Because we still don’t truly understand the underpinnings of consciousness
Why general artificial intelligence will not be realized
211–220 of 403 posts
Re: Why general artificial intelligence will not be realized
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
A duck is an entire organism with a known genetic code, suspected lineage in the tree of life and defined characteristics. A brain is an organ within another known organism in a differing position in the tree of life with different characteristics. A computer is a device which takes in input via some means and uses input to transform elements that together represent its internal state based on input and prior interna…
Everything is impossible until proven otherwise. You imagine a 'thinking' machine all you want. Doesn't change to reality of the situation that no digital device comes close to thinking. Some find this frustrating. So, they reduce the idea of a brain to a digital computer. Ita a confusion of the Model with that being Modelled. A photo of you, is a representation -- or model -- of you. But, it would be silly to become…
> You imagine a 'thinking' machine all you want. Doesn't change to reality of the situation that no digital device comes close to thinking.
Doesn't it though. Someone from the 1800s would probably absolutely think it does. We have computers that can identify what is in a photo, computers that can do complex math problems (pretty sure historically, the ability to do logic was considered first and foremost what made humans intelligent and not simple "animals", its only recently with the rise of computers this has taken a back seat), computers that can translate between languages, etc. That's not the same as being human, there is no sense of self or independence of action (nor are we anywhere close to having that) but we've made amazing, almost unconcievable strives, in only 100 years. So i think its unfair to say computers dont think at all.
Re: Why general artificial intelligence will not be realized
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> Life in general and your brain in particular may very well be more than "just chemistry". We really don't know. That claim has roughly the same epistemological status as Last Thursdayism ("the world was created last Thursday in a state where we have memories and see evidence of past events but those events aren't actually real."). > What we do know at this point is that no amount of "just chemistry" has ever manage…
Emerging field of quantum biology if fairly new, there numerous processes in neural networks for which current understanding of chemistry and mathematics is not sufficient.
For example, how transfer of functions emerges after hemispherectomy (half a brain is removed), to best of my understanding is unknown.
Re: Why general artificial intelligence will not be realized
#214Here 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 furt…
Tacit knowledge is knowledge that results from adapting to experience, like learning to tie shoelaces with practice, rather than something like finding the derivative of sin(x) by the usual mathematical proof method (reasoning step by formal step). Every deep learning system has tacit knowledge: it knows a chair when it sees one but can't explain how it knows. It just adapted its connections to training until it got…
Computers can’t heal themselves. Our bodies do that on their own without conscious prompting.
Humans evolve the complexity of a computers electron states, not the computers own inherent properties. My use doesn’t force transistors to evolve into better transistors. It has no self regeneration.
You don’t see the issue in principle but here you have an article by an expert pointing them out.
Perhaps be a better listener?
A computer has observable, literal limitations relative to a humans mechanical functionality.
You can’t scrape away literal reality to arrive at some reductionist idea of what a consciousness is.
Our only known good model for a machine that can create our consciousness is us. It took billions of years of the universe churning at random to accidentally generate us. We have no clue how to replicate that scale.
A computer literally lacks a whole lot of literal information that’s embedded in the hardware and software of a person.
Watch this and tell me the last time your computer reconfigured it’s literal shape when you altered its electric field properties: https://youtu.be/RjD1aLm4Thg
There’s something to “life” we’ll never be able to jam into silicon.
Re: Why general artificial intelligence will not be realized
#215Embodiment being a killer feature for AGI seems weird to me. Not only is "what is a body" vague, but it is entirely possible to build a body. So why would it prevent AGI? We do know that embodiment is a sufficient condition for general intelligence: if we assume humans have general intelligence then it is clearly a sufficient condition. But the question of necessary is more interesting because we have to actually ask…
> We do know that embodiment is a sufficient condition for general intelligence: if we assume humans have general intelligence then it is clearly a sufficient condition.
I'm not sure what you mean by "sufficient condition" here. Consider:
"We do know that having a moustache is a sufficient condition for general intelligence: if we assume moustachioed humans have general intelligence then it is clearly a sufficient condition."
Re: Why general artificial intelligence will not be realized
#216I came to this article expecting a logical proof of why AI was impossible, but instead found the following tautological argument: hard AI, which I define as intelligence with tacit knowledge, which in turn I define as knowledge that cannot be ran in algorithms, is impossible to be ran in algorithms.
Disappointing.
My counterpoint: is there anything that cannot be ran in algorithms? The way I see it the only thing stopping me from simulating every atom in a brain is computational power.
Re: Why general artificial intelligence will not be realized
#217Any article making such a claim need to start with explaining what evidence they have that human brains are not computing devices that can be replicated or simulated. Because absent evidence that there is something fundamental preventing us from one day copying the structure of a human brain and ending up with a working device, whatever claims they make are hand-waving.
There is quite a bit of evidence that your brain is analog, not digital. There is lots of evidence that it is both chemical and electrical in nature And while it is capable of logic, it does not rely strictly on any specific form of logic. In other words, the only working models we have for "intelligence" are nothing like the silicon binary switches we are attempting to use to replicate it.
In addition to being able to digitally represent analog signals, there's also such a thing as analog computation, including electronic analog computation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_computer#Electronic_ana...
So if the brain is an analog computer, then it seems reasonable to believe that we might be able to someday construct an equivalent analog computer (or a digital equivalent thereof).
Re: Why general artificial intelligence will not be realized
#218If you accept Dreyfuss’ argument that a computer can’t acquire some kinds of knowledge without a body, there’s a fairly obvious workaround. Give it a robot body. And in fact, many research projects are doing this.
The Dreyfussians may retreat to their motte and say, well, a robot body can’t give it the experience of walking barefoot through the grass so it can’t be fully general because there’s something people know that it can’t.
But it’ll surely know things we can’t, and we’ll have to admit that humans don’t have fully general intelligence either. Wr just think we do because we can’t think of the ideas we can’t think.
Re: Why general artificial intelligence will not be realized
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
I contend the brain by definition is a computer, and so that any claim that we can not produce an artificial one implies that we'll forever be unable to replicate a process that is repeated over and over by nature through simple biochemical processes.
'>I contend the brain by definition is a computer, I contend the brain is by definition a duck. It's easy to redefine words.
The difference is that a brain is provably capable of computation, while a brain is not provably capable of flapping its wings and migrating between Canada and Mexico every year (without the help of the meatsuit it's driving, at least).
Re: Why general artificial intelligence will not be realized
#220Every pronouncement that AGI will NEVER be achieved is equivalent as saying that AGI does not exist in the universe. So, I guess this biological AGI entity writing this note does not exist.
Right. Because if a carbon based / biological machine like a human can be an AGI, what reason - in principle - is there to say that the same can't be done with a different (perhaps silicon centric) machine? To suggest otherwise feels, to me, like indulging in a form of mysticism which holds up human life as something being "beyond" science.
Or, at the very least, that we can't artificially create a carbon-based machine capable of general intelligence?
Like, even if there's something magical about neurons that can't be replicated through conventional electronics, we could certainly put a bunch of actual neurons in chips and use those instead.