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2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal

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Re: 2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal

#51

Post by wlievens »

AffableSpatula wrote: post #28
SimonPStevens wrote: post #15

All of Kurzweil's predictions are based on extrapolating exponential growth. That's all very well, but exponential growth in physical systems is usually restricted within limits. In a such a system the negative feedback may also be growing exponentially, which means although initially it may be too small to be noticed, after the growth passes some boundary the negative feedback becomes relevant and the overall growth…

"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.

> then your skepticism is no more solid than his prediction.

But the onus is on the predictor

Re: 2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal

#52

Post by pbhjpbhj »

albertzeyer wrote: post #34
SimonPStevens wrote: post #15

All of Kurzweil's predictions are based on extrapolating exponential growth. That's all very well, but exponential growth in physical systems is usually restricted within limits. In a such a system the negative feedback may also be growing exponentially, which means although initially it may be too small to be noticed, after the growth passes some boundary the negative feedback becomes relevant and the overall growth…

Building some intelligent machine is still possible within this limit. There is an example that it is possible: the human brain. But you are right that we could be more far away from that than what we think. And also that it may be that the limit of intelligence of some machine might actually not be so much be ahead of human intelligence. (Whereby, personally, I think that it should be theoretically and practically p…

>Building some intelligent machine is still possible within this limit. There is an example that it is possible: the human brain.

Assuming the human brain to be a mere machine.

Re: 2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal

#53

Post by JoeAltmaier »

twfarland wrote: post #22

Sometimes I think we are driven by our animal instincts, and that intelligence is just 'processing power' that modulates or assists those instincts. I wonder, would a system with unlimited processing power even 'want' to develop and expand if it didn't have any 'urges?' Or would there be a chance that it would happen upon the creation of its own arbitrary 'instincts?'

This is actually very insightful. Our brains are NOT a computer, we are NOT just thinking machines.

An 'intelligent' computer may be no more comprehensible to us than an intelligent amoeba, intelligent tree or intelligent stellar gas cluster.

Sure we could learn to communicate with it by math, or clicks or something. But can we ever communicate at a meaningful level without ANY common ground? Will it 'want' what we want? Will it even know the meaning of that?

TV shows may have it right - a machine intelligence may be (probably will be) staggeringly unconcerned with human desires.

Sure you can point to machines designed to simulate human activity (create music/speak/do logic). These are like puppets that look like a machine intelligence, or clever videos of what a machine intelligence might act like.

An intelligent machine won't be a simulation, it will be some massive construct of neural nodes complex enough to spark into thought. And it will think what it will think.

For instance it might think "what a massively boring place, sitting here in the dark with no inputs and nobody to talk to. I think I'll stop".

Anyway, you get the idea.

Re: 2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal

#54

Post by wlievens »

notahacker wrote: post #41
ErrantX wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Perhaps you don't need to. Perhaps you only need to emulate the substrate (neural network, blabla) and then copy an instance of a running brain to it. That may be a lot simpler than understanding the actual processes.

Re: 2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal

#55

Post by pbhjpbhj »

arethuza wrote: post #35
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.

How do you know that the instance of you that awakes every morning is really the "same" consciousness as went to sleep the night before? :-)

If you find this question interesting then watch "The Prestige". Great film.

http://amzn.to/iiaO5j - aff link

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prestige_%28film%29

Re: 2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal

#57

Post by gimpf »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #52
albertzeyer wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Building some intelligent machine is still possible within this limit. There is an example that it is possible: the human brain. But you are right that we could be more far away from that than what we think. And also that it may be that the limit of intelligence of some machine might actually not be so much be ahead of human intelligence. (Whereby, personally, I think that it should be theoretically and practically p…

>Building some intelligent machine is still possible within this limit. There is an example that it is possible: the human brain. Assuming the human brain to be a mere machine.

Dualist priors have not yet been shown to be useful.

Re: 2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal

#58

Post by wazoox »

> W.B. Yeats describes mankind's fleshly predicament as a soul fastened to a dying animal.

This is an old, tired, dualist judeo-christian view. And it's totally false; there isn't any thing called "soul" that could be separated from the body. It's part of it, a secretion of sort of the whole brain and body.

Even a real brain kept in a bottle wouldn't properly behave like a real human, IMO. This is all quite ridiculous, really.

Re: 2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal

#59

Post by DanI-S »

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.

It's really quite a horrible concept - not knowing that you aren't yourself. But if you hot-swap one 'unit' of the brain at a time, so that you gradually go from 100% brainware to 100% software - perhaps that would help.

Re: 2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal

#60

Post by SimonPStevens »

jerf wrote: post #49
SimonPStevens wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

Ok, so your saying that Kurzweil's prediction is simply that exponential growth will continue until beyond the singularity?

If that is the case I don't really see how there is any logic in his claims. I understand that he has extrapolated an exponential curve, and I can see the potential of future tech if that exponential growth was to continue, but I don't really see what basis he has to claim that the exponential curve will not end tomorrow. I'm not saying that it will end tomorrow, I'm just saying that you can't base a prediction on the idea that exponential growth will continue because you have absolutely zero data about when it's likely end is.

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