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2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal

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Re: 2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal

#41

Post by notahacker »

ErrantX wrote: post #23
arethuza wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure the "knowledge of how to write the software" is the most complex part of the problem by far. However, one outside chance of a limit may be that the brain is doing something that is fundamentally different to the kinds of operations carried out by a normal computer - which is essentially the argument in The Emperor's New Mind. When I read that book at the height of my own AI enthusiasm I thought it was…

I think that the limitations we face vary depending on what model you are trying to solve. So; are you trying to create software that "emulates" human intelligence (i.e. AI)? In which case, yes, software is the major limitation. Or are you trying to create an artificial (and independently functioning) model of the human brain? In which case you have two limits; hardware speed. But also a huge lack of knowledge about…

Assuming there's no trivial way of mapping our neural networks to hardware chips running binary code, writing the emulator might prove beyond the human mind.

Can our thought processes be abstracted into blocks of a few hundred thousand lines of high level language we might actually be capable of writing?

Re: 2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal

#42

Post by marknadal »

Could we invest our time in discovering what consciousness is first before we make predictions about machine consciousness?

We used to call this type of behavior superstition: a belief not based on human reason or scientific knowledge, an irrational fear of future events.

Re: 2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal

#43

Post by ez77 »

dmd wrote: post #37
ez77 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

we do, after all, have a working example Which one?

Hint: You're using it right now. Hopefully.

Do you mean the Internet? How would that be intelligence?

Or do you mean my brain? That's not artificial intelligence (at least not obviously artificial!).

Edit: Maybe you meant a computer... but that would be quite a long shot. In short, spell it out, guys!

Re: 2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal

#44

Post by mechanical_fish »

dmd wrote: post #37
ez77 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

we do, after all, have a working example Which one?

Hint: You're using it right now. Hopefully.

It did take more than a few decades to design, however. I wouldn't really expect a new model to ship inside of forty years. At best, that's like expecting the next version of Windows to ship in the next three hours.

My theory of the singularity is that the concept is so popular these days precisely because (a) we've passed a critical knowledge threshold: A significant number of the best-educated people in the world have become aware that not only is a giant collection of self-replicating simple machines possible, it is old news -- billions-of-years-old news. But, (b), the majority of humanity still does not understand that. It is the very definition of irony, but most people -- even the educated ones -- have great difficulty conceiving of a vast, mobile, sentient colony of trillions of single-celled organisms working together with plan and purpose. Frankly, it's easier to believe in elves. Elves, we can grasp.

That gap between hard science and magical thinking is fertile ground for fantasy.

Singularity fiction bears the same relationship to modern molecular biology that Frankenstein bore to the work of Alessandro Volta.

Re: 2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal

#45

Post by sid0 »

SimonPStevens wrote: post #32
jcfrei wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think with the advent of quantum computers a limit in computing power is still far way. Nonetheless, what has brute computing power enabled us to do so far? There have been a few prestigious projects, ie. deep blue, seti, cern, molecular folding, etc. which take advantage of this power. But most research projects profit little from an increase in computing power. I think new software and algorithms play a bigger ro…

I wasn't aware quantum computers had actually been invented yet. They are still theoretical devices. Quantum computation as been explored but as yet we don't have a computer capable of executing the quantum algorithms. That aside, all I'm saying is that exponential growth has a limit. That growth could be measured in MIPS or in algorithm performance, it doesn't really matter, but I don't think that growth will contin…

Quantum computation as been explored but as yet we don't have a computer capable of executing the quantum algorithms.

They're in their infancy, but we've already had a quantum computer factor 15. http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/computing/hardware/chip-does-pa...

Re: 2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal

#46

Post by arethuza »

ez77 wrote: post #43
dmd wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hint: You're using it right now. Hopefully.

Do you mean the Internet? How would that be intelligence? Or do you mean my brain? That's not artificial intelligence (at least not obviously artificial!). Edit: Maybe you meant a computer... but that would be quite a long shot. In short, spell it out, guys!

Sorry - I did mean we have an example of a class of system that exhibits general intelligence, not "artificial" general intelligence.

Re: 2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal

#47

Post by SimonPStevens »

sid0 wrote: post #45
SimonPStevens wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn't aware quantum computers had actually been invented yet. They are still theoretical devices. Quantum computation as been explored but as yet we don't have a computer capable of executing the quantum algorithms. That aside, all I'm saying is that exponential growth has a limit. That growth could be measured in MIPS or in algorithm performance, it doesn't really matter, but I don't think that growth will contin…

Quantum computation as been explored but as yet we don't have a computer capable of executing the quantum algorithms. They're in their infancy, but we've already had a quantum computer factor 15. http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/computing/hardware/chip-does-pa...

Interesting. Thanks. Perhaps I take it back then. Maybe we do have a algorithm capable quantum computer.

Re: 2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal

#48

Post by jokermatt999 »

arethuza wrote: post #20
rue wrote: post #18

I remain unconvinced that a transplanted consciousness would really be the same person as opposed to a new, identical person. What's worse, it might be impossible to tell the difference since even the new consciousness wouldn't be able to know. … But it'd really suck to be the last generation before some significant increase in lifespan (say, up to 200) is reached.

Greg Egan's Permuation City has an interesting examination of what might happen to "copies": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permutation_City

And his short story "Learning to be me" (I think that's the one) present a slightly more horrifying take on it.

Re: 2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal

#49

Post by jerf »

SimonPStevens wrote: post #38
AffableSpatula wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The question is how close are we to the limit and that is something we are only likely to know when we reach it." You've posed the question and then immediately explained why it's fruitless to ask. Even if you are right that there must be limits; if you have no idea when his models are likely to break down then your skepticism is no more solid than his prediction.

My scepticism is of the implicit claim that you make predictions by extrapolating exponential growth curves. You can't, you can only make predictions up to the point the exponential growth breaks down, and as you can't predict that point before it happens you can't make predictions. I'm not saying he is wrong about the next 100 years, the singularity or AI, I'm saying may be wrong about the short term and he certainl…

"I'm saying may be wrong about the short term and he certainly can't be right indefinitely."

Sure he can, since you're the one who added the claim that it will continue indefinitely. What he says instead is that progress will continue until well beyond our point to predict what the resulting society will look like, due to the claimed fact that it will for instance include things like true AIs and brain uploading. I do not recall him talking about where the progress will stop; probably because it would be meaningless to us anyhow. If an AI from 2200 came to us now and tried to explain the latest cutting edge trends in the research into the ultimate limits of cognition we wouldn't get past the first paragraph.

Don't worry, you're hardly the only one to dismiss his claims without actually stopping for a moment and figuring out what he's actually claiming. I'm not exactly a strong Singulatarian myself but a lot of people really need to stop reading other people summaries of what he says (very very few are accurate enough to come to evaluate what he is saying) and read past his first couple of paragraphs before flipping the bozo bit. He may not be right, he's definitely not an idiot.

Re: 2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal

#50

Post by bgurupra »

I have absolutely no expertise in this but I have a feeling that for machines to better us , they need to be engineered at least better than the human brain.And considering Watson is bleeding edge computer and needs a computer as big as a room and lots of power whereas the Human brain fits in a shoe box and can run on a glass of milk and a tuna sandwich - there is a quite a bit of ground to cover before we hit singularity!
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