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Humans have limited "working memory". We manage to cram more into it via hierarchical decomposition into "chunks", a single concept that is more complex inside.
by hyperthesis 3y ago
Humans have limited "working memory". We manage to cram more into it via hierarchical decomposition into "chunks", a single concept that is more complex inside.
I submit that not everything can be hierarchically decomposed in a way that's useful - i.e. any "abstraction" you try to force on it is more leaky than non-leaky; in that it doesn't simplify its interactions with other chunks. You might say it's the wrong abstraction - but there's no guarantee there is a right abstraction. Some things are just complex.
(This is hypothetical, since I don't think we can conceive of any concepts we can't understand.)
An AI could have an arbitrarily large working memory.
Note: I'm talking about intuitive understanding. We could use it mechanically, just never "get it", cowering before icons, being the one in Searle's Chinese Room https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room
- pbw 3y agoI suspect the limit of what can be expressed in human language and comprehended by the human mind is vast, but yes, not infinite. I think the AIs will absolutely saturate the connection between them and us, with a non-stop torrent of information which will range from useful to civilization-changing. And I think this is all very unlike how we are currently impacting the lives of cockroaches with our insights about, well anything. Thus, it's not a good analogy.