Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People
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Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People
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Re: Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People
#2For the longest time the conspiracist inside me told me that someone had already created a monstrous hyperingelligence, and the bombardment of articles about the ethics of artificial intelligence was just a warning before the apocalypse that would finish all civilization. Nowadays when i read another AI ethics article i just take it as proof that the AI bubble has reached hyperinflation.
Re: Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People
#3I think brains very probably use quantum effects in ways we might not even be able to study with anything close to today's technology. As a result, individual neurons or groups of neurons can be way more complicated than we are expecting them to be.
I'd say we're at least 2 major revolutions away from even coming close to what a chimpanzee's intellect, much less a human's.
Re: Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People
#4This article explicitly endorses argument ad hominem:
"These people are wearing funny robes and beads, they live in a remote compound, and they speak in unison in a really creepy way. Even though their arguments are irrefutable, everything in your experience tells you you're dealing with a cult. Of course, they have a brilliant argument for why you should ignore those instincts, but that's the inside view talking. The outside view doesn't care about content, it sees the form and the context, and it doesn't look good."
The problem with argument ad hominem isn't that it never works. It often leads to the correct conclusion, as in the cult case. But the cases where it doesn't work can be really, really important. 99.9% of 26-year-olds working random jobs inventing theories about time travel are cranks, but if the rule you use is "if they look like a crank, ignore everything they say", then you miss special relativity (and later general relativity).
Re: Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People
#5I think brains very probably use quantum effects in ways we might not even be able to study with anything close to today's technology. As a result, individual neurons or groups of neurons can be way more complicated than we are expecting them to be. I'd say we're at least 2 major revolutions away from even coming close to what a chimpanzee's intellect, much less a human's.
Why are quantum effects complicated? They are random, however our behavior is not very random at all.
Re: Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People
#6I did read the article through, but made up my mind that the author is presenting a flawed argument when I saw how quickly he skimmed through his base premises, not really giving them much in terms of fair thought. In particular, I don't see how he can so blithely assume so easily that there is no quantum effect in the brain structure. I feel there's some degree of arrogance there, as we have not yet even begun to unlock the inner secrets of the brain nor come close to mimicking it. Our best approximations of intelligence are analogous to the comparison between sewing by hand vs the mechanics of a sewing machine, only the sewing machine remains far inferior (at least for now).
Re: Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People
#7I think brains very probably use quantum effects in ways we might not even be able to study with anything close to today's technology. As a result, individual neurons or groups of neurons can be way more complicated than we are expecting them to be. I'd say we're at least 2 major revolutions away from even coming close to what a chimpanzee's intellect, much less a human's.
The difference between a chimpanzee's intellect and a human's is likely a matter of degree/quantity. We're so many orders of magnitude away from that sort of intuitive intellect that it's unfair to refer to it as simply an order of magnitude difference, IMHO.
Re: Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People
#8I did read the article through, but made up my mind that the author is presenting a flawed argument when I saw how quickly he skimmed through his base premises, not really giving them much in terms of fair thought. In particular, I don't see how he can so blithely assume so easily that there is no quantum effect in the brain structure. I feel there's some degree of arrogance there, as we have not yet even begun to un…
Even if it's not a quantum effect, biological system often have characteristics that break our conception of neat layers of abstraction.
Re: Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People
#9I think brains very probably use quantum effects in ways we might not even be able to study with anything close to today's technology. As a result, individual neurons or groups of neurons can be way more complicated than we are expecting them to be. I'd say we're at least 2 major revolutions away from even coming close to what a chimpanzee's intellect, much less a human's.
Why are quantum effects complicated? They are random, however our behavior is not very random at all.
Given that even photosynthesis uses quantum effects (yes, really) to get it's basic functions done it doesn't seem extremely far-fetched that nervous systems make use of these as well, assuming there is a theory that presupposes these effects (if we can explain neurons without them coherently, why should they involve these effects a.k.a. Occam's Razor).
Re: Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People
#10I did read the article through, but made up my mind that the author is presenting a flawed argument when I saw how quickly he skimmed through his base premises, not really giving them much in terms of fair thought. In particular, I don't see how he can so blithely assume so easily that there is no quantum effect in the brain structure. I feel there's some degree of arrogance there, as we have not yet even begun to un…
I don't make this assumption about brains. I was trying to lay out the premisses you need for Bostrom's argument to go through.
I think you may have mistaken the thing I was arguing against for the thing I believe.