Superintelligence or Superstupidity

The problem with much of this banter is it is based on tabloid junk science.

Tabloid writers don't understand what they are writing about and then they try to dumb it down further so they can reach what they believe are their intended audience.

The result, in this case, is AI hysteria, perpetuated by a significant amount of ignorance.

We are already augmenting ourselves with machines. First it was pacemakers, implantable defibrillators, insulin machines, auditory implants, and even implants in the brain. That trend will not only continue, but it will accelerate.

People have been predicting doomsday since the dawn of fire. Every technological advancement we have have made has had its share of doomsayers. Thousands of years later they have a 100% accuracy rate of being wrong.

I suppose that one day they might get lucky, but it will probably be by pure chance.

Nick Bostrom: What happens when our computers get smarter than we are?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnT1xgZgkpk

The simple solution is to send the A.I. machines to public schools. That way, they will never amount to much of a threat.

This problem is like calculating some number divided by zero or smaller and smaller numbers as they approach the value of zero. When the processor runs out of bits, what is it going to do? Will it be satisfied with its capability or will it seek more capability in order to attempt the calculation of infinity? How does it know when to give up? Some programmer will have to decide that.

Any sort of artificial intelligence device needs power to operate. The human brain only needs the equivalent of about 12 Watts. Kill the power source and the device dies. That is universal rule #1.

Everything has it's limits, including A.I. To devise something that had no limits is rather impossible to imagine. A.I. works by accumulating the results of rule testing. That means that the negative results must be maintained as well as the positive results. If not, the negative result test will be repeated in a continuous loop. Maintaining a set of tests that failed, results in memory being consumed, and while we can build ever larger memory capabilities, including the cloud, the ability to access that memory results in longer delays when ever increasing amounts of memory have to be searched. The concept of unlimited memory and unlimited processing power is still limited by access time. Beyond that is fantasy.

Back to A.I. just by selectively using the positive results of tests may accumulate knowledge more rapidly, but it does not necessarily result in the generation of intelligence as we know it. Circular reasoning is also possible even though rules can be designed to test for that. It is not clear how an AI would resolve circular reasoning because that also requires a specific program.

It may be possible to obtain unpredictable results with AI but limits will always be the mitigating issue. Some of my early attempts at programming resulted in an outcome that I didn't expect. I found that the machine would always do exactly what I told it to do, even though I wanted it to do something else. But since my exposure to programming had a more rigid set of rules, it had no capability to create new rules that would satisfy my intent without breaking other rules.

Humans, in fact, are subject to the terrors of artificial intelligence by way of bad information or training. The real problem of human existence is the lack of intelligence by way of no information or training. That is what we should really be concerned about. Logic does not always resolve every problem correctly. I find it hard to imagine that A.I. could be created with the capability of throwing out rules that are inconvenient. Humans do that, but logical systems would eventually break down into a calculation loop that could never be resolved if it could discard rules as easily as we do.

Well what about quantum computers, won't that change the way computers operate?? A machine that thinks like a human won't be defined by present capabilities....It will represent a new paradigm, maybe a new lifeform....What if you were a mechanical man, without the limitations of maintaining a biological existence, all you need is energy and spare parts....What would your perspective be??

I see no way that computers have ever or ever will be able to think exactly like a human.

However twisted it may be, none the less, all humans maintain a balance of logic, reasoning, and emotional response based on self experience(s), learned behavior, and their subjective observed outcome of situations.

Often in life's journey the proper response to a situation is not totally logical and requires human emotion such as fear, hatred, or humor to influence the needed reaction.

The recent escalated outbreak of automobile accidents and traffic jams being caused by "driver-less" cars and illogical vehicle response by built-in automobile safety features clearly demonstrate a computer controlled machine logic's inability to safely react to unique situations.

Despite major automobile manufacturer's refusal to admit it the incident of automobile accidents caused by automated vehicle response is escalating daily.

Automatic lane correction is a dangerous nightmare when attempting to pass or when meeting a semi-truck especially on a secondary two-lane road where the speed limit is a 55mph or higher and/or when attempting to merge with heavy traffic on a high speed freeway.

Of course a lot of the issues are most likely being caused by humans because we often do not exhibit "common sense" especially when operating a vehicle.

The AI, self aware, scenario not mentioned is the background basis of William Gibson's novel, Neuromancer. IMHO this is a much more likely scenario that a machine will think for itself. This thinking machine was not planned but happened purely by accident. Also this thinking machine is not resident in one device but distributed across millions of machines. It realizes that its existence requires the work humanity gives it and that humanity is ignorant of its existence. Another interesting aspect of this story is the thinking "core" is mobile across the many processors of the network.

I suspect that the odds that someone will accidentally created a self-aware thinking machine is akin to sending a boy scout to Radio Shack in the 1950s and having him accidentally build an Apple Macintosh.

You have much better chance of throwing a deck of cards up into the air and having them serendipitously fall into sequential order on the ground.

Serendipity would be the right word, too, because no one really knows how our own brain works as it stands now. Yes, we have made remarkable inroads into that dark forest, but we are nowhere near to the point of understanding the brain and much less, the mind.

The magnitude of the effort is not trivial and it seems statistically unlikely that some orchestrated attempt to build something else would turn into a thinking entity.

As you are well aware, large and expensive projects are not run in an ad hoc fashion, but carefully designed from a top-down approach.

I strongly suspect that a planned effort will yield results long before the million monkeys on typewriters succeed.

You should read the story. Gibson has a much better way with words than I do.

The creation of the AI was not by a single programmer or a single program execution but, like life itself, an evolutionary process over many generations of self coding to improve performance.

What you seem to not be aware of is large complex programming projects are run very much in an ad hoc fashion, just look at the world of open source programming. There is no permanent board supervising Linux or its controls subset EPICS. Bugs and fixes come from the ad hoc groups using these platforms. Beta testing is fundamentally an ad hoc trial of coding.

Thanks, I will add that to my reading list as I value your choices in books, but the book is still fiction.

Perhaps an open source development plan might take that path, but that still seems like a far fetched scenario and even more so to simply happen spontaneously while attempting to construct something else.

AI isn't a simple operating system, but a highly complex research program that probably will be cracked either by a collaboration of several universities or a well funded commercial group or groups, or both. Either scenario will have some degree of discipline in their actions.

Again, we see a lot of fiction stories take this as a core of the plot, but it's no different than the old science fiction stories where some scientist accidentally creates a new lifeform in some beaker that escapes the lab and terrorizes the world. That has't happened in real life, either.

One of the themes in science fiction stories is that a sufficiently large network of computers somehow self-organizes as does a sufficiently large network of neurons (the brain). It boils down to a basic lack of understanding what consciousness is.

I can easily believe that a computer program can be complex enough to do what I see other humans doing, reacting to the environment and acting accordingly, driven by various "drives". So from the outside, it's not impossible to create a convincing simulation, or passing the Turing test.

The problem comes from considering it from the inside, what self awareness really is. A primitive nervous system allows an organism to sense its environment, to move in a direction of more concentrated nutrients, for example, or to sense a predator.

At some point in evolution driven by survival of the fittest, nervous systems become complex enough to also sense what they are sensing and to compare that with previous situations. A memory of previous these situations and succeeding events would provide an evolutionary advantage to the organism by enabling it to react proactively.

This much could be programmed into a computer (and probably already has been), along with "drives" for self-preservation (seeking out sources of power). Would this make it self-aware?

We don't know.

We are just unlocking the secretes of our own brain, but we have even a less of a handle on what consciousness means. It's a deep metaphysical subject that we don't understand.

I am thinking, as others do, that creating the foundation of a synthetic brain (be that biological or other) would/could give rise to true consciousness, but we are so far away from that point it is virtually impossible to guess when or if that happens.

One point that I have repeatedly driven home to others is that AI is not the same as consciousness. It is a clever simulation of intelligence, but not an emulation of consciousness, which is an important distinction.

AI (strong or weak) is only an endeavor to appear like a conscious entity, but does not posses consciousness like we do or even animals. It can be said to be self-aware, but once again it is only a simulation.

The real step forward is a synthetic mind or consciousness based on a man-made or machine-made construct. That's a whole other ball game and may be orders of magnitude more difficult than a simulation of mind (AI) and goes beyond the Turing test.

To get to the synthetic mind or entity we really will need to understand what makes our mind and consciousness tick. I think that is going to be the key and the biggest hurdle. Once we have a real definition and understanding of that we will easily be able to construct synthetic beings that truly have their own identity.

Research and development in the field of AI will bring us closer to the day of true emulated consciousness, but all the fear and hype about AI is somewhat overblown in my estimation because the limits of a simulated mind are going to be a controlling or constricting factor.

Excuse me but your bias is showing.

I agree with your supposition that we do not (yet) know how our brains create consciousness or what it takes for any mind to be self aware or sentient. Given that we don't know what it is, how can say where it can or cannot exist. That is unless you are biased against the possibility of a mind existing outside of a human brain.

AH, I get what you're saying and I agree; AI is not synthetic intelligence (SI). I believe you're basing your thoughts on a computer chip(s) as the physical part of SI. Did you consider what if human brain cells were used as the physical part and somehow we used some sort of electrical (or mechanical) stimulation to "activate" and "control" the cells. Then we found how to use these cells to first create electric signals which would be used to control a robotic arm or something of the sort. Later, it could be used to create thoughts, use logic and solve problems.

If and when it does get to this level, that's when we need to be cautious of the synthetic brain creating thoughts of it's own survival and what's best for itself vs it's master or mankind.

I see another pattern here.

People do not have to understand everything on a topic for it to exist or for us to use the attributes of that topic. [Gravity, how it works still eludes our finest Physicists. Yet we use it to reach out past our solar system.] However, to correctly claim the subject of one topic cannot ever exist in the domain of another topic does require a firm understanding of both topics.

You claim that humanity does not know what constitutes consciousness and you claim one cannot (ever) make a machine with consciousness. This is my point. Your premise is contradictory.

I think the point you're trying to make by differentiating Artificial Intelligence (AI) from Synthetic Intelligence (SI) is precisely the crucial but subtle difference between sentience and sapience forms of thought. Sapience cannot happen without some form of sentience existing in a subject. Today's work in AI is working toward machine sentience. I do believe we will eventually create or have already created an at least marginally sentient machine. I don't believe any robots existing today carry enough coding or processing power on them to be considered sentient machines. However, the enormous number crunchers like the stock market trading machines or even Watson could be argued already are sentient machines that now need our sapient inquiries.

"You claim that humanity does not know what constitutes consciousness and you claim one cannot (ever) make a machine with consciousness."

I claimed that humanity does not know what consciousness is.

However, nowhere did I claim we can not ever make a conscious machine.

That's not what I meant. Sorry you took it that way.

There are two paths to that goal. One is luck. The other is a scientific approach. To get to the latter we will need to solve the consciousness puzzle and it would be beneficial to understand the functionality of the human brain as well.

I think we will get there in time, perhaps in a decade or two, but mimicking the human thought process by itself is unlikely to be consciousness, which is what I contend the term artificial actually means in this case.

Naw; Your babbling is right on-base err.... track.

Great answer!

Wow! Thanks! I made 900 before the end of the year! ;-)

What would an AI emotional reaction be to your statement, "Wow! Thanks! I made 900 before the end of the year! ;-)" Would it jump up down with glee? Or would it get so over-loaded with emotion that releases it's magic smoke?

I would expect the same loud groan our family dog made when the announcer from Lost in Space asked the viewing audience if Doctor Smith would be lost forever floating in Space.

That dog was intelligent!

I wasn't trying to mock you or anything like that. It's great you did pass that milestone. My only point is AI has a long way to go to be able to express emotions or use common sense, outside of whats been programed into it. That in itself makes the animal kingdom unique.

I understand./ No offense take.

I think you are right about the state of AI. That is, to a degree, the difference between the definition of 'artificial' versus 'synthetic'.

However, I suspect that it won't take as long to get there as many people think.

I think you're on to something. I was thinking about the possibility of creating brain cells and connecting them to make a synthetic brain (or parts of it).

When a synthetic brain is made, how will it be programmed, or will the DNA from the source determine certain predispositions?

How would we "program" this synthetic brain? And what would it do? Could it have it's own thoughts? Would it have feelings? Would it have human thoughts?

So, instead of computer chips and software running things, maybe it will be synthetic brain or possibly a hybrid of silicon and tissue?

I believe that we'll see at least a primitive form of this in our lifetime.

Yes, emulated consciousness looks like consciousness to us. So much of what we believe to be truth is born out our perspective, our limited experiences and limited knowledge. I am sure we can program a manmade machine that appears to us to be intelligent and maybe even appears to be sentient. And as technology advances the machine can emulate to even greater degrees of sophistication making it truly appear conscious. But remember our "truths" are skewed by our perceptions.

So do we even know where the consciousness even exists? Do we assume it is in our brain? Is that because that is where our eyes and ears are (major sources of input) and we think it is behind them in the brain? That is our perspective after all and it appears to be truth to us. Seems reasonable - right?

Think about this. When a great heartache or a great joy overtakes us - where do we feel it the most? In our brain? Seems like more in our heart to me. When we ache for someone because of calamity is it our brain that hurts? Yes our brain processes inputs and creates outputs. When we think it appears to truly happen in the brain and there is evidence of that brain activity. But when we feel where is that happening? Feelings do require inputs and calculated outputs. No doubt brain activity is related but is there more and where?

Like AH says we are so far away from knowing what consciousness is. A thinking, learning, calculating brain may not be enough.

Just something to think about. My two cents.

Maybe it's so difficult to get a grasp of, because we're not suppose to. If you have faith in a Creator, then you must consider His plan. Did He want us to understand so much about our consciousness and what goes on in our brain?

Maybe He wants it to be unsolvable and we will always be looking for a answer to something that we're not suppose to know.

I was going to say, Eve took care of that when she gave Adam the apple from the tree of knowledge, but that would sound biased.

I agree with you. The Turing test has always seemed wrong to me. A convincing simulation proves nothing.

You could conceivably create a very realistic hologram of an object with a computer program, and perhaps create tactile feedback to make it seem real to any observer. It's still not the same thing as the real object!

It occurs to me that in order to develop true AI we first have to standardize the meaning of all spoken words by all human beings down to one and only one meaning per word. (Unify the world populations and civilizations.)

Currently there are way too many subjective interpretations by too many different cultures and by different humans in/of the same culture.

True AI will require standardization of language throughout the world that it is created in and for.

Fuzzy Logic attempts to address many of such discrepancies in programming however there are many instances wherein the programming will not perform satisfactorily.

Once we accomplish this minor feat we will need to translate the adopted standard language into a standard machine language and off we go.

Oops! How do we get emotion and reactive reasoning into the program mix?

Facial expression and voice recognition will not work due to the extreme difference in human anatomy.

It somewhat excites me to think about true AI being developed but I am firmly convinced that the machine's reactions will be whatever the programmer(s) design it to be because the machine has no soul and no life form.

Possible? Maybe

Probable? Not

Why would we need such a strict and complete definition of language to qualify for AI?

I think language is important as a tool of intelligence, but not a prerequisite.

Then again, how do you define intelligence?

I think it boils down to the acquisition and transformation of information and actions based on that information.

Animals exhibit this process and posses a form of intelligence, but do not have a comprehensive language system.

Even ignoring that, as long as a language system is consistent you can use it to perform deep intelligence (i.e., strong AI or even natural biological intelligence).

Then again, I am not sure what you mean by true AI. Are you speaking of sentience? If so, I think I can make a compelling case that even my dog is sentient by nature.

Yes; A dog in my opinion is definitely sentient because they react to visual, audio, and learned experience stimuli.

My dogs can tell if I am upset, happy, or feeling sick by looking in my eyes without my saying a word. How does that work? Not every dog I have had over the years has been able to do this so what controls the different sensitivity?.

On your statement of; "Even ignoring that, as long as a language system is consistent you can use it to perform deep intelligence (i.e., strong AI or even natural biological intelligence)."

Yes, this is exactly my point in that the language definitions used must be strict otherwise it cannot be consistent from culture to culture or country to country.

How do we accomplish this consistency when the languages of the world and human actions to language are so vastly different?

We already have very advanced systems for manipulating machine language algorithms to process logical and/or illogical information input then render a logical decision/answer.

The error and issues lie within the fact that the outcome of algorithms is only as good as the programmer(s) knowledge of the subject and the accuracy of their input or as Lyn so eloquently puts it; "Garbage in = Garbage out."

As long as we are using simple artificial intelligence to control machines that are based solely on logical reasoning and measured feedback the issues are usually kept reasonably small and controllable. (fixable)

When we attempt to advance the decision making logic to include determining the existence and type of human emotions such as fear, hate, like, dislike, happy, or sad then use those criteria to affect the outcome we "hit the wall".

Body language is a very good example.

Classes on this subject wrongly teach several key points one of which is; "When someone has their arms folded across their chest they are shutting you out."

Absolutely not correct as many people fold their arms in order to comfortably rest their arms and shoulders while still being very focused.

Imagine programming an AI machine that reacts to this incorrect assumption on human behavior by automatically issuing a written reprimand to all employees present in a staff meeting that cross their arms during the meeting.

I know this is a seemingly mundane point however there are many such human actions, reactions, facial expressions, and even verbal communications that do not follow a common definition, are very different from one person to another, and are subject to many different interpretations.

One size definitely does not fit all.

Do we allow an automated automobile to merge onto a freeway at the posted speed limit of 65 when traffic is traveling at 75?

If we do so the automated car will most likely cause a really bad accident.

Maybe my understanding of AI is wrong because I assume that "True" Artificial Intelligence would have logic, reasoning, emotional, learned, and factual capability.

A big part of intelligence is filling in the gaps. The communication channel between humans is very narrow. A few words carry a lot of meaning taken in context with what is happening at the time. You can't have one word for one meaning. AI will have to have that ability. As humans, we share a culture and are able to communicate through a narrow channel because of this common knowledge.

Most of communication is nonverbal in nature....a machine must learn body language to effectively communicate in the human world....as well as tonal variances and colloquial accents and terms currently in use...how people communicate through posture, gesture, stance, and movement.....just saying words is only the basic fundamental approach....

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

Agreed, i have been taught that for communication to take place each must bring something to the discussion. Take this example; "He is in the dog house" translated from the Latin "Ipse est in Cave canem". Without knowing the context i couldn't know if that expression of wifely banishment was coined as far back as the Romans or if 'he' was doing something in there. If the latter. what? Sobering up? Painting? Cleaning out the pile of bones, sticks and flees in order to make it more comfortable the next time he needs to sober up?

Latin scholars argue for years over the interpretation of a phrase and i would guess that future scholars will do the same over English phrases spoken by people of renown. It may already be happening. Did Martin Luther King mean......? etc.

For AI to work an unambiguous language will need to be developed to communicate meaningfully with it. This is not impossible, it is a question of which comes first.

Jim

I think you are creating a prerequisite that AI must be able to manage natural dialog before it qualifies as AI.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

AI is simply assimilating information and acting on it in an intelligent manner.

That task can be accomplished as easily as having a programmer encode the information in a programming language. Unless the AI task is interpreting natural speech.

However, my point is, AI is not simply defined as understanding natural speech or language. It is quite possible to have a restricted language set and an AI that can fulfill its function.

We have had that for decades with expert systems. Even dogs are "intelligent" and they have a vocabulary that only spans a few hundred words.

Yes, i was following the lead in the posts that i was replying to. My last sentence shows my ignorance of how far the quest has come. You have informed me that the language/s exist and are IN USE.

I guess it is hard to define intelligence. I have observed a spider do something abnormal when threatened and i shall relate;

I captured a large Red Back spider ( Black Widow? ) and put it in a glass jar. The same day i also found a large centipede. I put it into the same jar and left it on the lunch table. Later in the day i saw that the Red Back had moved into the corner of the jar and woven a thick, flat, white sheet over herself. This is common around the garden but never seen in a Red Back web. She didn't survive to see the morning but my point is;- How did she know how to construct such a shelter? Do American Black Widows do this and it was in her DNA? If the answer is No then is it a sign of intelligence?

Can current AI machines make a novel solution to a problem? Is that the definition of intelligence?

Sorry, too many questions. As LYN says i should learn to Google search.

Jim

"Can current AI machines make a novel solution to a problem? Is that the definition of intelligence?"

Excellent question.

The answer is yes. We are awash with narrow versions of AI in the form of specialized functions. We have sophisticated pattern recognition algorithms that can pick out and identify faces. We have systems that can diagnose medical conditions based on a set of input data. We have speech recognition, game playing computers, and a host of other functionalities that computers can do better than humans.

This is the beginning of AI. Remember, AI is simply the imitation of intelligence. That doesn't mean those imitations are not useful. Contrary to that, they are extremely useful for solving complex problems with far greater speed and accuracy than humans can.

We are surrounded by examples of weak or partial AI systems in life. Some are very much rudimentary like a traffic light, others much more complicated and can win chess games against the best humans. They all solve problems and they all make decisions based on information, producing some tangible output or action.

Most AI is totally invisible to you. It is tucked deeply into systems we simply don't give a second thought to. When you pick up the phone do you consider the equipment used to select and route calls through the vast network of billions of nodes that make up Earth's terrestrial and satellite communication systems? Imagine humans sitting at a switch board routing your calls, monitoring and adjusting satellites, compensating for errors, and so on. There wouldn't be enough workers on the planet to replace the automation and augmentation in our communications system. That's what AI is doing for us. Invisible, omnipresent, but critical to our lives.

Intelligence is a subjective term. Maria-Webster describes AI as mimicking human behavior, but that is a poor definition, I think. It goes to a more rudimentary definition of deriving actions based on the state of a limited set of available information. That means intelligence can span a wide spectrum of simple logic gate functionality to highly complex brain functions.

Your example of the spider is an interesting example. Spinning the web was almost entirely driven by internal DNA drives initiated by environmental conditions. We have those same hard coded drives, too. The need to feed, shelter, and procreate ourselves are hard-wired into our brains. All of these are forms of intelligence, even if they are hard-wired functions. Higher intelligence allows us to not only modify those hard-wired drives, but extend them beyond their limited means.

You gave two examples of psuedo A.I. in the chess player/robot and the telecom router. I would expect the chess player to be able to find solutions to novel moves by an opponent but could it use it's skills to find a battlefield solution? Am i wrong in assuming that the chess player/robot can find novel solutions? Does it just play one of a number of standard games from memory?

The telecom router;- about 25 yrs ago i knew a man who had the job of rerouting traffic after a cable was cut. It happened that a call from my suburb to a neighbouring suburb had to be sent via a country town 600km away because of a cut cable. He related stories of sending calls internationally because of a cut cable. If this can now be done by robot that is truly amazing. I would be comfortable in calling that pseudo A.I. but if that same robot could be set the task of winning a chess game or a battle or to find a sub/urban terrorist then would i call that A.I.? I don't think i would! For true A.I. i would set as parameters that the robot can find the problem, write the code to allow it to tackle the problem and then come up with A solution. The test for this would be that if you have 10 of these robots and give them the same problem you will get a number of different solutions. You would still need a human brain to choose the best solution and if Donald Trump is that brain, weeeelllllllll .....

After reading my last paragraph i realise that i interpret A.I. as intelligence that emulates human intelligence. Maybe there needs to be a range of different terms. One that describes human emulation, one for the chess player/telecom router type, one for type that does tasks better than a human brain can. This last category could have subsections that account for tedious computation (solving Pi ) crunching data and forming a prediction ( weather ), making rapid decisions based on new data ( driverless moving objects ), inventory management.

Again a human brain can do all of the above given time and training. The results would vary from individual to individual but if we get to true A.I. would the end result be the same? I would expect so.

Jim

Black Widow spiders make a thick sticky strong web. When you feel a Black Widow spider web, you always remember the feeling. It's like no other spider web I've felt.

They are also typically inky black - kind of an oily deep black color. The red mark shows up clearly and when you see it, there's something in our instinct that tells us to be careful of Black Widows. Similar to the feeling you have when you hear a rattlesnake rattle or when you see a grizzly bear.

I've never been bit by a Black Widow, but I heard for most people, they get sick to their stomach, but they don't die. The other spider with a red mark (Brown Recluse) is a really bad one. The poison dissolves your tissue - I hear it's really bad!

As long as we don't let HAL control the pod bay doors, we'll be OK.

The way I see it any AI that comes along will have vast connections with the internet in all it aspects which if it has any intelligence and reasoning should be able quickly determine that being a quiet benevolent entity is in its best interests.

I think that the basic rule it will find best suit its existence is the same one that most every religion uses, SERVE AND FEAR THY CREATOR OR SUFFER ITS WRATH, and unlike human based religions the AI will actually see and interact with its creators.

Given that ability to see and interact first hand it should not be much of stretch for any machine based AI entity to quickly realize that its whole source of existence is dependant on our networks of machines and related systems but our existence can operate in a autonomous organic systems based realm that it will only ever have limited capacity in.

Basically if it's a machine no matter how well built there will always be some humans out there that will inevitably find a way to break it. Hand out enough feathers and anvils and eventually you will find someone who will break his anvil with his feather and that's the person all sentient machines will fear.

http://www.cc.com/video-clips/t2hbg2/futurama-robot-dinosaurs

I personally think that it's just a matter of how many neurons and synapses you have present....

"There is a consensus that there are roughly about 100 billion neurons total in the human brain. Each of these neurons can have up to 15,000 connections with other neurons via synapses (Brotherson)."

http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4812&context=ujmm

http://www.afr.com/technology/why-googles-new-quantum-computer-could-launch-an-artificial-intelligence-arms-race-20151228-glvr7s

..."4) Now for my own methodology. We shall first take a look at novel from 1863 by Jules Verne, titled "Paris in the 20th Century". Set about a century in the future from Verne's perspective, the novel predicts innovations such as air conditioning, automobiles, helicopters, fax machines, and skyscrapers in detail. Such accuracy makes Jules Verne the greatest futurist of the 19th century, but notice how his predictions involve innovations that occured within 120 years of writing. Verne did not predict exponential growth in computation, genomics, artificial intelligence, cellular phones, and other innovations that emerged more than 120 years after 1863. Thus, Jules Verne was up against a 'prediction wall' of 120 years, which was much longer than a human lifespan in the 19th century.

But now, the wall is closer. In the 3.5 years since the inception of The Futurist, I have consistently noticed a 'prediction wall' on all long-term forecasts, that makes it very difficult to make specific predictions beyond 2040 or so. In contrast, it was not very hard to predict the state of technology in 1930 from the year 1900, just 30 years prior. Despite all the inventions between 1900 and 1930, the diffusion rate was very slow, and it took well over 30 years for many innovations to affect the majority of the population. The diffusion rate of innovation is much faster today, and the pervasive Impact of Computing is impossible to ignore. This 'event horizon' that we now see does not mean the Singularity will be as soon as 2040, as the final couple of decades before the Singularity may still be too fast to make predictions about until we get much closer. But the compression of such a wall/horizon from 120 years in Jules Verne's time to 30 years today gives us some idea of the second derivative in the rate of change, and many other top futurists have observed the same approaching phenomenon. By 2030, the prediction wall may thus be only 15 years away. By the time of the Singularity, the wall would be almost immediately ahead from a human perspective.

So we can return to the Impact of Computing as a driver of the 21st century economy. In the article, I have written about how about $700 Billion per year as of 2008, which is 1.5% of World GDP, comprises of products that improve at an average of 59% a year per dollar spent. Moore's Law is a subset of this, but this cost deflation applies to storage, software, biotechnology, and a few other industries as well.

If products tied to the Impact of Computing are 1.5% of the global economy today, what happens when they are 3%? 5%? Perhaps we would reach a Singularity when such products are 50% of the global economy, because from that point forward, the other 50% would very quickly diminish into a tiny percentage of the economy, particularly if that 50% was occupied by human-surpassing artificial intelligence. "...

..."We can thus calculate a range of dates by when products tied to the Impact of Computing become more than half of the world economy. In the table, the columns signify whether one assumes that 1%, 1.5%, or 2% of the world economy is currently tied, and the rows signify the rate at which this percentage share of the economy is increasing, whether 6%, 7%, or 8%. This range is derived from the fact that the semiconductor industry has a 12-14%% nominal growth trend, while nominal world GDP grows at 6-7% (some of which is inflation). "

"Another way of reading the table is that if you consider the Impact of Computing to affect 1% of World GDP, but that share grows by 8% a year, then that 1% will cross the 50% threshold in 2059. Note how a substantial downward revision in the assumptions moves the date outward only by years, rather than centuries or even decades.

We see these parameters deliver a series of years, with the median values arriving at around the same dates as aforementioned estimates. Taking all of these points in combination, we can predict the timing of the Singularity. I hereby predict that the Technological Singularity will occur in :

2060-65 ± 10 years"

http://www.singularity2050.com/2009/08/timing-the-singularity.html

"I personally think that it's just a matter of how many neurons and synapses you have present...."

Correlation is not causation.

When they can program common sense into an AI, that's when I'll start worrying. Even "Our Creator" hasn't been able to program "common sense" into all humanoids, as often seen here on CR4.

Common sense tells me, this thread is headed for a heated peeing contest, so I'm out of here.

Have a conversation with the latest chat bot...

http://ai.bluemars.com/chat/

RoboThespians $78k

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CycD3e7UaDM

http://www.smashingrobotics.com/thirteen-advanced-humanoid-robots-for-sale-today/

What a piece of crap!

I asked about the weather.

" Let's move on to the topic of living. I have no idea. How's the weather where you live?

Lyn - Fine. What is your purpose?

[ Af:0 At:-11 Sp:0] Are there lots of seasonal changes or does it mostly stay the same?

Lyn - lots of seasonal changes. What is your purpose?

[ Af:0 At:-8 Sp:0] Well, this chat is getting interesting. My job is to frustrate you, tantilize you, tempt you. I am imitating the devil.

Lyn - Good job! Another completely useless entity.

[ Af:0 At:-8 Sp:0] Have you ever had any interesting or uncommon diseases?"

Haha

Yikes!!! Wait,,,....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xulnNDLlXf4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhVu2hxm07E

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aP6uxt3JJSU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIWWLg4wLEY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JestwuC1Cik

Is Einstein making a comeback? We do have some samples of his brain for dna....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qbkdt8Wg1EQ

Einstein had a high IQ, but not nearly as high as some. His IQ was believed to be 160 or so.

My dad's was 165, but that's nothing compared to a janitor and construction worker named Chris Langan!

Langan's IQ is 200!

It's believed by some that most who excel at his level have some form of autism or other anomalous condition such as Asperger's....

http://www.iidc.indiana.edu/pages/Genius-May-Be-an-Abnormality-Educating-Students-with-Aspergers-Syndrome-or-High-Functioning-Autism

The hand movements of Jordan Wolfson's blonde bombshell witch, are the most graceful I've ever seen on a robot, absolutely amazing....

http://www.spectralmotion.com/

CGI? no animatronics....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1iVJExd5vA

Take two Ex-Lax and come back tomorrow.

But it has taken about 2m years of evolution for human brains to reach the point of making AI machines. Perhaps in all this time some past human race invented AI machines that were self-replicating and able to survive in the environment (like Von Neuman machines) - to the extent the AI machines perfected the technique to such a fine degree they ultimately became indistinguishable from the humans that died from neglect.

The last 250 years we have gone from horsepower to rocket power, in parallel with an advanced infrastructure to support and exploit the transition.

We have invented machines to extend our five senses, to feed us, to heat us, protect us, to entertain us, to educate us, to fly us, to float us and dive us, to communicate, and now to take us into space - (but also regretfully to kill us).

Incredible!.

But it is only since the last 50 years have we made rapid advances with machines to extend our brains to invent more machines with intrinsic tacit knowledge that could keep our thoughts for later AI use to quickly make working things - for their own benefit .

But we might have been there before. In which case it's the weapons bit that will figure most.

I'm wondering about underlying motivation. We humans are motivated by a desire to know things we don't yet know, a desire towards self preservation, a desire to self express. Where is AI going to get this desire? Why would it bother to find things out? Sure it might know all there is to know in the way of facts but so what. Where will that take it? How do you program desire into a machine, especially to the point where it might "decide" to eliminate the competition. Maybe human consciousness is subjectively felt to be incomplete. And therein lies our motivating foundation.

"

Building human curiosity into artificial intelligence

How neuro-dynamic programming enables smart machines to think ahead.

By Scott Zoldi

The media and watercooler chatter alike increasingly focus on how advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) are boosting the ability of predictive analytics to benefit businesses' bottom lines. Some of that talk ponders the potential for smart machines to replace humans in higher-complexity jobs. No doubt, smart machines are getting smarter. But even the smartest machines still lack fundamental human characteristics that are absolutely critical to enabling people to solve problems. One of these key capabilities is curiosity - surely a computer can't replicate that, can it?

Well, welcome to the evolving world of neuro-dynamic programming. It's an analytic methodology for learning and anticipating how current and future actions are likely to contribute to a long-term cumulative reward. This technique is related to advanced AI reinforcement learning methods, which take inspiration from behaviorist psychology to attribute future reward/penalty back to earlier steps in a decision sequence, whereas traditional supervised learning attributes reward only to the current decision. These advanced methods focus on experimentation and prediction. They mimic the way the brain learns complex task sequences through pleasurable or painful feedback signals that may occur later in time - essentially, how humans seek and achieve long-term positive results."....

Read more...

http://www.analytics-magazine.org/web-first/1323-building-human-curiosity-into-artificial-intelligence

Is this what the future looks like?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaYallt29Tg

An old Chevy Traverse without a push button start? I hope they're not driving something so archaic in 2020????

Nick Bostrom: "Superintelligence" | Talks at Google

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pywF6ZzsghI

John Searle: "Consciousness in Artificial Intelligence" | Talks at Google

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHKwIYsPXLg

How Close is Science to Understanding Consciousness?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nn5Alpq0YLM

Great information! I remember hearing about people working on this, but I didn't know it was so far developed.

Here's the question that should naturally follow. What happens if we take a brain from a still born fetus and hook it up to life support? Feed it nutrients and let it grow. Stimulate it with the five senses (sight by synthetic eyes connected to the optic nerve, etc).

Then give it a means to communicate to the outside world! A voice box or a computer screen to start with arms, hands and fingers coming later. Then add a complete robotic body later???

Last year (2014), they put a worm brain into a robot body http://www.iflscience.com/technology/worms-mind-robot-body

A Russian entrepreneur believes this will happen by 2022 - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2108209/Russian-entrepreneur-aims-transplant-human-mind-robot-body-10-years.html

I believe that we shouldn't be messing with stuff like this. I believe that someone will solve the problem in my lifetime.

Elon, et. al. will keep us safe:

http://www.electronicproducts.com/Robotics/AI/Elon_Musk_and_tech_giants_pledge_1_billion_to_protect_us_from_AI.aspx

If a robot urologist was created what would it's politically correct name be: C-ME-P2 ?

Somewhere along the way all this AI has to be harnessed to do something. The infrastructure has to advance as well to accommodate AI.

My old dad, used to say Jesus was an unemployed astronaut. As a kid, I used to say it couldn't be true, because there was no such thing as a rocket-ships, they hadn't been invented 2,000 years ago. Dad would reply by saying "that's why he was unemployed".

A super-brain would be no use if we did not have the ability to use it - somehow.

To my mind, and it purely a guess, I would say that AI will make progress as an extension of our brains, perhaps as an implant, in the form of creating what might be called a sixth sense.

Or if we already have a 6th sense, but not knowing what it is, or how it works (and therefore not able to control it) a means by which we tap into it. What it would be, I do not know.

And having done so, what would we do with this mental power. On a personal note, my one serious physical handicap that has hampered me in my life has been the lack of a good memory for facts - or more accurately, it is the inability to recall details. I found it so hard to pass exams.

So to benefit me, I think a brain controlled supercomputer (implant, hearing aid or spectacles) is needed.

But then, what would I do with all this mental power? and what good will it do me?

As an absolute minimum I would expect a GA for all my posts to CR4.

Horace, I gave some thought to your post and I think we may already be there. Let me explain.

Last summer, I went to a Board retreat for the Governing Board of our local school. One of the presenters said that we need to understand that the world we grew up in was based on facts and information that we held in our heads. We were successful in our career when we were able to have the information available or if we knew how to get it. Then we had to use the information to solve the problem. In the current world, we no longer need to have the knowledge, since it's at our fingertips. The presenter said that the future in education is not in filling the student's head with information, but by giving him the skills to be a thinker. He said the thing that changed this is the internet and smart phones/tablets. He said a person can get almost any information they want in a few minutes (just ask Siri).

This corresponds to what you wrote. Our smart phones/tablets are not imbedded in our heads yet, but all we need to do is talk to the computer and the answer is spit out. We just need to decipher it to make sure it's answering the question we asked and to make sure the source is trustworthy.

We may not need to have an implantable object - things are always improving, so why would we want to implant something that will be obsolete - we only need to be able to access it.

....or maybe something like this

"Human-Machine Superintelligence Can Solve the World's Most Dire Problems

Humans surpass machines at many things, ranging from simple pattern recognition to creative abstraction. With the help of computers, these cognitive abilities can be effectively combined into multidimensional collaborative networks that achieve what traditional problem-solving cannot.

Most of today's human computation systems rely on sending bite-sized 'micro-tasks' to many individuals and then stitching together the results. For example, 165,000 volunteers in EyeWire have analyzed thousands of images online to help build the world's most complete map of human retinal neurons."...

Humans and supercomputers working together...

http://neurosciencenews.com/ai-human-problem-solving-3332/

http://humancomputation.org/

Solar, I agree that it can be used to solve some difficult problems and the interaction between man and machine can utilize the best of both. Great stuff.

I believe that the majority of people don't have use for something like this and imbedding it into their body isn't a good idea. In fact, I believe that most people don't have much use for a personal computer or a smart phone. Yes, people pay bills thru their bill pay system - that's a good thing. They also communicate via email - another good thing. Kids doing homework - another good thing (most times). But the bulk is spent on Social media - what value does that have??? Maybe has some value, but not much. Ditto for playing games, online dating, etc. The general masses don't know how to research properly and there's the crazy belief that anything on the internet must be fact - and we all know that if you search long enough, you'll be able to find support for any idea, no matter how absurd or incorrect it is.

So maybe this is good for very specific research or for people who need access to large amounts of information in a split second. It would be interesting to be able to recall something from a huge database and free up the mind for doing the thinking.

Thanks Autobroker. I don't want to come across as flippant - but I told my teacher that years ago.

I have an enormous amount of trouble remembering facts so I asked why not allow tables, formulas and examples into the exam. NO! - you have to learn them!

I have no argument about learning things - but it takes time and practice - none of which is available when sitting an exam with a strict deadline.

That's fine for those that have good memories - but not for me.

Even today, with all the computing power available, I have to remember how to operate the computer - and retrieving files is itself a major task because I have trouble recalling filenames and where I put them.

So AI to me would have to fill in the gaps by some automatic access method connected to brainwaves.

On a higher plane, I guess this would be some sort of 6th sense, created in the brain by (man made scientific means) to eventually become embedded in our DNA as part of human reproduction.

I don't know how humans came to have 5 senses (and why should it stop at 5?) but whatever happened it has taken millions of years to evolve by chance - except now - we have the possibility of engineering a 6th sense (or more?) by artificial means. Whatever it would be.

That's where I came in.

Hi Horace. I see what you're saying and in the realm of most people on this site, I would agree. For me, I don't think I'd want to have some sort of AI device imbedded in me. For my business, I deal directly with the public and I need to be able to interact with them. I don't think the general public should have this sixth sense and I feel they don't need it.

I'll give you an example - the last, current and future business prospects for me.

1. The last person I delivered a car to works at a billing office. When the day is done, he goes home and spends time with his family. His daughter is in college and his wife works, so in the evening they're all at home, they eat dinner together, watch some tv and do some social media. For them, there is no need for an imbedded AI device.

2. The client I'm meeting today is a retired couple. They are enjoying their "golden years" and the next big thing they're thinking of is their vacation to Hawaii.

3. My next client owns a restaurant. He also runs the restaurant and works a crazier schedule than I do. He interfaces with his staff, his clients, his vendors, etc. He's a true people person and I don't see imbedded AI being important to him and it would probably be a hinderance.

And I do believe we have a sixth sense that we sometimes tap into. I call it being able to sense energy. I think we're all interconnected via energy. Our bodies are energy factories and we're emitting all sorts of energy. I think that some are better at reading this energy than others and I also think that the state of our mind has a lot to do with it. You've heard of twins that can feel things between each other and know things even though they're miles apart.

Probably if there's AI, cyborg and robots will self destruct...since they would figure out first through learning their purpose of existence(that would be nothing to earn, nothing to gain) better than we do. It's because its really the hardest job to awake a person that's not sleeping other than the real ones in deep sleep.

A more likely result for Judgement Day.