6 ms·

Transcendent Man Wows At Tribeca Film Festival Premier

28 points by kkleiner 17y ago

TheAmazingIdiot 17y ago
For those who like Kurzweil's ides, might I recommend books written by the author Greg Egan. His books, in particular "Diaspora", discusses the story line of ai-humans that live to invent, create, and discover. Their journey takes them through 10^10 universes just to solve one problem: the destruction of the Earth.
- jokermatt999 17y ago
  Along the same lines, I'd recommend Accelerando by Charles Strauss. (http://www.accelerando.org/ http://www.accelerando.org/) It's another well written piece of post-singularity fiction that's fascinating in the ideas and implications that it presents. Yes, this is the second topic today I've recommended it in. No, I am not a shill, it just came up twice.
Retric 17y ago
The most intresting mistake with the signularity concept is the idea that you can get a liner return on intelegence. While a computer with x processing power might be able to compute 10 moves deep in a game and a system with 10x the power might get there in 1/10th changing the goal to 11 moves might not be reasonable. Another mistake is the assumption that the universe can support "unlimited" intelegence. Their might be a lot of room at the bottom but nothings says computing power can't hit a fundimental limits at some point in the not to distant future. PS: When people assume exponential growth continues indefinatly they tend to ignore the growth limiters that only apply as you increase the scale.
- GHFigs 17y ago
  Who are you quoting? I'm not exceedingly well-versed on the subject, but I've read Kurzweil's books and I don't recall either of those ideas being assumed.
- J_McQuade 17y ago
  "Another mistake is the assumption that the universe can support "unlimited" intelegence." One thinker who seeks to address this point is Frank J. Tipler with his notion of the 'Omega Point' - a theoretical point where-after the contraction of the universe means that the available computational power, while still point-finite, will be increasing faster than the time remaining can decrease. I don't know how much stock I put in the concept, myself, but at least somebody's thinking about it! Read a little up on it - the guy may very well be bonkers, but it's certainly worth a look if you're into mind-bending metaphysics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega_Point_(Tipler) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega_Point_(Tipler)
  - randallsquared 17y ago
    The original hypothesis made specific predictions (regarding the Higgs, if I remember correctly) which have turned out not to be true. Tipler revised accordingly, rather than doing something new, which seems like a bad sign, scientific-method-wise. :)
prospero 17y ago
There was a time when a person could have the entirety of human knowledge on their bookshelf, but then Gutenberg came along and screwed that all up. Since then, even the most ambitious person has had to settle for less than complete knowledge. We rely on experts in their respective fields to make their knowledge palatable and useful for everyone else. Is the singularity the point where this ceases to become possible, or the point where we rely on the expertise of machines? The latter seems possible, at least, but I don't understand how the former is supposed to come about. People place a pretty high value on remaining naive, and there will probably always be a market for that.
- bdr 17y ago
  The Great Library was bigger than a single bookshelf, and pre-Gutenberg.
  - prospero 17y ago
    Fair point. I was referring to the canonical works (i.e. everything by Plato, but not everything about Plato), and was thinking about the period just before Gutenberg. The available body of knowledge was pretty irregular before Gutenberg (the burning of the Great Library, etc.), but monotonically increased afterwards. My question stands, though: haven't we already hit our individual saturation point for knowledge? What is the Singularity, if not that?
    - randallsquared 17y ago
      One answer is that it's when we can increase the saturation point itself. To use your terms.
      - prospero 17y ago
        That seems like an inversion of how I've always seen it described. As far as I understand it, the Singularity is when the rate of advancement outstrips our ability to keep up. If we already can't keep up, but technology fixes that sometime in the future, I don't know if that's the same thing.
andreyf 17y ago
I find the ideas of the Singularity movement greatly lacking in imagination. I think when we discover the true nature of consciousness, life, and evolution (which seem to be related), we'll be in for quite a fundamental philosophical surprise.
- chadmalik 17y ago
  The field of cognitive science (lingistics + philosophy + computer science + neuroscience + biology etc.) has actually discovered the underpinnings more or less. Consciousness is based on our bodily interaction with the world. Thought uses experiential metaphors from basic physical interactions with the world such as light/dark, up/down, etc. Read "Philosophy in the Flesh" by George Lakoff. AI will never come from digital machines.
  - spot 17y ago
    a computer can simulate interaction with world just as well as it can simulate your brain. "actually discovered the underpinnings" is a vast overstatement anyway.
    - chadmalik 17y ago
      Yes but simulating the brain will never be the same as the actual "wetware" in operation. To my understanding, the simplistic reason that hard AI has failed and always will - while it uses digital computation as a platform - is that its a HARDWARE deficiency. I'm generalizing but AI people all seem to be algorithm gurus who feel that the next algorithmic breakthrough will be "the one" to create an AI. I think what they miss is that the physical manifestation of brain and body are in fact required to be conscious. Disembodied consciousness cannot exist since conscious beings (animals) have complex biological systems known as bodies that enable what we view as intelligence. Yes, computers are infinitely better at rule-based computation than animals. No, they cannot pass simple tests of consciousness that a mouse can, and theres really no prospect of it happening because a better algorithm is created; fact is, animals and even insects don't think based on algorithms. Algorithms are models of the real world, not the real thing. Being conscious means using ones eyes/ears/mouth/nose/skin to feel, hear, smell, speak to interact with the world around you. It means having agency and not just checking a set of pre-written rules in order to decide what to do next. Its a biological system that enables that.

28 points by kkleiner 17y ago

For those who like Kurzweil's ides, might I recommend books written by the author Greg Egan. His books, in particular "Diaspora", discusses the story line of ai-humans that live to invent, create, and discover. Their journey takes them through 10^10 universes just to solve one problem: the destruction of the Earth.

jokermatt999 17y ago
Along the same lines, I'd recommend Accelerando by Charles Strauss. (http://www.accelerando.org/ http://www.accelerando.org/) It's another well written piece of post-singularity fiction that's fascinating in the ideas and implications that it presents. Yes, this is the second topic today I've recommended it in. No, I am not a shill, it just came up twice.

Retric 17y ago

The most intresting mistake with the signularity concept is the idea that you can get a liner return on intelegence. While a computer with x processing power might be able to compute 10 moves deep in a game and a system with 10x the power might get there in 1/10th changing the goal to 11 moves might not be reasonable. Another mistake is the assumption that the universe can support "unlimited" intelegence. Their might be a lot of room at the bottom but nothings says computing power can't hit a fundimental limits at some point in the not to distant future. PS: When people assume exponential growth continues indefinatly they tend to ignore the growth limiters that only apply as you increase the scale.

GHFigs 17y ago
Who are you quoting? I'm not exceedingly well-versed on the subject, but I've read Kurzweil's books and I don't recall either of those ideas being assumed.
J_McQuade 17y ago
"Another mistake is the assumption that the universe can support "unlimited" intelegence." One thinker who seeks to address this point is Frank J. Tipler with his notion of the 'Omega Point' - a theoretical point where-after the contraction of the universe means that the available computational power, while still point-finite, will be increasing faster than the time remaining can decrease. I don't know how much stock I put in the concept, myself, but at least somebody's thinking about it! Read a little up on it - the guy may very well be bonkers, but it's certainly worth a look if you're into mind-bending metaphysics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega_Point_(Tipler) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega_Point_(Tipler)
- randallsquared 17y ago
  The original hypothesis made specific predictions (regarding the Higgs, if I remember correctly) which have turned out not to be true. Tipler revised accordingly, rather than doing something new, which seems like a bad sign, scientific-method-wise. :)

prospero 17y ago

There was a time when a person could have the entirety of human knowledge on their bookshelf, but then Gutenberg came along and screwed that all up. Since then, even the most ambitious person has had to settle for less than complete knowledge. We rely on experts in their respective fields to make their knowledge palatable and useful for everyone else. Is the singularity the point where this ceases to become possible, or the point where we rely on the expertise of machines? The latter seems possible, at least, but I don't understand how the former is supposed to come about. People place a pretty high value on remaining naive, and there will probably always be a market for that.

bdr 17y ago
The Great Library was bigger than a single bookshelf, and pre-Gutenberg.
- prospero 17y ago
  Fair point. I was referring to the canonical works (i.e. everything by Plato, but not everything about Plato), and was thinking about the period just before Gutenberg. The available body of knowledge was pretty irregular before Gutenberg (the burning of the Great Library, etc.), but monotonically increased afterwards. My question stands, though: haven't we already hit our individual saturation point for knowledge? What is the Singularity, if not that?
  - randallsquared 17y ago
    One answer is that it's when we can increase the saturation point itself. To use your terms.
    - prospero 17y ago
      That seems like an inversion of how I've always seen it described. As far as I understand it, the Singularity is when the rate of advancement outstrips our ability to keep up. If we already can't keep up, but technology fixes that sometime in the future, I don't know if that's the same thing.

andreyf 17y ago

I find the ideas of the Singularity movement greatly lacking in imagination. I think when we discover the true nature of consciousness, life, and evolution (which seem to be related), we'll be in for quite a fundamental philosophical surprise.

chadmalik 17y ago
The field of cognitive science (lingistics + philosophy + computer science + neuroscience + biology etc.) has actually discovered the underpinnings more or less. Consciousness is based on our bodily interaction with the world. Thought uses experiential metaphors from basic physical interactions with the world such as light/dark, up/down, etc. Read "Philosophy in the Flesh" by George Lakoff. AI will never come from digital machines.
- spot 17y ago
  a computer can simulate interaction with world just as well as it can simulate your brain. "actually discovered the underpinnings" is a vast overstatement anyway.
  - chadmalik 17y ago
    Yes but simulating the brain will never be the same as the actual "wetware" in operation. To my understanding, the simplistic reason that hard AI has failed and always will - while it uses digital computation as a platform - is that its a HARDWARE deficiency. I'm generalizing but AI people all seem to be algorithm gurus who feel that the next algorithmic breakthrough will be "the one" to create an AI. I think what they miss is that the physical manifestation of brain and body are in fact required to be conscious. Disembodied consciousness cannot exist since conscious beings (animals) have complex biological systems known as bodies that enable what we view as intelligence. Yes, computers are infinitely better at rule-based computation than animals. No, they cannot pass simple tests of consciousness that a mouse can, and theres really no prospect of it happening because a better algorithm is created; fact is, animals and even insects don't think based on algorithms. Algorithms are models of the real world, not the real thing. Being conscious means using ones eyes/ears/mouth/nose/skin to feel, hear, smell, speak to interact with the world around you. It means having agency and not just checking a set of pre-written rules in order to decide what to do next. Its a biological system that enables that.