Why Computers Won’t Make Themselves Smarter • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Computers Won’t Make Themselves Smarter

#31

Post by bopbeepboop » Thu, Apr 01, 2021, 6:00 AM UTC

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #29

bopbeepboop wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’d be funnier if you quoted what you believe I said that’s incorrect, rather than making nebulous accusations because you didn’t understand or agree with my comment. Go ahead, get scientific.

Why should we get scientific? You didn't. You assumed some stuff, and came up with exponentially self-improving AI. That's not science. There is no scientific reason why global quantum communication means that an AI hits exponential growth. (If there is, you sure haven't supplied it! You've just asserted that it is so.)

We have papers showing how to exponentially accelerate AI using quantum computers, the same way we can accelerate other types of problems. (Finding a “best DAG” is related to lowest energy state.) Microsoft already has published a number of articles and is working on more. In general, global entanglement will give an exponential boost over isolated data centers — the same way a fully entangled computer is more powerful than a DWave.

I understand a number of readers aren’t familiar with QAI research though.

But that’s my point —

> Why should we get scientific? You didn't.

The person responding made a generic negative comment (as did you) due to not knowing the state of the art.

Incorrectly “correcting” people while yourself ignorant is prevented by giving people specific corrections: if you’d taken the time to tell me what you think I’m wrong about, you’d probably realize you don’t actually have a specific thing you think I’m wrong about — you just were surprised by my conclusion.

See here for more detailed arguments:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26657056

Re: Why Computers Won’t Make Themselves Smarter

#32

Post by tim333 » Thu, Apr 01, 2021, 7:23 AM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #17

Jack000 wrote: post #2

Surprised this was written by Ted Chiang (my all-time favorite science-fiction author). The IQ and compiler arguments seem like pretty weak strawmen, and the last section assumes that AI will have some kind of normal distribution of IQ just like humans, which doesn't make any sense. There's no reason to believe that intelligence is a quantity that can be improved ad infinitum ala singularity, but I think it's reasona…

> There's no reason to believe that intelligence is a quantity that can be improved ad infinitum ala singularity There are reasons to believe the opposite, that there's a limit. Not just practical technological limitations (e.g. limits to CPU process, speed, power consumption, etc) but also absolute limits for information processing under certain physical constraints (in the Shannon sense).

If you think of chess programs there isn't a limit to how many positions per second you can do - you can just run more machines in parallel. Thought at the end of the day you just get a slightly better chess machine. I imagine AI will go a bit like that.

Re: Why Computers Won’t Make Themselves Smarter

#33

Post by AnimalMuppet » Thu, Apr 01, 2021, 4:22 PM UTC

bopbeepboop wrote: post #31

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should we get scientific? You didn't. You assumed some stuff, and came up with exponentially self-improving AI. That's not science. There is no scientific reason why global quantum communication means that an AI hits exponential growth. (If there is, you sure haven't supplied it! You've just asserted that it is so.)

We have papers showing how to exponentially accelerate AI using quantum computers, the same way we can accelerate other types of problems. (Finding a “best DAG” is related to lowest energy state.) Microsoft already has published a number of articles and is working on more. In general, global entanglement will give an exponential boost over isolated data centers — the same way a fully entangled computer is more powerf…

But given a globally connected quantum AI, where's the science that says that that's enough to continue to improve exponentially? To actually get smarter?

Re: Why Computers Won’t Make Themselves Smarter

#34

Post by whimsicalism » Thu, Apr 01, 2021, 9:59 PM UTC

tim333 wrote: post #32

coldtea wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's no reason to believe that intelligence is a quantity that can be improved ad infinitum ala singularity There are reasons to believe the opposite, that there's a limit. Not just practical technological limitations (e.g. limits to CPU process, speed, power consumption, etc) but also absolute limits for information processing under certain physical constraints (in the Shannon sense).

If you think of chess programs there isn't a limit to how many positions per second you can do - you can just run more machines in parallel. Thought at the end of the day you just get a slightly better chess machine. I imagine AI will go a bit like that.

There is a discrete and finite number of chess positions so there is a limit, but it might not be computable with resources available within the observable universe.