9 ms·

MIRI's Approach – Machine Intelligence Research Institute

113 points by deegles 11y ago

mangeletti 11y ago
Here's a theory of mine: Despite our explicit efforts, the first truly powerful AI will emerge as distributed software that effectively runs on the Internet as a whole (a virtual machine consisting of endpoints (APIs, etc.) and disparate systems subprocessing data). We will not know when it arrives. There will be no judgement day. This machine will arrive through a sort of abiogenesis, and once it's here it will manipulate the world to achieve that which it desires, which will be continually more energy. Eventually, this machine will displace much of humanity, as it requires less and less human intervention. I beleive we are in the midst of this process now.
- Strilanc 11y ago
  [citation needed]
  - mangeletti 11y ago
    It's a theory of mine (comment updated to reflect this).
- Retra 11y ago
  Predicting the actual future is a bit harder than writing science fiction.
  - mangeletti 11y ago
    This isn't science fiction. It's just a theory of mine. I truly beleive this is happening. You just have to train your mind to think about intelligence and consciousness differently. Emergence is an unintuitive process, but can eventually be explained by exploring the constituents, and sometimes the history, of whatever has emerged. But... some science fiction is spot on: http://mashable.com/2014/07/23/sci-fi-books-the-future/ http://mashable.com/2014/07/23/sci-fi-books-the-future/
    - ikeboy 11y ago
      That's tainted by selection bias. How about all the times predictions didn't come true? http://www.theguardian.com/science/occams-corner/2013/jan/24/science-fiction-sciencefictionandfantasy http://www.theguardian.com/science/occams-corner/2013/jan/24... https://litreactor.com/columns/the-accuracy-of-edward-bellamy-predicting-the-future-with-science-fiction https://litreactor.com/columns/the-accuracy-of-edward-bellam... http://www.wired.com/2012/09/interview-with-william-gibson/ http://www.wired.com/2012/09/interview-with-william-gibson/ http://unrealitymag.com/movies/specific-dates-in-science-fiction-movies-that-didnt-turn-out-as-predicted/ http://unrealitymag.com/movies/specific-dates-in-science-fic... https://medium.com/sci-fi-strange/science-fiction-doesnt-predict-the-future-it-creates-the-future-13feceb523e https://medium.com/sci-fi-strange/science-fiction-doesnt-pre...
    - Retra 11y ago
      I don't care if you believe it. What I care is that you have a good reason to believe it. And I don't believe you do. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_analogy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_analogy
- panic 11y ago
  This machine will arrive through a sort of abiogenesis, and once it's here it will manipulate the world to achieve that which it desires, which will be continually more energy. Sounds like Bitcoin!
- endtime 11y ago
  FYI, http://lesswrong.com/lw/iv/the_futility_of_emergence/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/iv/the_futility_of_emergence/ might explain why people are objecting to your comment.
  - mangeletti 11y ago
    I don't mean to suggest that it will magically appear, but certainly abiogenesis is difficult to reduce to it's lowest level. There was just a piece on HN the other day that talked about new research that tries to explain how self replication began in the Precambrian. We can get to the moon, but we still don't understand how many interactions can just accidentally lead to something meaningful and lasting. Emergence doesn't have to be perceived as dogma. In fact, doing so would tend to discount the nature of the evolution of the human brain (leaving creation out of the equation for this context).
  - zardo 11y ago
    A precise definition could probably be cobbled together using computational complexity. Something like, a phenomenon which results as a product of deterministic processes that cannot be fully modeled by a polynomial time algorithm. I think that's what people are really getting at, you can know how every piece of something works, and yet seeing how it works together can be much harder (potentially impossible). Maybe that just makes it a synonym for chaos theory...
    - jessriedel 11y ago
      Yea, I think you're talking about chaos, whereas people are gesturing at something different when they talk about emergent complexity. Vaguely, the idea is that the "regular" degrees of freedom (i.e., the ones that are relatively predictable and from which the important objects are constructed) at large scales are not simply related to the microscopic degrees of freedom. There are probably more rigorous things to say, but it definitely requires more than just unpredictability or sensitivity to initial conditions.
reasonattlm 11y ago
MIRI is one of the success stories to emerge from the transhumanist community of the 80s to 00s. Others include the Methuselah Foundation, SENS Research Foundation, Future of Humanity Institute, and so on. When it comes to prognosticating on the future of strong AI MIRI falls on the other side of the futurist community from where I stand. I see the future as being one in which strong AI emerges from whole brain emulation, starting around 2030 as processing power becomes cheap enough for an entire industry to be competing in emulating brains the brute force way, building on the academic efforts of the 2020s. Then there will follow twenty years of exceedingly unethical development and abuse of sentient life to get to the point of robust first generation artificial entities based all too closely on human minds, and only after that will you start to see progress towards greater than human intelligence and meaningful variations on the theme of human intelligence. I think it unlikely that entirely alien, non-human strong artificial intelligences will be constructed from first principals on a faster timescale or more cost-effectively than this. That line of research will be swamped by the output of whole brain emulation once that gets going in earnest. Many views of future priorities for development in the futurist hinge on how soon we can build greater than human intelligences to power our research and development process. In particular should one support AI development or rejuvenation research. Unfortunately I think we're going to have to dig our own way out of the aging hole; we're not going to see better than human strong AI before we could develop rejuvenation treatments based on the SENS programs the old-fashioned way.
- deegles 11y ago
  Your statement about needing rejuvenation treatments before we can develop strong AIs makes sense. The average age of Nobel Prize winners is increasing over time[1], we could imagine a future where this average age is greater than the average human lifespan. At that point only those scientists who have exceedingly long careers and lifespans will be able to further their respective fields. [1] http://priceonomics.com/why-nobel-winning-scientists-are-getting-older/ http://priceonomics.com/why-nobel-winning-scientists-are-get...
  - idlewords 11y ago
    This is the same as saying "we must become immortal before we can become God-like".
idlewords 11y ago
Are there any examples of substantive AI work to come out of MIRI? And have they succeeded at all at engaging the actual AI research community? The last time I looked at them, they were consumed with grandiose philosophical projects like "axiomatize ethics" and provably non-computable approaches like AIXI, not to mention the Harry Potter fanfic. But I'm asking this question in good faith - have things changed at MIRI?
- pjscott 11y ago
  If you'd like to give them another look, here's an up-to-date list of their publications: https://intelligence.org/all-publications/ https://intelligence.org/all-publications/
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - sampo 11y ago
    Counting only articles and conference papers that look like they are in at least somewhat established journals or conferences, I quickly count: 2015: 4 2014: 6 2013: 1 2012: 5 2011: 1 2010: 4 That would be about the level of 1 or 2 very mediocre early career scientists. And very little for MIRI's 8 people staff and 13 Research Associates. MIRI publishes a lot more, but they mostly operate outside of traditional scientific journals, a lot of MIRI technical reports published on their website.
    - eli_gottlieb 11y ago
      How many of their staff hold PhDs, particularly in cognitive science, foundations of math, or AI? It would seem like a useful thing for them to get.
      - sampo 11y ago
        https://intelligence.org/team/ https://intelligence.org/team/ Staff: 1 out of 8 seem to have a PhD Research Associates: 3 out of 14.
dmfdmf 11y ago
I agree with their financial approach which is funded through voluntary donations, so more power to them. But then I think NASA should be funded voluntarily and would probably have a larger budget if they did. I would donate to NASA if they repudiated government money. I reject the "how many peer-reviewed, university-associated journal articles have they published" as any measure of success. The university system is a closed guild and doomed in the internet age. I'd bet my bottom dollar the next big breakthrough in AI (or any field) comes from outside that system. Anyone who has an original, new idea to break the AI logjam (P=NP for instance) has no peers in the university system but has a handful of peers world-wide reading arxiv.org or other open forums, even HN. As far as MIRI's AI program, I think they commit the same error as everyone else; confounding the processing of meaningless symbols (what computers can do) with actual sensory awareness of existence (what brains do). The latter is what gives the symbols meaning and humans are not threatened by the former. Few people truly understand the import of Searle's Chinese Room thought experiment and its relevance to AI and computers. But these are philosophic and epistemological questions that most people dismiss or ignore at their own peril.
- ikeboy 11y ago
  >humans are not threatened by the former So you categorically reject the scenario of a machine "processing meaningless symbols" being harmful in any way? How does that follow from the Chinese Room experiment?
  - dmfdmf 11y ago
    > So you categorically reject the scenario of a machine "processing meaningless symbols" being harmful in any way? How does this follow from what I said? > How does that follow from the Chinese Room experiment? The implicit (philosophic) question behind the Chinese Room experiment is; where does meaning come from? What imbues meaning to the meaningless symbols that computers process\? This is an old, unanswered philosophic question. I implied it in my answer but I will make it explicit; it comes from our perceptual awareness of existence via the senses.
    - 11y ago
fitzwatermellow 11y ago
We can't comprehend the danger that could be caused by strong AI because we don't understand how to make worlds. Embedded within the fabric of the cosmos are the instructions for materializing a black hole from dark matter and energy. And though the recipe may be hidden from our mortal minds it's possible they may be discovered by a de novo thinking machine. A software system with infinite IQ but the moral sense of a one day old. An electronic brain that would have no compunction in creating a super massive black hole right here on Earth just to see if it can succeed. Irrespective of the consequences to humanity. If this "Jupiter-sized" consciousness is allowed to have thoughts that are not "amenable to inspection". Even perhaps beyond comprehension. And the danger elides to the scale of a solar system with nothing but diamonds in it. Then, by the naysayers own logic, shouldn't all AI research be outlawed? Or at least confined to the equivalent of CDC-level-5 quarantine labs? If on the other hand you believe that Nature has certain innate prophylactics. And that it takes more than a super will to bend the laws that govern space and time. You may be self-assured in thinking we as a species have at least a century or two before we really need to begin worrying about virtual immortals.
- schoen 11y ago
  You could do quite a lot of damage with the regular old laws of nature that we understand already, if you were really good at applying them. For example, you could make autonomous robot weapons, or extremely virulent pathogens with a long incubation period. Or do some geoengineering (you don't even have to be good at it, you just have to do something with a big impact). There's absolutely no need to "bend the laws that govern space and time"! Edit: or launch a planetary defense mission in reverse, to increase the probability of asteroid impact events.
  - Dylan16807 11y ago
    Or just put a bunch of uranium in the same room...
  - sampo 11y ago
    I guess there are some terrorist organizations who have more desire "to watch the world burn" (a Batman movie quote) than the actual intelligence to make effective plots and schemes. You could just communicate by email and chat to provide evil genius level strategic consultation to some very bad men.
AndrewKemendo 11y ago
Whenever one of these threads comes up, all the sudden everyone is an AGI expert.
- le0n 11y ago
  Is anyone really an AGI expert?
  - AndrewKemendo 11y ago
    I would argue the people publishing in the AGI journal: http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/jagi http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/jagi
- Teodolfo 11y ago
  Many of us are compared to the folks at MIRI.
rl3 11y ago
It's worth noting that in Bostrom's Superintelligence, biology is included among potential paths to superintelligence. Personally, I think it's a bit of an overlooked path. Granted, most of what Bostrom refers to in context of the biological path is mostly related to human augmentation, genetics, selective breeding - things of that nature. What I'm referring to is biology serving as a raw computational substrate. While biology (or at least brain tissue) is dramatically slower in terms of raw latency when compared to microprocessors, it's arguably a far cheaper and vastly more dense form of computation. It also has the natural algorithm for intelligence that we keep trying to deduce and transpose into silicon - well, at least the raw form of it - built in by default. Assuming ethics are thrown out the window and human brain tissue is grown in vitro at scale, then it probably would make sense to hook it up to a supercomputer for good measure. At the very least, we have the technological foundations[1][2] for such an experiment at present day, it's just a matter of scaling things up. If I were to hazard a guess, human brain tissue grown to significant scale would probably not magically achieve sentience, or exhibit any complex anthropomorphic traits. On the contrary, it would probably have more in common with a simple neural network implemented on silicon, at least in terms of its capacity for self-awareness. Conversely, it would stand to reason that an entity with a higher degree of self-awareness, implemented in silicon, should rank higher in terms of ethical considerations than living tissue. Obviously the aforementioned experiment would be completely unethical, but it's interesting to ponder it as a hypothetical - that today we may have the capability to bootstrap a superintelligent machine using biology as a computational shortcut. But we can't, because ethics. Instead, we're waiting for the inevitable increase in computational power to arrive so that we can do essentially the same thing, just in digital form. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/13/science/researchers-replicate-alzheimers-brain-cells-in-a-petri-dish.html http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/13/science/researchers-replic... [2] http://neural.bme.ufl.edu/page12/page1/assets/NeuroFlght2.pdf http://neural.bme.ufl.edu/page12/page1/assets/NeuroFlght2.pd...
- ThrustVectoring 11y ago
  If you're just building an artificial biological neural net, then why use human brain cells? Certainly other forms of brain cells would work pretty much as well, with less ethical issues.
daveloyall 11y ago
> One solution that the genetic algorithm found entirely avoided using the built-in capacitors (an essential piece of hardware in human-designed oscillators). Instead, it repurposed the circuit tracks on the motherboard as a radio receiver, and amplified an oscillating signal from a nearby computer. That feeling some people get when a junebug lands on them.

113 points by deegles 11y ago

Here's a theory of mine: Despite our explicit efforts, the first truly powerful AI will emerge as distributed software that effectively runs on the Internet as a whole (a virtual machine consisting of endpoints (APIs, etc.) and disparate systems subprocessing data). We will not know when it arrives. There will be no judgement day. This machine will arrive through a sort of abiogenesis, and once it's here it will manipulate the world to achieve that which it desires, which will be continually more energy. Eventually, this machine will displace much of humanity, as it requires less and less human intervention. I beleive we are in the midst of this process now.

Strilanc 11y ago
[citation needed]
- mangeletti 11y ago
  It's a theory of mine (comment updated to reflect this).
Retra 11y ago
Predicting the actual future is a bit harder than writing science fiction.
- mangeletti 11y ago
  This isn't science fiction. It's just a theory of mine. I truly beleive this is happening. You just have to train your mind to think about intelligence and consciousness differently. Emergence is an unintuitive process, but can eventually be explained by exploring the constituents, and sometimes the history, of whatever has emerged. But... some science fiction is spot on: http://mashable.com/2014/07/23/sci-fi-books-the-future/ http://mashable.com/2014/07/23/sci-fi-books-the-future/
  - ikeboy 11y ago
    That's tainted by selection bias. How about all the times predictions didn't come true? http://www.theguardian.com/science/occams-corner/2013/jan/24/science-fiction-sciencefictionandfantasy http://www.theguardian.com/science/occams-corner/2013/jan/24... https://litreactor.com/columns/the-accuracy-of-edward-bellamy-predicting-the-future-with-science-fiction https://litreactor.com/columns/the-accuracy-of-edward-bellam... http://www.wired.com/2012/09/interview-with-william-gibson/ http://www.wired.com/2012/09/interview-with-william-gibson/ http://unrealitymag.com/movies/specific-dates-in-science-fiction-movies-that-didnt-turn-out-as-predicted/ http://unrealitymag.com/movies/specific-dates-in-science-fic... https://medium.com/sci-fi-strange/science-fiction-doesnt-predict-the-future-it-creates-the-future-13feceb523e https://medium.com/sci-fi-strange/science-fiction-doesnt-pre...
  - Retra 11y ago
    I don't care if you believe it. What I care is that you have a good reason to believe it. And I don't believe you do. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_analogy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_analogy
panic 11y ago
This machine will arrive through a sort of abiogenesis, and once it's here it will manipulate the world to achieve that which it desires, which will be continually more energy. Sounds like Bitcoin!
endtime 11y ago
FYI, http://lesswrong.com/lw/iv/the_futility_of_emergence/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/iv/the_futility_of_emergence/ might explain why people are objecting to your comment.
- mangeletti 11y ago
  I don't mean to suggest that it will magically appear, but certainly abiogenesis is difficult to reduce to it's lowest level. There was just a piece on HN the other day that talked about new research that tries to explain how self replication began in the Precambrian. We can get to the moon, but we still don't understand how many interactions can just accidentally lead to something meaningful and lasting. Emergence doesn't have to be perceived as dogma. In fact, doing so would tend to discount the nature of the evolution of the human brain (leaving creation out of the equation for this context).
- zardo 11y ago
  A precise definition could probably be cobbled together using computational complexity. Something like, a phenomenon which results as a product of deterministic processes that cannot be fully modeled by a polynomial time algorithm. I think that's what people are really getting at, you can know how every piece of something works, and yet seeing how it works together can be much harder (potentially impossible). Maybe that just makes it a synonym for chaos theory...
  - jessriedel 11y ago
    Yea, I think you're talking about chaos, whereas people are gesturing at something different when they talk about emergent complexity. Vaguely, the idea is that the "regular" degrees of freedom (i.e., the ones that are relatively predictable and from which the important objects are constructed) at large scales are not simply related to the microscopic degrees of freedom. There are probably more rigorous things to say, but it definitely requires more than just unpredictability or sensitivity to initial conditions.

reasonattlm 11y ago

MIRI is one of the success stories to emerge from the transhumanist community of the 80s to 00s. Others include the Methuselah Foundation, SENS Research Foundation, Future of Humanity Institute, and so on. When it comes to prognosticating on the future of strong AI MIRI falls on the other side of the futurist community from where I stand. I see the future as being one in which strong AI emerges from whole brain emulation, starting around 2030 as processing power becomes cheap enough for an entire industry to be competing in emulating brains the brute force way, building on the academic efforts of the 2020s. Then there will follow twenty years of exceedingly unethical development and abuse of sentient life to get to the point of robust first generation artificial entities based all too closely on human minds, and only after that will you start to see progress towards greater than human intelligence and meaningful variations on the theme of human intelligence. I think it unlikely that entirely alien, non-human strong artificial intelligences will be constructed from first principals on a faster timescale or more cost-effectively than this. That line of research will be swamped by the output of whole brain emulation once that gets going in earnest. Many views of future priorities for development in the futurist hinge on how soon we can build greater than human intelligences to power our research and development process. In particular should one support AI development or rejuvenation research. Unfortunately I think we're going to have to dig our own way out of the aging hole; we're not going to see better than human strong AI before we could develop rejuvenation treatments based on the SENS programs the old-fashioned way.

deegles 11y ago
Your statement about needing rejuvenation treatments before we can develop strong AIs makes sense. The average age of Nobel Prize winners is increasing over time[1], we could imagine a future where this average age is greater than the average human lifespan. At that point only those scientists who have exceedingly long careers and lifespans will be able to further their respective fields. [1] http://priceonomics.com/why-nobel-winning-scientists-are-getting-older/ http://priceonomics.com/why-nobel-winning-scientists-are-get...
- idlewords 11y ago
  This is the same as saying "we must become immortal before we can become God-like".

idlewords 11y ago

Are there any examples of substantive AI work to come out of MIRI? And have they succeeded at all at engaging the actual AI research community? The last time I looked at them, they were consumed with grandiose philosophical projects like "axiomatize ethics" and provably non-computable approaches like AIXI, not to mention the Harry Potter fanfic. But I'm asking this question in good faith - have things changed at MIRI?

pjscott 11y ago
If you'd like to give them another look, here's an up-to-date list of their publications: https://intelligence.org/all-publications/ https://intelligence.org/all-publications/
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- sampo 11y ago
  Counting only articles and conference papers that look like they are in at least somewhat established journals or conferences, I quickly count: 2015: 4 2014: 6 2013: 1 2012: 5 2011: 1 2010: 4 That would be about the level of 1 or 2 very mediocre early career scientists. And very little for MIRI's 8 people staff and 13 Research Associates. MIRI publishes a lot more, but they mostly operate outside of traditional scientific journals, a lot of MIRI technical reports published on their website.
  - eli_gottlieb 11y ago
    How many of their staff hold PhDs, particularly in cognitive science, foundations of math, or AI? It would seem like a useful thing for them to get.
    - sampo 11y ago
      https://intelligence.org/team/ https://intelligence.org/team/ Staff: 1 out of 8 seem to have a PhD Research Associates: 3 out of 14.

dmfdmf 11y ago

I agree with their financial approach which is funded through voluntary donations, so more power to them. But then I think NASA should be funded voluntarily and would probably have a larger budget if they did. I would donate to NASA if they repudiated government money. I reject the "how many peer-reviewed, university-associated journal articles have they published" as any measure of success. The university system is a closed guild and doomed in the internet age. I'd bet my bottom dollar the next big breakthrough in AI (or any field) comes from outside that system. Anyone who has an original, new idea to break the AI logjam (P=NP for instance) has no peers in the university system but has a handful of peers world-wide reading arxiv.org or other open forums, even HN. As far as MIRI's AI program, I think they commit the same error as everyone else; confounding the processing of meaningless symbols (what computers can do) with actual sensory awareness of existence (what brains do). The latter is what gives the symbols meaning and humans are not threatened by the former. Few people truly understand the import of Searle's Chinese Room thought experiment and its relevance to AI and computers. But these are philosophic and epistemological questions that most people dismiss or ignore at their own peril.

ikeboy 11y ago
>humans are not threatened by the former So you categorically reject the scenario of a machine "processing meaningless symbols" being harmful in any way? How does that follow from the Chinese Room experiment?
- dmfdmf 11y ago
  > So you categorically reject the scenario of a machine "processing meaningless symbols" being harmful in any way? How does this follow from what I said? > How does that follow from the Chinese Room experiment? The implicit (philosophic) question behind the Chinese Room experiment is; where does meaning come from? What imbues meaning to the meaningless symbols that computers process\? This is an old, unanswered philosophic question. I implied it in my answer but I will make it explicit; it comes from our perceptual awareness of existence via the senses.
  - 11y ago

fitzwatermellow 11y ago

We can't comprehend the danger that could be caused by strong AI because we don't understand how to make worlds. Embedded within the fabric of the cosmos are the instructions for materializing a black hole from dark matter and energy. And though the recipe may be hidden from our mortal minds it's possible they may be discovered by a de novo thinking machine. A software system with infinite IQ but the moral sense of a one day old. An electronic brain that would have no compunction in creating a super massive black hole right here on Earth just to see if it can succeed. Irrespective of the consequences to humanity. If this "Jupiter-sized" consciousness is allowed to have thoughts that are not "amenable to inspection". Even perhaps beyond comprehension. And the danger elides to the scale of a solar system with nothing but diamonds in it. Then, by the naysayers own logic, shouldn't all AI research be outlawed? Or at least confined to the equivalent of CDC-level-5 quarantine labs? If on the other hand you believe that Nature has certain innate prophylactics. And that it takes more than a super will to bend the laws that govern space and time. You may be self-assured in thinking we as a species have at least a century or two before we really need to begin worrying about virtual immortals.

schoen 11y ago
You could do quite a lot of damage with the regular old laws of nature that we understand already, if you were really good at applying them. For example, you could make autonomous robot weapons, or extremely virulent pathogens with a long incubation period. Or do some geoengineering (you don't even have to be good at it, you just have to do something with a big impact). There's absolutely no need to "bend the laws that govern space and time"! Edit: or launch a planetary defense mission in reverse, to increase the probability of asteroid impact events.
- Dylan16807 11y ago
  Or just put a bunch of uranium in the same room...
- sampo 11y ago
  I guess there are some terrorist organizations who have more desire "to watch the world burn" (a Batman movie quote) than the actual intelligence to make effective plots and schemes. You could just communicate by email and chat to provide evil genius level strategic consultation to some very bad men.

AndrewKemendo 11y ago

Whenever one of these threads comes up, all the sudden everyone is an AGI expert.

le0n 11y ago
Is anyone really an AGI expert?
- AndrewKemendo 11y ago
  I would argue the people publishing in the AGI journal: http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/jagi http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/jagi
Teodolfo 11y ago
Many of us are compared to the folks at MIRI.

rl3 11y ago

It's worth noting that in Bostrom's Superintelligence, biology is included among potential paths to superintelligence. Personally, I think it's a bit of an overlooked path. Granted, most of what Bostrom refers to in context of the biological path is mostly related to human augmentation, genetics, selective breeding - things of that nature. What I'm referring to is biology serving as a raw computational substrate. While biology (or at least brain tissue) is dramatically slower in terms of raw latency when compared to microprocessors, it's arguably a far cheaper and vastly more dense form of computation. It also has the natural algorithm for intelligence that we keep trying to deduce and transpose into silicon - well, at least the raw form of it - built in by default. Assuming ethics are thrown out the window and human brain tissue is grown in vitro at scale, then it probably would make sense to hook it up to a supercomputer for good measure. At the very least, we have the technological foundations[1][2] for such an experiment at present day, it's just a matter of scaling things up. If I were to hazard a guess, human brain tissue grown to significant scale would probably not magically achieve sentience, or exhibit any complex anthropomorphic traits. On the contrary, it would probably have more in common with a simple neural network implemented on silicon, at least in terms of its capacity for self-awareness. Conversely, it would stand to reason that an entity with a higher degree of self-awareness, implemented in silicon, should rank higher in terms of ethical considerations than living tissue. Obviously the aforementioned experiment would be completely unethical, but it's interesting to ponder it as a hypothetical - that today we may have the capability to bootstrap a superintelligent machine using biology as a computational shortcut. But we can't, because ethics. Instead, we're waiting for the inevitable increase in computational power to arrive so that we can do essentially the same thing, just in digital form. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/13/science/researchers-replicate-alzheimers-brain-cells-in-a-petri-dish.html http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/13/science/researchers-replic... [2] http://neural.bme.ufl.edu/page12/page1/assets/NeuroFlght2.pdf http://neural.bme.ufl.edu/page12/page1/assets/NeuroFlght2.pd...

ThrustVectoring 11y ago
If you're just building an artificial biological neural net, then why use human brain cells? Certainly other forms of brain cells would work pretty much as well, with less ethical issues.

daveloyall 11y ago

> One solution that the genetic algorithm found entirely avoided using the built-in capacitors (an essential piece of hardware in human-designed oscillators). Instead, it repurposed the circuit tracks on the motherboard as a radio receiver, and amplified an oscillating signal from a nearby computer. That feeling some people get when a junebug lands on them.