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An ant colony has memories its individual members don’t have (2019)

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Re: An ant colony has memories its individual members don’t have (2019)

#31

Post by darwinreally »

lopmotr wrote: post #13

The safe existence of corporations suggests to me that the popular fear of AGI taking over and destroying humans is unrealistic. Corporations are like giant powerful AGI machines with the single purpose of making money for their shareholders no matter the consequences. They do become a dangerous threat to humans if left unchecked but we've developed systems to keep them under control.

>They do become a dangerous threat to humans if left unchecked but we've developed systems to keep them under control.

East India Company begs to differ.

Re: An ant colony has memories its individual members don’t have (2019)

#33

Post by simiones »

salawat wrote: post #19
lopmotr wrote: post #13

The safe existence of corporations suggests to me that the popular fear of AGI taking over and destroying humans is unrealistic. Corporations are like giant powerful AGI machines with the single purpose of making money for their shareholders no matter the consequences. They do become a dangerous threat to humans if left unchecked but we've developed systems to keep them under control.

>Corporations are like giant powerful AGI machines with the single purpose of making money for their shareholders no matter the consequences. That is patently wrong. A corporation exists to distribute risk, and acommplish a task, ideally in a way that creates value for backers, but it is not a given that all profit creating avenues of behavior are desired or worth the egregious cost in negative externalities, or even…

> it is not a given that [...] a corporation must generate profit

I think that you are technically right, in that there can exist not-for-profit corporations. But for-profit corporations, which is what most people think about when they say "corporation" are generally legally required to put profit above any other value, assuming they are operating legally.

I completely agree with you that this is not a necessary way of organizing human society, and we are seeing more and more that the current for-profit system is disastrous for the environment and for society in general - especially given the inefficiency of regulation that you also mention.

Re: An ant colony has memories its individual members don’t have (2019)

#36

Post by mFixman »

Yesterday there was a link in HN regarding artificial intelligence, and a user raised an interesting question: if a ML algorithm can be considered conscious, could a group of people doing the equivalent calculations by hand be the same?

I think that ant example answers that question with a strong "yes".

Re: An ant colony has memories its individual members don’t have (2019)

#38

Post by cdo256 »

koonsolo wrote: post #22
hansbo wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Main takeaway, very interesting analogy. Ant colonies are great examples of complex systems with emergent large-scale behavior. Indeed the same could be said about networks of neurons. Interesting to think of an ant colony as the sum of oscillations of signals. Indeed. I've long thought that an ant colony should be seen as a single individual, rather than a group. One part which can procreate, like the reproductive…

I was going to say you can also look at a country like this, with roads as veins, military as white blood cells, scientists/universities for brains, etc. But my theory falls apart with the reproduction system. We don't really reproduce other 'countries'. While with ant colonies, a single entity produces all the "cells", and also all the "embryos" to start their own ant colonies. In that sense an ant colony uses asexu…

In some ways that's what collonialism is. It doesn't happen as much these days but if/when we start colonizing other planets, that would be a form of countries (or unions) reproducing.

Re: An ant colony has memories its individual members don’t have (2019)

#39

Post by andersonvieira »

koonsolo wrote: post #22
hansbo wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Main takeaway, very interesting analogy. Ant colonies are great examples of complex systems with emergent large-scale behavior. Indeed the same could be said about networks of neurons. Interesting to think of an ant colony as the sum of oscillations of signals. Indeed. I've long thought that an ant colony should be seen as a single individual, rather than a group. One part which can procreate, like the reproductive…

I was going to say you can also look at a country like this, with roads as veins, military as white blood cells, scientists/universities for brains, etc. But my theory falls apart with the reproduction system. We don't really reproduce other 'countries'. While with ant colonies, a single entity produces all the "cells", and also all the "embryos" to start their own ant colonies. In that sense an ant colony uses asexu…

I'm not sure about ants, but with bees the males generally come from other colonies. A princess mating with males from the same colony may cause problems in the offspring.

Re: An ant colony has memories its individual members don’t have (2019)

#40

Post by dragonwriter »

koonsolo wrote: post #22
hansbo wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Main takeaway, very interesting analogy. Ant colonies are great examples of complex systems with emergent large-scale behavior. Indeed the same could be said about networks of neurons. Interesting to think of an ant colony as the sum of oscillations of signals. Indeed. I've long thought that an ant colony should be seen as a single individual, rather than a group. One part which can procreate, like the reproductive…

I was going to say you can also look at a country like this, with roads as veins, military as white blood cells, scientists/universities for brains, etc. But my theory falls apart with the reproduction system. We don't really reproduce other 'countries'. While with ant colonies, a single entity produces all the "cells", and also all the "embryos" to start their own ant colonies. In that sense an ant colony uses asexu…

> But my theory falls apart with the reproduction system. We don't really reproduce other 'countries'.

Sure we do. The UK has a whole lot of offspring, for instance.

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