"Elon Musk made the electric car cool.
Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook.
Ashton Kutcher portrayed Apple founder Steve Jobs in a movie."
Which one of these things is not like the others?
Zuckerberg, Musk Invest in Artificial-Intelligence Company Vicarious
91–100 of 158 posts
Re: Zuckerberg, Musk Invest in Artificial-Intelligence Company Vicarious
#92I read/markered "On Intelligence" on my train commute to work and have scribbled a bunch of notes in the book. Pretty interesting and I like the basic idea of the memory-prediction framework, invariant representations, "melodies of patterns", focus on neocortex and the whole same general algorithm for all senses. I haven't had the time to research how far the general idea has gone or if it is relevant at all but the…
>I also found the random remark of "consciousness = what it feels like to have a neocortex" interesting. So there's a way it feels to not have a neocortex? Doesn't feeling anything imply you're conscious, which means you don't need a neocortex to be conscious?
An insect "feels" pain. It doesn't however feel retrospective pain, and it doesn't feel the past in the same way we do.
Having a neocortex is like having a 6th sense.
Our taste, smell, hearing, sight, and feeling neurons are all indirectly fed into our brain. With a neocortex, that input is also fed in. It's our "consciousness" feeling.
I hope that explains the confusion.
Re: Zuckerberg, Musk Invest in Artificial-Intelligence Company Vicarious
#93Call it what it is, an expert system, market research, a database of decisions/observations. Real "artificial intelligence" only exists in science fiction, in the minds of children playing with toys. Your computer (doll) won't ever love you back or have any awareness or understanding no matter how bad you want it to. It's a cool sounding buzzword for marketing, but if there's any intelligence here it's coming from a…
This idea is absurd which I believe arises from a certain type of perspective that humanity needs to go beyond. Humanity needs to be less caged in perception. Let me expound on a point of view that maybe different to what see.
To separate matter, and mind is a paradoxical argument, because they're both of the same thing. Going back to the old idea of the fallen tree, if there's no mind then matter does not exist, and if matter doesn't exist then mind can not arise.
To put in other terms, if there's nothing receiving the projection, then what is the projection projecting on? Projection, and reception are another way of looking at mind, and matter. Mind being reception, matter being projection.
So going by that logic, and assuming that we're all made of matter, we can say that matter itself is both projection, and reception. So if matter is both projection, and reception, then what does that mean? Are we all "just" matter? Yes. Exactly.
But the argument isn't whether or not we're made of matter. I think we all agree that we're made of matter. I think the argument is that we humans share a certain inexorable feeling of qualia that arises from being human. Yes that's it. It's that qualia that distinguishes us from the rest of everything, except...
The problem is that qualia arises from our material form. Of course assuming that everything is matter, and the idea of the eternal soul, or other such argument, is false. Then that means qualia itself is matter.
Ok. What the hell am I getting at?
Maybe matter is more complex, more interesting than we perceive. Maybe matter itself is "intelligent", and it's just another form distinct from human perception. hmmm... So am I saying that everything that is matter is "intelligent"? Yes. That's exactly what I'm saying, BUT there are different forms of material patterns that form different constructs intelligence.
Meaning that how we receive, or in what form we receive the projection determines our perspective. Right now it just so happens we humans have a POV of humans.
The thing is that due to our incredible ability to not just receive, but to also project what we receive onto different things gives us the power of empathy. The illusion that we can perceive from a different POV. That we can somehow distill our perspective, and project it onto another thing. It's worked quite well so far. Mathematics, language, science, etc. But once we try to see from another perspective that's unimaginably different then it all breaks down.
Let's try to look at the perspective of ant for instance. Well we can't, because if you think about it you can't think of non-thought. Think of non-thinking, is an oxymoron. An ant doesn't think, I mean I'm sure it thinks, but it has completely different sense organs, a completely different set of logical processes, it has a completely different structure, and a completely different perspective than humans. It's unimaginable, because we can only view it from our perspective, which in its renders the idea false. We can only view the world from our perspective. Yet we can't call the ant unintelligent, an ant is very intelligent.
What we see is just that, and what we see differently, is still just seeing. We can't stop seeing, and once we stop seeing, then we stop being human. A human being is just another form of seeing, ants another, computers yet another. Everything has intelligence, it's just not in a recognizable form. In a relatable form. We're all just a box of switches. A mesh of material patterns that filters through existence to produce being. Demeaning different forms of being as lesser is a very human centric perspective. See differently, from the top of the mount, and realize you'll only ever see like a human being.
Re: Zuckerberg, Musk Invest in Artificial-Intelligence Company Vicarious
#94Call it what it is, an expert system, market research, a database of decisions/observations. Real "artificial intelligence" only exists in science fiction, in the minds of children playing with toys. Your computer (doll) won't ever love you back or have any awareness or understanding no matter how bad you want it to. It's a cool sounding buzzword for marketing, but if there's any intelligence here it's coming from a…
Sadly, some people confuse their ignorance with knowledge and make all kinds of embarrassing claims. >There's no hint of evidence you = your brain. Sign up for a lobotomy we'll see much "you" is left afterwords. > If you believe artificial intelligence is possible, you're missing out on what life has to offer--or you would never think a box of switches could come alive. You got me. Believing x would make me think lif…
"Sign up for a lobotomy"
Correlation does not imply causation. If I unplug your LCD, that doesn't imply the application failed. If I pull out your CPU, doesn't imply the cloud app is not still functioning. Possible examples of this, people who are "brain dead" that have reached out to grab a scalpel (organs about to be harvested) or have come back to life after brain death or pronounced dead but can quote a conversation that happened in the room while brain dead, etc.
Re: Zuckerberg, Musk Invest in Artificial-Intelligence Company Vicarious
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I also found the random remark of "consciousness = what it feels like to have a neocortex" interesting. So there's a way it feels to not have a neocortex? Doesn't feeling anything imply you're conscious, which means you don't need a neocortex to be conscious?
An insect "feels" pain. It doesn't however feel retrospective pain, and it doesn't feel the past in the same way we do. Having a neocortex is like having a 6th sense. Our taste, smell, hearing, sight, and feeling neurons are all indirectly fed into our brain. With a neocortex, that input is also fed in. It's our "consciousness" feeling. I hope that explains the confusion.
Thanks, that makes sense. I was thinking of a different definition of "consciousness", the "hard problem" definition. [0] For an ant to feel pain, it would have to be conscious in the hard problem sense.
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness
Re: Zuckerberg, Musk Invest in Artificial-Intelligence Company Vicarious
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
"vastly expand the welfare state and divvy up at least part of the accumulated surplus to everyone" That's a technology we haven't had much luck with so far. We've had economies where "distribution" was related to direct wealth creation (make a sandwich and eat it myself), property & labour (you make a sandwich with my bread,we eat half each), thievery (gimme your sandwich). We've done sharing in small groups, that m…
We disagree about how well redistribution can and has worked at scale. My ultra-compressed (lossy) take is "pretty inefficient, but somewhat effective improving the lives of the less-wealthy". One of the most dramatic and promising examples of redistribution, GiveDirectly, is actually doing some followup research on the effectiveness of their redistribution, and it looks pretty good so far: (pdf warning) http://web.m…
I think there are pretty strong correlations between smaller social/political units and more effective, efficient, and non-corrupt welfare/redistribution systems.
There isn't a Nordic country with a population greater than just the population of the New York metro area (let alone New York state...let alone the United States as a whole)
Re: Zuckerberg, Musk Invest in Artificial-Intelligence Company Vicarious
#97privatization of research is real and awesome!
Probably not. If Noam Chomsky is to be believed (I do), most research to date has been publicly funded. In the US, it has been mostly through military expenditures. (To take only one example, ARPANET itself was funded by the military.) The actually awesome part is having huge investments on long term research. Private or public, it doesn't make any difference.
In response to your comment on another topic:
You can run a "freedom box" as follows:
http://freedombone.uk.to
The guide will work for a raspberry pi or a beagle bone.
It was created out of frustration with progress of the freedom box project.
Re: Zuckerberg, Musk Invest in Artificial-Intelligence Company Vicarious
#98Call it what it is, an expert system, market research, a database of decisions/observations. Real "artificial intelligence" only exists in science fiction, in the minds of children playing with toys. Your computer (doll) won't ever love you back or have any awareness or understanding no matter how bad you want it to. It's a cool sounding buzzword for marketing, but if there's any intelligence here it's coming from a…
Can you define intelligence, before you claim 'stuff'?
Try a dictionary. Look at the latin root. That's the original meaning of intelligence.
Re: Zuckerberg, Musk Invest in Artificial-Intelligence Company Vicarious
#99The AI winter is very much over, and we're back to the good old days of selling the future. I bet this team is very sharp, but there's still merit to "over-promise, under-deliver." "Phoenix, the co-founder, says Vicarious aims beyond image recognition. He said the next milestone will be creating a computer that can understand not just shapes and objects, but the textures associated with them. For example, a computer…
Funny to think that instead of curing diseases or making cheap renewable energy, we'd instead try to spend resources to invent a computer to do that for us...
Well it is incredibly dangerous, but if we did make safe, super intelligent AI, it would definitely be a much greater investment than directly working on those problems.
To put it lightly, it would automate and massively bring down the cost/increase the speed of research and engineering. Sure enough money, spent on enough humans, given enough time, could eventually find a cure for any disease. But why do that when you can just ask the AI and have a cure overnight?
Of course it's not clear how safe such an AI would be (such a being could easily outsmart us and get what it wants, whatever that even is), nor how difficult it will be to create one.
Re: Zuckerberg, Musk Invest in Artificial-Intelligence Company Vicarious
#100"Replicating the neocortex, the part of the brain that sees, controls the body, understands language and does math. Translate the neocortex into computer code and 'you have a computer that thinks like a person,” says Vicarious co-founder Scott Phoenix.'"
Do you? Other than the language part it sounds like you may instead have an electronic lizard or cow. Add language and you might have an electronic parrot or dolphin(they can do some language processing).
Something's missing - the ability to reason: deduction, induction and abduction. The ability to set goals and to find a path to those goals. These are the magic that everyone has been seeking and not finding for a long time.
The pieces the Vicarious found speaks of are available today. We have exquisite computer vision, pretty good language understanding and fair robots but no strong AI and certainly no embodied AI. The promises above are hollow. But it will make some people a lot of money.