Slashdot Mirror
Douglas Hofstadter Looks At the Future
An anonymous reader writes with a link to this "detailed and fascinating interview with Douglas Hofstadter (of Gödel Escher Bach fame) about his latest book, science fiction, Kurzweil's singularity and more ... Apparently this leading cognitive researcher wouldn't want to live in a world with AI, since 'Such a world would be too alien for me. I prefer living in a world where computers are still very very stupid.' He also wouldn't want to be around if Kurzweil's ideas come to pass, since he thinks 'it certainly would spell the end of human life.'"
That's what mathematician Roger Penrose thinks also, in case you weren't aware. You may want to read his book "The Large, the Small, and the Human Mind".
You're not understanding what the singularity is about. What you're describing is a dumb extrapolation. The singularity, in contrast, is the idea that once we develop artificial intelligence that is as smart as the smartest scientists, there is the possibility that the AI could design an improved (i.e. smarter, faster) version of itself. Then that version could design a yet more improved version, even more quickly, and so on. That will mean the rate of scientific progress could be faster than humans are capable of, and we could find ourselves surrounded by technology we do not understand, or perhaps we cannot possibly understand. The idea behind the singularity is feedback, such as the recursion that can be created by the Y combinator in your sig.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Neurons are far too large to be affected by QM effects.
If I disagree with you it's because you are wrong.
The current Federal Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke, would disagree with you about the causes of the Great Depression. He says that it was the fault of the Federal Reserve. http://www.federalreserve.gov/BOARDDOCS/SPEECHES/2002/20021108/default.htm Check mises.org for other economic information.
A lot of people seem to misunderstand Asimov's Laws of Robotics. They are not a suggestion for what laws real robots should follow. They are used to demonstrate that no simple set of rules could possibly make robots "safe". See the Wikipedia article, which mentions that.
Centralization breaks the internet.
A decent "chess vision" system would need to on it's own create 3D models by examining the pieces and interpret what those models are. The computer would have to be able to capture images of the board in near real-time to be able to determine when the opponent moved, and how it moved. It would also need sufficient accuracy in image acquisition, interpretation, and AI to determine where exactly the robotic arm needs to grab the piece without having it slip or tilt - that is an enormous task of physics simulation. Next is realtime spacial awareness, the system would have to create a 3D model of the board, pieces, and the robotic arm in space, and compute distances & movements for pick up and placement all without hitting other pieces, accidently dropping the piece above the board, or pushing the piece through the board.
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
I was looking forward to hearing a coherent rebuttal of the singularity, because it seemed to make so much sense to me once I heard the theory completely laid out. This is Hofstadter's response - I can say I was not impressed by his argument or rationale. In fact I can say I don't recall seeing either in his presentation... just an "it's not possible" attitude.
http://singinst.org/media/tryingtomuserationally
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
Something more like the Singularity can be found in a lot of Ken MacLeod's books, particularly The Stone Canal and The Cassini Division.
MacLeod's an excellent writer and well worth a look if you haven't already come across him.