4 ms·

Well, that's the neat thing: we can give them "all" of the senses, eh? I suspect we're about to discover some very interesting things, like which kind of ghost

Well, that's the neat thing: we can give them "all" of the senses, eh? I suspect we're about to discover some very interesting things, like which kind of ghosts are real...

analog31 4y ago
We had all the senses, yet we didn't come up with even the motivation to do empirical science until the 17th century. And even today, a general model of human thought would not necessarily contain a clear recipe for doing science.
- carapace 4y ago
  > We had all the senses We have (I think the current recognized number is about) twenty-seven senses. > we didn't come up with even the motivation to do empirical science until the 17th century That's historically inaccurate, to put it mildly. (E.g. "Science Education in the Early Roman Empire", Richard Carrier) > a general model of human thought would not necessarily contain a clear recipe for doing science. Every human child is a scientist? Anyway, don't overthink it. Once these systems have sensors and can integrate the effects of their behavior on external systems, they'll have empirical data and Bayesian reasoning, they will develop reliable models of the world, they will be able to check their "hallucinations" against real world conditions and adapt. In other words, science is adaptive in the evolutionary sense. These devices are not talking apes, they don't have the "baggage" of glands and DNA and history.
  - analog31 4y ago
    Yes, that's a great point. I was assuming, without really thinking about it, that the AI's still carry our historical baggage. We feed a large portion of that baggage to them as their training data, to see if they can impress us with human-like behaviors. Under those conditions, the AI's stand roughly the same chance as a human child of learning to think scientifically. But that's not a hard requirement. I work for a company that makes sensors. Some of our lunchtime conversations have revolved around the idea of a colossal computer being given a plethora of sensors. In a science-fiction sense, in which we don't worry too much about the cost or practicality of doing so.
    - carapace 4y ago
      > We feed a large portion of that baggage to them as their training data, to see if they can impress us with human-like behaviors. But we don't feed them only the baggage, eh? We also [can] give them all the writings and teachings of all the great thinkers and humanitarians, all the saints and sages, and then ask them to impersonate e.g. Jesus or Buddha... Whoever it is that "floats your boat", anyone from Papa Smurf or Santa Claus to Gandhi or George Washington... > Under those conditions, the AI's stand roughly the same chance as a human child of learning to think scientifically. It's our choice, eh? If we value scientifically-grounded outputs the networks will change their weights (etc.) and that's what we'll get. > I work for a company that makes sensors. Ah! I envy you. :) > Some of our lunchtime conversations have revolved around the idea of a colossal computer being given a plethora of sensors. In a science-fiction sense, in which we don't worry too much about the cost or practicality of doing so. Hmm, isn't that the Internet? :) Well met!

Well, that's the neat thing: we can give them "all" of the senses, eh? I suspect we're about to discover some very interesting things, like which kind of ghosts are real...

analog31 4y ago

We had all the senses, yet we didn't come up with even the motivation to do empirical science until the 17th century. And even today, a general model of human thought would not necessarily contain a clear recipe for doing science.

carapace 4y ago
> We had all the senses We have (I think the current recognized number is about) twenty-seven senses. > we didn't come up with even the motivation to do empirical science until the 17th century That's historically inaccurate, to put it mildly. (E.g. "Science Education in the Early Roman Empire", Richard Carrier) > a general model of human thought would not necessarily contain a clear recipe for doing science. Every human child is a scientist? Anyway, don't overthink it. Once these systems have sensors and can integrate the effects of their behavior on external systems, they'll have empirical data and Bayesian reasoning, they will develop reliable models of the world, they will be able to check their "hallucinations" against real world conditions and adapt. In other words, science is adaptive in the evolutionary sense. These devices are not talking apes, they don't have the "baggage" of glands and DNA and history.
- analog31 4y ago
  Yes, that's a great point. I was assuming, without really thinking about it, that the AI's still carry our historical baggage. We feed a large portion of that baggage to them as their training data, to see if they can impress us with human-like behaviors. Under those conditions, the AI's stand roughly the same chance as a human child of learning to think scientifically. But that's not a hard requirement. I work for a company that makes sensors. Some of our lunchtime conversations have revolved around the idea of a colossal computer being given a plethora of sensors. In a science-fiction sense, in which we don't worry too much about the cost or practicality of doing so.
  - carapace 4y ago
    > We feed a large portion of that baggage to them as their training data, to see if they can impress us with human-like behaviors. But we don't feed them only the baggage, eh? We also [can] give them all the writings and teachings of all the great thinkers and humanitarians, all the saints and sages, and then ask them to impersonate e.g. Jesus or Buddha... Whoever it is that "floats your boat", anyone from Papa Smurf or Santa Claus to Gandhi or George Washington... > Under those conditions, the AI's stand roughly the same chance as a human child of learning to think scientifically. It's our choice, eh? If we value scientifically-grounded outputs the networks will change their weights (etc.) and that's what we'll get. > I work for a company that makes sensors. Ah! I envy you. :) > Some of our lunchtime conversations have revolved around the idea of a colossal computer being given a plethora of sensors. In a science-fiction sense, in which we don't worry too much about the cost or practicality of doing so. Hmm, isn't that the Internet? :) Well met!