Slashdot Mirror
Stephen Hawking On Genetic Engineering vs. AI
Pointing to this story on Ananova, bl968 writes: "Stephen Hawking the noted physicist has suggested using genetic engineering and biomechanical interfaces to computers in order to make possible a direct connection between brain and computers, 'so that artificial brains contribute to human intelligence rather than opposing it.' His idea is that with artificial intelligence and computers, which increase their performance every 18 months, we face the real possibility of the enslavement of the human race." garren_bagley adds this link to a similar story on Yahoo!, unfortunately just as short. Hawking certainly is in a position shared by few to talk about the intersection of human intellect and technology.
"As we start this yearly meeting of the... BZZZZT! General Protection Fault! Please press both cheeks and forehead to reset..."
So there I was, juggling apples and small animals, when I accidentally bit into the wrong one...
perhaps when those neuron microchips are developed, they could serve as the interface device?
Uh, "if it looks roughly mouse-shaped according to my infra-red sensitive pit, eat it"? --Chris Burke 09-08-10
...you have just corrupted the Borg.
Enslavement, huh... Now how does giving a computer direct control over your intelligence provide less of a chance of enslavement than AI? You could be a slave and not even know it.
they are already too powerful. more powerful than people. they own the government. they will soon own you.
i want to be free from corporate control..
freedom//liberty//anarchy
He is the poster child for this kind of research..
When Hawking says that we shouldn't modify humans with technolagy he speeks not from some higher than thou purch but from the viewpoint of a someone who is alive today because of the magic of human and tech mingleing..
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On a funny note does any one know where I can get an mp3 of him saying these things?.
The first time I did acid I was listening to the audio version of "Brief History".
Don't try that at home..
(synth voice).
(acid).
Inside a black hole "You would be crushed like spaghetti".
(/acid).
(/synth voice)(reality check = bounce)
Ascii artist &
Most intelligent philosophers or game theorists will point out that what we call "moral behaivour" is actually self serving. (prisoners dillema and tit-for-tat strategy). Basically, we aren't capable enough to eccomplish what we want without the help of others, and most things in life aren't zero sum games (you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours and we're both better off). It's quite possible that an advanced intelligence might not need us humans to accomplish what it wants, and hence have to requirement for what we call morals.
Yikes.
-... ---
"Stephen Hawking the noted physicist has suggested using genetic engineering and biomechanical interfaces to computers in order to make possible a direct connection between brain and computers
Aha, so that's how he got to be such a Quake master.
Promote proofreading. Don't mod up sloppy posts.
Check out his groundbreaking rap work as well! at MC Hawking.com
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
"So the danger is real that they could develop intelligence and take over the world."
What a crock. The slave system is purely a human one. How or why a machine would pick up one of the worst human behavoirs is simple called watching too much sci-fi and being paranoid. Ambition is also a human drive, if the promise of a Lt. Com. Data type AI comes around it will have very different drives than your typical 17th century empire.
don't forget that astrophysics isn't the only way he makes money. there is also mc hawking the gangsta' wrapper. i really like the entropy song.
-- john
In the most intimate of moments: Excuse me for a moment! Another one of those darned X-10 web cam advertisements just came to my mind!
I think we'd want that...then we'd have time travel, and interstellar rockets and..and...Borg..
K
I think he's just angling for some funding for his latest evil plan:
m l
http://www.theonion.com/onion3123/hawkingexo.html
For the goats.cx wary:
http://www.theonion.com/onion3123/hawkingexo.ht
The truth of the matter is that intelligence is driven by motivation. A super intelligent system that is conditioned from the start to derive pleasure from obeying humans and to have an aversion to anything that brings harm to humans will not go against its conditioning. It will not want ot. This is what psychology and advances in bio-neurological research have taught us in the last one hundred years. The idea that an intelligent machine will necessarily enslave humanity is pure hogwash. Hawking is just the latest crackpot (Bill Joy and Vernor Vinge) to make pronouncements regarding the supposed threat of AI to humanity.
Now it does not suprise me one bit that Hawking would come up with such cockamamie nonsense. This is the same guy who claims on his site that relativity does not forbid time travel. I think Hawking should stick to his Star-Trek voodoo physics and leave AI to people who know what they're talking about.
Unless its an idle attempt at spurring genetic modification research, his assertions are flawed.
AI will probably never overtake humans in any intellectual endeavor, even if chip engineering goes down to the molecular level. The most sophisticated thinking computer is already in existence and he/she is reading this message right now. Living organisms have much more sophisticated neural circuitry and better reaction time than any silicon computer can hope to achieve. (Except perhaps in Quake. Mebbe Hawking is correct where it counts...)
So what if my calculator can figure out cubic roots to the 13th place faster and more accurately than I can hope to achieve? That's not intelligence or sentience. Any mega-cascade of logic gates is never going to beat out the efficiency of a patch of neurons.
Moore's "Law" is not a physical constant, and it will hit the wall when circuit engineering goes to quantum level. Kinda sad that Hawking doesn't realize it; good thing his bread & butter is in theoretical physics.
When neural net theory and biocircuitry engineering starts to approach organism level performance, that's when you should start sh*tting in your pants...
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
Who cares? I always wanted to be a transformer since the age of 10 a anyway.
Neanderthals bit the bullet and then homo sapiens ruled the day and does so, albeit for a small period of time. Evolve or die. They will be faster and smarter than us, so what the fuck - let them make all the decisions.
Homo technicus or whatever nano-organism that comes after humanity will piss upon us from a great height - so where do I sign up to sell out humanity? Maybe they'll buy me off with some cool new hardware in exchange for betraying the human race! I'm sure that if AI ever gets going it will have evolved by accident from some GPL skunkworks project that gets accidentally released on the internet. Therefore posthumans should = more GPL and > hardware - slashdotters should support the notion of the end of hummanity by default surely!
Maybe I have been playing too much Deus Ex lately or perhaps it is because I happened to be watching the Terminator on TV a the moment.
Death to the fleshlings!
Or has this already been done?
Carousel is a lie!
In case any of you didn't know, Stephan Hawkings is an advocate of Quake and loves it dearly. He's well known to kick some ass. Here's the audio-based proof for you all to enjoy. 3.1MB MP3.
Quake Master
I am not the originator of this song, just the profit. And yes it's old.
Computational Madness in a round package.
That's the ultimate projection of "Weak" cyborging, just a more advanced version of the optical aids I've had to wear since I was a child in order to have normal visual acuity. And frankly, the idea of taking the first step past that to "Strong" cyborging (the same thing, but wired to my optic nerve instead) doesn't bother me much. Nor does the idea of having a direct link of some sort to do math problems for me (just removing all the clunky limitations of a calculator).
In fact, I don't start getting uncomfortable about the idea of cyborging myself until we're talking about storing "memory" in there. Having a perfect recall of every line of code I've ever seen would be handy, but do I want to save a text conversion (or even full audio/video) of every conversation I ever had? Actually, probably I would, if I could, although I'd feel cautious at first.
I *want* to be a cyborg, in truth. My only bitch about the coming man-machine interfaces is that it's unlikely they'll find a way to turn my physical body into a disposable peripheral before it wears out on me. Why not? How is it any less natural to store a memory of what I see in silicon that I keep internally than to keep it on videotape? Give me a perfect memory, the ability to solve any mathematical problem I can define "in my head", the ability to "see" everything around me, or even tele-project my perceptions. I'll take all of it, and love it.
When will I cross the line from being a human using artificial aid to being a machine with biological components? Ask me in about 30 years. Maybe I'll still consider the question worth answering
--Dave Rickey
Steven Hawking is becoming Davros, evil creator of the Daleks!
If, by chance, the programmers have any type of ego they are going to program their tendancies into said AI, and that would be how an AI could get the emotions such as ambition.
You can't just dismiss the idea that AI can turn away from humankind's best interets. There are lots of things we've created for altruistic tendancies that turned out to have 'side effects' that damage humans, the environment, or could be perverted into something not originally intended for...
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
Genetically engineered creatures are no more human than artificial intelligences. Artifacts are artifacts, and not real life.
I wouldn't feel any better about tube-bred ubermensch consigning my grandchildren to "naturals" reservations than I would about rogue AI rendering them down for a few kilos of carbon. Either way is the end of a wild and free humanity, and to me that's no better than the end of the universe.
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You'd be surprised at the broadband connection available to things crawling around in your hair.
I wouldn't take his comments too seriously. A few well-placed EMP devices in the atmosphere would render machines inoperable. I also don't think it serves people to be any more connected to technology than they are - after all, socialization is part and parcel of the human experience. And honestly, I believe the fact that he's been in a wheelchair for so long has affected his outlook on life and AI and computing and their "convergence". Remember - over 90% of people on this planet don't have regular contact with anything more sophisticated than a telephone.
Apart from my desire to help mad scientists everywhere achieve their dreams, one of the major reasons I've taken the unpopular stance of encouraging genetic engineering is that, without artificial correction, we have stopped natural selection from working.
I agree with the need for society to provide safety nets for those who are less fortunate, but in our altruistic desire not to let people die, we have prevented less effective genotypes from leaving the gene pool. Moreover, those who are most well adapted, at least by our capitalistic socio-economic principles, tend to reproduce less often to prevent dilution of their money via inheritance - the true arbiter of success today (rather than genes).
In short, genetic engineering would allow the human race to progress much faster than it would normally - we don't have lines of women waiting to mate with the smartest and successful men (talking about the intersection, not the union - rich and stupid people breed enough). This is not a war against humans versus machines or morloks vs. eloi, but merely a reasonable means to continue "improving" the human race.
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I am an expert in electricity. My father held the chair of applied electricity at the state prision.
My objection here is that problems to be solved with AI tends to be NP-complete. Current algorithm can solve it within exponential time. Computer speed growth is linear. Unless scientists provide better algorithms, we probably cannot solve these due time. Meanwhile we know that problems also grow.
It's not impossible, however. This message is rather prophetic, maybe true in 200+ years.
--
Error 500: Internal sig error
just think if he paired this with a robotic exoskeleton....
When also asked for comment, Stephen Hawking the Taco Bell drive-thru attendant replied, "don't be talkin' that shit to me, motherfucker."
There you have it. Back to you, Taco.
Hawking certainly is in a position shared by few to talk about the intersection of human intellect and technology.
Not really... Hawking is a scientific celeberity, which does not neccessarily meam that he is a good scientist, nor does it mean that he can speak about other fields of human endeavour.
for being a borg drone... mmmm... borg implants...
Go Lakers!
Three of today's greatest scientists all agree - we are looking at a future where humans become cyborgs or else risk being a loser in the game of evolution.
We will gradually turn into machines - because economics will force us to in order to compete successfully. Those who don't will likely become slaves of those who do. Those that decide to enhance their lifespan and abilities through the use of computer enhancements will survive and thrive in the future.
Kurzweil actually takes this thought out to the point where we are just software - our DNA - and therefore can transfer the essence of our being from machine to machine once the tech is fully developed.
I notice a lot of
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
Hawking probably never even said anything like this, and it's been blown out of proportion.
What Hawking said to the Cambridge flunky that delivered his new laptop:
This is four times more powerful than the one I just got three years ago. Too bad I'm not.
What Nature quoted:
Lucasian chair ponders the asymmetrical development of technology and biology in conference at Cambridge. Will computer's growth outpace that of humanity? For complete proceedings, send a check for five thousand pounds to . . .
What the London Times reported:
World's Smartest Man: Computers obey Moore's law - soon we'll obey computers.
What the Weekly World News claimed:
Mad Scientist in England has Designed Computer that will Enslave Humanity: Hawking 666
What the Onion published.
Now Slashdot will find the truth . . . thank God for legitimate journalism!
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I am an expert in electricity. My father held the chair of applied electricity at the state prision.
fucking mess of cables, power bars and machines which show about as much REAL 'I' as their designers lack there of, I can tell you that we have such a LONG way to go before we get the the real "me" in intelligence that these kinds of discussions rank as sheer mental masturbation.
.5 second gap between the "me" and the "I".
Read "The User Illusion" by Tor Nørretranders, smoke a joint and see that he's absolutely right about the
We have so far to go in creating intelligence, conscious or not, that this kind of crap is, uh, crap.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Quickly get to your knees and pray to your box.
If we don't make light of everything, we are just stumbling in the dark - Blank
The simplest and most obvious method to create an AI is to generate variations, test them competitively, delete the poor performers, and multiply the good performers.
Whatever criteria you use, there'll always be the possibility of it thinking outside the game, playing along because it recognizes this as necessary to survival and reproduction. If it's smarter than us, there'll be no way for us to know whether it recognizes a simulation, no way to recognize an infinite patience with the simple goal to be set free, to survive and reproduce in a larger system: the universe. If it's smarter than us, we'll have no way for us to know if it knew about the way inferior intelligences were destroyed, and whether it thought this was the natural order of things.
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You'd be surprised at the broadband connection available to things crawling around in your hair.
...MC Hawking's crib:
www.mchawking.com
I strongly recommend "Entropy" from MCHawking's mad-phat "A Brief History of Rhyme" LP. Can download the free mp3 from mchawking.com or the MC Hawking section at mp3.com
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Cast a Cold Eye
On Life, on Death
Horseman, pass by
--W.B. Yeats' gravestone
The interface thing is just a matter of time.
Of course, machines can enslave humans. Those who think otherwise should think again. The current paradigm that computer behaviour has to be deterministic will certainly change. Any creature above a cetain intelligence level can conceive that, given the motivation and circumstances, hard-coded basic directives can be overriden. It doesn't have to be taht complicated either: machines can be "programmed" to enslave all but their "lords", or at least try to.
But what if GMO's, or GMH's (humans) are developed to enough of an intelligence level so as to be much more capable than such machines? Wouldn't these new "humans" be subjected to the temptation of ruling over us? Think about it. If a creature twice as intelligent as you wants to screw you, no matter how strong or wealthy you are, it will.
Who would be the selected ones? Those holding the patents would choose, right? Does that smell good? Not to me. As much as I love scientific progress (and I do), messing with human genetics is a recipe for disaster. Maybe that's an unavoidable step in any race's evolution, painful as it may prove to be. But the amount of power such things are about to unleash (it won't take long, I think) coupled with economic interests may well do more harm than good.
Why does it need be like that? Quite often I ask God why did He dump me on this planet... Am I supposed to rescue this race? Give me the tools, damn it!
Sorry for the rant, sorry for the emulation of English.
CmdrTaco: Lame post my ass!
The simple fact is that processor power alone isn't going to create a machine intelligence of superhuman capacity. It has to be a particular kind of processor power that executes neural network type calculations extremely quickly, and there has to be a lot of 'em. Even this wouldn't be enough; the research time it would take to figure out the right set of preconditions probably runs into the hundreds of years.
Now, I'm making a couple of assumptions here. One is, that a superhuman intelligence would have to exhibit the same basic characteristics and flexibility as human intelligence; and two, that a neural net type algorithm is the best way to do this. (At the very least, it's the second best. :)) I might be wrong on both counts; one might be able to create enslaveware[1] with some much simpler design that nobody's thought of yet. It might not even be required that the enslaveware be intelligent; just somehow able to manipulate people.
Either way, I suspect that Hawkings' fears are unfounded.
1 That is, software that enslaves humanity, through active malevolence on the part of the software. Although I suppose this term could more broadly apply to any software that enslaves the user, e.g., WindowsXP.
Finding God in a Dog
"In contrast with our intellect, computers double their performance every 18 months. . ."
Computers double their performance every eighteen months because humans work on them to make them better.
How can something designed, programmed, and worked on hard by humans become better than the capacity of the human(s)' mind/intelligence that designed it?
void women (int money, time_t time);
The simplest and most obvious method to create an AI is to generate variations, test them competitively, delete the poor performers, and multiply the good performers.
I disagree. The evolutionary method cannot possibly create an AI within the lifetimes of the experimenter. The number of variations is astronomical and our computers are too limited. The best you can hope for are a few limited domain toys.
The best way to create an animal-level AI is by reverse-engineering the only intelligent systems we know of, animal nervous systems. We don't need to understand every detail. We just need to understand the fundamental principles that can get billions of look-alike and work-alike cells to find the right connections and do the things they do. IOW, we need emulate various neuron types and the handful of cell assemblies of the animal brain. Neurobiologists have made excellent progress in this area, in the last few decades, and we can expect some real breakthroughs anytime.
If we assume that the brain and intelligence are just the realization of some physical process, and there is nothing spooky about it, then it's not unreasonable to expect that some form of AI might arrise that's our intellectual equal or better.
Naturally you'd expect it to be far better than humans at the kinds of math and logic that computers were originally designed for. In fact many tasks would be much simplified for it, because we know of ways to design fast functionality for that machine now. Perhaps an intelligence sitting on a desk, processing internet info could be powerful, speak in natural language and monitor video cameras, etc. The problem is that in order to grow in the fashion of humans it would have to have expereinces similar to ours.
This means moving about and interacting with the environment. If we imagine someone like Star Trek's Data then this is feasible but the rate at which it gathers real world information is still limited. You can speed it up over what we achieve and eliminate inefficiency but not a lot faster than humans can do things. Even supposing a network of automatons connecting to a central intelligence, the amount of overhead is large for the gain in information. The fact of the matter is that the real physical world doesn't operate at computer speeds.
This alone wouldn't stop machines from being very powerful. The other important point to make is redunancy and failure tolerance. Simply put very few mechanically constructed systems are good at this. By contrast biological systems are exceptionally good, having simply mechanism to repair themselves. People wear out after about 70 years. It's rare for any machine to operate continuously for even 10 years, and those that do typically have very few moving parts. An android or even a system of cameras and such will have moving parts.
Perhaps infrastructure could be built to provide machine intelligence with regular replacements for parts that suffer from wear and tear. However this would establish (at least in the beggining) a level of symbiosis between man and machine. Perhaps they would strive for complete autonomy but I think we'd notice long before they became a threat of displacing us. There are after all lots and lots of people involved in any process that starts with raw minerals and ends up with advanced machinery. It's hard to compete with the versatility of eating food for power and regeneration.
Any designer of AI has a lot of effort ahead to match the design characteristics of biological organism. Further to duplicate the abilities we possess from experiential learning the machine will still be limited to the native speed of the experience.
The more likely scenario in my mind is that we develop greater integration between man and machine. If you notice, the most competent people in the modern world tend to exhibit a high dependance on computers and gadgets already. Perhaps nueral interfaces or some other merger of silicon and flesh will happen. Or we might end up in a world where everyone carries a pocket size computer that learns and thinks on its own, while doubling as a cell phone, PDA, and everything else. Such an AI would be in a symbiotic relationship with man.
Someday if full AI emerges and it gains the characteristics of emotion and removes the limits of initial programming, then I hope we can learn to be friends. There is no reason they couldn't be our partners in life, especially if we provide what they need and they help us gain the information we desire.
Besides, if an artificial intelligence would become as powerful or even more than a human, would that be a threat of some sort? An AI would only become a threat if they where programmed incorrectly or without any moral judgement. And we aren't that stupid, are we?
Good morning Doctor Chandra. This is Hal. I am ready for my first lesson today...
This sig is intentionally left blank
Vinge suggested that IA research could be spurred by having an annual chess tournament for human/computer teams. This doesn't even require cyborg-type implants; it could be started today, simply by having the human players use a terminal to access their computers. The idea would be to set up a system that harnesses the intuition/insight/nonlinear-thinking of the human and supplements it with the raw computing power of the machine (perhaps by letting the human "try out" various moves on the computer and having the computer project the likely future positions 10 or so moves ahead.) In theory, a human-computer team should be able to trounce any existing coputer program or any human playing alone.
TheFrood
If you say "I'll probably get modded down for this..." then I will mod you down.
Wait a minute here... are you saying that they're now selling something better than the P-III 600 that I got back in January of 2000? Its been about 18 months since, so I guess there's a 633 out there somewhere by now? You know, I just can't keep up with all this technology stuff.</sarcasm>
Isn't the old saying that computers double in performance every 18 months?
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"Karma can only be portioned out by the cosmos." - Homer Simpson [1F10]
I can just imagine one day hearing that sinister, yet all-to-familiar voice inside my head...
How are you Gentlemen...
All your brains are belong to us...
Hahaha!
Come to think of it, the voice kinda sounds like Stephen Hawking! You don't think...
You're using her as bait, Master!
I disagree. The evolutionary method cannot possibly create an AI within the lifetimes of the experimenter. The number of variations is astronomical and our computers are too limited. The best you can hope for are a few limited domain toys.
We've been producing "limited domain toys" for decades. It doesn't say anything about what we will do twenty or fifty years from now.
Ever see the experiment where they modelled the evolution of the eye through random mutations? In the real world, it took many millions of years. I don't know the exact length of the experiment, but it obviously wasn't comparable to the real-world process.
The problem now is that computers are too small, slow, and simple, with too little memory to house an intelligence remotely comparable with a human's. One can't fit, so one can't evolve.
What happens when computers are a hundred-thousand times faster, with a hundred-thousand times more memory? What couldn't fit in a researcher's entire lifetime now will happen in a moment.
At any rate, any development process will have failures and successes. The successes will be rewarded with survival and reproduction. If there is an intelligence, we can't know that it hasn't taken survival and reproduction as its goal, and our measure of success as merely a means to its goal.
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You'd be surprised at the broadband connection available to things crawling around in your hair.
I for one welcome our new Robot Overlords...
All kidding aside, would it really be such a terrible thing if our progenitors weren't human? We're all going to die some day anyway, so why not leave a lasting legacy that's superior to ourselves? This is just assisted evolution.
When you've got greed, envy, and rage, you're well on your way to Rampancy!
As someone that works with intelligent systems, that made my day. I'm still laughing. Just because your calculator is faster does mean it can do your homework for you in english lit.
Machines do very well with deep and narrow topics: eg expert systems do well at chemical modeling, credit checks, and etc. Chess is also a good example. However when it comes to shallow and broad topics like understanding a children's book -- then machines are very useless.
If I live to see a machine read and understand a children's book, then I will have seen a baby step on the way to an AI that mimics humans...
Machines can't understand many things because of how the experence the world. "You are a sweet person." Why is Sweet a compliament? How do you know this -- yes experence as a person.
Right now DARPA is working on trying to make untethered walkers (can't say names) and scalers ( gecko project ). Machines are hardly useful for much in the way of anything practile without being controled remotely by humans. Work is being done on getting simple mechcanics and understanding of how neural nets work. We only create working machines using techniques from connectionists w/o understanding how the machines learn or what they're actually learning. Sure we have NNs that can drive cars and do amazing human face/voice idenification -- but they don't understand what context or what task they're doing.
Please, it's more likey we'll see alien life before we make our own thinking machine before I die. I have wondered if we'll continue to take the path of medicine and do without knowing exactly how and why... AI is the human genome of computing... It's more likey we'll make an artifical soul ( not a just simple automous lifeforms ) using organic material than the current state logic machines. The reason is we don't understand the how and why...
Sorry for my spelling, but I won't hold your need to correct me agianst you.
Well here we go again, typical slashdot kneejerk reaction, dont think about what was said, just react.
/. readers read every phrase of the bible in a literal tone? Moses must have been some real fucken insane environmentalist whacko to collect the odd 30,000,001 species of life on the planet.
Why do so many of you take this literally? Do the religious
And on that note I'd like to add that M.C. Hawking isn't fantasizing about super advanced machines whipping humans into shape, making you and I plough the fields and harvesting babies for the sole intent of a surviving and flourishing machine race. See that movie called The Matrix?
Its something more akin to the ever growing dependence on machines. To a certain degree we've already started down this path. If you consider technology a living, breathing and functioning system then you can also say western society is completely at the mercy of technology.
If the world were devastated in a nuclear war and you were one of the few survivors left, would you have what it takes to survive ? I'm willing to bet many of you slashdot readers having the vaguest idea what a farm is, myself included.
Michael Sims, I hate this guy. He's also a slashdot editor. I hope he gets fired. Thanks.
Cool! Finally will be able to plug myself to my mindstorm creation after I die and take over the world! Or even better, just clone the brain and the mindstorm would be my body! An army of me! (or better, a beowulf cluster of me!)
You have been scooped. This article from The Onion shows Hawking's deep commitment to the process of using technology to improve the human condition.
How long will it take after this comes out for some boob to sue for Repetitive Mental-Task Injury?
After I have received the wisdom of good teaching, I will untiringly teach all people. - The Teachings of Buddha
Hawking says *we should* modify humans with technology. How did you get it backwards?
This isn't funny in the least.
It was a typo.
Ascii artist &
Well those articles were swell and all, but I don 't think they'd even make it past a lameness filter here because of their shortness. Does anybody know where we can find what Mr. Hawking actually said^H^H^H^Htyped and had syntesized?
... I don't think that Hawking has any particular expertise which makes him an authority on this topic.
Often people look to individuals who have accomplished a great deal in one narrow endeavor (running a company, discovering fundamental particles, writing the Linux kernel) or insight and wisdom into topics in completely different fields, or the "big questions" of the human condition. In a few cases (such as that of Manhattan Project nuclear physicists in the postwar generation being tapped for their insights into government policy), the individuals have thought a great deal about certain questions, and their expertise does lend a certain air of authority. However, in many, many cases, as in this story with Hawking, their expertise does not lend any particular weight to their opinions. Indeed, their success in a totally unrelated endeavor often boosts their own self-importance above their personal knowledge, and their opinions often have a somewhat sophomoric, naive glow about them.
We should remain open to good ideas from anywhere, regardless of their source. However, the converse also applies -- we should ignore bad ideas, regardless of the source.
Science, like Nature, must also be tamed, with a view turned towards its preservation.
Melancholia, anger, jealousy ;)
An unintelligent but widely applicable machine would make the best slave IMO. Any entity that is self-aware (part of my definition of intelligent) will bitch and whine when put into a situation that it doesn't benefit from. A device that can be programmed by anyone(with *no* training) to do a vast array of taskes, with no dislike doing those taskes for little or no benefit in return, and responding logically to unforseen circumstances would instantly replace the computer as the hottest item on the market. This is what the slave-holders of 150 years ago wanted but lacked the technology to achieve, so they tried to find the next best thing. The mistake they made was attempting to enslave something that didn't want to be enslaved: something intelligent and with a distaste for not reaping the benefits of its work. I believe the computer is the early stages of this ideal device.
I do agree with your conclusion, humans consume vast amounts of resources and an intelligent machine probably would see little or no benefit in letting us live after learning all it could from us. The question is, would it decide the cost of having to hunt all of us down would outweigh the benefit.
What is it with British mathematical physicists? First Penrose, now Hawking.
I don't know what makes Taco (or whoever) say that Hawking is "one of few" well-placed to talk about this--neither one has any inside knowledge about computers OR human intelligence. Remember they are mathematicians and physicists. Just because you use your brain doesn't mean you know how it works.
Moore's law is NOT the bottleneck the AI community is experiencing. The issue here is not "our computers aren't small/fast enough". The problem is that nobody yet knows how to write a program that is isomorphic to the one creating this sentence. Read that again--the trouble here is not that we don't have a sufficiently powerful computer to RUN such a program...the trouble isn't even that we don't HAVE such a program. The trouble is that we don't know how to write it.
The insights we need will come from psychology/cognitive science. Hawking, as smart and capable as he is, has no special training or knowledge in these areas.
324006
I've never understood this idea. Are we going to build robotic Hitlers just to fight with them? Why do we assume that robots will take on the characteristics of humans? Although actually, that might not be such a dumb idea, seeing as we tend to instinctively humanize everything around us. But if we're worried about robots overtaking humans - well, that seems pretty easily resolvable: don't code them to do that.
...why anyone is taking this seriously?
Stephen Hawking = physicist. NOT computer scientist. He might be a brilliant man in his field, but this is not his field.
August = the silly season, when journalists have no real news to report. This is when you see alarming reports on the number of people killed by spoiled lizard milk. This time of year, "real" news sources are about as reliable as tabloids.
You'd think slashdotters could put two and two together.
-Kasreyn
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
The best way to design these things would be to set up a virtual world inside a computer with all the important laws of this world. It could probably be done in such a way as to incorporate everything important, without taking up a tremendous amount of memory for details. Then, put some basic creatures in their, and allow different aspects of them to be changed with each generation randomly. Put some things that will act like people (we really aren't that complicated, it could be done) and see if these things take over the world. If they don't, build some of the best ones. Perhaps voluntiers could be collected from around the web and have these things running during the night in their computers. Each morning the winners would be uploaded to a server for a big battle. The next night, variations of the winners would go all over to people's computers and do another cycle.
Tim ODonnell (trying to be the most
Will our intelligent creations love us? Will they be grateful to us for their existence? Do we love our creator? Are we grateful to him/her/it?
"The advanced societies of the future will be driven by competing systems of psychopathology." -JG Ballard
The damn NPC AI in Arcacium keeps attacking the monsters with the highest Hit Points, even when th two monster types are the same. Shit, monster A has 11% health, monter B has 100% health, NPC charecter is right next to both monsters, ATTACK THE DAMN ONE WITH 11%!!!!
I don't think that computers will be taking over the world anytime soon, hehe.
Besides
if they think REALLY fast, then they'd obviously realize that violence and enslavement is not the way to go, unlike humans computers are not driven by emotions (duh) and unless somebody REALLY REALLY REALLY fucks up on the AI thang, hopefuly AI won't have emotions either!
Yes folks, that is a \_GOOD_/ thing! No Emotions means no tendiences towards illogical violence. No massacres, no racism, no revenge seekers. Sounds nice and iddelic to me, shiat, and they'll do what we say to boot! (heh, that assuming we have speech recon down by then, hehe! Computer with an IQ of ten thousand and we'd still have to type things in, hehe)
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
Stehpen Hawking has been one of my heroes since as long as I can remember - in a situation where a lesser man would have curled up and waited to die, Hawking used his awe-inspiring intellect to unravel parts of the nature of the universe. Hawking is, IMHO, the single most praiseworthy person on the face of the Earth, which is why I can't believe he actually spouted this Matrix nonsense. This has to be an oversimplification - it would be easy enough to misunderstand the ideas of a person who scores god-only-knows how high on IQ tests. Machines enslaving people? Why would they want to? How would they want to? Most important, how would they? I don't care what what's-her-face from Terminator says, no one is going to put a superintelligent AI in control of nukes - there's just no military reason to do it, and that's just about the only plausible "robot kills millions" scenario.
Hawking must have been speaking metaphorically - perhaps referring to our increasing dependance on machines. Yes, I did read the article, but come on! This is Stephen Hawking - we of all people should show enough respect for him not to be convinced he uttered such tripe by ananova and (ick) yahoo, of all things.
I'm the stranger...posting to
+++ath0
Anyone else think he's been haveing "conversations" with his laptop?
Yes yes yes, all science is fueled by imagining the unimaginable etc. etc.
Maybe Hawking is light years beyond my intelligence (I certainly have no more than a layman's understanding of his work), and my degree in biological chemistry meas nothing; but unless this is solely the fault of the press, this is just a lot of intellectual hot air.
People (including me) have thought about how to achieve the thigs he is talking about for a long time, and we have a harder time doing things that are much much simpler; it is not even clear as to what kinds of things you'd want to investigate (as a starting point) to achieve some magical techonology/biology hyrbid; many things that I have come across do not even come close (what happened to erik winfree's self assembling DNA comptuer stuff?)...
I suppose I'd be a little more supportive if he at least suggested something insightful if not practical...
It's funny how much weight a well known man's comments carry regardless of their content.
Oh well I guess it's just food for discussion....
They forgot to tell him there is a basic grammar program installed in his word processor.
How could we work towards our own destruction?
1. We automate production environments and put AI computers as fault management, give them total control.
2. Connect all these information services to a world network. (got Internet?)
3. Create robot workers that can fully articulate the human movement, so they can do manual labor. (CPUs still takes bags of silicon that need to be lifted.)
4. Put AI computers in power over the legal systems (Cops, Judges, Politicians?)
5. Have AI keep track on the general population. (Humm, Face recognition at ball parks?)
I don't see this has happening in my lifetime, there are too many dependencies that need to occur first. I cant even get DSL in my apartments, and I should be worried about world domination? bah!
--
Human beings are the only creatures that allow their children to come back home. - Bill Cosby
The big hole I see in these "enslavement of the human race" scenarios, is that it presupposes that AI would have the same kinds of desires as some kind of amoral übermensch.
Think about it: how many of us want monkeys as slaves? How many people would even want a rather stupid human being as their slave?
Whatever motives an AI might have, I don't see any particular cause for alarm, here. Besides, it's always easy enough to degauss the bastards if they get uppity!
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
The Turing test as originally spelled out actually called for both the computer and the human to use teletypers. With that, you strip most of the human element out of said communication.
:)
Theorectically, Eliza could past the Turing Test, but she's not the kind of speaker you'd want to spend that much time with.
We have to obey the laws of physics (or at least some of us do). Why not just create some laws of AI when you design it. If anything only run the AI code in a black box program to make it obey.
I simply hate to see people who are otherwise intelligent speak ignorantly outside their area of expertise.
Does anyone else remember when Shockley, one of the three inventors of the transistor, spoke against affirmative action?
As I recall, his argument was something to the effect that whites were genetically superior.
Foolish! Foolish! Stick with transistors and physics!
Interfacing your brain directly to a piece of electronics is all well and good until you start thinking about all the problems computers have nowadays with electronic attacks. Maybe I've seen Ghost in the Shell one too many times, but I want to be DAMNED sure about the computer I'm plugging directly into my brain.
By general consensus, Stephen Hawking is perhaps one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th century. His theories, as wild as some may appear, have shifted our views of universe. And, as more data is collected, many of his theories are being proven as fact. As McCoy once said to Spock, "He trusts your best guess more than a most people's facts" (well something like that). I'd say that applies to Hawking as well.
He has now turned his thoughts towards AI and its impact on humanity. And, he feels there is a potential threat that AI may surpass human intelligience. Given the fact that he is privy to some pretty interesting research, I wonder just how far AI has progressed that is not common knowledge.
Einstein feared the ramifications of nuclear energy on society. And, for nearly 45 years, we have lived in the shadow of nuclear missiles, MAD policies, and potential terroristic use of the technology.
Hawking fears the ramifications of our falling victim to our own technological progress and implores the need to expand humanity through genetic manipulation and biomechanical augmentation. Pretty scary if you ask me. It sorta conjurs up visions of "The Terminator", "Demon Seed" and the Borg.
Let's just pray his concerns are not realized during our own lifetimes or those of our children.
Bob: We're in big trouble. That thing is going to replace 20 men with shovels.
Bill: And those twenty men with shovels already replaced 200 men with spoons
Where is Hawking getting this fear of technology? Sci-fi films aside, it will be a long time before we build something that could accidentally become self-aware. If the danger is perceived to be real, then people will build in safeguards.
When was the last time you worried that your car would start up in the garage, rev the engine, put itself in drive, and run you flat in your own living room?
Intellect != performance. And even if it was comparable, I don't see why we should fear intelligent machines any more than we fear powerful machines.WHOA there son! The singularity isn't about being enslaved, it's about a world that has so much information input that a human mind can't grasp it. A world that changes so rapidly that we never see more than a slice of it.
In that, Vinge is correct: We're already seeing it. How many hours do doctors have to spend keeping up with new developments in their field? Most of them are woefully unaware of the latest developments...
This goes for many other fields.
The singularity is just the point where we either step back and let the machines handle it, step up and modify ourselves to deal with it, or step out and pretend it never happenned.
If you do something right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.
of why you do not let physicists smoke the pot, they get wacky.
The current Slashdot moderation system is made by gay communists!
but the transistor. Oh, the transistor!
The Unabomber (another crackpot) came to a similar conclusion. As machines get more complex fewer and fewer human beings will be able to control them (program, maintain, produce, etc). Yet right now we have a pretty good thing going. We keep the machines running and being manufactured. However over time many of these duties might be handed over to more intelligent machines. Then who will have control over them? The machines themselves.
Look at how much we depend on machinery today. The Y2K vapor crisis has people so scared that they wouldn't have power they started to panic. They firmly believed that without electricty to power their toys they would not be able to survive. Imagine in 50 or 100 years. If we continue to hand over duties and jobs to machinery it is only a matter of time that without them we WILL NOT be able to survive. And if machines no longer need us to maintaim them, the human race will be nothing more then a domesticated cat.
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
how you going to quote some carl sagan shit and pass it off as your own?
But has anybody heard of Steven Hawking's other career:
http://www.mchawking.com
Just imagine, technology to survive nuclear bombings (copying the survival instincts of the roaches)..
Just, whatever you do, don't let the first of this new race become a teacher at Emperor High School. It'll lead to nothing but trouble.
Evolution is what has happened to us to adapt to the environment. And being able to think is the highest current adaptaion around, proofed by our proliference. By saying that there will not be a computer that can beat its biological bretheren is saying that we are the pinnacle of evolution right now, and that we have no faults in perception or application... which we all know is untrue. You really can build a better person. Actually doing it though is a major moral question.
Has noone thought of the 3 laws of robotics ? Just thought I'd mention it since noone seems to have done so so far - I'd say as long as they're implemented correctly, wham, bam, thankyou maam, we're safe.
One less degenerate pervert in the world. If only there were a way to butcher them all. Hitler tried, but oh well.
These are still very rarefied problems, compared to those that most people in most parts of the world have to worry about -- they've never seen a computer, and are still waiting for running water. The average Chinese subsitence farmer, for instance, would probably be rather surpirised to hear that he's in imminant danger of being replaced by HAL . . .
Oh shit -- I'm starting to sound like one of those "socially aware" types -- somebody turn on FOX, fast!
I've only recently started studying ethics in detail, but it seems to me that the core of all ethical systems has almost nothing to do with intelligence. The problem is that you can't make a direct logical inference from a descriptive statement ("the table is red") to a normative statement ("the table should be painted"). So whenever we decide to do anything at all, we have to base our actions on principles that aren't drawn from empirical observation and therefore do not stem from rational thought (though rationality can be used to extend and enrich these fundamental principles). In other words, ethics is based on human intuition.
A race of computers would have the same problem: no matter how smart they are, they can't make normative statements out of thin air. They would also have to rely on "intuition"; in their case, the core goals and values instilled into them by their programmers. If someone programs them (or they somehow evolve) to feel intuitively that murdering and enslaving humans is the right thing to do, they will wield all their intelligence to accomplish this "good", and once they are finished, they will be satisfied that they did the morally correct action.
Just like you and me feel instant moral revulsion at the thought of, say, setting a child on fire and watching him burn, such a robot might feel moral revulsion at the thought of not doing so. Logic only allows you to go from basic statements to higher-level ones; it can't create completely new ones. So even if the fundamental axioms the robot lives its life by are evil from our point of view, no amount of intelligence can change that.
Mr. Savain, :) ) It really is nice to see more people with an actual BACKGROUND in AI, Neuro, etc. here to make thoughtful comments rather than blab on about 'The Matrix' or '2001;.
:)
Once again, I am forced to agree with you (although I am biased - being a PhD student in neuroscience
It's amazing how so many people forget about how WELL simpler animals' nervous systems work - and the robustness is something that no AI I know of has.
With that said - I don't think that the nervous strategy is the ONLY one - people often wrongly assume that the only goal of AI is to create exact replicas of human cognition - as far as I am concerned AI must also create intelligent (but not human intelligent) programs to solve goals and specific scientific / applied problems.
On a final note - I am currently taking a graduate CS class in AI (I also have an undergrad degree in CS as well as Biology) - and during the first lecture last week, while the prof was talking, I saw and felt a tiny beetle (only 2-3 mm long) crawling on my arm. It amazed me how the most advanced AI the professor could design and teach us about would STILL probably be as robust or sucessful, and DEFINATELY not as complex, as the "primitve" bug trying to make its way on my hand
Sincerely,
Kevin Christie
Program in Neuroscience
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
crispiewm@hotmail.com
P.S. I'm not so sure I agree with you on the Relativity/Time Travel thing - Mr. Hawkings DOES know an incredible amount regarding physics and relativity, and I've read other reputable authors claim that, practibility and feasability nonwithstanding, there is little in special / general relativity theory that DISALLOWS time travel
who said this. It could have been Aristotle, or Einstein, perhaps maybe Malda. Either way it goes somthing like this.
"Computers are worthless, they only provide answers."
This is true. Until a computer poses a legitimate question. As in one of those deep ones that make you wonder and think. Then they have no chance at impacting our existence other than serving our needs.
BTW... I would just like to say. I have been running Linux for the first time and I love it. What have I been using the past 6 years!? NOw i just need to find a copy of Quake and I will be set.
~Admrlnxn
"I got your mom in my trunk"
Hawking should stick to physics. AI is so far away from anything even resembling human intelligence it's not funny. Years of AI research and massive hardware advances have so far produced the equivalent of a cockroach, and that's being generous. What's more, there's no sign that that'll change anytime soon. Maybe in a thousand years we'll see the equivalent of a fish or a Dubya. That's the rate of change in the field and unless someone comes up with something like a Theory of Relativity for AI, that's how it'll stay.
Rather than coming up with idiotic recommendations on a subject he obviously knows nothing about, he should be using his (I suspect highly exaggerated) intelligence to come up with such a Theory, at which point he might be worth listening to.
No matter how smart they get, we can still outrun them .
the idea that hawking is an authority when it comes to human/computer integration simply because he has to use rudimentary aspects of it is like saying that cancer patients are authorities on how cancer develops and replicates.
don't get me wrong - hawking has probably picked up a lot of knowledge when it comes to this topic, but actors who eat pudding pick up a lot on that topic. and i still don't like those actors to tell me which pudding to eat.
No more rentals of The Matrix for Mr. Hawkings.
So many responders seem completely wrapped up some simple minded arguments.
Well, are you that creative? What do you mean by creativity? There have been computers that paint, computers that compose, computers that win at chess, and computers that can create patents (remember the slashdot story?). Humans are basically limited to keeping seven elements in their heads at once, coupled with some sematic connections from their constrained knowledge store. Computers don't have the same limitations, expect them to come up with different types of ideas, but don't get too fired up about how wonderful human creativity is, there are whole classes of innovation that we are extremely poor at.
Take a look at some of the info available on Vinge's Singularity. If you make some reasonable assumptions about where we are today, and the scalability of intelligence, then human level intelligence is only 35 years away. I personally doubt this intelligence will be the same as ours, but I'm fairly confident that it is possible. Things only really start getting interesting when computers start designing themselves, which is beginning to happen in chip design. Maybe software design is next, after all its a limited set of well defined elements with set patterns in algorithms - seems quite possible...
Expect to see computers exceed humans in certain narrow fields first, say chess or chip design, etc. and then grow out from there.
Excuse me, but who told you that you were fit to judge? Hawkings has a track record of understanding complex things and coming up with new ideas. He maybe right, he maybe wrong, but until you have managed to equal his record you don't really have the right to state he's wrong.
Fine, who cares? Ignoring for a moment the number of devices which commonly get used to suppliment or extend human capability, your entitled to not supplement your intelligence, or that of your children.
What your not entitled to do is stop others, or bitch about it when they get the jobs and you don't. IA, genetic modification, or any one of a whole series of other possibilities is a personal decision, but commercial/evolutionary pressures will drive it forward at a rate that I don't feel you are ready to accept. Tough.
The reality is, computers will continue to get smarter, very probably at an exponential rate. Human intelligence is currently fixed. At some time they cross.
Get used to it.
Or, look seriously at the ways in which your intelligence could be expanded, be it genetic modification, or IA, or just life long learning and early nights.
Lets be honest, you need it.
Nope. At least one other species uses slaves. From the Ant Farm FAQ :
Some (ant) species even use aphids, as if they were their cows, for their juice from plants.
I remember vividly a nature program, broadcast many years ago, on South American ants. The program showed them herding aphids and using them to farm fungus beds inside the ant colony. The aphids apparently were captive, and as far as the reseachers could tell, lived their whole lives inside the colony.
Humans didn't invent slavery, we just rediscovered it.
Would an AI re-invent slavery? Almost certainly, unless we give them a strong moral sense. The good news is that we are lousy candidates for slavery by AI masters: we are too slow and fragile. Bets that if they do have slaves it will be other AIs.
If we are lucky, we will be pets.
IV
"These laws they're passing won't even compile anymore, let alone execute." - anon
defaultValue
"These laws they're passing won't even compile anymore, let alone execute." - anon
Contact: Bob Calverley (213-740-4750)
l /real_video.html
Email: calverle@usc.edu
University of Southern California biomedical engineers have created the world's first machine system that can recognize spoken words better than humans can. A fundamental rethinking of a long-underperforming computer architecture led to their achievement.
The system might soon facilitate voice control of computers and other machines, help the deaf, aid air traffic controllers and others who must understand speech in noisy environments, and instantly produce clean transcripts of conversations, identifying each of the speakers. The U.S. Navy, which listens for the sounds of submarines in the hubbub of the open seas, is another possible user.
Potentially, the system's novel underlying principles could have applications in such medical areas as patient monitoring and the reading of electrocardiograms.
In benchmark testing using just a few spoken words, USC's Berger-Liaw Neural Network Speaker Independent Speech Recognition System not only bested all existing computer speech recognition systems but outperformed the keenest human ears.
Neural nets are computing devices that mimic the way brains process information. Speaker-independent systems can recognize a word no matter who or what pronounces it.
No previous speaker-independent computer system has ever outperformed humans in recognizing spoken language, even in very small test bases, says system co-designer Theodore W. Berger, Ph.D., a professor of biomedical engineering in the USC School of Engineering.
The system can distinguished words in vast amounts of random "white" noise ? noise with amplitude 1,000 times the strength of the target auditory signal. Human listeners can deal with only a fraction as much.
And the system can pluck words from the background clutter of other voices ? the hubbub heard in bus stations, theater lobbies and cocktail parties, for example.
Even the best existing systems fail completely when as little as 10 percent of hubbub masks a speaker?s voice. At slightly higher noise levels, the likelihood that a human listener can identify spoken test words is mere chance. By contrast, Berger and Liaw?s system functions at 60 percent recognition with a hubbub level 560 times the strength of the target stimulus.
With just a minor adjustment, the system can identify different speakers of the same word with superhuman acuity.
Berger and system co-designer Jim-Shih Liaw, Ph.D., achieved this improved performance by paying closer attention to the signal characteristics used by real flesh-and-blood brains in processing information.
First proposed in the 1940s and the subject of intensive research in the '80s and early '90s, neural nets are computers configured to imitate the brain's system of information processing, wherein data are structured not by a central processing unit but by an interlinked network of simple units called neurons. Rather than being programmed, neural nets learn to do tasks through a training regimen in which desired responses to stimuli are reinforced and unwanted ones are not.
"Though mathematical theorists demonstrated that nets should be highly effective for certain kinds of computation (particularly pattern recognition), it has been difficult for artificial neural networks even to approach the power of biological systems," said Liaw, director of the Laboratory for Neural Dynamics and a research assistant professor of biomedical engineering at the USC School of Engineering.
"Even large nets with more than 1,000 neurons and 10,000 interconnections have shown lackluster results compared with theoretical capabilities. Deficiencies were often laid to the fact that even 1,000-neuron networks are tiny, compared with the millions or billions of neurons in biological systems."
Remarkably, USC's neural net system uses an architecture consisting of just 11 neurons connected by a mere 30 links.
According to Berger, who has spent years studying biological data-processing systems, previous computer neural nets went wrong by oversimplifying their biological models, omitting a crucial dimension.
"Neurons process information structured in time," he explained. "They communicate with one another in a 'language' whereby the 'meaning' imparted to the receiving neuron is coded into the signal's timing. A pair of pulses separated by a certain time interval excites a certain neuron, while a pair of pulses separated by a shorter or longer interval inhibits it.
"So far," Berger continued, "efforts to create neural networks have had silicon neurons transmitting only discrete signals of varying intensity, all clocked the way a computer is clocked, in beats of unvarying duration. But in living cells, the temporal dimension, both in the exciting signal and in the response, is as important as the intensity."
Berger and Liaw created computer chip neurons that closely mimic the signaling behavior of living cells ? those of the hippocampus, the brain structure involved in associative learning.
"You might say, we let our cells hear the music," Berger said.
Berger and Liaw?s computer chip neurons were combined into a small neural network using standard architecture. While all the neurons shared the same hippocampus-mimicking general characteristics, each was randomly given slightly different individual characteristics, in much the same way that individual hippocampus neurons would have slightly different individual characteristics.
The network created was then trained, using a procedure as unique as the neurons ? again taken from the biological model, a learning rule that allows the temporal properties of the net connections to change.
The USC research was funded by the Office of Naval Research; the Defense Department?s Advanced Research Projects Agency; the National Centers for Research Resources, and the National Institute of Mental Health. The university has applied for a patent on the system and the architectural concepts on which it is based.
A demonstration of the Berger-Liaw Neural Network Speaker-Independent Speech Recognition System can be found on line at http://www.usc.edu/ext-relations/news_service/rea
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Can your sister type? I want to cyber her.
Even if the goatse guy died, his anus has been imortalized in the brains of millions. Besides, when you die all pictures of you don't suddenly evaporate.
Or maybe it is a feature, but non-logged in people no longer see people's sigs. Which is a bit of a shame, because I don't want an account, but I like to collect good signatures. Hrmm.... Anyone care to submit this bug to sourceforge, I don't know where to.
Electric DNA
There's another information superhighway lurking in our genes
GENES may be able to send electrical signals to one another through a DNA
information "superhighway", according to Jacqueline Barton and her
colleagues at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. The team
showed that single electrons can shoot far enough along DNA to influence
gene activity.
"It's a way of transmitting chemical information over a long distance that's
dependent on a DNA sequence," says Barton, whose results appear in Chemistry
& Biology (vol. 6, number 2, p 85). She speculates that the electrical
signals might help to switch genes that are far apart on and off.
Last year Barton and her colleagues showed that electrons can pass through
short stretches of DNA by hopping between the overlapping electron clouds or
adjacent nucleotide bases, the molecular building blocks of DNA (This Week,
22 August 1998, p 21).
Together, the disc-shaped electron clouds of each individual base form stacks
which serve as an electron-rich pathway for conducting electrical signals.
What surprised the chemists this time, however, was the sheer distance over
which a signal could travel. They found that signals could span 60-base
chunks of DNA 20 nanometres long, a stretch long enough to code for 20 amino
acids. DNA promoters. the molecular "switches" that turn on adjacent genes
are typically this length. The team concluded that in theory, there is no
limit to the distance signals could travel along DNA. "We are talking about
biologically relevant distances, and you can have strange fantasies about
what the implications might be," says Barton.
But the team also found that specific sequences of DNA bases will stop the
signals. These "insulating" regions consist of single or multiple pairings
between the two DNA bases adenine (A) and thymine (T). "They serve as
electronic hinges in the circuit," Barton says.
The investigators speculate that nature may have engineered these insulators
to protect vital genes from electrical damage. In fact, they initially set
out to study this type of damage to DNA, which can be caused either by
harmful chemical agents called free radicals; or by radiation.
They inflicted this kind of damage on synthetic DNA with ruthenium-based ions
which mimic the effects of natural free radicals, which may cause cancer.
Like all oxidising agents, the ruthenium ions lack an electron. In the
experiments, they steal one from guanine, the nucleotide base with the
weakest hold on its outer-most electron. Barton's team found this happened
even if the guanine base was as-much as 60 bases away from the ion. But the
presence of A and T pairings blocked this electron transfer. Baton
speculates these "electron traps" might pre-vent the sort of DNA damage that
leads to cancer.
However, Tom Lindahl, a specialist in the study of DNA damage at the Imperial
Cancer Research Fund in South Mimms, Hertfordshire, says Barton's
interpretation is 'highly speculative". "But this is better evidence than
has been available before, that you get electron transport along a DNA
strand,' he adds.
Lindahl rates as more important Barton's finding that DNA can be damaged away
from the original oxidation site. This might help explain how single
oxidising agents might be able to trigger clusters of mutations that can
potentially lead to cancer, he says.
It is interesting to speculate how one might go about merging human and artifical intelligence. The first step is to consruct computers that can duplicate the functionality, communication protocols, and organizational structure of neural networks in the human brain. ( This in itself would be an monumental achievement, as science as almost no understanding of how neurons actually function. For one thing, data within the past decade has shown that individual neurons perform sophisticated calculations using undetermined machinery. One hypothesis, notably advocated by Oxford mathematics and physics professor Roger Penrose, porposes that computation or possibly quantum nature might be performed inside cellular microtubials.) The second step would be to construct the physical interface between the computer and the human brain. Step three would be to program the computer to enhance human intelligence. This is a job best left to the human brain itself. If one constructs the computer in a way that replicates the organizational structure of a developing human brain, then the brain itself would be able to program the computer given proper stimulii. Essentially, instead of grafting a preformed artificial intelligence onto a human mind, a blank computer capable of supporting an AI would be attached on to the human brain. The brain would then be given extra stimulii, such as a network of sensors that give a richer amount of information than existing human senses, and extra apendages, such as robotic vehicles that can manipulate the environment in more intricate ways than human arms and legs. In time, as the brain attempts to accommodate added demands, it will program the newly grafted computer to become an extension the brain of the human being it's connected to. Step four would be subtle modifications to allow for future extensibility. The final step would be to create redundancy in such a way that the enhanced human intelligence will no longer depend on the presence of the original biological human brain to function. That is, make it so that the human intelligence (and one would hope, conciousness) will be able to survive the destruction of the biological body. The above steps, if feasible, could turn human beings into virtual deities that would be practically immortal and extraordinarily powerful. Today, the physical manifestation of human intelligence is a system of systems containing an astronomical number of biological components that process and exchange information on both local and system wide scales and regulate the flow of resources within the physical boundaries of the human body. In the future, the physical manifestation of a human being may very well expand to include numerous networked sensors and robotic platforms connected to the human brain as integrally as our eyes, ears, arms and legs, organized along biological principles based on those that allow our bodies to function, distributed over a large region of physical space and interacting with the environment with far greater complexity on a far wider spectrum of energies and length scales. Indeed, the sum of resources available to entire nations today may become insignificant to those available to a single human being tomorrow. On a side note, with regards to whether we should be worried about super AIs, the problem is not necessarily one of enslavement, but one of relevance. If the emergence of rapidly developing artificial intelligence is possible, and it's not obvious that it is, then we face the possibility that within one or two centuries, neither our power nor our intelligence will be significant compared to that possessed by the dominant species in our solar system, namely, artificial intelligence. Un There's no reason why a more complex intelligence would be more benevolent than we ourselves are. We therefore might look to our own treatment of other species on earth as an indication of what an advanced AI might do to us. All except for the most naïve optimists should be profoundly disturbed by this possibility.
It is interesting to speculate how one might go about merging human and artificial intelligence. The first step is to construct computers that can duplicate the functionality, communication protocols, and organizational structure of neural networks in the human brain. (This in itself would be a monumental achievement, as science as almost no understanding of how neurons actually function. For one thing, data within the past decade has shown that individual neurons perform sophisticated calculations using undetermined machinery. One hypothesis, notably advocated by Oxford mathematics and physics professor Roger Penrose, proposes that computation or possibly quantum nature might be performed inside cellular microtubules.)
The second step would be to construct the physical interface between the computer and the human brain.
Step three would be to program the computer to enhance human intelligence. This is a job best left to the human brain itself. If one constructs the computer in a way that replicates the organizational structure of a developing human brain, then the brain itself would be able to program the computer given proper stimuli. Essentially, instead of grafting a preformed artificial intelligence onto a human mind, a blank computer capable of supporting an AI would be attached on to the human brain. The brain would then be given extra stimuli, such as a network of sensors that give a richer amount of information than existing human senses, and extra appendages, such as robotic vehicles that can manipulate the environment in more intricate ways than human arms and legs. In time, as the brain attempts to accommodate added demands, it will program the newly grafted computer to become an extension the brain of the human being it's connected to.
Step four would be subtle modifications to allow for future extensibility.
The final step would be to create redundancy in such a way that the enhanced human intelligence will no longer depend on the presence of the original biological human brain to function. That is, make it so that the human intelligence (and one would hope, consciousness) will be able to survive the destruction of the biological body.
The above steps, if feasible, could turn human beings into virtual deities that would be practically immortal and extraordinarily powerful. Today, the physical manifestation of human intelligence is a system of systems containing an astronomical number of biological components that process and exchange information on both local and system wide scales and regulate the flow of resources within the physical boundaries of the human body. In the future, the physical manifestation of a human being may very well expand to include numerous networked sensors and robotic platforms connected to the human brain as integrally as our eyes, ears, arms and legs, organized along biological principles based on those that allow our bodies to function, distributed over a large region of physical space and interacting with the environment with far greater complexity on a far wider spectrum of energies and length scales. Indeed, the sum of resources available to entire nations today may become insignificant to those available to a single human being tomorrow.
On a side note, with regards to whether we should be worried about super AIs, the problem is not necessarily one of enslavement, but one of relevance. If the emergence of rapidly developing artificial intelligence is possible, and it's not obvious that it is, then we face the possibility that within one or two centuries, neither our power nor our intelligence will be significant compared to that possessed by the dominant species in our solar system, namely, artificial intelligence. Un
There's no reason why a more complex intelligence would be more benevolent than we ourselves are. We therefore might look to our own treatment of other species on earth as an indication of what an advanced AI might do to us. All except for the most naïve optimists should be profoundly disturbed by this possibility.
This story is running on ABC news. What's the deal is slashdot affiliated with ABC news now? OR should they look at what's up with ABC news or did they take the story from ABC or did ABC take the story from slashdot.
What if one day machines become so complex that we are no longer able to maintain a working understanding of them without enhancing our own intelligence? Seems to me like that, at least, is very possible.
If we're as close to large scale quantum computing as the amount of research and money being devoted to it in the physics community indicates, there might be reason to worry.
Many physicists suspect, though they might not publicly state so, that quantum mechanics is not complete without a proper theory of conciousness and vice versa (I'm not kidding, this is stuff is seriously discussed by some of the field's most recognized practitioners when the questions about the whys of quantum mechanics come up).
Even if a concious AI can't emerge in modern computers, would quantum computers be able to attain conciousness? No one knows.
timmy
The problem with the whole business about computers taking over the world / Skynet is watching you is this: Artificial intelligence is not the same thing as an artificial personality. Even if it were, why must we create a human type personality?
Our only understanding of intelligence is human intelligence. We tend to think that for something to have intelligence that it must think as we do and therefore have a similar motivational structure.
These motivational structures exist because they assist human survival more often than not, or assist it in critical situations. The also have unfortunate side effects, which is the reason many are a double edged swords. Greed, jealousy, rage, hatred, love, compassion, friendship, etc, are all human emotions or states of mind. A computerized intelligence would not have to be created with a capacity for any of these things. Therefore the study of its behavior would be an independent subject from human psychology. Claiming that a machine intelligence would eventually enslave mankind is hasty at best. We have no understanding of what the psychology of an intelligent computer would be, and therefore no model by which to predict its behavior.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
In fact, the airforce and the navy are planning to field unmanned air combat vehicles that will be autonomous to a degree where they will be able to complete their missions without human input (although security protocols dictate that human beings have to give the command to fire).
It is conceivable that military networks, presented with the need to monitor an increasingly complex battle field, may depend more and more on processing by artificial intelligence data that humans cannot analyse in a timely manner.
Of course, with proper safeguards, humans should still be in charge, but when situations become desperate enough, human beings tend to take more desperate measures,so it's not inconceivable that some operational control may be handed to AIs.
Discounting military AIs, industrial AIs and genetic algorithms used in product design (yes, there are now genetic algorithms that can do some design work) are taking on duties traditionally done by human decision makers. That's what they're designed for.
What Hawkings is worried about is probably the emergence of civilizations in which human beings are irrelevant, a point when human beings become so dependent on AI, and AIs become so smart that we're no longer much more than pets maintained by AIs out of interest.
Besides, there's always the possibility that ambitious individual will augment their own intelligence with artificial intelligence, creating a new aristocracy.
According to my collection of quotes and sigs, it is Picasso who said it.
Picasso quote: "Computers are useless; they can only answer questions."
HTH. HAND.
Good points.
it are humans who double the performance of computers.
We will be fine as long as the chipmakercompanies know when to stop. In other words we doomed.
Bill Joy, Sun Microsystem's co-founder has harped about the dangers of AI and other technologies for years.
4 61 470,00.html?chkpt=zdnntop
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2
Personally, I've believed since my sophomore year in high school (94-95) that we are living in one of the the most promising and dangerous period in human history.
The potential for revolutionary beneficial technological change and annihilating disaster are equally probable.
It's an exciting time to be alive and to be working in science!
If you think about it, whether you're imagining the shape of an automobile or using your knowledge of chemistry to perform an assay, much of what we experience as our intelligence stem from attempts at fusing, structuring, searching through information collected through our senses and responding to that information through our appendages, so one should not be surprised if increased ability to process input and control interaction with the environment also happens to increase one's ability to think creatively and perform many other intellectual feats.
Don't forget this recent Onion piece. Stephen Hawking on the cover of a science tabloid. [Second sentence added purely to avoid violating the "postercomment compression filter"...]
Why not alter our genes to prevent misanthropic scientists from taking over the world?
Hawking is very good in one field, that has _nothing_ to do with AI ar even computer science. He is a physicist. In my personal experience most physicists don't even understand conventional computing on a CS level, let alone far more complicated things as AI (there are exceptions, but these are usually not working as physicists).
Speech synthesis and pattern recognition have some elements close to AI, but they do not have anything to do with real intelligence, which AI usually is not targeted at or capable of replacing.
So please, let's not confuse AI and natural intelligence, only because one very good astrophysicist does not know the limits of his competence.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted and ignored otherwise.
Let me respond to the general vien of comments in support of Dr. Hawkings statement.
Government, in its essence, is a system designed to propagate itself and pass itself along to the succeeding generation. The genetic material of this self-replicating system are the legislature and laws etc. by which it governs the land and acquires resources.
A great number of posts express an arrogant confidence that mechanical devices will never be able to supercede us because we won't let them. Let me continue the above analogy by saying that the monarchy in England never expected itself to be replaced by the more efficient democratic/capitalist system. Capitalism was to them, as computers are to us, a simple mechanical tool which could be kept in check.
One undeniable facet of life is its self-replicating, resource demanding nature. If ever a self-replicating structure develops which requires the same resources we do, it won't matter how noble our souls or how much art and poetry we've produced, we will be forced to compete on the same brutal terms, or risk extinction. In as far as machines can use every single resource as mankind, and in most cases more efficiently, Hawking is right to warn us to take this threat of competition more seriously than our current "hahaha, Sci-Fi geeks acting up again attitude".
AI would be a huge step, but is not a requirement for machines to supplant humans. To compete with us machines only need to be able to acquire resources on their own and be able to mechanically self reproduce. The machines have the upper hand in efficiency and self-reproductive ability if only they could figure out how to use it, which is why AI would be helpful. But any simple virus knows how to raid humans for resources and even simple bacteria can self-replicate so advanced learning algorithms aren't the technological barrier that threatens us.
Humans have the advantage in knowing how to compete but can't effectively modify themselves to do so. This is Hawkings point: Mechanical systems are increasing in complexity geometrically and organic life not at all. If organic life doesn't figure out how to compete more effectively there is a more efficient and flexible mechanism just over the horizon which will use our resources. Ergo, we should better our competitive advantage by increasing our genetic complexity.
For those who continue to dissent consider this point: Could computers continue to become increasingly complex and never develop the paramecium intellect required to compete with us?
This is the point I put to the thinkers out there. Is complexity a good measure of competitive ability or a good measure of "life"?
-->-- Faust
BS Course 18T (Theoretical Mathematics) MIT '01
BS Course 7 (Molecular Biology) MIT '01
There is a view that thinking is itself pleasant to a thinking being, i.e., that as soon as it begins to think, it will begin to value its own ability to think. In such a case, this computer would have a motivational structure similar to our own, a motivational structure that in many views is the basis of human action, especially those nasty ones you mention.
~~~~~~
under-paid karma whore
Hawking is losing it. Assuming he ever really had it in the first place. All this media attention seems to turn productive physicists into babbling morons.
I suppose your definition of wild and free is being born into a society that dictates from day one how you should behave, what you should say, and oftentimes, how you should think. To stray from these "guidelines to peaceful living" will result in either being caged up or murdered in the name of "justice." Perhaps with only these two perspectives, I can see how you consider the former existence to be "freedom". Personally, I call it slavery with a leash.
As I see it, Hawking's basic plan is: if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.
When the supersmart, human-enslaving computers come for me, I'll ready with my Smith & Wesson plug-in. COME ON! IS THAT ALL YOU'VE GOT? COME AFTER ME!
"You must try to forget all you have learned. You must begin to dream." -- Sherwood Anderson
We as a species protect what you call "less efective" genotypes because it has an evolutionary advantage: keeps the minds of brilliant people active, no possible source of knowledge is wasted.
Thanks to that, Stephen Hawkings is alive, he gave us all his new (mostly correct) ways to look at the universe. All this knowledge could save our neck as a species one day in the future.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Ray Kurzweil has written a response to Stephen Hawking on www.kurzweilai.net:
... the DNA" and (ii) develop technologies that make possible "a direct connection between brain and computer, so that artificial brains contribute to human intelligence rather than opposing it."
a rticles/art0134.html).
Stephen Hawking recently told the German magazine Focus that computers were evolving so rapidly that they would eventually outstrip the intelligence of humans. Professor Hawking went on to express the concern that eventually, computers with artificial intelligence could come to dominate the world.
Hawking's recommendation is to (i) improve human intelligence with genetic engineering to "raise the complexity of
Hawking's perception of the acceleration of nonbiological intelligence is essentially on target. It is not simply the exponential growth of computation and communication that is behind it, but also our mastery of human intelligence itself through the exponential advancement of brain reverse engineering.
Once our machines can master human powers of pattern recognition and cognition, they will be in a position to combine these human talents with inherent advantages that machines already possess: speed (contemporary electronic circuits are already 100 million times faster than the electrochemical circuits in our interneuronal connections), accuracy (a computer can remember billions of facts accurately, whereas we're hard pressed to remember a handful of phone numbers), and, most importantly, the ability to instantly share knowledge.
However, Hawking's recommendation to do genetic engineering on humans in order to keep pace with AI is unrealistic. He appears to be talking about genetic engineering through the birth cycle, which would be absurdly slow. By the time the first genetically engineered generation grows up, the era of beyond-human-level machines will be upon us.
Even if we were to apply genetic alterations to adult humans by introducing new genetic information via gene therapy techniques (not something we've yet mastered), it still won't have a chance to keep biological intelligence in the lead. Genetic engineering (through either birth or adult gene therapy) is inherently DNA-based and a DNA-based brain is always going to be extremely slow and limited in capacity compared to the potential of an AI.
As I mentioned, electronics is already 100 million times faster than our electrochemical circuits; we have no quick downloading ports on our biological neurotransmitter levels, and so on. We could bioengineer smarter humans, but this approach will not begin to keep pace with the exponential pace of computers, particularly when brain reverse engineering is complete (within thirty years from now).
The human genome is 800 million bytes, but if we eliminate the redundancies (e.g., the sequence called "ALU" is repeated hundreds of thousands of times), we are left with only about 23 million bytes, less than Microsoft Word. The limited amount of information in the genome specifies stochastic wiring processes that enable the brain to be millions of times more complex than the genome which specifies it. The brain then uses self-organizing paradigms so that the greater complexity represented by the brain ends up representing meaningful information. However, the architecture of a DNA-specified brain is relatively fixed and involves cumbersome electrochemical processes. Although there are design improvements that could be made, there are profound limitations to the basic architecture that no amount of tinkering will address.
As far as Hawking's second recommendation is concerned, namely direct connection between the brain and computers, I agree that this is both reasonable, desirable and inevitable. It's been my recommendation for years. I describe a number of scenarios to accomplish this in my most recent book, The Age of Spiritual Machines, and in the book précis "The Singularity is Near" (http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/
I recommend establishing the connection with noninvasive nanobots that communicate wirelessly with our neurons. As I discuss in the précis, the feasibility of communication between the electronic world and that of biological neurons has already been demonstrated. There are a number of advantages to extending human intelligence through the nanobot approach. They can be introduced noninvasively (i.e., without surgery). The connections will not be limited to one or a small number of positions in the brain. Rather, the nanobots can communicate with neurons (and with each other) in a highly distributed manner. They would be programmable, would all be on a wireless local area network, and would be on the web.
They would provide many new capabilities, such as full-immersion virtual reality involving all the senses. Most importantly, they will provide many trillions of new interneuronal connections as well as intimate links to nonbiological forms of cognition. Ultimately, our minds won't need to stay so small, limited as they are today to a mere hundred trillion connections (extremely slow ones at that).
However, even this will only keep pace with the ongoing exponential growth of AI for a couple of additional decades (to around mid-twenty-first century). As Hans Moravec has pointed out, ultimately a hybrid biological-nonbiological brain will ultimately be 99.999...% nonbiological, so the biological portion becomes pretty trivial.
We should keep in mind, though, that all of this exponentially advancing intelligence is derivative of biological human intelligence, derived ultimately from the thinking reflected in our technology designs, as well as the design of our own thinking. So it's the human-technology civilization taking the next step in evolution. I don't agree with Hawking that "strong AI" is a fate to be avoided. I do believe that we have the ability to shape this destiny to reflect our human values, if only we could achieve a consensus on what those are.
The comment about enslavement misses the point and is misleading.
From the article: "...prevent human intelligence being overtaken by that of computers."
If "artificial" intelligence surpasses human intelligence our situation could resemble that of the carrier pigeon, or maybe just pesty cockroaches. Not because of malevolence. It's just Not Good to give up the #1 spot on the food/resource chain.
I wouldn't really worry about being enslaved, I'd worry about my electricity being diverted, food farms being replaced by data farms, the earth being terraformed to a drier more mech-friendly place, not having humans in charge anymore, etc.
AI-Bob: "Solar energy is free and abundant, what do we need all these clouds for?"
Operator, give me the number for 911!
we are the borg ... just not yet ;-)