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Human

quarter--mile.com

251–260 of 282 posts

Re: Human

#251

Perhaps I am unimaginative about whatever AGI might be, but it so often feels to me like predictions are more based on sci-fi than observation. The theorized AI is some anthropomorphization of a 1960s mainframe: you tell it what to do and it executes that exactly with precise logic and no understanding of nuance or ambiguity. Maybe it is evil. The SOTA in AI at the moment is very good at nuance and ambiguity but some…

I've listened to some old sci-fi radio shows and it's interesting how often "the computer never makes a mistake" comes up. Which is usually followed by the computer making a mistake.

That's why the term "Garbage In, Garbage Out" exists.

In any non-edge case (that is, where the system is operating in ideal conditions and no flaw or bug, known or unknown, exists in the system), a verifiably functioning computer will produce the exact same results for any process every time.

If the computer does not do what you expected it to do and spits out garbage, then you gave it garbage data.

Re: Human

#252
post #7

Doesn't really make much sense. It states that this is a purely mechanistic world with no emotion. So why would a machine be "bored" and wish to create a human?

I think we are supposed to just gloss over those bits and enjoy the rest of the story.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspension_of_disbelief

Re: Human

#253
post #51

What this thread keeps surfacing, and so much discussion around this stuff generally right now, from speculation about the next phase of intelligence, the role of pattern, emotion, logic, debates over consciousness, the anthropocentrism of our meaning-making...is that we are the source of reality (and ourselves). Instead of a “final authority” or a simple march from animal to machine, what if everything from mind, ph…

"If the universe is information at play"

beautiful words

Re: Human

#254
post #248

> logical self-preservation mechanisms This tautology has always bothered me. It's such an obvious anthropomorphization. A computer is a clock. A clock doesn't care about its preservation; it just ticks. The whole point of this is to not anthropomorphize computers! But of course, without some nugget of free will, there would be nothing to talk about. There wouldn't be any computers, because they were never willed int…

An atom is just a clock. A molecule is just a number of atoms in a particular configuration. An cell is a collection of molecules. An organ is a collection of cells. A human is a collection of organs. Seemingly, everything can emerge from clocks.

Sorta, but the only part of this system that really has an equivalence to computing written instructions is DNA.

I think the more interesting thing about humans as systems is the set of environmental contexts each system is subjected to. Each cell implements a relatively simple system, but a collection of cells can implement a more abstract system. When I reach out my hand and grab something, that action is accomplished by a complicated collection of systems. It's easier to talk about the abstract application of that system than it is to explain the system itself.

But what if I wanted to change it? I can't just give my organs new instructions that change their behavior. I can't cut them into pieces, shuffle them around, and put them back together, and end up with a functional system in the end. A surgeon can make specific changes, but only because they understand the implications of each change.

The same goes for computational instructions. I can't just link an OpenGL program to Vulkan and expect it to work. In order to refactor software, we must accommodate the change in subjective context.

We usually accomplish this by establishing shared context, but that just moves the problem. What if we could solve it directly? That's what I'm working on.

Re: Human

#255
I really liked the first chapter: the juxtaposition between ideas on how "AI"/algorithms/etc work and how humans work. I enjoyed how it was flipped around.

The second chapter was very disappointing and lost the intrigue I had built from the first.

Re: Human

#256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why are emotions so special? they're just algorithms like any other. That's a pretty bold claim. There's uncountable inputs. It's like trying to accurately predict the weather - chaos theory or something. Emotions are "essentially" gas exchange, but the areas and rate or whatever are not standardized across humans.

Emotions are not inputs, they are outputs first. we process information using internal algorithms that we developed as a result of our life experience and genetic coding and the result is an emotional verdict over some input. That emotional verdict is presented to our decision making algorithms as input, we can ignore it or act on it. I have neither experienced or observed anything about human emotions that indicates…

> Emotions are not inputs, they are outputs first.

i never said emotions were inputs. The gas exchange and the resulting reaction or "thoughts" or "emotions" have uncountable inputs. Some people don't have the ability to "put themselves in someone else's shoes", some people do. Some people can see pictures in their "mind's eye" and some can't.

I don't think we're talking about the same thing, based on your last sentence.

Re: Human

#258
Emotions aren't that special or mysterious. They are just a low-power analog decision-making mechanism. Making a machine driven by emotion would be trivial.

We don't know how to make a machine that can experience emotions (or if it's possible at all, or if it's in fact already been done). But then the same can be said about any other type of experience.

Re: Human

#259
post #246
post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We already see that at smaller scales though with other machine learning algorithms; image recognition algorithms will lock on to any consistency in your training set more often than learning to recognize what you actually want it to [0]. It's not a huge stretch to map that pattern out to a more generally intelligent system having a poorly defined reward function doing really weird stuff. [0] Like the tumor recogniti…

I think it is a huge stretch to believe that patterns which appear in one set of algorithms (simple non-AGI algorithms) will also appear in another set (AGI algorithms). Unless there is some physical reason for the behavior I wouldn't make any strong claims. The specificity of algorithms is why AGI is hard in the first place cause at the end of the day you have a single operation running on a single data structure (h…

I think the pattern holds even as you increase the intelligence that a machine does not by nature of being able to mimic intelligence come with the same framework of understanding what is requested of it.

Re: Human

#260
post #7

Doesn't really make much sense. It states that this is a purely mechanistic world with no emotion. So why would a machine be "bored" and wish to create a human?

It would be rational for them to have some level of a "novelty-seeking" drive, in order to avoid getting stuck at a local maximum.
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