The Singularity is not coming • Hacker News Board

Re: The Singularity is not coming

#41

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Aug 10, 2012, 9:41 AM UTC

fchollet wrote: post #5

6ren wrote: post #4

This is a reasonably plausible argument for progress within fields and paradigm shifts; but consider between fields, and the rate of new field creation. To use the given examples, Newtonian physics, quantum physics and Information Theory began in 1687, 1930 and 1948. That seems quite accelerating (of course you'd need more complete stats to demonstrate this properly). BTW: I disagree that intelligence and imagination…

While I agree with you that the rate of paradigm shift increases over time, I argue that their average impact/scope decreases. Newtonian physics opened more room for technological progress than quantum mechanics, etc. Earliest inventions have the most impact (the invention of the scientific method having the most impact of all?). So my point is that if you look at paradigm shift rate not in volume but in impact, you'…

[deleted]

Re: The Singularity is not coming

#42

Post by bermanoid » Fri, Aug 10, 2012, 9:45 AM UTC

The author completely misses the point of these arguments.

This is not about science increasing the rate of scientific progress. It's about computation improving the rate of computational progress. Particularly, the "Singularity" is about that happening in a world where strong AI exists.

And I'm not even going to harp on the fact that the number of computations per second that we perform on this planet has been undoubtedly exponential at least for a while, because that's not the real point.

The real point is that like the author says, human creativity is still the driving force in computational advances, and human creativity can't be sped up by periodically doubling clock rates or core counts.

If it could? Those doublings would happen even quicker, and the exponential growth we've seen so far would be nothing.

This does, of course, require that you believe that strong AI is possible at all, and that the entire process of creativity could eventually be put into software. If you don't believe in that in the first place, then there's no point having the argument at all - you don't argue the details of a nuclear chain reaction with someone that doesn't believe in neutrons.

Re: The Singularity is not coming

#43

Post by paulsutter » Fri, Aug 10, 2012, 9:52 AM UTC

Linear increases in science can drive exponential increases in what's possible.

I remember computers of 30 and 40 years ago. Today everyone in the world has free access to supercomputers that translate languages and search petabytes of data (aka Google). We didn't need to revolutionize basic physics to get here from punched cards.

Expect a similar revolution in the next 30 to 40 years.

Re: The Singularity is not coming

#44

Post by fchollet » Fri, Aug 10, 2012, 9:59 AM UTC

bermanoid wrote: post #42

The author completely misses the point of these arguments. This is not about science increasing the rate of scientific progress. It's about computation improving the rate of computational progress. Particularly, the "Singularity" is about that happening in a world where strong AI exists. And I'm not even going to harp on the fact that the number of computations per second that we perform on this planet has been undou…

How is throwing more (truly intelligent) computers at the problem any different than throwing more human brains at it? It's not just computing power that had been exploding, it is also the number of people trying to crack the nut of AI (for instance).

Re: The Singularity is not coming

#45

Post by batgaijin » Fri, Aug 10, 2012, 9:59 AM UTC

m00natic wrote: post #37

batgaijin wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I mean when you look at some of the incredibly broken tools that we use today, it is a bit ridiculous: 1). Emacs/Vim are the popular hardcore/moddable editors, despite the severe clunkiness/outdated architecture 2). C/C++ has a huge mindshare despite the fact that it severely reduces the impact of the individual programmer 3). Proprietary tools are falling away, but their entrenched closed gardens are remaining…

OT Emacs clunkiness/outdated architecture...give me a break, minimal core with lisp interpreter on top giving programmable and extensible platform next to none is still what...30 years ahead of anything called "modern".

I'm not saying that there is something superior atm, I'm just saying it could be SO much better than what it is today.

Re: The Singularity is not coming

#46

Post by fchollet » Fri, Aug 10, 2012, 10:06 AM UTC

guelo wrote: post #29

The information revolution must be accelerating the speed of scientific discoveries. In the past scientists would make paradigm shifting discoveries that would be forgotten or that would be confined to a specific region. It would take other scientists centuries to rediscover them and build on top. Many discoveries come about by improving on and combining previous discoveries, so what needs to be improved to speed up…

You raise a very interesting point.

But I'm under the feeling that reality is much more complex: access to more information can as well inhibit creativity as it can inspire new discoveries.

I can't say I fully the relationship between the creative scientific process and information exchange/consumption, but I'm pretty sure that past a certain point, the more papers you read the less likely you are to come up with something new. At a macro scale, communication is definitely a driver of progress, but at a micro scale?...

Re: The Singularity is not coming

#47

Post by vibrunazo » Fri, Aug 10, 2012, 10:16 AM UTC

harshreality wrote: post #28

vibrunazo wrote: post #26

This seems like arguing with a door. The whole concept of the singularity is absurd. Taking your time to construct arguments of why such absurdity would happen slow instead of fast, if it happened. Is just like trying to come up with scientific explanations why unicorn poop couldn't be technically as magical as rainbows. Reminds me of those nerdy arguments we all had, debating whether superman's clothes would burn up…

That is like claiming the universe is more intelligent than we are because we could never hope to calculate one millisecond of what the universe does if we all had IQs of 200 and 15 billion years with pencil and paper. What computers do is not intellectual. Intelligence is probably just a stochastic random process of clawing one's way up a hill, but even with enormous computational power, it took the solar system 4.5…

That's obviously subject to whatever your definition of "intelligence" is. The only reason why you can even disagree, is because we don't have an objective definition. So we could argue forever and not get anywhere.

But what matters, is that at the end of the day. For almost any practical and objective definition of "human intelligence" that you might write down. I can write a computer program that will follow those specs and execute it better than a human being. Today. Fact is, humans are nothing but machines and our computers are already better than us in most tasks. Talking about the point which "computers overtake human intelligence" is dismissing the hundreds of different sub-fields in AI research which already got way past that point. Not only with better processing (as you imply), but also with better algorithms than us.

Or we might stick with our current subjective and useless definitions of the word. And keep dreaming about how would it be when we get to somewhere undefined.

Re: The Singularity is not coming

#48

Post by andreasvc » Fri, Aug 10, 2012, 10:25 AM UTC

ars wrote: post #39

joe_the_user wrote: post #38

I think the advocates of the singularity see it as coming from an explosion of the possibilities of technology rather than an explosion of science in general. Kurzweil himself mentions how to the average research scientist, science appears slow and linear (with jumps most coming when a scientist gets a different set of tools to work with). > Let’s have a hypothetical AI that researches artificial intelligence, and th…

You don't understand intelligence. Doubling the circuits doubles the speed of the intelligence, but it has no effect on it's quality . You are assuming the existence of not just an intelligent parallel algorithm but an infinitely scalable one (i.e. one that could actually take advantage of more circuits)! Because without that, you don't need to double the circuits - you could just give them more time. Concepts that a…

Given that intelligence is probabilistic and approximate, doubling the circuits would increase accuracy. I think it's pretty plausible that intelligence does work this way, since humans make mistakes all the time.

Re: The Singularity is not coming

#49

Post by rvkennedy » Fri, Aug 10, 2012, 10:50 AM UTC

bermanoid wrote: post #42

The author completely misses the point of these arguments. This is not about science increasing the rate of scientific progress. It's about computation improving the rate of computational progress. Particularly, the "Singularity" is about that happening in a world where strong AI exists. And I'm not even going to harp on the fact that the number of computations per second that we perform on this planet has been undou…

It's about computation improving the rate of computational progress

But computation doesn't improve the rate of computational progress. That's achieved by improvements in manufacturing. Computation does help a little, giving us better tools for chip design. But mainly it's manufacturing.

The only way for computational progress to exponentiate, past the limit of Moore's Law, is to use more physical resources - computers get literally bigger.

And so expensive that only the five richest crowned heads of Europe can afford them!

Re: The Singularity is not coming

#50

Post by BoldAsAnEagle » Fri, Aug 10, 2012, 10:55 AM UTC

He just downgraded "intelligence" and replaced it with "imagination" and his arguments are valid. However, an AI with imagionation, now thats something and still opens up possibility of singularity.