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Just A New Fractal Detail In The Big Picture (2015)

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Re: Just A New Fractal Detail In The Big Picture (2015)

#71

Post by atemerev »

skinnyarms wrote: post #66
atemerev wrote: post #39

As a curious software engineer, I have a basic familiarity on where heating oil comes from (I remember my first sci-pop book with a section on basics of oil processing), where nuts are grown, basics of food industry supply chains, and every other example covered. My knowledge might be rudimentary and without much detail, but I try to cover all bases, and when I discover some area of human knowledge I genuinely know n…

You should try building a toaster from scratch https://www.ted.com/talks/thomas_thwaites_how_i_built_a_toas...

Unfortunately, I am not that good at manually building hardware. Learning how it works is another thing, though.

Re: Just A New Fractal Detail In The Big Picture (2015)

#72

Post by icebraining »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #60
campground wrote: post #33

This is similar to a thought I've had for some time now; That artificial intelligence is most likely to emerge - rather than be explicitly designed - from our increasingly complex, interconnected, self-regulating systems and institutions. We will be no more aware of, or able to converse with it, than the bacteria in our guts are aware of us. Also, artificial intelligence is the wrong term. We have artificial intellig…

>> What we are talking about is a new, higher form of real intelligence. Which if the author is right and our brains have already been shrinking means that within a few hundred years, there won't be any humans left - just "higher intelligence". I've never understood people's naivety thinking we're always going to be at the top of the evolutionary ladder. At some point, we will be replaced and humans in whatever form…

Which if the author is right and our brains have already been shrinking means that within a few hundred years, there won't be any humans left - just "higher intelligence".

No, it really doesn't. Even if the extrapolation was correct - which is dubious at best - losing 15% of brain over 10 000 years certainly wouldn't mean "no humans within a few hundred years".

Re: Just A New Fractal Detail In The Big Picture (2015)

#73

Post by roymurdock »

Rauchg wrote: post #45

For different versions of this argument see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_effect . Bostrom said: "A lot of cutting edge AI has filtered into general applications, often without being called AI because once something becomes useful enough and common enough it's not labelled AI anymore". Finally, the problem with all these articles is the lack of precise definition for the terminology involved (it reminds me of deb…

A lot of the arguments/heated debates on HN stem from a failure to define key terms. Less so in threads on compsci-related topics, but almost always on threads with econ-related topics. Especially universal basic income. Once you identify this common issue it becomes easy to avoid these frustrating (and frustrated) conversations altogether.

Eno has taken a pretty liberal view of "AI" but he makes a good point about specialization. I would define the concept he's getting at as "collective social memory," but I enjoyed his musings nonetheless.

Re: Just A New Fractal Detail In The Big Picture (2015)

#74

Post by scrollaway »

ccccc0 wrote: post #64
JoBrad wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's generally accepted that any intelligence that isn't from a living being is artificial. Global Civilization isn't living, per se.

I'd argue that Global Civilization is nothing but living!

I read a comment on HN a while back arguing that today's companies are essentially human-powered AIs. It made me think quite a lot -- large companies especially take a lifeform of their own. They tend to mostly care for themselves. Actions are taken "for the company" without any one person being actively aware of why. Higher-ups have some form of backdoor access to the direction the company takes; a symbiotic relationship with what is, in a way, a parasite.

Re: Just A New Fractal Detail In The Big Picture (2015)

#75

Post by pastProlog »

dredmorbius wrote: post #13
josephpmay wrote: post #8

This is closely related to the economic concept of the "Invisible Hand"[0] and also explains why planned economies never seem to work, no matter how well-intentioned they are (see the current state of Venezuela - although in their case, as in almost every case of central planned economies, greed and corruption were the prevailing forces of the ruling agency) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_hand

The "invisible hand" metaphor used by Adam Smith is not an explanatory mechanism , and if anything is an admission that the specific mechanism isn't understood . In use at the time and earlier, it had the sense of "the invisible hand of Providence" (or God). Though Smith, as Hume, was almost certainly what we'd now call an athiest. He used the term three times, in three different books: The Theory of Moral Sentiments…

Also, Adam Smith's example of the invisible hand was as a mechanism to prevent so-called free trade, and raise protectionist tariffs. The people you mentioned have twisted Smith's words into the exact opposite meaning - they say Smith's invisible hand sweeps away protectionist tariffs and allows international free trade. He said the complete opposite of what they say he said.

Re: Just A New Fractal Detail In The Big Picture (2015)

#76

Post by benkarst »

Thoughtful article. Eno refers to hidden processes in systems as AI hinting at their similarity.

I am assuming there are already digital systems in place that monitor "hidden" processes that make a chicken sandwich for example (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URvWSsAgtJE).

Such systems could monitor data points and possibly forecast the price (or a great many things) of a chicken sandwich.

Re: Just A New Fractal Detail In The Big Picture (2015)

#77

Post by TeMPOraL »

e12e wrote: post #62
mwfunk wrote: post #15

He's addressing one aspect of AI that can be disturbing to some people, specifically becoming reliant on the expertise of others in your day-to-day life and thus becoming less independent. If your biggest issue with the concept of AI assistants is that they might have insights about you that you yourself don't have, I could see this article making someone feel better about it. For me at least, that's not the primary…

I still think your examples are more of the "powerful tools" kind of AI. And I think the general argument about "hard AI problems, when solved, cease to be AI" is also along those lines. I think we've proven by example that what we thought of as things that require "real" intelligence, like chess, go, jeopardy - really don't. They're not a good yardstick for intelligence. Or intelligence is not as closely tied to (se…

> Indeed. I fear AI that stops being dependent on people. Such systems are still far off, I believe. But I don't see why we couldn't intentionally or by accident create a new form of life that could out-compete us, and in the end make us extinct.

Since the line between AI realized in a machine and systems in general is kind of thin and blurry, one could argue that the economy is about to become such a system. If automation can fill all the links in the feedback loop chains of the market, we could one day wake up to see humanity being completely excluded from the economy, which would continue onwards by itself. A Disneyland with no children[0].

[0] - http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/

Re: Just A New Fractal Detail In The Big Picture (2015)

#78

Post by Joof »

scrollaway wrote: post #74
ccccc0 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue that Global Civilization is nothing but living!

I read a comment on HN a while back arguing that today's companies are essentially human-powered AIs. It made me think quite a lot -- large companies especially take a lifeform of their own. They tend to mostly care for themselves. Actions are taken "for the company" without any one person being actively aware of why. Higher-ups have some form of backdoor access to the direction the company takes; a symbiotic relatio…

Many larger systems are more than the sum of their parts. Enough that you could consider the grouping it's own entity. Ant hills are the canonical example because individual ants are recognizable as 'animals', but the function of an anthill clearly relies on a complex interaction between more simple ants.

Just as we are made of tiny organisms, bigger systems could be considered to be made of us.

Re: Just A New Fractal Detail In The Big Picture (2015)

#79

Post by DonaldFisk »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #42
mwfunk wrote: post #15

He's addressing one aspect of AI that can be disturbing to some people, specifically becoming reliant on the expertise of others in your day-to-day life and thus becoming less independent. If your biggest issue with the concept of AI assistants is that they might have insights about you that you yourself don't have, I could see this article making someone feel better about it. For me at least, that's not the primary…

The problem with habit reinforcement is that you've simply created a feedback loop. "You like [music type]? Here are more bands/artists of [music type]." It looks like an innocent service. But it's devastating to real exploration, because it makes it much less likely you'll ever discover Band/Artist Z whom you'd never normally listen to but love anyway. This is why thoughtless customer profiling is a dumb idea, and c…

I discussed this problem decades ago when I developed MORSE (http://web.onetel.com/~hibou/morse/MORSE.html).

People like certain things for no obvious reason, and are unlikely to change. It does them no favours to recommend them music they don't like, or anything else which depends on taste. But if there's music similar to the music they're known to like, which they haven't heard - perhaps because the band is obscure, from a different decade or part of the world, or new, for example - they might want to hear it. Also, there might be one or two songs they'd like by artists they don't normally listen to. Collaborative filtering is good for this.

Your point is valid about ideas, news, and a number of other things which have nothing to do with taste. People would benefit from sometimes being exposed to viewpoints different from their own.

Re: Just A New Fractal Detail In The Big Picture (2015)

#80

Post by tambourine_man »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #47

> I read once that human brains began shrinking about 10 thousand years ago and are now as much as 15% smaller than they were then. Timeline's a bit off, but the science is still a shocker: > Over the past 20,000 years, the average volume of the human male brain has decreased from 1,500 cubic centimeters to 1,350 cc, losing a chunk the size of a tennis ball. The female brain has shrunk by about the same proportion. h…

I find that scary. A huge collection of specialists makes for a pretty fragile species.
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