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astropin
SFN Regular
USA
970 Posts |
 Posted - 09/08/2004 : 09:47:55 [Permalink]
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Ok. This site says it allot better than I can...please read. http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0134.html
I find Ray Kurzweil to be the preeminent futurist. I find no flaw in his logic or line of reasoning even though at the end of the day Bill Joy may be right (in a nut shell; that advanced technology will lead to our demise). The Age of Spiritual Machines has to be one of the most fascinating books I've ever read and the page I have provided a link for is probably the highlight of that book. One excerpt:
"Already, IBM's "Blue Gene" supercomputer, now being built and scheduled to be completed by 2005, is projected to provide 1 million billion calculations per second (i.e., one billion megaflops). This is already one twentieth of the capacity of the human brain, which I estimate at a conservatively high 20 million billion calculations per second (100 billion neurons times 1,000 connections per neuron times 200 calculations per second per connection). In line with my earlier predictions, supercomputers will achieve one human brain capacity by 2010, and personal computers will do so by around 2020. By 2030, it will take a village of human brains (around a thousand) to match $1000 of computing."
He then gets into creating the "Software" needed to make a computer truly sentient. Not only do I think that true sentient AI is inevitable, but I believe most of us will be here to see it happen.
Please tell me where you think Ray has F&*^^$ up.
I only see two scenarios:
1. Advanced Technology leads to nanothech, AI ect... and a very, very interesting future. (How would like to be part of the last generation to die of old age! Now that would really suck; well not to you....your dead.)
2. Advanced Technology leads to the demise of the human race and possibly all life on this planet.
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I would rather face a cold reality than delude myself with comforting fantasies.
You are free to believe what you want to believe and I am free to ridicule you for it.
Atheism:
The result of an unbiased and rational search for the truth.
Infinitus est numerus stultorum |
| Edited by - astropin on 09/08/2004 09:57:26 |
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Valiant Dancer
Forum Goalie
USA
4826 Posts |
Posted - 09/08/2004 : 10:10:14 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by astropin
Ok. This site says it allot better than I can...please read. http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0134.html
I find Ray Kurzweil to be the preeminent futurist. I find no flaw in his logic or line of reasoning even though at the end of the day Bill Joy may be right (in a nut shell; that advanced technology will lead to our demise). The Age of Spiritual Machines has to be one of the most fascinating books I've ever read and the page I have provided a link for is probably the highlight of that book. One excerpt:
"Already, IBM's "Blue Gene" supercomputer, now being built and scheduled to be completed by 2005, is projected to provide 1 million billion calculations per second (i.e., one billion megaflops). This is already one twentieth of the capacity of the human brain, which I estimate at a conservatively high 20 million billion calculations per second (100 billion neurons times 1,000 connections per neuron times 200 calculations per second per connection). In line with my earlier predictions, supercomputers will achieve one human brain capacity by 2010, and personal computers will do so by around 2020. By 2030, it will take a village of human brains (around a thousand) to match $1000 of computing."
He then gets into creating the "Software" needed to make a computer truly sentient. Not only do I think that true sentient AI is inevitable, but I believe most of us will be here to see it happen.
Please tell me where you think Ray has F&*^^$ up.
I only see two scenarios:
1. Advanced Technology leads to nanothech, AI ect... and a very, very interesting future. (How would like to be part of the last generation to die of old age! Now that would really suck; well not to you....your dead.)
2. Advanced Technology leads to the demise of the human race and possibly all life on this planet.
Ray equates capacity (in this case raw processing power) with a fictional software which become self aware. While there is no doubt in my mind that a computer can rival the raw processing power of humans, it's instruction set lacks the esoteric, inquisitive nature of live humans. Humans can go beyond the situations that they have tools to deal with to make different tools and in some cases discard tools which no longer serve their purpose. Computers cannot do these things. They can only adapt in the manner they are told to and make tools in a manner they are told to. |
Cthulhu/Asmodeus when you're tired of voting for the lesser of two evils
Brother Cutlass of Reasoned Discussion |
| Edited by - Valiant Dancer on 09/08/2004 10:11:52 |
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Ricky
SFN Die Hard
USA
4907 Posts |
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astropin
SFN Regular
USA
970 Posts |
Posted - 09/08/2004 : 11:32:54 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Ricky
3.) We find a limit to our advancement in our technology (I don't find this likely, but its a possibility)
4.) We ban the advancement of technology on moral grounds (we already see this happening)
And that is why are opinions differ. Ok #3 is a possibility although I find it a very remote one. #4 - No chance. Too much to be gained...Power, money, control, ect... One way or another technological gains will continue. If not by leading nations then by underground movements (scary thought which could leads to the demise scenario). Once we know something is possible it is just a matter of time. If Ray is right changes are about to happen fast and furious so we better be on top of it. |
I would rather face a cold reality than delude myself with comforting fantasies.
You are free to believe what you want to believe and I am free to ridicule you for it.
Atheism:
The result of an unbiased and rational search for the truth.
Infinitus est numerus stultorum |
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Ricky
SFN Die Hard
USA
4907 Posts |
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astropin
SFN Regular
USA
970 Posts |
Posted - 09/08/2004 : 16:12:38 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Ricky
4, no chance? I can almost be certain they will not take place underground, such things require millions of dollars of funding. Its not like some guy off the street can try to make a cloning machine in his basement. Should there be no limit to the amount of power and control we have? Is there such a thing as too much power? This are all moral questions, and if the answer is yes, there is such a thing, then we may see the end of technological advancement because of this.
I didn't mean Joe working in his garage would develop Drexler's vision of Nanobots! Do you honestly think that major countries will not continue to work on advanced tech. even if they had agreed not to? There is way, WAY too much power at stake....like I said before...even if it destroys us in the process. So China & North Korea are working on Nanotech & A.I. You think everyone else is going to sit around and watch? This is not Nuclear weapons development...its worse and much harder to detect if someone is working on it or not. Therefore the US, Most of Europe, Japan, South Korea ect...are going to try and develop it first and hopefully share that info with each other. |
I would rather face a cold reality than delude myself with comforting fantasies.
You are free to believe what you want to believe and I am free to ridicule you for it.
Atheism:
The result of an unbiased and rational search for the truth.
Infinitus est numerus stultorum |
| Edited by - astropin on 09/08/2004 16:13:28 |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 09/08/2004 : 17:07:00 [Permalink]
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I have to agree that technology developement. on the global scale, will not be impeded. On some national scales it may be, but not globally.
quote:
Posted by Ricky:Its not like some guy off the street can try to make a cloning machine in his basement.
Actually, biotech is probably going to be relatively inexpensive to develope and use. There are already major concerns about gene modification and olympic athletes for the next summer olympics.
http://www.acfnewsource.org/science/gene_doping.html
Do a google search for "gene doping" to find more info... |
Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 09/08/2004 : 18:54:55 [Permalink]
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Valiant Dancer wrote:quote:
Again, we will have to disagree.
I find it difficult to understand why you are throwing in the proverbial towel of "we will have to disagree" so quickly.quote:
I have never seen a program which was designed to adapt to changing situations be able to do something beyond the set of situations it was designed for especially when some of them contained concepts that the computer was never programmed the meaning for.
And these qualities are present in individual brain cells? Does a single neuron "understand" anything?
Like cellular automata, the idea I expressed in my prior post about a possible form of AI depends on a relatively simple program, running with billions of independent instances, communicating with each other, taking on a surprising behaviour overall. I've seen it in code I've written myself. An AI will not be fundamentally different in this regard, the difference will be one of scale and complexity.quote:
As I understand nuerons, it isn't the operation of a specific neuron in particular. It is the interaction of neurons together which makes abstract thought possible.
That's what I said.quote:
Your child, as well as mine, had the capability of abstract thought throughout. He learned that items have permanence through the inquisitive nature of humans.
Object permanence is an abstract idea which kids learn. And kids need to be encouraged to learn, also. What makes you think an artificial intelligence will be any different?quote:
How does one program inquisitiveness into an artificial entity?
The idea, "inquisitiveness is good" may be something that needs to be taught through brute force to an artifical intelligence. We may have to teach such a thing everything it will know, even things which are instinctive to human infants. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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Skyhawk
New Member
33 Posts |
Posted - 09/08/2004 : 22:58:16 [Permalink]
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Sometimes, I have a feeling that no one reads my post. Do my points suck or something? I mean, how hard is it to get over the idea of conventional programming? If you feel my posts are unworthy just say so, and I will be quite as a mouse. Dave W. also has similar points that are forcing you guys to think out of the box and get the big picture. Guys, think networking, think genetics, think evolution. These are things that are becoming better and better! As stated before, we have ways of designing programs that DO adapt through its own source code, my friend actually tried to create such programs for solving problems and there are plenty of researchers trying to harness this ability as much as possible.
Well, read or no read I'll talk. Okay, on the grounds of economical benefit. Imagine if researchers were able to develop AI that was able to hunt down computer viruses, create firewalls, and modify its own source code for "immunity"? I mean, that is a good example of AI used for practicallity. We can find other ways of using AI, in order to be able to take on human capailities of abstract thought and problem-solving capabilities to solve practical problems...using a larger base of resources.
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 09/09/2004 : 00:22:10 [Permalink]
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I read your posts Sky.... I just know doodly-squat about programing and have nothing to say on that level that would be in any way contribute to the discussion.
About the best I can do in this thread is to say.... why would an AI need to mimic human intelligence beyond certain key points like learning and creative problem solving? |
Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 09/09/2004 : 06:32:32 [Permalink]
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Dude wrote:quote:
...why would an AI need to mimic human intelligence beyond certain key points like learning and creative problem solving?
Well, frankly, human (or, more broadly, primate) intelligence is really the only example we can probe very deeply. We can see that dolphins are intelligent, but we can't yet discover how their thought processes work.
On the other hand, if the "throw a bunch of virtual neurons together and see what happens" approach works, there's no telling what kind of intelligence might emerge. It may be quite alien, especially if it's got, through the benefit of databases, complete recall of every bit of data received as input. Humans don't have that sort of memory.
Skyhawk wrote:quote:
I mean, how hard is it to get over the idea of conventional programming?
Depends. Some people have embraced the OO paradigm, while others reject it for the old procedural methods. Of course, both boil down to a bunch of instructions run chronologically, so there's little fundamental difference in how well properly-written programs of both types work.
The big difference between current programs and how a true "genetic program" will work is that the latter is going to have to treat its own code as data at certain points in time, for modification purposes. Self-modifying code has been around for years, but not at the massive scale which will be required for a decent AI (if one comes about through the genetic-programming route). |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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Valiant Dancer
Forum Goalie
USA
4826 Posts |
Posted - 09/09/2004 : 07:10:54 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Dave W.
Valiant Dancer wrote:quote:
Again, we will have to disagree.
I find it difficult to understand why you are throwing in the proverbial towel of "we will have to disagree" so quickly.quote:
I have never seen a program which was designed to adapt to changing situations be able to do something beyond the set of situations it was designed for especially when some of them contained concepts that the computer was never programmed the meaning for.
And these qualities are present in individual brain cells? Does a single neuron "understand" anything?
Like cellular automata, the idea I expressed in my prior post about a possible form of AI depends on a relatively simple program, running with billions of independent instances, communicating with each other, taking on a surprising behaviour overall. I've seen it in code I've written myself. An AI will not be fundamentally different in this regard, the difference will be one of scale and complexity.quote:
As I understand nuerons, it isn't the operation of a specific neuron in particular. It is the interaction of neurons together which makes abstract thought possible.
That's what I said.quote:
Your child, as well as mine, had the capability of abstract thought throughout. He learned that items have permanence through the inquisitive nature of humans.
Object permanence is an abstract idea which kids learn. And kids need to be encouraged to learn, also. What makes you think an artificial intelligence will be any different?quote:
How does one program inquisitiveness into an artificial entity?
The idea, "inquisitiveness is good" may be something that needs to be taught through brute force to an artifical intelligence. We may have to teach such a thing everything it will know, even things which are instinctive to human infants.
I believe the task of programming instinctiveness into a machine is not possible as the manner in which instinctiveness is understood is inadequate to be able to produce a program mimicing it. Humans also have the ability to feel pain and react in an instictual manner. Machines lack this trait.
From my analysis of complex programming systems, I have seen problems which are unexpected crop up when it didn't make sense why. I then was able to isolate the error and analyze why it was occurring. It usually was an interaction error from sharing variable names where something was erroneously killed though indirection or the value changed. I have seen nothing to convince me that a machine is capable of sentience. |
Cthulhu/Asmodeus when you're tired of voting for the lesser of two evils
Brother Cutlass of Reasoned Discussion |
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Valiant Dancer
Forum Goalie
USA
4826 Posts |
Posted - 09/09/2004 : 07:26:26 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Skyhawk
Sometimes, I have a feeling that no one reads my post. Do my points suck or something? I mean, how hard is it to get over the idea of conventional programming? If you feel my posts are unworthy just say so, and I will be quite as a mouse. Dave W. also has similar points that are forcing you guys to think out of the box and get the big picture. Guys, think networking, think genetics, think evolution. These are things that are becoming better and better! As stated before, we have ways of designing programs that DO adapt through its own source code, my friend actually tried to create such programs for solving problems and there are plenty of researchers trying to harness this ability as much as possible.
Well, read or no read I'll talk. Okay, on the grounds of economical benefit. Imagine if researchers were able to develop AI that was able to hunt down computer viruses, create firewalls, and modify its own source code for "immunity"? I mean, that is a good example of AI used for practicallity. We can find other ways of using AI, in order to be able to take on human capailities of abstract thought and problem-solving capabilities to solve practical problems...using a larger base of resources.
Sky,
Conventional programming and OO programming all reduce to machine level code. OO just activates a robust conventional program which the user/high level programmer never sees.
I suppose I'm guilty of glossing over your posts because you post as a user would. That is someone who is not conversant in the nuts and bolts of how a computer works and make statements based on sophisticated user interfaces and marketing brochures. In an application of existing technology sense, this is useful. In the discussion of computer instruction level coding, it is less useful.
Dave W and I have a basic disagreement that placing the individual pieces in close proximity and establishing structured communication between them will give the extremely complex machine a quality which would achieve sentience. Dave W believes it will. I don't. I may be getting bogged down in minutae, but I believe projects of this nature would as well due to the properties that I have seen in most computer programmers worth their salt. |
Cthulhu/Asmodeus when you're tired of voting for the lesser of two evils
Brother Cutlass of Reasoned Discussion |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 09/09/2004 : 08:15:54 [Permalink]
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Valiant Dancer wrote:quote:
I believe the task of programming instinctiveness into a machine is not possible as the manner in which instinctiveness is understood is inadequate to be able to produce a program mimicing it.
You have misunderstood my use of the word "teach." I did not intend it to mean "program." I meant "teach," as we teach kids different facts about the world.
I believe that we can create a set of programs which will have the capability of learning. I do not know if such a pile of code will "instinctively" desire to learn, or if its creators will have to force-feed it data until such a time as the benefits of learning are established.quote:
Humans also have the ability to feel pain and react in an instictual manner. Machines lack this trait.
Much of these "instinctual" reactions are handled away from the brain. A ganglion in the lower spine creates the knee-jerk reflex, as the path from knee all the way to brain and back takes too long, and walking itself would be impossible. And clearly, such reactive machines do exist. Otherwise, a Roomba would simply get stuck in a corner.
No, the instincts I am talking about are more cerebral. Like curiosity. These may need to be taught (not programmed, but taught).quote:
From my analysis of complex programming systems, I have seen problems which are unexpected crop up when it didn't make sense why. I then was able to isolate the error and analyze why it was occurring. It usually was an interaction error from sharing variable names where something was erroneously killed though indirection or the value changed. I have seen nothing to convince me that a machine is capable of sentience.
I fail to see the relevance of these comments to anything I have written.quote:
Dave W and I have a basic disagreement that placing the individual pieces in close proximity and establishing structured communication between them...
Perhaps the fact that the pieces will be able to "re-wire" their communications on the fly will help clear up the picture?quote:
..will give the extremely complex machine a quality which would achieve sentience. Dave W believes it will. I don't.
And I am trying to understand why you feel the problems you have brought up are insurmountable, contrary to the history of science in general. AI is still a field which is busy, so far as I know, with many people striving for a truly sentient program. In other words, that the lack of inherent curiousity (for example) is a dead-end to the search for a true AI doesn't appear to be self-evident. Other than your personal experiences - which while interesting, are less than compelling as generalizations - how did you arrive at your conclusions? |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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BigPapaSmurf
SFN Die Hard
3192 Posts |
Posted - 09/09/2004 : 08:24:21 [Permalink]
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[quote]I believe the task of programming instinctiveness into a machine is not possible as the manner in which instinctiveness is understood is inadequate to be able to produce a program mimicing it. Humans also have the ability to feel pain and react in an instictual manner. Machines lack this trait. quote]
I think insticnt is the most machine like trait humans have and would be one of the simpler tasks in the overall project, the real trick is having it overcome instinct, such as sacrificing itself when it will certainly take damage. Thats the key to AI I believe, learning that its programming isnt always the correct action.
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"...things I have neither seen nor experienced nor heard tell of from anybody else; things, what is more, that do not in fact exist and could not ever exist at all. So my readers must not believe a word I say." -Lucian on his book True History
"...They accept such things on faith alone, without any evidence. So if a fraudulent and cunning person who knows how to take advantage of a situation comes among them, he can make himself rich in a short time." -Lucian critical of early Christians c.166 AD From his book, De Morte Peregrini |
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