5 ms·

> they are definitely trying to achieve whole-brain emulation Of course they are trying. They were also trying in 1956: "We think that a significant advance c

by sampo 12y ago

> they are definitely trying to achieve whole-brain emulation Of course they are trying. They were also trying in 1956: "We think that a significant advance can be made in one or more of these problems if a carefully selected group of scientists work on it together for a summer." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dartmouth_Conference http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dartmouth_Conference The history of AI research is full of totally unfounded optimism that has failed every time. (I mean the kind of research that promises significant advances towards human level AI. Of course AI research has produced methods that have useful applications.)

eli_gottlieb 12y ago
I find it strange that you think AI and WBE are the same thing. Putting your claims about machine cognition (which can then be separated into various cognitive faculties) aside, you really think that emulating human cognition on a separate substrate is outright impossible? Then what's the seemingly "magical" property of our meat substrate that forbids outright, or forbids via excessive expense, using any other substrate ever?
- sampo 12y ago
  > you really think that emulating human cognition on a separate substrate is outright impossible? Absolutely not. But I think it's too far in the future, that it is totally pointless for us, in 2014, to worry about it. I view the singularity crowd as a bunch of medieval alchemists, after they have seen gunpowder, worrying about mutually assured destruction of the whole world, after someone scales their firecrackers to a size capable of destroying whole countries. Yes, coming to 1950's we did reach nuclear weapons with end-the-world capability. But it would have been quite pointless for (al)chemist, or philosophers, in the 1400's, or even in the 1700's, to start worrying about this threat.
  - eli_gottlieb 12y ago
    Ah, so you think scientific progress proceeds not merely at a constant rate, but at a constantly slowing rate, thus causing the rate of new discoveries to be roughly constant over the centuries, despite our constantly adding more scientists, and publishing more papers, based on increasingly solid foundations.
    - sampo 12y ago
      > so you think scientific progress proceeds not merely at a constant rate, but at a constantly slowing rate No, I don't think so. I just think the way looks very long, even given our current acceleration rate. Plus, this field has a very strong track record of blatant overestimations.
- sampo 12y ago
  > I find it strange that you think AI and WBE are the same thing. I apologize but being ambiguous. I don't think they are the same. But I see the same totally unfounded optimism in both the people who expect AGI to happen relatively soon, and in the people who expect WBE to happen relatively soon. Like, in the next 50–100 years.
  - davidgerard 12y ago
    And that they are frequently the same people.
MaysonL 12y ago
How long ago would realtime auditory language translation have been considered obviously strong AI?
- eli_gottlieb 12y ago
  That's basically where my theory about all this comes from. We keep finding that more and more tasks that "clearly" require a whole human-level mind... can actually be done quite well with Narrow AI/ML techniques and crap-tons of training data. We consistently overestimate the Kolmogorov complexity of human cognitive tasks in order to flatter ourselves, thinking that surely no computer can do XYZ unless we're within six months of a capital-S Singularity. Gaaah, I'm trying to remember the link to some short story that Someone (we all know who) wrote about a man fretting over his JRPG party members seeming to be conscious. The author's afterword said that he expected seemingly-conscious video game characters to show up "six months before the Singularity". I currently expect seemingly conscious video-game characters - which are actually just very stylish fakes with really good NLP - many decades before anyone manages to produce a self-improving agent.
davidgerard 12y ago
You could say the same thing about "nanotechnology" - which in practice is materials scientists getting money for chemistry when they know damn well that using the term is implicitly promising magical tiny robots to the gullible.

by sampo 12y ago

eli_gottlieb 12y ago

I find it strange that you think AI and WBE are the same thing. Putting your claims about machine cognition (which can then be separated into various cognitive faculties) aside, you really think that emulating human cognition on a separate substrate is outright impossible? Then what's the seemingly "magical" property of our meat substrate that forbids outright, or forbids via excessive expense, using any other substrate ever?

sampo 12y ago
> you really think that emulating human cognition on a separate substrate is outright impossible? Absolutely not. But I think it's too far in the future, that it is totally pointless for us, in 2014, to worry about it. I view the singularity crowd as a bunch of medieval alchemists, after they have seen gunpowder, worrying about mutually assured destruction of the whole world, after someone scales their firecrackers to a size capable of destroying whole countries. Yes, coming to 1950's we did reach nuclear weapons with end-the-world capability. But it would have been quite pointless for (al)chemist, or philosophers, in the 1400's, or even in the 1700's, to start worrying about this threat.
- eli_gottlieb 12y ago
  Ah, so you think scientific progress proceeds not merely at a constant rate, but at a constantly slowing rate, thus causing the rate of new discoveries to be roughly constant over the centuries, despite our constantly adding more scientists, and publishing more papers, based on increasingly solid foundations.
  - sampo 12y ago
    > so you think scientific progress proceeds not merely at a constant rate, but at a constantly slowing rate No, I don't think so. I just think the way looks very long, even given our current acceleration rate. Plus, this field has a very strong track record of blatant overestimations.
sampo 12y ago
> I find it strange that you think AI and WBE are the same thing. I apologize but being ambiguous. I don't think they are the same. But I see the same totally unfounded optimism in both the people who expect AGI to happen relatively soon, and in the people who expect WBE to happen relatively soon. Like, in the next 50–100 years.
- davidgerard 12y ago
  And that they are frequently the same people.

MaysonL 12y ago

How long ago would realtime auditory language translation have been considered obviously strong AI?

eli_gottlieb 12y ago
That's basically where my theory about all this comes from. We keep finding that more and more tasks that "clearly" require a whole human-level mind... can actually be done quite well with Narrow AI/ML techniques and crap-tons of training data. We consistently overestimate the Kolmogorov complexity of human cognitive tasks in order to flatter ourselves, thinking that surely no computer can do XYZ unless we're within six months of a capital-S Singularity. Gaaah, I'm trying to remember the link to some short story that Someone (we all know who) wrote about a man fretting over his JRPG party members seeming to be conscious. The author's afterword said that he expected seemingly-conscious video game characters to show up "six months before the Singularity". I currently expect seemingly conscious video-game characters - which are actually just very stylish fakes with really good NLP - many decades before anyone manages to produce a self-improving agent.

davidgerard 12y ago

You could say the same thing about "nanotechnology" - which in practice is materials scientists getting money for chemistry when they know damn well that using the term is implicitly promising magical tiny robots to the gullible.