Leading Neuroscientist Says Kurzweil Singularity Prediction A “Bunch Of Hot Air” • Hacker News Board

Re: Leading Neuroscientist Says Kurzweil Singularity Prediction A “Bunch Of Hot Air”

#41

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Mar 10, 2013, 10:53 PM UTC

pwny wrote: post #19

diminoten wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're saying is merely postulation, it's not "demonstrably" true, not to mention your use of the term "impractical" is probably the most misleading use of that word I've read today. You're writing off thousands of years of philosophy and dozens of years of experimental results in maybe a paragraph, if I'm being generous.

It actually IS demonstrably true that the brain is made of atoms. That makes it a quantum system, which our modern physics tells us how to simulate. The use of the term "impractical" here refers to the fact that we don't have quantum computers and that we don't have the computing power required to simulate such a large quantum system. I'd say dismissing thousands of years of philosophy here is relevant, since it was…

[deleted]

Re: Leading Neuroscientist Says Kurzweil Singularity Prediction A “Bunch Of Hot Air”

#42

Post by joe_the_user » Sun, Mar 10, 2013, 10:56 PM UTC

blackhole wrote: post #6

The part of the article that bothers me here the most is a leading nueroscientist asserting that the brain is not computable. That is demonstrably false: The brain is a quantum system, just like everything else in the universe. All quantum systems containing n qubits can be simulated by 2^n classical bits. It may very well be impractical to compute a decent sized brain, but that's still technically computable , which…

Technically, you'd have to say that brain's output is combination of computable system and a perfect random noise source.

That is because a simple source of quantum noise should not be computable. Any computable pseudo-random noise generator produces strings of digit with asymptotically constant Kolmagorov complexity while the Kolmagorov complexity of a true random number generator goes to infinity.

All that said, the person is article is certainly overreaching to imply we can know the brain definitely isn't computable. Clearly he does have any kind of knowledge that would tell him that. This might enough to say since the rest of his argument seems to hinge on this.

Re: Leading Neuroscientist Says Kurzweil Singularity Prediction A “Bunch Of Hot Air”

#43

Post by michaelwww » Sun, Mar 10, 2013, 10:58 PM UTC

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #17

When Newton came up with his universal law of gravitation, he also made an interesting observation. He had no idea why gravity worked the way it did, he could only model its behavior numerically. It's been over 300 years and we're still trying to figure out exactly how gravity works. But in a way it doesn't matter: his law has given humanity tremendous abilities it didn't have before. When Deep Blue won the Jeopardy…

Kurzweil is saying much more. In The Age of Spiritual Machines he states "Artificial Intelligences claim to be conscious and openly petition for recognition of the fact. Most people admit and accept this new truth." What cluster of running software by which algorithms produces this consciousness 16 years from now?

Re: Leading Neuroscientist Says Kurzweil Singularity Prediction A “Bunch Of Hot Air”

#44

Post by joe_the_user » Sun, Mar 10, 2013, 11:01 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #32

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #17

When Newton came up with his universal law of gravitation, he also made an interesting observation. He had no idea why gravity worked the way it did, he could only model its behavior numerically. It's been over 300 years and we're still trying to figure out exactly how gravity works. But in a way it doesn't matter: his law has given humanity tremendous abilities it didn't have before. When Deep Blue won the Jeopardy…

The "singularity" is never going to happen because it assumes intelegence is a single thing that can be increased with more processing power and better algorithms. Completely ignoring things like information theory, over fitting, insanity, training data, and chaos theory. We can and probably will build reasonably general AI, but you far more likely to see each generation of AI being an ever smaller improvement than a…

Suppose one has the means to build a flexible General AI with modern silicon technology. How could this not result in a thing whose abilities couldn't then be continuously increased at the rate regular silicon technology increased?

The whole "diminishing returns will stop us" just seems like a comforting fairy tale for those who don't want to think about the consequences (which I suspect a bit of thought does show won't be as rosy as Kurzweill imagines).

Edit: Hardware progress is still mostly following "Moore's Law". The only that's not increasing is processor speed. But if we build a "reasonably general AI", how could that box's capacities not be increased by tightly integration with other similarly intelligent boxes?

Re: Leading Neuroscientist Says Kurzweil Singularity Prediction A “Bunch Of Hot Air”

#45

Post by reasonattlm » Sun, Mar 10, 2013, 11:01 PM UTC

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #17

When Newton came up with his universal law of gravitation, he also made an interesting observation. He had no idea why gravity worked the way it did, he could only model its behavior numerically. It's been over 300 years and we're still trying to figure out exactly how gravity works. But in a way it doesn't matter: his law has given humanity tremendous abilities it didn't have before. When Deep Blue won the Jeopardy…

I'd wager against that incremental model.

I'd say that strong artificial intelligence is far more likely to happen via bottom-up modeling of the existing human brain as a starting point. The computational capacity for reductionist simulations that will exist probably 20 years from now, and as computational capacity increases those simulations start to become emulations. I don't expect to see massive gains over that time in the other way of doing it.

Once you have crude human brain models, a lot of very unethical things will start to happen in the course of further development. (e.g. countless deaths of intelligent beings if you're in the continuity identity boat, and probably a lot of unavoidable pain and suffering regardless of your take on identity). That seems hard to prevent given the enormous advantages that will accrue as a result; there is a strong incentive for people to adopt the pattern identity point of view so as to justify what they are going to do with mind copies in the course of development.

The important point is that once you have human brain models, from there the path to many different forms of strong artificial intelligence is just a matter of iterating those models. This seems far more likely to produce results than constructing new forms of intelligence progressively and de novo.

Re: Leading Neuroscientist Says Kurzweil Singularity Prediction A “Bunch Of Hot Air”

#46

Post by vacri » Sun, Mar 10, 2013, 11:02 PM UTC

blackhole wrote: post #6

The part of the article that bothers me here the most is a leading nueroscientist asserting that the brain is not computable. That is demonstrably false: The brain is a quantum system, just like everything else in the universe. All quantum systems containing n qubits can be simulated by 2^n classical bits. It may very well be impractical to compute a decent sized brain, but that's still technically computable , which…

You're being overly tight with your definition. We still don't completely know how the brain works, and while we have a top-down discipline and a bottom-up discipline, we still haven't figured out how they meet in the middle - and the fundamental point he's making is that there's nothing to say that we will get those algorithms. Until we get to that stage, regardless of whether it's theoretically feasible if you had a magic emulation tool, it's not feasible because we don't have the algorithms to emulate. And if we get to that stage, 'we made a brain emulator!' is one of the smaller stories, since things like 'we have answered the questions of whether free will and the soul exist' will be far more profound.

Re: Leading Neuroscientist Says Kurzweil Singularity Prediction A “Bunch Of Hot Air”

#47

Post by alexvr » Sun, Mar 10, 2013, 11:05 PM UTC

We're just waiting for a really smart simulation programmer with access to a super-powerful computer to create a simulation of a small, earth-like world so we can watch as accelerated evolution creates some human-like (or not) being with a similar brain. I think we can write an algorithm for an AI that can pass the Turing test, but I think serious AI that will precipitate the singularity will come as a result of evolutionary algorithms and very powerful computers.

Re: Leading Neuroscientist Says Kurzweil Singularity Prediction A “Bunch Of Hot Air”

#48

Post by s_baby » Sun, Mar 10, 2013, 11:07 PM UTC

blackhole wrote: post #6

The part of the article that bothers me here the most is a leading nueroscientist asserting that the brain is not computable. That is demonstrably false: The brain is a quantum system, just like everything else in the universe. All quantum systems containing n qubits can be simulated by 2^n classical bits. It may very well be impractical to compute a decent sized brain, but that's still technically computable , which…

>Yes, you can. It will be impossibly huge and slow, but you can.

A major problem is many of the brain's processes use "chaotic models". These are what we associate with the "butterfly effect" where extremely tiny deviations from the true value make the model diverge from actual behavior. Most models tend to have some tiny deviation from the true value but it usually doesn't matter. In this case it does, and it may be an insurmountable problem.

The brain might be computable but that doesn't mean a classic turing machine would work. Maybe one day we can build a biological protein-based computer that shares the "irreducible properties" of brains, but then all we've really built is a brain.

Re: Leading Neuroscientist Says Kurzweil Singularity Prediction A “Bunch Of Hot Air”

#49

Post by Retric » Sun, Mar 10, 2013, 11:14 PM UTC

joe_the_user wrote: post #44

Retric wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "singularity" is never going to happen because it assumes intelegence is a single thing that can be increased with more processing power and better algorithms. Completely ignoring things like information theory, over fitting, insanity, training data, and chaos theory. We can and probably will build reasonably general AI, but you far more likely to see each generation of AI being an ever smaller improvement than a…

Suppose one has the means to build a flexible General AI with modern silicon technology. How could this not result in a thing whose abilities couldn't then be continuously increased at the rate regular silicon technology increased? The whole "diminishing returns will stop us" just seems like a comforting fairy tale for those who don't want to think about the consequences (which I suspect a bit of thought does show wo…

When a dumb AI comes up with the correct answer using a smart AI is not going to give you a better answer the old one is still correct. However, it could give you a wrong answer for whatever reason. As to diminishing returns, there is a window between a self driving car that's better than people and a 'perfect' self driving car but clearly that's a diminishing return situation, because it was giving you the perfect answer 99.99% of the time there is not a lot of room for improvement.

PS: S curves often look like exponential curves but the real world has real limits so you can't have unlimited exponential progression of any type period end of story. And it looks like we are on the down slope when it comes to transistors. http://www.extremetech.com/computing/123529-nvidia-deeply-un... "Nvidia deeply unhappy with TSMC, claims 20nm essentially worthless" And that's for video cards which are embarrassingly parallel.

Re: Leading Neuroscientist Says Kurzweil Singularity Prediction A “Bunch Of Hot Air”

#50

Post by Filligree » Sun, Mar 10, 2013, 11:15 PM UTC

jamestc wrote: post #29

nawitus wrote: post #5

>“Fallacy is what people are selling: that human nature can be reduced to [something] that [a] computer algorithm can run! This is a new church!” Actually, the "new church" is that human nature is something more than physics. Even if Kurzweil is wrong in his predictions, certainly this neuroscientist is also wrong with his metaphysical beliefs that the brain is something more than a mere "machine".

He doesn't suggest that human nature is more than physics, he is saying that consciousness isn't computable. If neural subsystems are a hierarchically arranged and internally generated chaotic dynamic activity, there is the problem of long-term predictions and causal inference. >It may seem paradoxical that a deterministic phenomenon is inherently unpredictable, but in systems that exhibit chaotic behavior, small unc…

> Chaotic activity

Well yes, the brain is demonstrably chaotic.

Why does this matter? If you run a simulation of the brain, you'll soon get different output than the original would output, but does that mean the simulation isn't working?

It'll still be intelligent behaviour, even if it isn't the exact same behaviour. It'll still be the same person; if such behavioural differences mattered, then turning up the temperature slightly would make you a different person. Thermal noise bubbles up to the macroscopic level all the time.