Posted on 04/13/2006 7:22:29 AM PDT by Neville72
Meanness is a human trait. Most of the SI researchers espouse a humanistic/relativistic reality anyway. Will they program SI with the 10 commandments? I don't think so.
In terms of lethality, an SI analogy to a nuclear weapon is that the software is the trigger and nanotechnology is the lump of plutonium. Kept separate, we might have a chance. Together, the world could be transformed into "computronium" overnight.
"Self-awareness is not the most important question."
Well, we already know that computers can outperform us, given a set of instructions. And I suppose that a computer that could write its own program and set of instructions would be quite "intelligent" -- even possibly dangerous.
But it would also lack imagination, no? Or at least would have a limited imagination. We'd still have ingenuity on our side.
I hope you are right. I favor a quarentined SI/nanotech solution, with assured "reboot" capability, maybe to the surface of the Moon or Venus.
Nuclear weapons were much easier to control, once they were developed. SI/nanotech will be extraordinary difficult to control, if they are developed at all.
I think this form of self-awareness is only operational as seen from the outside observer and doesn't prove the actual self-awareness of a robot in the human "I know I exist" sense.
"The Singularity will be a future period during which the pace of technological change will be so rapid, its impact so deep, that human life will be irreversibly transformed," said Ray Kurzweil, keynote speaker and author of the best-selling The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology (Viking, 2005).
I'm reading the book. About 1/2 way through. You knock the ideas that these people have but they are well thought through and documented in spades. Have a look at the book the next time you are in Borders. You may be surprised. In particular, Kurzweil isn't predicting that any of this is going to happen over night. The big changes are 30 to 40 years away. Look back 40 years and think about about the state of automatic voice recognition, pattern recognition, database indexing of billions of documents, instant and essentially free worldwide communication in any household that wants it and computers for $800 that are as good as anything that IBM had in 1966.
Things are changing. And fast.
I don't know. Ray Kurzweil has already revolutionized multiple areas of human endevour. I believe he did a lot of the foundational work around digital audio sampling, which led to electronic music synthesizers that accurately mimic instruments. He also invented a lot of the basic OCR (optical character recognition) technology. His web site has a robotic person with a synthesized voice on it that you can interact with.
We routinely interact with voice response systems that are able to understand our speech. In 1985 a friend who was an AI research PhD at a university told me that that 'might never be possible'.
I think the track record of Dr. Kurzweil is pretty impressive and I would not bet against him.
Brilliant. Much better explained than I could manage. I'm with you all the way.
Huh? How about any person who has seen Blade Runner. After all, while genetically engineered and grown in vats the replicants were people, with intelligence, feeling, emotion and sensation. Would you support NOT extending rights to such people? Based on what ideology? Conservatism? I don't think so.
Prove it. That's just an assertion on your part. It may be correct, or it may not be.
It's been definitely demonstrated that humans can make human and inhuman tools. The ultimate inhuman tool could be SI/nanotech (would the acronym SIN be appropo?). Food for thought.
Maybe he was basing his conclusions on projected CPU speeds and memory limitations, rather than software design.
Is the word "understand" appropriate here? Again, that is an anthropromorphism. I would prefer "convert".
Ping! Please add me to your list. Thanks
Some of the questions posed seem very revealing of the agenda:
Yudkowsky: How can we shape the intelligence explosion for the benefit of humanity?
Peterson: How can we safely bring humanity and the biosphere through the Singularity?
Kurzweil: Will the Singularity be a soft (gradual) or hard (rapid) take off and how will humans stay in control?
Doctorow: Will our technology serve us, or control us?
Consider who exactly is the "we" referred to in these questions. Is it possible that these questioners literally see themselves as the "we", the Controllers, the ones C.S. Lewis referred to as "The Conditioners" in his prescient little book The Abolition of Man? ("For the power of Man to make himself what he pleases means, as we have seen, the power of some men to make other men what they please.") Perhaps the questions might be more aptly put, "how will certain humans stay in control" of others?
"... In order to understand fully what Man's power over Nature, and therefore the power of some men over other men, really means, we must picture the race extended in time from the date of its emergence to that of its extinction. Each generation exercises power over its successors: and each, in so far as it modifies the environment bequeathed to it and rebels against tradition, resists and limits the power of its predecessors. This modifies the picture which is sometimes painted of a progressive emancipation from tradition and a progressive control of natural processes resulting in a continual increase of human power. In reality, of course, if any one age really attains, by eugenics and scientific education, the power to make its descendants what it pleases, all men who live after it are the patients of that power. They are weaker, not stronger: for though we may have put wonderful machines in their hands we have pre-ordained how they are to use them. And if, as is almost certain, the age which had thus attained maximum power over posterity were also the age most emancipated from tradition, it would be engaged in reducing the power of its predecessors almost as drastically as that of its successors. And we must also remember that, quite apart from this, the later a generation comes—the nearer it lives to that date at which the species becomes extinct—the less power it will have in the forward direction, because its subjects will be so few. There is therefore no question of a power vested in the race as a whole steadily growing as long as the race survives. The last men, far from being the heirs of power, will be of all men most subject to the dead hand of the great planners and conditioners and will themselves exercise least power upon the future.The real picture is that of one dominant age—let us suppose the hundredth century A.D.—which resists all previous ages most successfully and dominates all subsequent ages most irresistibly, and thus is the real master of the human species. But then within this master generation (itself an infinitesimal minority of the species) the power will be exercised by a minority smaller still. Man's conquest of Nature, if the dreams of some scientific planners are realized, means the rule of a few hundreds of men over billions upon billions of men. There neither is nor can be any simple increase of power on Man's side. Each new power won by man is a power over man as well. Each advance leaves him weaker as well aas stronger. In every victory, besides being the general who triumphs, he is also the prisoner who follows the triumphal car."
C.S. Lewis
Cordially,
Because the replicants still weren't human. Sure, they LOOKED like humans.
Basically, it tugs at the heartstrings. Looks right, feels right, but still is NOT the same thing.
So I think that while every person might indeed be tempted to legislate along these lines, it's only really the left who would.
Perhaps I'm naive. Maybe the appearance is all that matters. I mean, I don't think dogs have souls, but it is and should still be against the law to mistreat them. Perhaps the same kind of principal would apply?
Kurzweil is a big time self promoter and carnival barker, so I'd be suspicious of any of his claims. As far as AI goes, we'll probably end up making them organic like the brain already is rather than something like integrated circuits.
Welcome aboard!
We are definitely more than our brain's ability to perform mathematical calculations. Even the cause of the ability to do math problems is not analogous to the machine language of a modern CPU.
'No Staples' made that comment at #16, not me.
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