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Whatever you mean, it took 13 billion years and the whole universe as far as we can tell to create the 20 watt human intelligence brain. And it doesn't take 20

Whatever you mean, it took 13 billion years and the whole universe as far as we can tell to create the 20 watt human intelligence brain. And it doesn't take 20 watt of energy to maintain humans, it takes a whole ecosystem capable of sustaining a human population. And for us to operate at our current level of information processing it takes a whole planetary civilization. So no you haven't proved anything by saying that a human brain consumes only 20 watts of energy. We spread an awful lot of entropy around that has to be kept away from our delicate biological and social systems. You're positing a way to create human intelligence-like in a bottle, that's the same as speculating about the shape of a reality where we have FTL travel or teleportation or whatever else you fancy. If we're talking about what current ML/AI can do, they can extract patterns from training data and than apply those patterns to other inputs. This can give us great automation, but it won't give us anything better than the training data, solve physics, global warming, poverty or give us human intelligence in a chip. Whatever quantity Q of entropy in the training data, the total output will be more Q all accounted for. That's true for humans and machines. No shape of possible AGI will give us any output with less Q than the combination of inputs had. The dream that a machine will solve all problems that humanity can't hinges on negating that, which goes against thermodynamics. As it stands, the planet cannot cope with all the entropy we're spreading around. It will eventually collapse civilization/the ecosystem, whatever buckles first, from the excess entropy. Because global warming, poverty, or ignorance is just entropy. Disorder. Things not being just so as we need them to be.

ben_w 2y ago
> Whatever you mean, it took 13 billion years and the whole universe as far as we can tell to create the 20 watt human intelligence brain. It's grossly unreasonable to include the entire history of the universe given the Earth only formed about 4 billion years ago; and given that evolution wasn't even aiming for intelligence, even starting from our common ancestors being small rodents 65 million years ago is wildly overstating the effort required — even the evolution of primates is too far back without intentional selective breeding. > You're positing a way to create human intelligence-like in a bottle, that's the same as speculating about the shape of a reality where we have FTL travel or teleportation or whatever else you fancy. FTL may well well be impossible. If you seriously think human intelligence is impossible, then you also think you don't exist: You, yourself, are a human like intelligence in a bottle. The bottle being your skull. > This can give us great automation, but it won't solve physics, global warming, poverty or give us human intelligence in a chip. AI has already been in widesprad use in physics for a while now, well before the current zeitgeist of LLMs. There's a Y Combinator startup: "Charge Robotics is building robots that automate the most labor-intensive parts of solar construction". Poverty has many causes, some of which are already being reduced or resolved by existing systems — and that's been the case since one of the ancestor companies of IBM, Tabulating Machine Company, was doing punched cards for the US census. As for human intelligence on a chip? Well, (1) it's been quite a long time since humans were capable of designing the circuits manually, given the feature size is now at the level where quantum mechanics must be accounted for or you get surprise tunnelling between gates; and (2) one of the things being automated is feature segmentation and labelling of neural micrographs, i.e. literally brain scanning: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32619485/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32619485/
- namaria 2y ago
  I never said human intelligence is impossible. All I am saying is that Sam Altman's promises (remember the original topic) hinge on breaking thermodynamics. Humans evolved on a planet that was just so. The elements on Earth that make life possible couldn't have been created in a younger universe. So it take the full history of the universe to produce human intelligence. It also doesn't exist in a vacuum. Current human civilization is not a collection of 8 billion 20 watt boxes. > As for human intelligence on a chip? Well, (1) it's been quite a long time since humans were capable of designing the circuits manually, given the feature size is now at the level where quantum mechanics must be accounted for or you get surprise tunnelling between gates; and (2) one of the things being automated is feature segmentation and labelling of neural micrographs, i.e. literally brain scanning: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32619485/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32619485/ I don't understand any of this so I won't comment.
  - ben_w 2y ago
    > All I am saying is that Sam Altman's promises (remember the original topic) hinge on breaking thermodynamics If it hinged on that, then you would actually be saying it's impossible. > The elements on Earth that make life possible couldn't have been created in a younger universe Those statements also apply to the silicon and doping agents used in chip manufacture. They tell you nothing of relevance, we're not doing Carl Sagan's Apple Pie from scratch with AI, we're trying to get a thing like us.
    - swiftcoder 2y ago
      > If it hinged on that, then you would actually be saying it's impossible "impossible with the approach OpenAI is using" != "impossible"
      - namaria 2y ago
        Look, any sufficiently complex autonomous system necessitates a bigger, more complex one to maintain it's functionality. The more complex, the harder it is to deal with the entropy that this system is removing form it's target action area. Eventually you need a whole universe capable of sustaining self reproducing intelligent systems. The way to get intelligent autonomous and sufficiently complex systems to do anything non trivial is life. Anyone trying to sell you a box they say is capable of non trivial, adaptive, complex behavior autonomously is selling you a perpetual motion machine: a pretense that thermodynamics can be suspended at will.
ben_w 2y ago
Unless I'm mistaken, you've added these two paragraphs since my last comment: > Whatever quantity Q of entropy in the training data, the total output will be more Q all accounted for. That's true for humans and machines. No shape of possible AGI will give us any output with less Q than the combination of inputs had. The dream that a machine will solve all problems that humanity can't hinges on negating that, which goes against thermodynamics. Thermodynamics applies to closed systems, which the earth in isolation isn't. This is why the source material for Shakespeare didn't already exist on Earth in the Cretaceous. It's also why we've solved loads of problems we used to have, like bubonic plague and long distance communication. > As it stands, the planet cannot cope with all the entropy we're spreading around. We're many orders of magnitude away from entropic limits. Global warming is due to the impact on how much more sunlight keeps bouncing around inside the atmosphere, not the direct thermal effect of our power plants. > It will eventually collapse civilization/the ecosystem, whatever buckles first, from the excess entropy. Because global warming, poverty, or ignorance is just entropy. Disorder. Things not being just so as we need them to be. Entropy isn't everyday disorder, it's a specific relationship of microstates and macrostates, and you can't usefully infer things when you switch uses. Poverty is much reduced compared to the historical condition. So is ignorance: we have to specialise these days because there's too much knowledge for any one human to learn. Entropic collapse is indeed inevitable, but that inevitably is on the scale of 10^18 years or more with only engineering challenges rather than novel scientific breakthroughs (the latter would plausibly increase that to 10^106 if someone can figure out how to use Hawking radiation, but I don't want to divert into why I think that's more than merely an engineering challenge).
- namaria 2y ago
  > Thermodynamics applies to closed systems, which the earth in isolation isn't. Wrong. You're probably conflating the second law of thermodynamics with the whole thing. Obviously, thermodynamics applies to Earth, it was invented here. > Entropy isn't everyday disorder, it's a specific relationship of microstates and macrostates, and you can't usefully infer things when you switch uses. No, this is Bolzmann entropy. Entropy is absolutely a measure of disorder, and the fact that you cannot measure a specific value for large complex systems because the calculating framework is too simplistic and only applies to very well defined and artificial assemblies of quantities it does not mean that the concept and intuition do not apply. Entropy is a measure of disorder or uncertainty. Maybe you disagree with my intuition about it. But I'm not the only one: - Shannon Entropy Fits Well Social Risk: Unemployment and Poverty in Large Cities https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8905455 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8905455 - The Interrelation Poverty-Unemployment from the Theory of Entropy in Modern Societies https://alicia.concytec.gob.pe/vufind/Record/AUTO_bbe82cfd37f4f742190fbf070abf16a1/Details https://alicia.concytec.gob.pe/vufind/Record/AUTO_bbe82cfd37...

ben_w 2y ago

> Whatever you mean, it took 13 billion years and the whole universe as far as we can tell to create the 20 watt human intelligence brain. It's grossly unreasonable to include the entire history of the universe given the Earth only formed about 4 billion years ago; and given that evolution wasn't even aiming for intelligence, even starting from our common ancestors being small rodents 65 million years ago is wildly overstating the effort required — even the evolution of primates is too far back without intentional selective breeding. > You're positing a way to create human intelligence-like in a bottle, that's the same as speculating about the shape of a reality where we have FTL travel or teleportation or whatever else you fancy. FTL may well well be impossible. If you seriously think human intelligence is impossible, then you also think you don't exist: You, yourself, are a human like intelligence in a bottle. The bottle being your skull. > This can give us great automation, but it won't solve physics, global warming, poverty or give us human intelligence in a chip. AI has already been in widesprad use in physics for a while now, well before the current zeitgeist of LLMs. There's a Y Combinator startup: "Charge Robotics is building robots that automate the most labor-intensive parts of solar construction". Poverty has many causes, some of which are already being reduced or resolved by existing systems — and that's been the case since one of the ancestor companies of IBM, Tabulating Machine Company, was doing punched cards for the US census. As for human intelligence on a chip? Well, (1) it's been quite a long time since humans were capable of designing the circuits manually, given the feature size is now at the level where quantum mechanics must be accounted for or you get surprise tunnelling between gates; and (2) one of the things being automated is feature segmentation and labelling of neural micrographs, i.e. literally brain scanning: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32619485/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32619485/

namaria 2y ago
I never said human intelligence is impossible. All I am saying is that Sam Altman's promises (remember the original topic) hinge on breaking thermodynamics. Humans evolved on a planet that was just so. The elements on Earth that make life possible couldn't have been created in a younger universe. So it take the full history of the universe to produce human intelligence. It also doesn't exist in a vacuum. Current human civilization is not a collection of 8 billion 20 watt boxes. > As for human intelligence on a chip? Well, (1) it's been quite a long time since humans were capable of designing the circuits manually, given the feature size is now at the level where quantum mechanics must be accounted for or you get surprise tunnelling between gates; and (2) one of the things being automated is feature segmentation and labelling of neural micrographs, i.e. literally brain scanning: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32619485/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32619485/ I don't understand any of this so I won't comment.
- ben_w 2y ago
  > All I am saying is that Sam Altman's promises (remember the original topic) hinge on breaking thermodynamics If it hinged on that, then you would actually be saying it's impossible. > The elements on Earth that make life possible couldn't have been created in a younger universe Those statements also apply to the silicon and doping agents used in chip manufacture. They tell you nothing of relevance, we're not doing Carl Sagan's Apple Pie from scratch with AI, we're trying to get a thing like us.
  - swiftcoder 2y ago
    > If it hinged on that, then you would actually be saying it's impossible "impossible with the approach OpenAI is using" != "impossible"
    - namaria 2y ago
      Look, any sufficiently complex autonomous system necessitates a bigger, more complex one to maintain it's functionality. The more complex, the harder it is to deal with the entropy that this system is removing form it's target action area. Eventually you need a whole universe capable of sustaining self reproducing intelligent systems. The way to get intelligent autonomous and sufficiently complex systems to do anything non trivial is life. Anyone trying to sell you a box they say is capable of non trivial, adaptive, complex behavior autonomously is selling you a perpetual motion machine: a pretense that thermodynamics can be suspended at will.

ben_w 2y ago

Unless I'm mistaken, you've added these two paragraphs since my last comment: > Whatever quantity Q of entropy in the training data, the total output will be more Q all accounted for. That's true for humans and machines. No shape of possible AGI will give us any output with less Q than the combination of inputs had. The dream that a machine will solve all problems that humanity can't hinges on negating that, which goes against thermodynamics. Thermodynamics applies to closed systems, which the earth in isolation isn't. This is why the source material for Shakespeare didn't already exist on Earth in the Cretaceous. It's also why we've solved loads of problems we used to have, like bubonic plague and long distance communication. > As it stands, the planet cannot cope with all the entropy we're spreading around. We're many orders of magnitude away from entropic limits. Global warming is due to the impact on how much more sunlight keeps bouncing around inside the atmosphere, not the direct thermal effect of our power plants. > It will eventually collapse civilization/the ecosystem, whatever buckles first, from the excess entropy. Because global warming, poverty, or ignorance is just entropy. Disorder. Things not being just so as we need them to be. Entropy isn't everyday disorder, it's a specific relationship of microstates and macrostates, and you can't usefully infer things when you switch uses. Poverty is much reduced compared to the historical condition. So is ignorance: we have to specialise these days because there's too much knowledge for any one human to learn. Entropic collapse is indeed inevitable, but that inevitably is on the scale of 10^18 years or more with only engineering challenges rather than novel scientific breakthroughs (the latter would plausibly increase that to 10^106 if someone can figure out how to use Hawking radiation, but I don't want to divert into why I think that's more than merely an engineering challenge).

namaria 2y ago
> Thermodynamics applies to closed systems, which the earth in isolation isn't. Wrong. You're probably conflating the second law of thermodynamics with the whole thing. Obviously, thermodynamics applies to Earth, it was invented here. > Entropy isn't everyday disorder, it's a specific relationship of microstates and macrostates, and you can't usefully infer things when you switch uses. No, this is Bolzmann entropy. Entropy is absolutely a measure of disorder, and the fact that you cannot measure a specific value for large complex systems because the calculating framework is too simplistic and only applies to very well defined and artificial assemblies of quantities it does not mean that the concept and intuition do not apply. Entropy is a measure of disorder or uncertainty. Maybe you disagree with my intuition about it. But I'm not the only one: - Shannon Entropy Fits Well Social Risk: Unemployment and Poverty in Large Cities https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8905455 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8905455 - The Interrelation Poverty-Unemployment from the Theory of Entropy in Modern Societies https://alicia.concytec.gob.pe/vufind/Record/AUTO_bbe82cfd37f4f742190fbf070abf16a1/Details https://alicia.concytec.gob.pe/vufind/Record/AUTO_bbe82cfd37...