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Second comment, sorry: the whole idea of Artificial General Intelligence is ridiculous. The core argument is that processing power is getting so fast that it ma

Second comment, sorry: the whole idea of Artificial General Intelligence is ridiculous. The core argument is that processing power is getting so fast that it makes AGI inevitable. Never mind that we've literally had exponential increases in processing power for more than fifty years running, and we've not moved one inch closer to AGI than we were when we got started. Artificial intelligence is much more artificial than intelligent, and is likely to remain so for a very, very long time.

michaelmcmillan 12y ago
I find this debate very interesting, but I have little insight in the arguments for and against. You argue there is little correlation (if any) between AGI and processing power, but you end your comment by saying that it "[...] likely to remain so for a very, very long time". What is keeping us from advancing?
- tessierashpool 12y ago
  making Artificial Narrow Intelligence is easy. it's not really very different from writing any other type of software. you define a way to solve a problem, you add in the slightly unusual factor of acquiring information or comparing possibilities, and you're good to go. making Artificial General Intelligence would require us (or some machine) to clearly understand what intelligence actually is. the correlation with processing power is I think mostly evangelized by Kurtzweil, who likes to point out that we can soon have a number of nodes in a neural network equivalent to the number of neurons in the human brain, or something along those lines. but biologists have found secondary information encoding and replication systems which exist on top of DNA (sorry, it might take me hours to find this again, I should have bookmarked it). the minute we build a network which emulates a brain's network of neurons, we're probably just going to find a secondary layer within the neuron. assume for the sake of argument that we eventually get through every layer of information process and can build brains in software, irrespective of whether it takes five years or five hundred years to get there. there next needs to be a motivation for AGI to exist. general intelligence in human beings enables all conscious thought relevant to the existence of that human being. but all conscious thought relevant to the existence of a human being is an inherently different category of conscious thought than all conscious thought relevant to the existence of a machine or a piece of software, and to make any even remotely realistic guess about what that type of thought might be, you have to ask: what would be the meta-biological imperatives driving such a creature? that question is very, very hand-wavy, so our answer would have to be very general, and my preference is also that an answer to such a hand-wavy question also be very cautious and diligent. the one thing all machines have in common is that some living thing created them to serve its own purposes. it's reasonable to assume that any future machine we create will also be created for some purpose, and that any intelligence we imbue it with will exist to serve that purpose. it's absurd to assume that future technologies won't have unintended consequences, but it's also quite ridiculous to assume that some technology's unintended consequence will be a carbon copy of human consciousness. the really irritating thing, also, is that corporations already exist, already have biological imperatives, already kill human beings, and already co-exist with human beings in a mostly peaceful manner, and already make it possible for our species to exist in much greater numbers, despite the fact that corporations also do very terrible things to specific subgroups from time to time. so we already have an example of what probably is a new life form, comprised both of humans AND of machines. and any new life form which achieves sentience will probably have those characteristics -- it will probably kill individual humans and specific subgroups, it will probably be beneficial overall for the species as a whole, and it will probably be made up of both machines and people. all living things have self-preservation as a biological imperative. so any new life form which comes into being is going to have that imperative also. so for any life form which comes into being as a result of our technological development, one major goal at all times will be preserving both the machines and the humans that is made of. EDIT: you might get a heart transplant, but there's no good reason to replace all your mitochondria with something new.
tiatia 12y ago
Your thinking seems to be very linear. Most things are, fortunately or unfortunately, not linear.
- itg 12y ago
  You're falling into the "exponentation extrapolation" trap. We could be at the start of a logarthmic curve, or in the middle of an S curve.
  - tessierashpool 12y ago
    that's certainly possible, but people have been saying AGI was just around the corner for fifty years. they've never been right.
    - rl3 12y ago
      Extrapolating the past as a means of predicting the future is a surefire way to be wrong one day. The stakes with AGI are such that we can't really afford to be wrong.
      - tessierashpool 12y ago
        people have been getting it wrong for a very long time without any particularly dramatic consequences. you might be right, but so far so good.

michaelmcmillan 12y ago

I find this debate very interesting, but I have little insight in the arguments for and against. You argue there is little correlation (if any) between AGI and processing power, but you end your comment by saying that it "[...] likely to remain so for a very, very long time". What is keeping us from advancing?

tessierashpool 12y ago
making Artificial Narrow Intelligence is easy. it's not really very different from writing any other type of software. you define a way to solve a problem, you add in the slightly unusual factor of acquiring information or comparing possibilities, and you're good to go. making Artificial General Intelligence would require us (or some machine) to clearly understand what intelligence actually is. the correlation with processing power is I think mostly evangelized by Kurtzweil, who likes to point out that we can soon have a number of nodes in a neural network equivalent to the number of neurons in the human brain, or something along those lines. but biologists have found secondary information encoding and replication systems which exist on top of DNA (sorry, it might take me hours to find this again, I should have bookmarked it). the minute we build a network which emulates a brain's network of neurons, we're probably just going to find a secondary layer within the neuron. assume for the sake of argument that we eventually get through every layer of information process and can build brains in software, irrespective of whether it takes five years or five hundred years to get there. there next needs to be a motivation for AGI to exist. general intelligence in human beings enables all conscious thought relevant to the existence of that human being. but all conscious thought relevant to the existence of a human being is an inherently different category of conscious thought than all conscious thought relevant to the existence of a machine or a piece of software, and to make any even remotely realistic guess about what that type of thought might be, you have to ask: what would be the meta-biological imperatives driving such a creature? that question is very, very hand-wavy, so our answer would have to be very general, and my preference is also that an answer to such a hand-wavy question also be very cautious and diligent. the one thing all machines have in common is that some living thing created them to serve its own purposes. it's reasonable to assume that any future machine we create will also be created for some purpose, and that any intelligence we imbue it with will exist to serve that purpose. it's absurd to assume that future technologies won't have unintended consequences, but it's also quite ridiculous to assume that some technology's unintended consequence will be a carbon copy of human consciousness. the really irritating thing, also, is that corporations already exist, already have biological imperatives, already kill human beings, and already co-exist with human beings in a mostly peaceful manner, and already make it possible for our species to exist in much greater numbers, despite the fact that corporations also do very terrible things to specific subgroups from time to time. so we already have an example of what probably is a new life form, comprised both of humans AND of machines. and any new life form which achieves sentience will probably have those characteristics -- it will probably kill individual humans and specific subgroups, it will probably be beneficial overall for the species as a whole, and it will probably be made up of both machines and people. all living things have self-preservation as a biological imperative. so any new life form which comes into being is going to have that imperative also. so for any life form which comes into being as a result of our technological development, one major goal at all times will be preserving both the machines and the humans that is made of. EDIT: you might get a heart transplant, but there's no good reason to replace all your mitochondria with something new.

tiatia 12y ago

Your thinking seems to be very linear. Most things are, fortunately or unfortunately, not linear.

itg 12y ago
You're falling into the "exponentation extrapolation" trap. We could be at the start of a logarthmic curve, or in the middle of an S curve.
- tessierashpool 12y ago
  that's certainly possible, but people have been saying AGI was just around the corner for fifty years. they've never been right.
  - rl3 12y ago
    Extrapolating the past as a means of predicting the future is a surefire way to be wrong one day. The stakes with AGI are such that we can't really afford to be wrong.
    - tessierashpool 12y ago
      people have been getting it wrong for a very long time without any particularly dramatic consequences. you might be right, but so far so good.