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> 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 re

> 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 2y 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 2y 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 2y 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 2y 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 2y 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).

matthewdgreen 2y 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 2y 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 2y 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 2y 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 2y 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).