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Embodiment is indispensable for AGI

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Re: Embodiment is indispensable for AGI

#81

Post by notahacker »

tshaddox wrote: post #52
K0SM0S wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no asking, let alone answering this question beyond mere speculations, until we've defined "subjective experience" in objective terms — i.e. positively provable, measurable in some unambiguous way (not merely inferred). That is the hard problem. Solving it might require reframing the problem such that this dichotomy isn't even relevant anymore (like say electromagnetic information isn't "opposed" or "dual" or…

It strikes me as odd to start from the position "we declare this thing to undeniably exist" and then spend generations trying to spit out even one sentence describing what evidence or explanation for its existence might even plausibly look like.

Can't speak for other humans of course, but I'm more certain my sensory experiences exist than anything else, to the point searching for an evidence base for their existence or concluding they didn't exist unless explained would just be weird. I'm also certain my sensory experiences are not identical to attempts to quantify them or describe them in language or interpretive dance (philosophers struggling to define and articulate things even at high levels of abstraction is weak evidence in favour of qualia, since the defining aspect of qualia is its the portion of human brain state that can't be communicated). The alternative: that its a practical possibility to translate all parts of my sensory experiences into data which can be transmitted and parsed in exactly the same way by other minds feels like the proposition needs some evidence or justification [beyond "Your brain is composed of atoms. Other atoms exist"]

Seems to me that the bafflement I'm experiencing at people doubting human sensory experience is the real bit, and the neural network that might be able to perfectly replicate my bafflement in silicon is the purely hypothetical construct.

Re: Embodiment is indispensable for AGI

#82

Post by Gatsky »

programmarchy wrote: post #53
Gatsky wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps the right thing to do is place an AGI into a simulated world and observe its behaviour over (accelerated) eons, to understand its true nature. Perhaps that’s what our creator is doing to us.

This sounds like a wise thing to do, although to play devil’s advocate, if the AGI is hyper intelligent then it may be able to detect it’s inside a simulation and conceal any malicious intentions it may have.

I think one could make a provably water tight simulation. Of course an AGI would realise it could be in a simulation, just as we have.

Re: Embodiment is indispensable for AGI

#83

Post by fatherzine »

teraflop wrote: post #79
melony wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do AGIs dream of crystal nights? Greg Egan is calling and he wants his simulated worlds back!

For those who don't get the reference: A significant plot point in one of Egan's early (and excellent) novels, Permutation City , involves creating an accelerated, simulated world containing unicellular life, and waiting for it to evolve sentience through natural selection. Years later, Egan came to the conclusion that even if it was possible to perform such an experiment: > I realised that anyone who actually did th…

Rather nihilistic perspective. There is a counterbalancing force, it's called "love", and our ancestors perhaps knew how to find it better than us, hyperstimulated beings enmeshed in an artificial environment.

A couple of arbitrary references:

https://www.vintag.es/2017/08/candid-shots-show-victorian-co...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four#Plot

Re: Embodiment is indispensable for AGI

#84

Post by fatherzine »

olalonde wrote: post #64
afarrell wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not if there are sufficient incentives to defect from the team trying to develop AGI and sufficient memetic defenses against someone doing so for nationalistic reasons.

Einstein developed his groundbreaking theories while working as a clerk in the Swiss patent office. Information and education today are even more accessible than it was back then. If research is banned from universities and companies, someone will eventually discover AGI in their basement.

Not necessarily. It's likely the energy budget to build AGI from scratch vastly exceeds the reach of your average hobbyist.

Re: Embodiment is indispensable for AGI

#86

Post by UmbertoNoEco »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #62
UmbertoNoEco wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's trivial to give a regular CPU better sensing than you in dozens of variables (pressure, temperature, voltage, CO concentration, etc), so your point is rather weak.

I absolutely agree. You can, and better than humans. Not only better for any one sense, but also more senses than humans have. But that isn't what Isinlor was talking about. They said "moving electrons around" within the normal CPU circuitry as if that was the same as actuators controlling the external world. It's not.

Moving electrons in silicon circuits = Moving K+ and Na+ ions in cells. Same principle. There is nothing inherently special, sacred or non-physical about our circuits. They are very energy efficient (compared to current standards), highly parallel and it is a kluge hard to reverse-engineer but other than that they are sensors, processors and actuators. This blueprint is universal, trivially so.

Re: Embodiment is indispensable for AGI

#87

Post by in3d »

olalonde wrote: post #76
tshaddox wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It strikes me as odd to start from the position "we declare this thing to undeniably exist" and then spend generations trying to spit out even one sentence describing what evidence or explanation for its existence might even plausibly look like.

I know it's a bit far fetched but I'd go as far as to say that, by Occam's razor, the conscious experience does not exist. A world where the "conscious experience" does not exist would be indistinguishable from our world; ergo, the "conscious experience" does not exist.

A world where nothing but conscious experience exists and what you think as the world is simulated would be indistinguishable from your experience. Ergo, the “real world” does not exist.

Re: Embodiment is indispensable for AGI

#88

Post by olalonde »

tomcatfish wrote: post #77
olalonde wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't possibly know. Just as you can't possibly know if anyone else experiences a subjective experience or if you're the only one who does. In practice, it is advisable to act as if agents who behave as if they had a subjective experience really do (people, AGIs, animals, etc.). Related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie

The concept of a philosophical zombie is outright incoherent under most formulations. The argument runs "What if everything was exactly like a universe where everyone had a mind except that no one had a mind?" The answer is that one of these things is true: * P-zombies would write IDENTICAL papers about how they experience qualia but p-zombie land wouldn't * The mind has some effect on the universe you can detect, so…

The p-zombie thought experiment pre-supposes or rather, defines, consciousness as being non-physical. If it were physical, the two worlds would obviously be distinguishable. My take-away from it is that the p-zombie world is simply our world. The theory that "a non-physical consciousness exists" can't be tested and is therefore a bad theory.

Re: Embodiment is indispensable for AGI

#89

Post by mkaic »

fatherzine wrote: post #5

Correct. Without real stakes, no real intelligence. Now why on Earth would anyone want to build an embodied AGI, beats me. Actually, it doesn't beat me, it's the age old foolish pride that we'll be able to control our creation. We are not Gods, we won't. There should be international treaties with teeth to ban A(G)I research, like we do for uranium enrichment or (to a lesser extent) for gain of function research. Wha…

AGI is like the nuclear bomb in more ways than one. It has the capacity to end the world, or start research that ends up making the world a utopia. It's also inevitable like the nuclear bomb -- no international treaty could have stopped the Manhattan Project, because it was seen as a moral imperative to those involved that they continue their research and create the bomb before someone else did. The same principle applies to AGI. If principled people don't invent AGI first, that means unprincipled people will, which could spend the end of the entire world.

Re: Embodiment is indispensable for AGI

#90

Post by andrewflnr »

dinosaurdynasty wrote: post #73
Karellen wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternatively, we are analogue beings made up of systems that appear to be best described by chaotic continuous non-linear math, and digital computers can roughly simulate physics to a given level of precision, which can be as fine as you care to make it… at the cost of ever increasing processing requirements. And the amount of physics involved in simulating a single human cell, like a neuron, is already vast. Whethe…

Who says computers have to be digital? Analog computers are already a thing.

The preceding discussion was specifically about "a CPU". Analog computers are specifically excluded.

If, despite that, you're trying to simulate an analog entity with an analog computer, or build any analog AGI, the question arises whether it's possible to build one any simpler or faster than existing biological computers, e.g. humans. If no, then why bother?

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