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Why general artificial intelligence will not be realized

nature.com

131–140 of 403 posts

Re: Why general artificial intelligence will not be realized

#131
Here is, to me, the relevant line:

"Hubert Dreyfus, who argued that computers, who have no body, no childhood and no cultural practice, could not acquire intelligence at all. One of Dreyfus’ main arguments was that human knowledge is partly tacit, and therefore cannot be articulated and incorporated in a computer program. "

I have not read the rest of the article but in the introduction it's stated:

"The article further argues that this is in principle impossible, and it revives Hubert Dreyfus’ argument that computers are not in the world."

Wiktionary defines tacit as "Not derived from formal principles of reasoning" [1].

So the main argument is that humans have intelligence that is impossible to express through reason or codification. In other words, humans have a literal soul, divorced from physical world, that cannot be expressed in our physical world thus making any endeavour to create artificial intelligence impossible.

This is a dualist line of reasoning and, in my opinion, is nothing more than theology dressed up in philosophy.

I would much rather the author just flat out say they are a dualist or that they reject the Church-Turing thesis.

Re: Why general artificial intelligence will not be realized

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is "religious" is this inclination to treat human intelligence as this magical thing that works outside the laws of nature, as if our neurons and our brain were something other than just chemistry doing very complex things. That would be quite an extraordinary claim that requires equally extraordinary evidence.

Life in general and your brain in particular may very well be more than "just chemistry". We really don't know. What we do know at this point is that no amount of "just chemistry" has ever managed to create even the most rudimentary form of "life" from inert chemicals. And the only working models we have for "intelligence" at this point are inextricably bound to life.

No amount of "just chemistry" has yet managed to create...

Keep in mind that no amount of rocketeering has ever put a man on Mars, but that hardly constitutes a proof, or even serious evidence, that it is impossible.

Arguments from ignorance are a terrible thing.

Re: Why general artificial intelligence will not be realized

#134
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely the burden of proof is on someone claiming something is impossible? I skimmed the article but I didn't see any support for his argument beyond pointing to the limitations of existing technology, and asserting that these limits were insurmountable.

>Surely the burden of proof is on someone claiming something is impossible? You can't prove a negative in this sense. In general, we know things are possible... but we never know if things are impossible. And, don't call me surely.

That's certainly not the case. We can and absolutely have proven things to be impossible.

Re: Why general artificial intelligence will not be realized

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We know that machines with AGI are possible - humans are such machines. Maybe you could discuss whether classical computers could achieve AGI, but I think overall the quest is to build machines with AGI, not necessarily in the form of classical computers.

> humans are such machines. Humans are animals. Part of the paper defends the notion that a lot of human intelligence is tacit based on being embodied in the world as a living organism. The idea that humans are biological robots is only one that came about as metaphor when we created machines and some similarities were noted.

Are quadriplegic people "human"?

Re: Why general artificial intelligence will not be realized

#136
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is like saying CD players will never be as good as vinyl record players because the first use digital signals (rational numbers) and the second analogue (real numbers).

My audiophile friends would vehemently agree with this statement :)

People who vehemently agree that vinyl is better than digital audio are a big part of the reason "audiophile" is basically derogatory nowadays. Reasons being:

- Vinyl gets dust and scratches that degrade signal.

- Dragging a needle along a surface is an inconsistent and limited mechanism for signal transfer.

- Vinyls are always derived from digital files these days anyway! Except for pre-digital prints, studio rate digital is as "pure" as it gets.

P.S. Tube amps are not better than chip amps either, it's a complete myth. Every measurement a tube amp does well at is beatable with a cheaper chip amp design. People think we can do 10 gigabit Ethernet and 4g LTE radio bandwidth with chips, but not accurately control a speaker producing audible frequencies? Please.

Audiophile products have a weird way of capturing people's hearts despite having no merit. I think it's partly because people hear their favorite music through a device and misplace their feelings for the music onto the device, and partly because they are biased towards rationalizing purchases even when they've been conned by some pseudoscience or empty marketing.

Re: Why general artificial intelligence will not be realized

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is "religious" is this inclination to treat human intelligence as this magical thing that works outside the laws of nature, as if our neurons and our brain were something other than just chemistry doing very complex things. That would be quite an extraordinary claim that requires equally extraordinary evidence.

I'm missing a step. Is there a proof that all nature can be simulated with binary logic?

If you agree that the universe is governed by the laws of quantum mechanics, that these laws are local, and that any given region of the universe can be described with a finite dimensional Hilbert space (informally speaking, it contains a finite amount of information, which is implied by the Bekenstein bound), then yes. And of course there are some theories where these assumptions don't hold where the answer is still yes. See this paper for more details: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1102.1612.pdf

(There are a few more technicalities which amount to forcing the simulator to solve an uncomputable puzzle before we tell them the laws. Let M be a turning machine that whose halting behaviour is undecidable. Even a spin-1/2 system might be "uncomputable" if all I tell you is that its Hamiltonian is (1 0; 0 1) if M halts and (1 0; 0 2) otherwise. Since a spin-1/2 system is one of the most blatantly computable things out there, this objection doesn't have much force.)

Re: Why general artificial intelligence will not be realized

#138
post #33

This article seems to be yet another long-winded attempt to say that human beings have some sort of "soul" or "vital essence" that computers don't, but since those ideas are out of vogue, it uses obfuscated language to make the same point without explicitly saying it. See: > which have allegedly shown that our decisions are not the result of “some mysterious free will”, but the result of “millions of neurons calculat…

It always mystifies me to what extent people insist on trying to hold on to this fantasy of free will, while remaining unable to define free will in a way that does not devolve to "magic" or some attempt to obscure a deterministic description behind smoke and mirrors. At least some of the latter (e.g. a portion of compatibilists etc.) will if pressed admit that their "free will" is an effect or illusion of mind layer…

What is determinism? Something just like a single play in a game of pool? Or could it include all of the history of a person and all of the biology, chemistry, and physics that keeps them upright and existing? How much of that information as amenable to "deterministic description"?

Take care that your "determinism" isn't just smoke and mirrors, too.

Re: Why general artificial intelligence will not be realized

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is "religious" is this inclination to treat human intelligence as this magical thing that works outside the laws of nature, as if our neurons and our brain were something other than just chemistry doing very complex things. That would be quite an extraordinary claim that requires equally extraordinary evidence.

I'm missing a step. Is there a proof that all nature can be simulated with binary logic?

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "binary logic," but there is the Church-Turing-Deutsch principle which states that a "universal computer" (essentially a working quantum computer) can simulate all physical processes. But I suspect it's not a "proof" that would satisfy skeptics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church%E2%80%93Turing%E2%80%93...

Re: Why general artificial intelligence will not be realized

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we're successfully simulating the surface level of it, the underlying mechanism is (imho) totally irrelevant to the user. If general intelligence is happening, does it really matter if the underlying mechanism is neurons, or transistors, or vacuum tubes?

The surface level of intelligence, not the biological implementation. Chess and Go programs have a surface level understanding of board games.

Here's the fun philosophical question: Do you have a below-surface level understanding of anything? I mean, sure you know that if you do this, something else does that, but do your really understand?
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