed from clay we can show humans are not formed of transistors. I don't think those using the gear metaphor, or the telegraph metaphor, and so on, believed the brain actually contains gears or has a real telegraph in the day to day sense either. The problem was the metaphor, not that they took it literaly.