The Problem with his model is, that he assumes that he ignores the "shoulder of giants" effect in his model, since he assumes that a later researcher has the same number of points as the earlier, but only hard problems to solve. ( Perhaps I will extend his model a bit later.)
The Singularity is not coming
61–70 of 84 posts
Re: The Singularity is not coming
#62The 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…
And I'm pretty sure that the fewer papers your read the more likely you are to come up with something you think is new, but isn't.
Of course, depending on the context whether something is "new" or not might not matter, it certainly does in academic research, but if you are making stuff work it's less of a factor.
Re: The Singularity is not coming
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
OT Emacs clunkiness/outdated architecture...give me a break, minimal core with lisp interpreter on top giving programmable and extensible platform next to none is still what...30 years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.
I have yet to find anything vim can't do that I'd like it to do. Like most critics you only make vague statements. Anyway, the source is out there, if there really was a need for new features somebody would implement them. Hint, hint!
Re: The Singularity is not coming
#64The 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…
So designing the next generation of Intel chips using the latest Intel chips isn't "computation improving the rate of computational progress"?
Re: The Singularity is not coming
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Intelligence doesn't even have to feed on itself. Imagine a human-level hardware designing AI. As long as Moore's law applies, it can double its computational power every 18 subjective months. From our point of view, that's 18 months, then 9, then 4.5…
If Moore's law where unlimited, such an AI would have infinite computational power in 36 months, with absolutely no increase in actual intelligence. But of course Moore's law is limited. Still, we could expect quite a bit of progress from a mere AI hardware designer.
Re: The Singularity is not coming
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Intelligence doesn't even have to feed on itself. Imagine a human-level hardware designing AI. As long as Moore's law applies, it can double its computational power every 18 subjective months. From our point of view, that's 18 months, then 9, then 4.5… If Moore's law where unlimited, such an AI would have infinite computational power in 36 months, with absolutely no increase in actual intelligence. But of course Moor…
I do not believe that that is what Moore's Law means or how it works.
Perhaps I just mistook your meaning - what do 'subjective months' mean? Why do they mean that the doubling time starts halving?
Re: The Singularity is not coming
#67The 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…
Actually he misses a second point too ... the reason you don't see exponential growth in human-led research is that we each start out with "empty" brains. To become truly knowledgeable in a field may require a life-time.
I'm not arguing that the singularity is near either, but machines would have the advantage of creating offspring that are already as knowledgeable/intelligent as themselves. Something I couldn't do for my children.
Re: The Singularity is not coming
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Intelligence doesn't even have to feed on itself. Imagine a human-level hardware designing AI. As long as Moore's law applies, it can double its computational power every 18 subjective months. From our point of view, that's 18 months, then 9, then 4.5… If Moore's law where unlimited, such an AI would have infinite computational power in 36 months, with absolutely no increase in actual intelligence. But of course Moor…
This assertion is groundless. Why would Moore's law accelerate? In fact, Moore's law is currently decelerating and gains are increasingly harder to find. Further, Moore's law says nothing about computational speed, but only the density of transistors. These two are related but not identical.
Edit: also, from my understanding, the gains in transistor density largely depend on new discoveries in physics. Before a computer can aid in accelerating Moore's law it would need to be sufficiently advanced to generate new discoveries in physics, but at this point you'd have a computer smart enough that it Moore's law wouldn't matter much. Seems like putting the cart before the horse to me.
Re: The Singularity is not coming
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
So designing the next generation of Intel chips using the latest Intel chips isn't "computation improving the rate of computational progress"?
To increase "computational progress" on an exponential scale, the rate of improvement has to increase.
If the rate of improvement were constant, the progress would be linear.
In short, something is improving the rate (but it probably includes more designers and better methods, not just more complexity management).
Re: The Singularity is not coming
#70I 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…
This is actually under debate. There is disagreement among neuroscientists whether intelligence is a result of brain modularity (specific regions of the brains optimized for certain tasks), or due to brain size alone. All that said, I'm skeptical of the singularity since it assumes that a recursive process can continually improve intelligence without significant diminishing returns. The problem with this thinking is that it fails to take into account evolution. All this research into AI is based on the assumption that "intelligence" should be like human intelligence. But human intelligence has had several billion years to evolve and is highly optimized for our environment (actually our environment from several tens of thousands of years ago when we were hunter gatherers). It seems naive to me to assume that we are not nearing a local optimum in what is possible with human intelligence. I don't believe a singularity is possible because by recursively improving "intelligence" you will near the local optimum of that form of intelligence but that does not mean you can continue improving that intelligence indefinitely.