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The Singularity doesn't require computer sentience. Researchers at the Singularity Institute* refer to their goal as a "powerful optimization process."* All t
by khafra 17y ago
The Singularity doesn't require computer sentience. Researchers at the Singularity Institute* refer to their goal as a "powerful optimization process."* All that's required is that it's better at general-purpose goal-seeking than humans; that would logically include the ability to wipe out the human race and tile the solar system with little smiley faces if we set its goal incorrectly.
* http://www.singinst.org/ http://www.singinst.org/
* http://www.sl4.org/archive/0512/13006.html http://www.sl4.org/archive/0512/13006.html
- iron_ball 17y agoAnd that's roughly what I meant by "self-directed." Imagine a concrete goal: efficient fusion power, for instance. It's easy to define, easy to establish success metrics, and it's even easy to propose methods -- but success has eluded us for decades. A mind that could solve a problem like that would have to have intuition, lateral and parallel thinking, and creativity (or their machine equivalents; I'm open to an AI which might think utterly unlike a human). My point is that we don't know where such traits come from in humans, and thus have no idea how to even begin to attempt to replicate them in computers except in the crudest and most rule-based ways. Note: I would dearly like to be proven wrong, I'm just parroting things I've heard.