Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People

Post by mmanfrin » Thu, Dec 22, 2016, 11:45 PM UTC

zoren wrote: post #76

apsec112 wrote: post #53

"I live in California, which has the highest poverty rate in the United States, even though it's home to Silicon Valley. I see my rich industry doing nothing to improve the lives of everyday people and indigent people around us." This is trivially false. Over a hundred billionaires have now pledged to donate the majority of their wealth, and the list includes many tech people like Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Mark Zuck…

As to the first claim. It seems Mississippi has the highest poverty rate at 21.9%. California is at 16.4%. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_poverty...

Post by Florin_Andrei » Thu, Dec 22, 2016, 11:46 PM UTC

zaroth wrote: post #80

I feel like this essay is missing a key point around defining intelligence. Machines can be trained to emulate intelligence, but machines are not themselves intelligent. Our neural nets can drive cars, convert speech to text, recognize images, and maybe even carry on a conversation. But there's no light behind the eyes. It's all synthetic. It's an emulation which mimes intelligence through the brute force of observin…

Post by tptacek » Thu, Dec 22, 2016, 11:50 PM UTC

idlewords wrote: post #71

amasad wrote: post #70

It's amusing how his talk and Stuart Russel's talk [0] -- which end up going opposing ways -- use the "atomic bomb" as an example in fallacious thinking. Stuart's example is about how respected physicists said "impossible to get energy out of atoms" and the very next morning someone published a paper stating how to do it. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBCOMm_ytwM

He and I were on a panel once! It did not go well.

Post by auganov » Thu, Dec 22, 2016, 11:50 PM UTC

JamilD wrote: post #54

md224 wrote: post #27

"Put another way, this is the premise that the mind arises out of ordinary physics... If you are very religious, you might believe that a brain is not possible without a soul. But for most of us, this is an easy premise to accept." The thing that irks me about this is how it reinforces a common (and in my opinion, false) dichotomy: either you believe the mind is explicable in terms of ordinary physics or you believe…

The roundworm (c. elegans) only has 302 neurons, and about 7,000 synapses, but is capable of social behavior, movement, and reproduction. The entire connectome has been mapped, and we understand how many of these behaviors work without having to resort to additional ontological entities like your "third way". If this complex behavior can be explained using only 302 neurons, I have no doubt that the complexity of huma…

Post by Sniffnoy » Thu, Dec 22, 2016, 11:50 PM UTC

Veratyr wrote: post #79

apsec112 wrote: post #53

"I live in California, which has the highest poverty rate in the United States, even though it's home to Silicon Valley. I see my rich industry doing nothing to improve the lives of everyday people and indigent people around us." This is trivially false. Over a hundred billionaires have now pledged to donate the majority of their wealth, and the list includes many tech people like Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Mark Zuck…

It's not necessarily false. The quote you took seems to be referring to the homeless in California. The Giving Pledge requires that the money be given to philanthropy, which may improve the lives of others around the world, rather than Californians.