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The Singularity is not coming

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Re: The Singularity is not coming

#51

Post by zokier »

vibrunazo wrote: post #47
harshreality wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

If that were true, how come humans are still superior in many (intelligence based) tasks? From games such as Go and Arimaa to more practical tasks such as laying out electronic parts on circuit boards (autorouting).

Mix in self-learning and generality, and I doubt that a better computer program could be programmed today.

Re: The Singularity is not coming

#52

Post by marvin »

vibrunazo wrote: post #47
harshreality wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't get your argument at all. As in, I'm not sure what you're trying to argue. If you agree that computers will soon be capable of everything a human brain does, and that the brain is just a machine that could eventually be copied and improved, how could there _not_ be tremendous and unpredictable changes to the world when it happens?

If humans create artificial minds that are able to operate on their own, what we decide are the important problems to work on could end up becoming a moot point. You can't really negotiate with someone who's a lot smarter than you (not more than a chimpanzee can negotiate with humans).

If you're criticizing philosophers and researchers for "dreaming" about these ideas, you might want to have a look at some of the thoughts around what would happen if we created self-improving, human-level artificial intelligence. The consequences are potentially catastrophic to human existence, and hence justifies some effort even if you think it is completely unlikely. And whether it is unlikely or not is subject to strong debate. Have a look at

http://singularity.org/research/

Re: The Singularity is not coming

#53

Post by marvin »

shin_lao wrote: post #23

Great article. I've always found the concept of singularity naive. Greatest discoveries haven't been done by the most intelligent persons. Science isn't just a question of intelligence or will, it's also a question of timing, luck and duration. Everything has a limit. Ants have limits. We have limits. And the supposed "all mighty AI" will have limits if it ever exists.

I posted this link somewhere else, but it's such a good read that I'll post it again.

http://singularity.org/research/

Even if you disagree with the ideas of what general artificial intelligence could do to the human existence on Earth and elsewhere, it is justified to spend some effort thinking about it. The potential consequences to human existence are all-encompassing. So when something is deemed a potential existential risk, it's worth thinking about.

If the current development in computing continues, I believe that superhuman artificial intelligence is inevitable. And that if we don't prepare for it properly, we might screw it up in a historical way.

Re: The Singularity is not coming

#54

Post by gd1 »

fchollet wrote: post #44
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).

Because the human brains can only communicate and acquire knowledge at a limited rate. This causes the "exponential decrease of discovery impact of each succeeding researcher" that the original post refers to, but he misses the point completely. We can't 'stand on the shoulders of giants' until we've climbed up there, slowly and painfully. An AI can just download the lot. And share any new discoveries with the hive mind.

Re: The Singularity is not coming

#55

Post by rsaarelm »

I'm not that much worried about whether or not there's an asymptote of diminishing returns for self-improving intelligence. I'm quite a bit worried about just how far away a genuinely self-improving intelligent system will move from the level of human capacity before it starts hitting the wall.

I think Kurzweil is mostly the one who keeps going on about literal unending exponential growth. Vinge's original singularity idea was more about things just becoming irreversibly incomprehensible for regular humans, since ultimately limited or not, self-improving intelligences are going to end operating on a level very distant from human thought.

Re: The Singularity is not coming

#56

Post by Anderkent »

rvkennedy wrote: post #49
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 - comput…

But computation doesn't improve the rate of computational progress.

As long as it's people developing computing devices, that holds. But when you have a machine that is capable of improving its own software, you get a self reinforcing loop where computation improves the rate of computational progress.

Re: The Singularity is not coming

#57

Post by Anderkent »

fchollet wrote: post #46
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 som…

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

Do you have any evidence this is a property of optimizing systems in general, as opposed to simply a limitation of human capabilities?

Re: The Singularity is not coming

#58

Post by [deleted] »

vibrunazo wrote: post #47
harshreality wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

[deleted]

Re: The Singularity is not coming

#59

Post by coldarchon »

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…

Absolutely right, as I pointed out below, the very young author obviously compares scaling to scientific progress. As we currently have no model in AI which could create a cognitive skill, his writing becomes obsolete and will be laughed at when we do.

Re: The Singularity is not coming

#60

Post by tommorris »

Okay, here's the thing. It's certainly possible that strong AI could exist. Pretty much the only way of finding out is by attempting to build it. If it's possible, we'll be able to build it eventually. If not, we won't. If the magical singularity happens, it'll flow naturally from the strong AI. And if it doesn't, it doesn't. And, well, if we get strong AI but no singularity, great, we still get strong AI and we can use it to do some very clever shit that makes the sort of things the AI community are doing now seem primitive.

Given this, I'm not sure why singularity promoters give that much of a shit whether people believe it. I'm certainly skeptical of it. Given I pretty much use a 40 year old text editor to write in a language that's about 20 years old and is just about approaching the discoveries that the Lispies made back in the 50s, I'm not sure what progress we're talking about. I write code that basically instructs a computer with pretty much the same level of semantic complexity as one does when giving instructions to a particularly stupid child.

But perhaps I've got this wrong. Perhaps the singularity will happen. I don't understand why the singularity promoters are so angry about people who are skeptical of their claims. While I was doing the rounds on Wikipedia a while back, I found this image...

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Singularity_Deniers_...

Have a look at the image description before I cleaned it up:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Singula...

Apparently, if someone tells me that a super-intelligent AI will create a brain many hundreds of times better than our own and then allow us to live forever and my reaction isn't an immediate "oh my god, you are so, so right!" then I'm a 'singularity denier', equivalent in status to a holocaust denier. If the singularity idea is pretty much bound to happen as a result of emergent technological progress or whatever, why is my doxastic consent such an important requirement for it coming about?

I freely admit I'm probably not as smart a guy as Ray Kurzweil. But let's not forget: the history of bizarre cults shows us that smart people can believe some very stupid things.

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