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This seems like arguing with a door. The whole concept of the singularity is absurd. Taking your time to construct arguments of why such absurdity would happen

This seems like arguing with a door. The whole concept of the singularity is absurd. Taking your time to construct arguments of why such absurdity would happen slow instead of fast, if it happened. Is just like trying to come up with scientific explanations why unicorn poop couldn't be technically as magical as rainbows. Reminds me of those nerdy arguments we all had, debating whether superman's clothes would burn upon re-entry on the atmosphere. Fun times, but useless. Proponents of singularity have a broken understanding of "intelligence". We already have computers that perform plenty of intellectual tasks better than humans. Even learning itself, or coding and reprogramming itself. But this is not "intelligent" yet according to them. They'll only be satisfied when "intelligent" means mimicking a human being for no other reason other than mimicking a human being's sake. They don't want an intelligent computer, nor actual practical solutions to real problems. What they really want is a really complex fart app.

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harshreality 14y ago
That is like claiming the universe is more intelligent than we are because we could never hope to calculate one millisecond of what the universe does if we all had IQs of 200 and 15 billion years with pencil and paper. What computers do is not intellectual. Intelligence is probably just a stochastic random process of clawing one's way up a hill, but even with enormous computational power, it took the solar system 4.5 billion years of not-well-directed effort to produce us... (and to produce whatever creature that blotch was on the curiosity camera :). Only once we existed could the universe, through us, produce the works of art, literature, culture, and scientific knowledge that we've accumulated very rapidly.
- vibrunazo 14y ago
  That's obviously subject to whatever your definition of "intelligence" is. The only reason why you can even disagree, is because we don't have an objective definition. So we could argue forever and not get anywhere. But what matters, is that at the end of the day. For almost any practical and objective definition of "human intelligence" that you might write down. I can write a computer program that will follow those specs and execute it better than a human being. Today. Fact is, humans are nothing but machines and our computers are already better than us in most tasks. Talking about the point which "computers overtake human intelligence" is dismissing the hundreds of different sub-fields in AI research which already got way past that point. Not only with better processing (as you imply), but also with better algorithms than us. Or we might stick with our current subjective and useless definitions of the word. And keep dreaming about how would it be when we get to somewhere undefined.
  - zokier 14y ago
    > For almost any practical and objective definition of "human intelligence" that you might write down. I can write a computer program that will follow those specs and execute it better than a human being. Today. If that were true, how come humans are still superior in many (intelligence based) tasks? From games such as Go and Arimaa to more practical tasks such as laying out electronic parts on circuit boards (autorouting). Mix in self-learning and generality, and I doubt that a better computer program could be programmed today.
  - marvin 14y ago
    I don't get your argument at all. As in, I'm not sure what you're trying to argue. If you agree that computers will soon be capable of everything a human brain does, and that the brain is just a machine that could eventually be copied and improved, how could there _not_ be tremendous and unpredictable changes to the world when it happens? If humans create artificial minds that are able to operate on their own, what we decide are the important problems to work on could end up becoming a moot point. You can't really negotiate with someone who's a lot smarter than you (not more than a chimpanzee can negotiate with humans). If you're criticizing philosophers and researchers for "dreaming" about these ideas, you might want to have a look at some of the thoughts around what would happen if we created self-improving, human-level artificial intelligence. The consequences are potentially catastrophic to human existence, and hence justifies some effort even if you think it is completely unlikely. And whether it is unlikely or not is subject to strong debate. Have a look at http://singularity.org/research/ http://singularity.org/research/
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harshreality 14y ago

That is like claiming the universe is more intelligent than we are because we could never hope to calculate one millisecond of what the universe does if we all had IQs of 200 and 15 billion years with pencil and paper. What computers do is not intellectual. Intelligence is probably just a stochastic random process of clawing one's way up a hill, but even with enormous computational power, it took the solar system 4.5 billion years of not-well-directed effort to produce us... (and to produce whatever creature that blotch was on the curiosity camera :). Only once we existed could the universe, through us, produce the works of art, literature, culture, and scientific knowledge that we've accumulated very rapidly.

vibrunazo 14y ago
That's obviously subject to whatever your definition of "intelligence" is. The only reason why you can even disagree, is because we don't have an objective definition. So we could argue forever and not get anywhere. But what matters, is that at the end of the day. For almost any practical and objective definition of "human intelligence" that you might write down. I can write a computer program that will follow those specs and execute it better than a human being. Today. Fact is, humans are nothing but machines and our computers are already better than us in most tasks. Talking about the point which "computers overtake human intelligence" is dismissing the hundreds of different sub-fields in AI research which already got way past that point. Not only with better processing (as you imply), but also with better algorithms than us. Or we might stick with our current subjective and useless definitions of the word. And keep dreaming about how would it be when we get to somewhere undefined.
- zokier 14y ago
  > For almost any practical and objective definition of "human intelligence" that you might write down. I can write a computer program that will follow those specs and execute it better than a human being. Today. If that were true, how come humans are still superior in many (intelligence based) tasks? From games such as Go and Arimaa to more practical tasks such as laying out electronic parts on circuit boards (autorouting). Mix in self-learning and generality, and I doubt that a better computer program could be programmed today.
- marvin 14y ago
  I don't get your argument at all. As in, I'm not sure what you're trying to argue. If you agree that computers will soon be capable of everything a human brain does, and that the brain is just a machine that could eventually be copied and improved, how could there _not_ be tremendous and unpredictable changes to the world when it happens? If humans create artificial minds that are able to operate on their own, what we decide are the important problems to work on could end up becoming a moot point. You can't really negotiate with someone who's a lot smarter than you (not more than a chimpanzee can negotiate with humans). If you're criticizing philosophers and researchers for "dreaming" about these ideas, you might want to have a look at some of the thoughts around what would happen if we created self-improving, human-level artificial intelligence. The consequences are potentially catastrophic to human existence, and hence justifies some effort even if you think it is completely unlikely. And whether it is unlikely or not is subject to strong debate. Have a look at http://singularity.org/research/ http://singularity.org/research/
- deleted 14y ago
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