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I think we are vastly underestimating how optimised life on Earth is on the axes of energy efficiency vs computational capacity. Current state of robotics and A

I think we are vastly underestimating how optimised life on Earth is on the axes of energy efficiency vs computational capacity. Current state of robotics and AI together is showing us that life and biological neural networks are capable of doing things we still cannot fully replicate, all the while using orders of magnitude less energy. A honey bee or an ant still remains incomprehensible, and the most basic worm insimulable. I posit an extrapolation that once we figure out how life has managed to come up with its incredible computational capabilities, our silicon AI is going to become not only a lot smarter, but also a lot cheaper too.

bluefirebrand 1y ago
> our silicon AI is going to become not only a lot smarter, but also a lot cheaper too. It is entirely possible that silicon is just strictly not capable of reaching the computational capacity of meat It is almost certain that silicon cannot reach the complexity of a human brain in the same "fits inside a human skull" footprint that brains have to adhere to
- matthewdgreen 1y ago
  On the other hand, mechanical devices are massively stronger than the strongest living animal. Metal and composite materials are wildly stronger than bone. Wheeled vehicles and planes move faster than the fastest cheetah or falcon. There are a small number of exceptions where biology-derived materials strictly outperform our best synthetic alternatives, but generally speaking we’ve outperformed in every other area. It wouldn’t surprise me if non-biological materials ultimately beat out biological neurons.
  - bluefirebrand 1y ago
    This seems trivially obvious and also "so what?". Of course non-biological materials beat out biological ones in a lot of ways. They don't get tired, they are impossibly strong, whatever else. We already have machines that do the jobs of many people, with only a single human operator. Think of a simple excavator. Using it, a single human can move more dirt per hour than dozens of people with shovels possibly could. Arguably the human pilot is operating as a stand-in for the machines "brain"
    - matthewdgreen 1y ago
      The "so what" is that we already have hundreds of examples of places where biological materials find an amazing balance within whatever energy/cost/resource-availability envelope they were evolved in -- but where artificial materials (perhaps outside that energy/resource envelope) have proven to be hugely superior. I'm just hypothesizing that there's no reason to believe that biological computation will prove to be the exception.
- AndrewKemendo 1y ago
  In fact, only two elements - carbon and silicon - can form stable, tetrahedrally bonded 3D networks of sufficient complexity and flexibility to support recursive molecular systems at planetary temperatures So if there’s going to be another system with equivalent complexity it’s going to either be another carbon based thing or a silicon based thing
  - IAmBroom 1y ago
    THIS is it. People are positing silly extrapolations ("We can make steel stronger than bones, so we can make silicon computers smarter/volume than organic ones"). It eventually comes down to organic chemistry versus non-organic chemistry. Organic chemistry has far greater dimensions of freedom (ways to combine/exchange energy) to exploit unique nonbinary computational systems. For a macro instance, eyes process "lines" and "spots" by combining neural patterns before the signals even reach the brain, and from this can identify vertical obstacles (like trees in a forest) and threats (like pairs of predator eyes) more quickly at lower energy. But likewise, neurons are not limited to exchanging electrons via a single modality (voltage exceeding threshold). Neurotransmitter chemicals can alter local or systemwide thresholds for certain cells; this amounts to massive preprocessing that silicon can only roughly imitate with massive design efforts (which were effectively done by evolution in the organisms).

bluefirebrand 1y ago

> our silicon AI is going to become not only a lot smarter, but also a lot cheaper too. It is entirely possible that silicon is just strictly not capable of reaching the computational capacity of meat It is almost certain that silicon cannot reach the complexity of a human brain in the same "fits inside a human skull" footprint that brains have to adhere to

matthewdgreen 1y ago
On the other hand, mechanical devices are massively stronger than the strongest living animal. Metal and composite materials are wildly stronger than bone. Wheeled vehicles and planes move faster than the fastest cheetah or falcon. There are a small number of exceptions where biology-derived materials strictly outperform our best synthetic alternatives, but generally speaking we’ve outperformed in every other area. It wouldn’t surprise me if non-biological materials ultimately beat out biological neurons.
- bluefirebrand 1y ago
  This seems trivially obvious and also "so what?". Of course non-biological materials beat out biological ones in a lot of ways. They don't get tired, they are impossibly strong, whatever else. We already have machines that do the jobs of many people, with only a single human operator. Think of a simple excavator. Using it, a single human can move more dirt per hour than dozens of people with shovels possibly could. Arguably the human pilot is operating as a stand-in for the machines "brain"
  - matthewdgreen 1y ago
    The "so what" is that we already have hundreds of examples of places where biological materials find an amazing balance within whatever energy/cost/resource-availability envelope they were evolved in -- but where artificial materials (perhaps outside that energy/resource envelope) have proven to be hugely superior. I'm just hypothesizing that there's no reason to believe that biological computation will prove to be the exception.
AndrewKemendo 1y ago
In fact, only two elements - carbon and silicon - can form stable, tetrahedrally bonded 3D networks of sufficient complexity and flexibility to support recursive molecular systems at planetary temperatures So if there’s going to be another system with equivalent complexity it’s going to either be another carbon based thing or a silicon based thing
- IAmBroom 1y ago
  THIS is it. People are positing silly extrapolations ("We can make steel stronger than bones, so we can make silicon computers smarter/volume than organic ones"). It eventually comes down to organic chemistry versus non-organic chemistry. Organic chemistry has far greater dimensions of freedom (ways to combine/exchange energy) to exploit unique nonbinary computational systems. For a macro instance, eyes process "lines" and "spots" by combining neural patterns before the signals even reach the brain, and from this can identify vertical obstacles (like trees in a forest) and threats (like pairs of predator eyes) more quickly at lower energy. But likewise, neurons are not limited to exchanging electrons via a single modality (voltage exceeding threshold). Neurotransmitter chemicals can alter local or systemwide thresholds for certain cells; this amounts to massive preprocessing that silicon can only roughly imitate with massive design efforts (which were effectively done by evolution in the organisms).