Summary Of Symposium On Spiritual Machines

csy writes, "I've just returned from the symposium on Spiritual Machines hosted by Douglas Hofstadter as previously publicized on /., and I thought I'd write Slashdot a quick summary of the events from my recollection (other posters will no doubt correct the errors I make here, and I don't summarize all the speakers, only those I consider more interesting)."

"The interest in the symposium was amazing. The lecture hall was packed, and people who couldn't get into the main lecture hall had to watch the talk by live video in an overflow room (which was packed to the brim as well). There were the old and the young, male and female. Interest was no doubt spurred by the symposium's very controversial thesis, recent interest in Bill Joy's article in Wired, and the very distinguished cast of speakers. The irony of the fact that the symposium was punctuated by microphone failures and abruptly dimming lights in the room was not lost on anyone.

Ray Kurzweil spoke first, and he spoke of how rapidly increasing CPU speeds would result in intelligent, spiritual machines. He spoke of how the current exponential shrinkage of transistor sizes was not the first such trend, but rather a series in the natural progression of technology: from mechanical computing devices, to vacuum tubes, to transistors, to integrated circuits, and he expressed his optimism for the future. He spoke of how the human brain could be scanned, to replicate its functionality in silicon. His conviction in these advances, and the ability of humans to reverse engineer the human brain, made him express a highly optimistic position.

Bill Joy spoke next. He opened by stating that he believed in the ability of computers and nanomachinery to continue to advance, but it was precisely his belief in this advancement that led to his position that the continued development of nano-machinery and self-replicating machines would pose a new and different kind of threat to human kind ('knowledge of mass destruction'). He made a particularly eloquent point about how that while science has always sought the truth and that free information has great value, but just as the Romans realized that to 'always apply a Just Law rigidly would be the greatest injustice,' so must we seek a restraint, and 'avoid the democratization of evil.' It wasn't exactly clear to me from his speech what form he thought this restraint must take, but his speech was extremely compelling, and it is clear to me that at the least, self-replicating machines will create new and serious challenges for mankind.

John Holland, the inventor of Genetic algorithms, took a more skeptical view of the ability of increasing computer speeds, even at exponential rates, to naturally result in machine intelligence. In his words, 'progress in software has not followed Moore's law.' He believes in its eventuality, but not in the time frame proposed (2100). He gave the example of Go vs. Chess, where the number of positions in Go are approximately 10^30 greater than in chess, and simply by adding additional rows and columns, the number of positions increase exponentially -- eliminating gains made from exponential increase in computer speeds. He said that while genetic algorithms enable the evolution of computer programs, the fitness function and the training environment to use (he gave the example of evolving an ecosystem) are often unclear. He emphasized the need for strong theory and he concluded with a very (in my mind) profound statement, 'Predictions 30 years ahead have always proven to be wrong, except in the cases where there is a strong theory behind it.'

Ralph Merkle addressed the claims made by Bill Joy directly. He said that rather than to speculate on the dangers of nanotechnology and take hasty action, we need to find out whether nanotechnology gives an edge to the 'offensive or the defensive,' and to understand this, more research is need, and not, in Bill Joy's words, 'relinquishment.' (Joy later asked Merkle 'Do you think biological weaponry gives an advantage to the offensive or defensive,' to which Merkle embarrassingly replied, 'I'm not sure.')

John Koza, drawing from examples in Genetic programming, said that while human-competitive results by machines are certainly possible (e.g. the evolution of previously patented circuit designs), much more computational power is needed to evolve the equivalent of a human mind.

Other choice moments: Holland asked Joy during the panel discussion how much progress have we seen in Operating Systems in the past 30 years, to which Joy replied 'the function of an operating system is fixed.'

In conclusion, the speakers largely differed over the time frame for intelligent, spiritual machines, and the amount of danger self-replicating machinery posed to humanity -- but no one in the panel seemed to think the Moore's law would run out of steam, or that intelligent machines would not be eventually possible -- although Hofstadter does admit that this is as much by construction of the panel, which did not include any serious naysayers."

Comments

Problem not with the Technology

[crush]

Nice summary of the symposium.

I find it hard to take Bill Joy's position seriously - we are already in a position where we have the means to do achieve destruction of most of us. Yet we haven't implemented it (yet). So why worry particularly when a further total destruction method is added. Inf + 1 is still Inf.

I suppose the idea that `intelligent' machines would be as irrational as we claim ourselves to be is what is motivating his claims.

Personally I think discussion of these issues serve as a of a sort of Rorschach blot where we project our negative perceptions of `humanity' onto all intelligences. It's not very surprising that someone living in a brutal society that imprisons and executes so many of it's population and bombs and starves other nations would come to a such negative conclusion.

Myself? I'm waiting for the rational, kind robot masters to take over - which would you rather have running your life: Bush/Gore or a machine that could play 10 Kasparovs and beat them?

My take on it...

[twjordan]

I thought the conference was amazing.

I am sure many more will post a lot, since there were a lot of people there who, not to make a stereotype, looked like they read slashdot.

I think many of the most astute comments came from those members of the panel who were less widely known. Ralph Merkele, a nanotech man, made some excellent comments on offensive and defensve uses of new inventions. The idea being that an innovation that is primarily defensive (ie: a castle) is good, while offensive developments (the atom bomb) are bad. But his best point came when refuting Bill Joy's worries. He spoke about a centralized reproductive process, saying that if replecators were designed to recieve their genetic "code" from a central location, they would be rendered completely benign since that code could be changed at will. His comments were very well organized, concise, and effective. Anyone know anything he has written that might not be too technical?

Bill joy said "the size [of the operating sytem] is expanding exponentially, the functionality is fixed"

Best cheap shot: Ray to Bill, "How many in the audience caught this news story," which he followed with a fake story about Sun deciding to give up all development of innovations which made the software "smarter." It was amusing, I wonder if they fought in the parking lot :)

On a final note, I couldn't belive how RUDE some of the audience was. In particular one person felt that he had to yell out to Bill Joy (quite rudely), "turn the microphone on!" when he was using a broken mic. I mean the man wrote vi, I doubt he needs to be told to turn ont he mic. This happened quite often, the audience yelling commands like some sort of floor director to this very distinguished panel. Just seemed in pretty poor taste.

Other than that, excellent conference and I look forward to some other people's takes on it.

Re:My take on it...

[gargle]

I am sure many more will post a lot, since there were a lot of people there who, not to make a stereotype, looked like they read slashdot.

On the contrary, I was quite pleasantly surprised by the diversity of the audience who turned up. They were not stereotypical "geeks" (whatever that means) -- the audience was very diverse in terms of age, ethnicity and gender.

Ralph Merkele, a nanotech man, made some excellent comments on offensive and defensve uses of new inventions. The idea being that an innovation that is primarily defensive (ie: a castle) is good, while offensive developments (the atom bomb) are bad. But his best point came when refuting Bill Joy's worries. He spoke about a centralized reproductive process, saying that if replecators were designed to recieve their genetic "code" from a central location, they would be rendered completely benign since that code could be changed at will.

Merkle was actually a pioneer in cryptography. He has a website here. I'm not really convinced by Merkle's arguments. The distinction between "offensive and defensive" weapons seems kind of bogus to me -- there's a saying that the best defense is a strong offense, and to make an example, in terms of nuclear arms, the threat of offense has served as a defense.

The best defense to me seems to be social ones rather than technological ones. We have to, as a species, learn to deal with these new challenges, to grow up ethically, so to speak. We've succesfully (I hope) navigated the threat of nuclear destruction, with much pain and suffering in between, and the greatest danger seems to me that this be repeated with the advent of machine life, before we learn as a species to deal with this maturely.

I don't quite buy Joy's arguments either. I don't really see how self-replicating nano-machines present a qualitatively different threat from existing biological weapons. But yes, the danger will come if the ability to create such machines is widespread so that anybody can build one on his desktop.

He spoke about a centralized reproductive process, saying that if replecators were designed to recieve their genetic "code" from a central location, they would be rendered completely benign since that code could be changed at will

Not convincing either. Some people will try to put the code on the machines. What happens then?

On a final note, I couldn't belive how RUDE some of the audience was.

Yes, but I thought it was also a good thing that the audience wasn't overawed by the panel.

An Algorithm For Consciousness

[mindpixel]

It's nice to see such interest in this field, and some nice book sales... but I just not a member of the 'speculate and wait' theory of artificial consciousness. I want to see a real theory and I wait to see code!

I moderate ArConDev: The Artificial Consciousness Development Mailing List. This is not a philosopher's list, though philosophy is discussed. It's a developer's list; for those people actually trying to code true artificial consciousness.

To give you an idea, my own work of the last five years has centered on the following 'Algorithm for Consciousness':

1) Collect a very large number (1 billion or more) of items of binary consensus fact. Such as: water is wet, bees sting, it is difficult to swim with skipants on, etc.

2) Validate the items (I call them MindPixels) against a large number of people.

3) Train a neural net (SRN's look good) against the items that are most stable across the validating population.

4) When the NN consistently performs better than chance, send an email to the editors of Nature and Science announcing humanity's first 'Minimum Statistical Consciousness' - the first artificial system to have measurable consciousness.

5) When the NN consistently performs statistically indistinguishably from an arbitrary human, email the editors of Nature and Science announce the first true Artificial Consciousness! .

Ok. How's a NN going to generalize consciousness from a bunch of MindPixels? Well, the math is the same as used in tomography, except in many dimensions - hypertomography.

This post is already getting too long... trust me, the theory is solid - and much better explained in my forthcoming book 'Hacking Consciousness'