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Review:The Age of Spiritual Machines
In l990, inventor Ray Kurzweil predicted in "The Age of Intelligent Machines," that the Internet would proliferate rapidly and that the defeat of a human chess champion by a computer was imminent.
He was right on both counts, so it's worth paying attention to his new book, "The Age of Spiritual Machines," (Viking, $25.95). This round, Kurzweil is making even more radical predictions - namely, that computing will develop so rapidly over the next century that technology and human beings will literally merge in socially, educationally, biological, even spiritual ways.
Kurzweil has ratcheted up the human-versus-artificial intelligence debate a few notches. There will, he makes clear, be no human intelligence versus artificial intelligence. We and our computers will become one.
This theory picks up where Moore's Law leaves off. Gordon Moore, one of the inventors of the integrated circuit and former chairman of Intel, announced in l965 that the surface area of a transistor - as etched on an integrated circuit - was being reduced by approximately 50 per cent every twelve months. In l975, he revised the rate to 24 months. Still, the result is that every two years, you can pack twice as many transistors on an integrated circuit, doubling the number of components on a chip as well as its speed.
Since the cost of an integrated circuit has stayed relatively constant, the implication is that every other year brings twice as much circuitry running at twice the speed for the same price. This observation, known as Moore's Law on Integrated Circuits, has been driving the acceleration of computing for decades.
The most advanced computers are still much simpler than the human brain, currently about a million times simpler. But computers are now doubling in speed every twelve months. This trend will continue , Kurzweil predicts, with computers achieving the memory capacity and computing speed of the human brain by approximately the year 2020.
This is a stunning idea. Human evolution is seen by scientists as a billion-year drama that led to its greatest creation: human intelligence. Computers will get to the same point in less than a hundred years. It's time - past time, actually - to start asking where they will go from here.
Kurzweil doesn't argue that next year's computers will automatically match the flexibility and subtlety of human intelligence. What he predicts is the rapid rise of what he calls the software of intelligence. Scanning a human brain will be achievable early in the next century, and one future approach to computing will be to copy the brain's neural circuitry in a "neural" computer designed to simulate a massive number of human neurons.
"There is a plethora of credible scenarios for achieving human-level intelligence in a machine," writes Kurzweil. "We will be able to evolve and train a system combining massively parallel neural nets with other paradigms to understand language and model knowledge, including the ability to read and understand written documents."
Kurzweil's own law of accelerating growth and return is centered on the idea that this new bio-digital species becomes increasingly learned and sophisticated, life will become more orderly and efficient, while technological development continues to accelerate.
Kurzweil's premise - that computers will become as smart as we are and then merge their intelligence with ours -- is not only challenging and provocative; it also makes sense. But he isn't as clear or coherent when it comes to divining just what kind of intelligence computers will have - how intuitive they can be, how individualistic or ethical.
By the second decade of the next century, there will be reports of computers passing the Turing Intelligence test, says Kurzweil. The rights of machine intelligence will become a public policy issue. But machine intelligence will still largely be the product of collaborations between humans and machines, computers still programmed to maintain a subservient relationship to the species that created them. But not for long.
Where his book and his vision stumble is in grasping what will happen to us when computers become smarter than we are, then sensual, social or spiritual. Will we better off? Will the computer be moral? Will it have a social or other consciousness? Do we wish to merge with computers into one species? Will we have any choice? We could be heading for a sci-fi nightmare or, alternatively, for another of those utopian visions that used to pepper Wired magazine before it became the property of Conde Nast.
While futurists can measure or plot the computational skills of tomorrow's computers, can anyone really know the precise nature of that intelligence, and whether or not it can replicate the functions of the human brain?
The idea of our being outsmarted, thus dominated and endangered by computers, has been portrayed as a nightmare in Stanley Kurbrick's "2001" (Kubrick apparently greatly underestimated the virtual person Hal would become). It's also surfaced in various rosy intergalactic Disney-like visions in which machines perform labor, clean the air, heal humans, teach kids. Kurzweil doesn't say which notion, if either, sounds more plausible.
The latter half of the book becomes essentially a time-line: Kurzweil somberly walks us through the evolution of computing intelligence, and the eventual merging of digital technology and human beings into a new species.
By 2009, Kurzweil predicts, human musicians will routinely jam with cybernet musicians. Bioengineered treatments will have greatly reduced the mortality from cancer and heart disease. But human opposition to advancing technology will also be growing, an expanding neo-Luddite movement.
By 2019, nonetheless, Kurzweil predicts that computers will be largely invisible, embedded in walls, furniture, clothing and bodies - sort of like the artwork in Bill Gates' massive new mansion. People will use three-dimensional displays built into their glasses, "direct eye" displays that create highly realistic, virtual visual environments that overlay real environments. Paraplegics will routinely walk and climb stairs through a combination of computer-controlled nerve stimulation and exoskeletal robotic devices. This display technology projects images directly onto the human retina, exceeds the resolution of human vision, and will be widely used regardless of visual impairment.
In 2009, human opposition to advancing technology will be growing - as in the spread of the Neo-Luddite movement.
By 2019, there will be almost no human employment in production, agriculture, or transportation, yet basic life needs will be met for the vast majority of the human race. A $1,000 computing device will approximate the computational ability of the human brain that year, and a year later, the same amount of money will buy the computing capacity of about 1,000 human brains.
By the year 2099, a strong trend towards the merger of human thinking with the world of machine intelligence that humans created will be underway. There will no longer by any clear distinction between humans and computers. Most conscious entities will not have a permanent physical presence. Life expectancy will no longer be a viable term in relation to intelligent beings.
Small wonder Kurzweill expects a growing discussion about the legal rights of computers and what constitutes being "human." Direct neural pathways will have been perfected for high-bandwidth connection to the human brain. A range of neural implants will be available to enhance visual and auditory perception, machine-generated literature and multi-media material.
"The Age of Spiritual machines" surpasses most futuristic predictions of sci-fi writers and technologists. Scientists and programmers may not be the best judge of the nature of artificial digital intelligence. Some input from biologists and neurologists might have been useful. Sometimes, Kurzweil's predictions read like the numbingly familiar, gee-whiz techno-hype that infect mass media discussions of the Internet.
Yet Kurzweil is someone to be taken seriously. No nutty academic or cyber-guru, MIT named him inventor of the year in 1988; and he received the Dickson Price, Carnegie Mellon top science award, in 1994.
Caution is still in order. Kurzweil's earlier predictions about the Net and chess were short term, thus much more cautious and feasible. Only the new bio-digital species will know if these visions turned out to be right.
Predictions about the future of technology have a checkered history, itself a cautionary tale for futurists. Walt Disney was convinced we'd be whizzing back and forth to Saturn on weekends by now. We were surely supposed to be controlling the earth's climate rather than worrying about holes in the ozone layer. And whatever happened to cancer cures and hover cars?
But it's hard to find any parallel with the history of computing. The growth of digital machines suggests the future of computers be taken more, not less, seriously. "The Age of Spiritual Machines" is a wake-up call. It reminds us that the relation between human beings and the remarkable machines they've invented is almost sure to change radically. Perhaps it's time to start thinking seriously about how.
Buy this book here.
You can e-mail me at jonkatz@slashdot.org.
Sounds like something straight out of William Gibson. He didn't know much about computers either.
People already hate this idea, and it isn't even possible yet. If computers became smarter than us, I'd consider it much more likeley that the 80% computer illiterate would take Louisville sluggers to the "brainy" computers.
Resistance is futile.
Hmm.. looks pretty like what I've been waiting for ...
Let's see if I manage to get one of these into myself... human age is pretty short uknow.
Anyhow, if I'll get the chance, I'll be first in line getting one of these.
I don't want my brain integrating with Windoze 2100.
:)
This all assumes were still here after 2000 anyway...
The thought processes of computer have been developing differently than human. We don't really want to make a whole bunch of digitized humans, we already have humans. Maybe in the future a virtual human will be created, but there will only be a couple for the novelty will where off. Computers will be developed along different lines to complement humans not copy them. As it was said in the article, the two may merge, not one takes over the other.
That's my thought
Weasel23
You're offtopic.
...is an RJ-45 jack in my head.
-Joe Merlino
Well, it's both of theirs, isn't it? Clarke wrote the book, Kubrick directed the film, and they collaborated closely.
Godel expressed it tersely by observing that mathematics cannot hope to explain the universe because the universe contains mathematics. Thus the set of all things outside the universe by definition does not contain mathematics and we cannot express them.
I think this notion also applies to our understanding of how our brain works. Call it "spirituality" if you want, but I beleive that it is simply impossible for any human being (or even a collection of them) to understand how we think, since the act of thinking is contained by our brains.
I beleive we can enhance our cognitive abilities using computer technology, but replacing it or merging with it is simply out of the question since we cannot understand ourselves completely.
"Professing themselves to be wise they became fools". If science teaches us anything of late it is that the more we know, the more we know we don't know. A faithful reproduction of the human mind above and beyond that of the Creator of the entire universe is a goal whose boundaries will prove to lie beyond infinity. For example, although we have mastered flight and can fly higher and faster than anything God created on this earth we still cannot faithfully reproduce the skill and the grace of a swallow or the nimbleness of a dragonfly and I'll wager we never will.
Actually to an anthropologist, computers are part of our evolutionary ascent.
I bave no Idea how technology will develope, but
"By 2019, there will be almost no human employment in production, agriculture, or transportation, yet basic life needs will be met for the vast majority of the human race"
I find hard to believe. Think about how our socio-economic system is set up. It's hard to see that happening in America and Europe, let alone globally.
There are very hard AI problems that need to be solved (or finessed) before Kurzweil's predictions can occur. In the 1950s and 1960s, the basic problems of natural language understanding, machine learning, planning, perception (e.g., vision), and commonsense representation and reasoning were all established. Since then, progress has been made, but it is very slow. For example, much of my recent research has been the analysis of algorithms and representations that were developed in the 1950s and 1960s. In 40 years, we now have machines that play chess at a grandmaster level, we have passable speech recognition, and we can scan bar codes at the grocery store pretty well. That is progress, but not very big steps toward solving the hard problems.
Tom Bylander
bylander@cs.utsa.edu
Too lazy to create an account.
SF author Iain M. Banks created a universe were the civilization
(The Culture) is run by the Minds, AIs with capacity far
beyond human grasp. It is a positive universe, but I think that
it will be a very hard and rough way to get there.
Another SF novel I read recently that does not paint a horror
scenario (at least not from advanced AI's built by humans) is
VAST by Linda Nagata. In this universe a human being is
its mindstate. Humans can give up their bodies and live
completely in a VR world.
What I want to say is, that it is at least thinkable, that AI
systems and humans can live in a symbiosis.
I recommend both authors. The books are good reading and
give food for thoughts.
Humans don't have repsect for natural life, let alone artificial life.
Processor speeds double at the rate of once every 18 months. This trend will continue until the year 2005, when it becomes impossible to continue in silico. The brain of the honeybee can execute fp instructions to the tune of 100,000,000,000 GFLOPS. Computers as smart as the human brain indeed; they should try simulating a bug before striving for such lofty goals.
To suggest we are "about to become one with our computers" demonstrates clearly what occurs when a science fiction writer fancies himself a scientist.
I would suggest "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadler.
'cuse any misspellings
If anyone knows a thing about the 2nd law of thermodynamics they wouldn't believe in evolution. Evolutionist's have more Blind Faith to believe in evolution than any other religious belief requires.
Summed up, it is Everything degenerates, it does not spontaneously develop, or advance. We see examples of this everywhere ie paint decays to dust, people age and die.
Any careful study of evolution THEORY shows the inaccuracies, the falsifications, that are believed even after disproved. It has been the single largest source of fraud in the scientific community.
We've almost done away with natural selection, if we wish to progress, we must modify ourselves. As for merging removing 'free will', the 'free will' we have now is only an illusion, unless you are betting on a soul which I assume most slashdotter's arent.
-AC
Damnit, Katz, research first, THEN write.
"Experts" have been predicting human-scale machine intelligence "in 20 years" for the last 50 years.
Quantum computers in theory allow you to fit more bits per bit into a bit. Even if we get bits down to a single atom, we could keep Moore's law going for a good while yet.
Meanwhile computer programmers are getting better at having computers act like people to some extent. At what point is the simulation complex enough to qualify as a person? If you can't tell, does it matter if it's not self aware? Is there any way to tell if it is self aware? That stuff's still a good bit off but it's undoubtedly coming.
Jon when are you going to stop using that damned Mac?
Your article is still stuffed with question marks where apostrophes are supposed to go.
Please go write for MacWorld. Or wouldn't they take you?
Why can't an intelligence understand itself? All we need to do is continue to study the brain in ever-greater depth and detail, and increase the computer power available to simulate it. Assuming the universe isn't random (as I do), the solution is out there somewhere. Anthropic principle: If this problem can't be solved, we wouldn't be here.
Currently, computers are told by us humans what is right and what is wrong
Correct me if I am wrong but isn't that what your childhood was like?
The problem with Moore's law in general is that it disregards the fact of diminishing returns and that you can only squeeze so many transistors in a small area before QM interactions between electrons start messing you up. Of course molecular circuitry will work just fine. The only question is will things get really cool or just kind of terminate like the telephone, the automobile, the pencil, etc.
-Rich
Facts are just solidified opinion....
First: You can double all the time estimates, Moore's law may well be 24 months but the culture takes a lot longer to get used to new ideas.
Second: You can radically revise upward the amount of resistance from the conservatives...look at the furor over the non-issue of abortion.
Third: What makes you imagine that super-smart computer intelligences would want to have anything to do with us?
1. Start by assuming the universe is not based on random factors. Therefore all intelligences are different, because we are not all mental clones of each other. Therefore there is a difference between the intelligence of any 2 people. Once these differences are discovered and a scale of measurement is decided upon, we'll have a "true" IQ test.
2. Not *yet*, maybe. Starting from the same assumption, we can show that there must be a finite and definite set of rules for every process in the universe, including intelligence. Find the rules, program them into a computer, and off we go!
Moore's law: Who says we can't have subatomic transistors? Ever heard of quantum computing? Not only is it far smaller and faster than a modern machine, but it works in a fundamentally different way so that some operations may be faster by several orders of magnitude.
How the brain works: It must work *somehow*, or it wouldn't work at all. Precise and exact application of scientifc methods will eventually solve all problems. Perhaps we'll invent atomic-scale electrodes that can be placed, millions at a time, on individual neurons. From there, it's equivalent to reverse-engineering a complex machine.
Also, a lot of the progress has just been stonewalled by single, insurmountable problems. Break those down and you'll have all kinds of results. How does the brain work? Learning? Integration of senses into the neural net?
We have also created machines that can cut apart a living cell and remove its pieces. Machines that can smash mountains, or build them. We have flown across space and to the bottom of the oceans. I don;t believe that the "more we don't know" is infinite. One day we will know everything.
Anyway, there has always been one fundamental flaw I believe with people that say computers will eventually be more intelligent than humans. That flaw is that computers are inherantly digital creations, and humans are not. Neurons are not merely ON or OFF. Human memory is not stored as a series of bits. I think the question of human vs. machine intelligence goes much much deeper and you have to ask yourself what is consciousness comprised of. I believe conscious thought is comprised more of an awareness of energy around us as opposed to the arbitrary storage of sensory data.
We will find out someday that as intelligent as computers get, they are not actually "self aware" the way humans are. Therefore, humans will always "one up" on the systems they create.
We are quickly approaching the point at which silicon can no longer support rapid advances in chip fabrication. There will need to be a huge paradigm shift at that point in order to continue advancing forward.
We are already seeing the size of the CPU grow, even though the pathways are shrinking. Hold a Pentium II up next to a Cyrix 486 and you'll see what I mean.
Until we make some major breakthrough that allows us to start making circuits smaller than silicon will allow, I think SMP boxes will become more commonplace. As well, massively parallel computing technologies will emerge into the consumer market. Department clusters will be commonplace, where people use their colleagues spare cycles.
Machines will start getting larger. CPU's the size of a small plate will not be uncommon in midrange systems. However, CPU sales will drop off in the home consumer market when we hit the wall just as modem sales have slumped after hitting the 56K wall.
There will be a movement in the software community to trim the fat and start writing efficient software again like we used to in the early to mid 1980's. This is already starting. While big bloated desktop environments like KDE, Gnome, and Windows 98 serve as eye candy to those with a nearly bottomless hardware budget, other who are content with a low-end Pentium system are looking towards lighter weight GUI's and more efficiently coded applications. While storage will continue to be cheap, developers will code expressly for CPU efficiency.
All in all, I think that hitting the wall will be good for us. It will cause us to make the most of what we have, instead of getting caught up in the Bigger/Better/Faster/More mindset.
Wow you are impressive, if you can simulate evolution and all the scientist's in the world couldn't put humpty together again.
Kinda hard to read, my flying car hit some turbulance on the way to work.
Well, a lot of people have said that it can't happen. I think it can and will. No, we still don't know how the brain works, but we're getting closer. Yes, the brain is massively parallel, but there is a limit; I think I've heard that each neuron has a limit of about 13 connections to other neurons. The physical limits on the size of silicon logic are being reached, but the design of the logic circuits can be changed to improve speed.
Currently, neural nets are being programmed in procedural languages, which is pretty inefficeint. (I know that lisp et. all are not procedural, but at some point it is executed as machine code, which is.) If we can etch a neural net on silicon, we will be a long way towards increasing the speed of processing.
The most difficult part of AI may end up being the instinct, or exactly how the neurons are arranged. but that probably won't be an insurmountable hurdle. As of two years ago, we were able to completely model a cockroach (sp?). That may not be intelligence, but it is a start. Eventually we will get bees, lizards, mice, dogs and humans.
Is this just a troll, or are you really some blazing genius who has seen past the muddled reasoning of the entire scientific community? I wasn't aware that thermodynamics applied to cummulative chemical reactions. Maybe if I slept in a pyramid and wore a power crystal, I could gain your rare insight.
"It is well known that, left to themselves, chemical compounds ultimately break apart into simpler materials; they do not ultimately become more complex. Outside forces can increase order for a time (through the expenditure of relatively large amounts of energy, and through the input of design). However, such reversal cannot last forever. Once the force is released, processes return to their natural direction - greater disorder. Their energy is transformed into lower levels of availability for further work. The natural tendency of complex, ordered arrangements and systems is to become simpler and more disorderly with time.
Thus, in the long term, there is an overall downward trend throughout the universe. Ultimately, when all the energy of the cosmos has been degraded, all molecules will move randomly, and the entire universe will be cold and without order. To put it simply: In the real world, the long-term overall flow is downhill, not uphill. All experimental and physical observation appears to confirm that the Law is indeed universal, affecting all natural processes in the long run.
Naturalistic Evolutionism requires that physical laws and atoms organize themselves into increasingly complex and beneficial, ordered arrangements.6 Thus, over eons of time, billions of things are supposed to have developed upward, becoming more orderly and complex.
However, this basic law of science (2nd Law of Thermodynamics) reveals the exact opposite. In the long run, complex, ordered arrangements actually tend to become simpler and more disorderly with time. There is an irreversible downward trend ultimately at work throughout the universe. Evolution, with its ever increasing order and complexity, appears impossible in the natural world."
in 2200, with the current growth of population, we will turn into a ball of bodies with a radius of a lightyear, expanding in all directions at 99% speed of light.
But maybe that will be stopped in 2150, when a computer will be the size of Jupiter, consuming all the energy of the sun, and with an IQ of 1E+245, will eventually find a way.
Unless the computers of 2050, built on proteins and lipids, carbohydrates and minerals, will let their libido take command over their senses and make a holocaust fighting for land, power, sex and wealth. I look forward to seeing it.
Two observations:
1. No matter how advanced hardware becomes, it is far from obvious that it will acquire functions similar to those of a brain. Let's grant that intelligence, consciousness, etc. are somehow created within an extraordinarily complex device that ultimately obeys the laws of physics. Simply having more advanced hardware to work with doesn't bring us any closer to knowing what software is needed to make a computer conscious. I think these predictions depend much more on advanced in neuroscience than on advances in chip design.
2. I don't think Godel's incompleteness theorem has much bearing on this issue. Godel's theorem deals with the relationship between the completeness of a logical system (in other words, Can All True Statements Be Proven To Be True By Deduction?), and its consistency (in other words, Do Validly Deduced Statements Ever Contradict Each Other?). Godel proved that no logical system can be both complete and consistent with respect to describing number theory, and I think that the same proof has been made for Euclidean geometry. In other words, "There Must Exist True Statements That Cannot Be Proven".
Whether or not Godel's proof is meaningful outside of mathematical systems is unclear (at least to me). However, it certainly seems like a giant leap of faith to assume that Godel's proof means that human consciousness is "A True Statement That Cannot Be Proven"
and I quote on open or closed
"To create any kind of upward, complex organization in a closed system requires outside energy and outside information. Evolutionists maintain that the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics does not prevent Evolution on Earth, since this planet receives outside energy from the Sun. Thus, they suggest that the Sun's energy helped create the life of our beautiful planet. However, is the simple addition of energy all that is needed to accomplish this great feat?
Compare a living plant with a dead one. Can the simple addition of energy make a completely dead plant live?
A dead plant contains the same basic structures as a living plant. It once used the Sun's energy to temporarily increase its order and grow and produce stems, leaves, roots, and flowers - all beginning from a single seed.
If there is actually a powerful Evolutionary force at work in the universe, and if the open system of Earth makes all the difference, why does the Sun's energy not make a truly dead plant become alive again (assuming a sufficient supply of water, light, and the like)?
What actually happens when a dead plant receives energy from the Sun? The internal organization in the plant decreases; it tends to decay and break apart into its simplest components. The heat of the Sun only speeds the disorganization process."
in the 1970s, I read books about society in the year 2000. We would all live in space, eat only pills, wear antennas on our head, be 12" tall, have alien friends in space and fly around in saucers. I still wait for a diadem-headset cellular phones. All the other I already have.
This is great news, though. Moores law predicts that I will stop complaining about my computer at 2008. And imagine: in 17 years I can play Quake in 16000x12000, 320bit colour, 1000fps!
I liked the book, but what I found boring was the repetition of "Oh, here's a technology that will take over the future" (i.e. voice recognition, translation software, mind-music) followed by "And coincidentally, here's the "Kurzweil XYZ Company" that I created to invest in it.
He's an interesting guy, with lots of success behind him. If he wrote an autobiography, I'd read it. But it's a bit unfair to wrap a bunch of patting himself on the back under the guise of an AI/philosophy text.
It's pretty easy to demonstrate evolution in the real world. I can think of two examples off the top of my head, bacteria and communities of insects becoming more resistance and eventually immune to chemical toxins (antibiotics and insecticides). It's demonstratable, and just not liking it doesn't make it go away.
Your statement show both a misunderstanding of theory of thermodynamics and the theory of evolution. In an open system (the earth) if enough free energy is available (the sun) you can buck entropy for a limited time. Once your energy source runs out (brown dwarf, but the earth will be incinerated so who cares), the open system (charball) will succum to entropy very quickly.
Build me a robot body, scan my brain and reconstruct its connections in a computer simulation, install it in the robot body.
Great, everlasting life.
Except its not my everlasting life, it's the simulations.
Like it or not I am going to die in this fleshy cage. When I do go I'm sure as hell not going to leave a simulation of myself to mourn me.
They've been saying Moore's law is going to run into a brick wall (10 years out) for at least 20 years. They've been predicting a brick wall for photolithography for at least 10 years ("the limit is the wavelength of light" - by which they meant visible light, forgetting UV etc.)
You talk about the speed of "a" serial processor. MPP now means thousands of processors - why not billions? Umm, Beowolf ring any bells?
We can simulate living things now (cockroach, worm, paramecium or whatever), monkey-level intelligence is a slam-dunk.
The interesting questions are:
1. Are humans really different from other animals?
2. Can computers have emotions?
3. Can computers create art (Linux kernel, Mona Lisa, etc)
My answers are no, yes, and yes - but not in my lifetime (I hope).
"Does God Place Dice? Mathematical concepts of chaos theory", Ian Stewart afaik.
the examples you cite are of natural selection, not macro evolution/mutations.
the two are not the same, just as industrial melanism (pepper moth example) is not an example of evolution in action.
I chuckle at all the attempts to mimick the incredible limitless abilities of the human mind by all merely trying to follow the etchings we left in the brain. We are, after all, NOT our brains. Its like saying the case of a computer determines its ability to do math. Until we find we /are/ spiritual beings, I of of the firm believe we will never have a "smart" computer.
"By 2020, computers will be as smart as we are."
Or rather,
by then, we will be just as dumb as our machines.
As stated natural selection, hmmmmm
And here I thought this was a classic example the evolutionist's once believed in and quoted.
I guess it evolved also.
carbon based life form from Santa Fe , January 5, 1999
Should be 0 stars; but this machine doesn't allow that.
There is very little science in this book. It is really about Kurzweil's ego. He frequently implies his software is the future of computing. His
"most significant event" for 1999 is the publication of this book. Such self serving hype is unforgivable. Predictions for 2009 are easily extrapolated from today's technology (probably because he will be around to be held accountable).
Longer range predictions are pure SCIENCE FICTION. According to Kurzweil, humans will become borg-like drones, or even worse, extinct; replaced by self replicating machines. No way!
There are some interesting bits of computing history, but even these facts are distorted to promote Kurzweil's agenda.
Save your money. Pulp science fiction has more integrity than this book.
You seem to be arguing that the theory of evolution is about some magical force which causes life forms to spotaniously reorganize themselves into other species. If you can find the section in Darwin's 'Origin of the Species' where he argues this, I'd love to hear about it because I couldn't find it.
Also, what alternative theory to you propose? What else could explain such variety and specialization in the natural world. Why is there an orchid that looks like the wasp it uses to fertilize it? How did human intelligence develop? I would really like to hear you ideas on how these things came to be.
PS. Purple moth example. ;), probably too many in this case.
Given enough time, yes the moths would eventually turn purple or evolve into another niche where they were less threatened. However in this example it more likely that the environmental stress would go away (factory closed) or the species would be killed off in the area because they are too easy to see. Turning from white to purple is a lot of little steps
By 2020 we will have faster better parallel computers, but none of them will pass a non restricted turing test or even come close. Maybe in a 1,000 years or so. Any predicitions of the future (especially in terms of dates) are invariably optimistic.
You will believe whatever your bias allows you to believe. Your Objectivity is subject to your bias.
It appears you do not like "Scientific Methodology" if it does not suite your bias. Why would would say a creationist cannot use science to argue for the science of Creation. Evolutionist's did not create science, they came along well after many creation believers and non developed the scientific methodolgy. For example sir Isaac Newton..
Like it or not God created this world, Science included, and since he made the laws who better to understand and use them.
tata
The point is that we cannot know these laws because math is limited to the observeable laws from OUR viewpoint. We cannot fathom rules of behaviour for something we cannot observe. You might as well prove God does or doesn't exist!
Even if you assume that Math == Universe, you cannot express the behaviour of the universe as a whole because, again, it is by definition defined as something outside our existence.
It's sad to see that most of the replies to the
article discusses intelligence as if it were a
well defined term. A discussion about building
intelligent machine should start with the
philosophical question about what constitutes intelligence instead of rambling about various technical details and problems.
Fredrik Henbjork
Email: frehe491@student.liu.se
WWW: http://g204.ryd.student.liu.se
PS. Purple moth example. ;), probably too many in this case.
Given enough time, yes the moths would eventually turn purple or
evolve into another niche where they were less threatened. However in
this example it more likely that the environmental stress would go
away (factory closed) or the species would be killed off in the area
because they are too easy to see. Turning from white to purple is a
lot of little steps
Micromutations by way of natural selection does not macroevolution make. No matter how hard you try, there's no way a bird will transmorgify into a fish and viceversa.
its seems strange to me that he uses the word "spiritual" in the title without giving any clear notion of what "spiritual" IS.
there are two fundamental ways we can come to an understanding of what is "consciousness", and what is "spiritual":
i) the first ASSUMES that MATTER is primary, and consciousness is an attribute of it.
ii) the other assumes that consciousness is primary, and that the physical world is a manifestation of an underlying consciousness.
deeply rooted in the assumptions of this book is the notion that consciousness is an attribute of physical processes. this cannot be assumed. love, hate, morality, etc. cannot be explained by ONLY the interaction of physical processes. until the nature of *consciousness* is understood, we cannot claim.
with purely physical (i.e. material & electronic) means, we can mimic the patterns and behaviours of animals, and even that in humans which is animal externally-derived behaviours. but in order to make a progress of a spiritual nature, we must first understand the nature of what is spiritual, and only then can a new impulse in the moral sphere come about. you can certainly track change in moral behaviour through entirely physical means, but new impulses to moral action cannot be explained from purely physical means.
the whole machine intelligence thing is quite
fascinating - and we'll surely be seeing
cleverer and cleverer ways of automated a lot
of the behavioural and animal characteristics
of humans and animals. but to confuse patterns
of behaviour with what is spiritual i believe
is a gross blunder.
to find the eternal, one must learn to
distinguish between that which is transitory
semblance and appearance, and that which is
intransitory, and essential.
regards,
johnrpenner@earthlink.net
I would argue that the class of thinking that falls under the label of 'free will' results from an imperfect ability to integrate all factors relating to a particular course of action. With a wide enough perspective, the desire to commit inefficient action, or action that does not best achieve a given end will not be present.
Anyone exhibiting 'free will' in these cases would probably be a 'sick' individual. (Taking action that is counter to your interests being a fairly good example of self destructive behavior.)
There are a number of Sci-Fi authors that have done a fairly good job painting this issue. (Greg Bear for one.)
Matthew N. Dodd
"Genetic Programming : On the Programming of Computers by Means of Natural Selection" by John Koza, it's a good intoductory text. comp.ai.genetic on usenet might have a good FAQ to get you started as well.
So world is deterministic, or is it not?
:)
Who could say, certainly no one who is
within the world, and how could you ask
from an outsider.
The problem of philosophy is that not many
things in exemption of axioms are proven.
Certainly something as metaphysical as
Free Will isn't proven or disproven.
Anonymous by Choice
Coward yeh!
katz runs on windows!
No, nural nets (very complex ones) have freedom to think what they want (if they have the proper hardware to do it.) we are the same way. Different parts of our brains do different things(i.e.:get a lobotomy and there goes your free will.) The whole idea of AI is to eventually give computers free will.
Bird to fish? I agree, it would be pretty unlikely. It's more likely that you'd get a bird which had similar form and function as fish. Kinda like how cows became whales and dolphins (Sea mammals probably evolved from cattle).
Remember our favorite little swimming bird here at Slashdot? How else do you explain penguins being a purely swimming creature when almost all other birds can fly?
Fish to bird? Probably already happened. Fish->Amphibian->Reptile->Dinosaur->Bird (over ~500 million years). If you can think of a more plausible place birds came from, I'd like to hear your argument.
>Think about it, which make more sense (in the >context of one with faith in such things of >course). A divine being which creates a universe >which basically runs itself or one which creates >a universe it constantly has to intervene in. One >god is an idiot and one is not, I'll leave it to >you to figure out which is which.
."). An impersonal God is no God at all, it's a reason to live by humanities faulty logic.
What is better a dead God or a living God? The God of the Bible is a living God. Whether or not you label him an idiot is irrelevent, because He is God and you are not. And before you claim my faith irrational, understand that is both rational and livable (i.e. Francis Scheaffer's "The God who is there . .
In addition to claim that life is constantly improving, I ask you where the object of your faith lies. I have yet to see clinical or reasonable evidence proving otherwise.
Dale McCrory
dalem@studionorth.com
Your ignorance is massive.
SLoT doesn't tell you what you think it does.
The talk.origins archives have a great deal of information to show you why you are wrong.
You've caught a few with your troll, now go away and get some intelligence.
"Evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics" always seems to be the "proof" against evolutionary processes that is offered up by Biblical creationists and other Flat-Earth types.
I invite you to peruse the archive at
http://www.talkorigins.org
for a refutation of this "proof", along with refutations of other popular creationist pseudoscience myths. You are, of course, free to hold your own personal beliefs, but please tell your ghost stories around some other campfire, okay?
This is a little of topic but
Science is Science it is not a belief it is a method, when you insert fraud and defamation into it, it becomes a farce.
Well at least the True and Living God gives us Choice, we choose our actions, now you know why we are shall we say as you, a little futzed up. I suppose you would want a bunch of robots going about doing the same thing day it day out no change, now that's a creation.
You could say the only thing that is evolving is the theory of evolution.
I believe the point is Evolutionary Theory is "illogical and invalid" give the facts against it.
ie symbiosis, like cleaner fish and predator, now how would that have evolved over millions of years if the little cleaner fish kept trying to clean and the predator kept gobbling them up! there would be no cleaner fish!
Compare a living plant with a dead one. Can the simple addition of energy make a completely dead plant live?
Yes, mostly you need to repair cell degeneration.
The plant will 'live' again. Mostly we just lack
the technology to do this level of repair, but
i'd venture that in 50 years nanotechnology will
resurrect a dead plant.
Computers will never develop an awareness of their own. They can be programmed to act as if they are self aware, but ultimately, they will be our creations and thus "less" than us.
Our Creationist friend is repeating a series of statements that have been refuted in appropriate fora. Our Creationist friend should have known that he was repeating things that have been refuted. In short, our Creationist friend repeated a lie.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics, Evolution, and Probability provides a comprehensive explanation of his error.
Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick co-wrote the screenplay, and ACC later published a novelization. The story was similar to a previous work of his too, a short story.
Not really. Kubrick and Clarke collaborated together on the screenplay. Clarke wrote the full text of the novel during the making of the movie .. he later described the experience of seeing rushes from the movie and going back home and revising his text as being an "exhilarating, but somewhat expensive, way of writing a novel."
The flow of the movie, the visuals, and the atmosphere are all distinctly Kubrick (with the help of Douglas Trumbull), although Clarke certainly had a hand there as well.
But the story is mostly Clarke's, and in the end, the novel ends up diverging from the movie (the final confrontation between man and monolith takes place near the Saturnian moon Iapetus, not in the Jovian system.)
The whole point is based on Entropy occuring period, without it evolution would stand a chance, re-read, 2nd law, The amount of energy in this world is decreasing. So you support me than?
Living beings as I posted degenerate also, without a set of instructions to order the energy and matter you would not exsist.
The idea of life starting per chance by RNA and DNA getting together at the same time, surviving and developing, really takes faith in man's science. And of course matter came from nowhere.
"Life is far too complex to have resulted from any chance happening. Even the simplest form of
life consists of billions of parts working together and needed for the basic functioning of the organism. These could not have sprung into being at the same time and interrelating together
by chance. Life coming from matter would violate the law of biogenesis and the cell principle
which state that life must come only from life. Secondly, we find that the first matter could not
simply have come into existence from nothing. This is a logical absurdity. Finally, we find that
morality in humanity as well as our mental capacity and utter dominance of the physical world
make humanity set apart by any reasonable means from the rest of the living world."
The whole point is based on Entropy occuring period, without it evolution would stand a chance, re-read, 2nd law, The amount of energy in this world is decreasing. So you support me than?
Living beings as I posted degenerate also, without a set of instructions to order the energy and matter you would not exsist.
The idea of life starting per chance by RNA and DNA getting together at the same time, surviving and developing, really takes faith in man's science. And of course matter came from nowhere.
"Life is far too complex to have resulted from any chance happening. Even the simplest form of life consists of billions of parts working together and needed for the basic functioning of the organism. These could not have sprung into being at the same time and interrelating together by chance. Life coming from matter would violate the law of biogenesis and the cell principle which state that life must come only from life. Secondly, we find that the first matter could not simply have come into existence from nothing. This is a logical absurdity. Finally, we find that morality in humanity as well as our mental capacity and utter dominance of the physical world make humanity set apart by any reasonable means from the rest of the living world."
unfortunately this also is my final post
If you want to see what future technologies will really create, go read Transmetropolitan by Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson. Raw computing power won't matter when nanotechnology comes into play and makes us as posthuman as we want to be -- replacing our stomachs with stacks of bacteria, downloading our consciousness into nanotech communities, gengineering red delicious apples with cocaine in them, switching our DNA with that of alien species, using nanotech-powered makers that can turn base block matter into delicacies like roast dog leg and baby seal eyes...
This is the future. Don't you understand?
WarrenEllis.com
I own this book, it is rather good.
The review, however, seemed like a poor summarization of the intro chapter.
you're ignoring the fact that this "intelligence" requires hardware to run on, and who maintains this hardware? who maintains the power generators to keep the machine from shutting down? it is a very nice idealistic thought to think that a computer programme can run forever, but it ignores the realities of requiring the external world to provide the energy and machine matinance. then it becomes subject to survival like any other organism - surviving as long as it can get the outer world to cooperate and let it live (janitor! do not flip that power switch!).
What is better a dead God or a living God?
:-)
A dead God would be better. Your living God created this universe so that He might have creatures to torture for His own sadistic amusement. The reason His followers fear Science so much, is that Science gives us hope of someday tracking down the demonic God and killing Him, thus releasing all mankind from His reign of terror and fear. You worshippers of the sadistic God worship pain and death, but Science shall rise above you and vanquish you utterly.
(I should've been a preacherman...
Godel, paraphrased, says that any mathematical system you care to come up with will be flawed because there's a theorem which cannot be proved or disproved within it.
That theorem doesn't tend to be very interesting, however. By and large, you can get by just fine without needing to prove or disprove it, and its presence does not make math useless.
In short, Godel's fascinating, but not a show stopper for AI or anything else.
Yes, it does! It's very interesting, too...
Well, at least nuclear power is too cheap to meter...
Jesus Christ, you fundie moron, look up the 2nd law of thermodynamics and fucking understand it, you stupid stupid religious moron. This is the most often repeated 'proof' "evilution" doesn't exist.
You are actually fucking stupid enough to think that scientists have a paradox in their system? How little do you know about the scientific method anyhow?? How dumb can you possibly be? Oh wait, you are a creationists which means stupidity is boundless.
Being a fundie means never having to say you are wrong. Dummy.
Really all this argument is quite lame in the first place.
Hell, we don't even know how a "simple" insect thinks (if it thinks at all).
... and you want to simulate and duplicate a human brain (even in the unlikely case that brain = mind).
Talking about really stupid megalomaniacs.
Nature has after billions of years and trial and error (or do you actually think that there were no genetic mistakes in evolution?) reached the stage to produce semi-intelligent beings that examine their surroundings and deduce conclusions using some form of logic.
We obviously are not the last word in evolution and Nature is definately NOT deterministic or even predictable.
Quantum Theory excludes that possibility. Even if some poor soul feels that the world is deterministic, philosophers like Popper have stated -I won't use "proven"- that even a classical universe is not deterministic.
That we should actually think some 400 million years of evolution will be duplicated in one or two centuries is incredibly idiotic.
Try to think rationally and read some physics damn it. When done with physics, read some philosophy, then read everything again.
Then we can talk, if you even have any doubts.
Micromutations by way of natural selection does not macroevolution make. No matter how hard you try, there's no way a bird will transmorgify into a fish and viceversa.
Well, duh. Whatever gave you the idea that evolution theory ever made a claim even close to this? Even Darwin, when the theory was being formulated, would have never made a claim so obviously wrong.
However: you are perfectly comfortable with the claim that woman was made out of a rib of man. Ohhhh! That makes ton's of sense!! Ever wonder why you are considered a lunatic? (Hint: because you are).
Chromosomal increase can happen by any of the 3 methods listed above. The increase of chromosomes does not increase the information initially but when the additional copies of chromosomes mutate and natural selection is applied, information increase does happen. this has been observed thoroughly in the lab despite the fact that it happens rarely in animals.
Instead of repeating creationists pamphlets, read a science book. Every creationist repeats the same thing over and over again, try some independent thinking and you might actually stump me instead of bore me. If you need God as a crutch to keep you from running rampant and killing everybody in sight, good for you, but I don't.
This is a common misconception of the word theory which is exploited by creationists
to win over the great unwashed. In science, a theory is systematically organized knowledge. To the gullible, evolutionary theory is exploited as mere conjecture, which is another definition of the word theory, just not the proper one in this context. I have, sitting on my desk, a copy of a book entitled Basic Electronics Theory. Am I now to suppose that my computer may be just a figment of my imagination?
Boy, I've seen a lot here at Slashdot, but I never expected a creationist to rear his befuddled head.
Sorry if this has already been said. I didn't have time to read through all the threads.
.5K the thinking capacity with it.
Just being me, the thought of merging with computers doesn't sound tantalizing. Not because I don't respect my comp (it runs linux after all), but it IS A COMPUTER, it knows only what *I* give it, and only when *I* permit it do to so.
Human history has numerous examples to show as proof for what can happen when complex computers (human brains) go out of balance. It only took one *really* smart guy to pop off WWII.
Now imagine a computer with 1K of that thinking capacity/potential - and what that could do if it brought many smaller minions of only
And then they got connected to the net.
I'm not necessarily saying it's gonna be a T2 scenario (although I don't see why it shouldn't happen), but the possibilities scare me.
"What if we didn't teach computers how to be mean?"
Do you teach your children to be mean? But they learn anyway.
Now take that 1K comp with his minions and he's learned to use TCP/IP, not from books but just by being hooked up someplace. Humans can learn the balance required to ride a bike through trial and error, and once you learn, you never forget.
The greatest irony would of course be that mankind would've been replaced by its own creation - at once a grand yet incomprehensible thought.
Well, it'll be interesting.
I'm not an Anonymous Coward.
My email address is madhat@san.rr.com
I believe you would be very interested in a recent EETimes article (Issue 1043, Jan. 11, 1999, page 51) entitled 'Temporal neural net emulates brain's dynamics'.
...it can switch between different modes of operation, including chaotic modes,... [...] This introduces an element of unpredictability to the the system, allowing it to find unlearned solutions to input problems."
/. discussions about the "Liquid File System" for something largely akin to my ideas. This is the future folks, let's get a move on it! :)
"Farhat has developed a neuron that itself behaves in a complex way. [...]
"Farhat said it is possible that interactions between these neurons could provide a mechanism for so-called higher brain functions like cognitioin, complex motor control, and even conciousness."
"Farhat said the approach has biological justification..."
I find this remarkable, and a very positive step towards human-machine and pure-information-entity evolution.
I have in the past hypothesized that: "conciousness is a function of complexity, connectedness, and chaos". Nothing more, and nothing less.
What very few people have realized is that the internet was/is a self-organizing system, with our own human minds as the catalyst, allowing the growth of and shaping it.
Unfortunately money-power interests have been attempting to stop the free flow of information necessary for this to happen, and to balkanize the net, the result of which is largely akin to various forms of brain damange and schitzophrenia in someone's human brain. Take for instance the similarity between the small portion of the brain that acts almost like an index node. If this is damaged, people have trouble directly remembering things, although a memory of a similar thing make trigger a memory of this other thing. This damage is very similar to web sites choosing to exclude web indexing robots from their own site, because they want to force users to use their own internal search engine, instead of allow the use of a large global one.
This results in information that exists, but is largely inaccessable from a global web seach.
This is a Bad Thing. If only people would warm to the idea of a transcopyright, heavy distributed caching, and allowing the use of strong cryptographic authentication, which would allow lesser direct control over the physical location of information (which should actually be irrelevant), then perhaps true progress and development could happen again on the web.
So-called "web portals" are the epitome of this evil, by attempting to force people to access information via a location-dependent site, primarily for reasons of advertising revenue.
I'm getting off into a totally different topic here, but one of my fundemental desires is to see information access that is truly location and platform independent, globally searchable (although possibly locally indexed, for efficiency), uniquely addressable, and eternally persistant. Reference previous
kind of kills free will doesnt it
it could be that mind supervenes on the brain (ie, things that affect the brain will have affects on the mind, but not necessarily visa versa)
it could also be a dozen other things. Follow the original poster's advice, take a philosophy class.
entrophy is not what it used to be
"There is nothing about consciousness that suggests it requires a physical mechanism."
True. However, there is also nothing to suggest that it cannot be the product of a physical/computational mechanism.
Even if the mind/intelligence can be shown to be "outside" of the hardware of the brain, pursuing artificial intelligence will give us some useful tools (expert systems, voice recognition, etc).
Duh!
b) 4m
Current chips are laid out in a plane. We cannot continue to double the number of transistors per square inch indefinitely. However, we can go vertically. You may be only be able to get 1000 cars into the parking lot, but build yourself a parking garage, and suddenly you've got 5000 cars in the same area.
Byte magazine did some very good articles on Expert Systems back in the late 70's/early 80's (back when it was a good magazine :-)
They described the ES algorithm, and how to get it to answer questions.
Of course, there is always my favorite: "Animal".
Does it swim? N
Does it fly? N
Does it live in dark passageways? Y
Is it a Grue?
There is a huge difference between a helium atom and a DNA molecule.
:-) I believe that science and religeon cannot rule each other out. If God did create the universe, then the study of the universe, and the way it works, cannot disprove God. Furthermore, to use the scriptures to disprove a scientific *FACT* is also futile. The bible, however, is *NOT* a science book. The truths contained within it are not always literal or scientific.
I agree that the second law argument against evolution won't work, although it is an interesting argument.
My own point of view is this: God did create the universe, and he is bending it and shaping it constantly. (After all, how many of us are content to just install Linux, it's gotta be tweaked
Natural (or artificial) selection is a demonstratable FACT. That natural selection is responsible for the diverse number of species, or the transmutation of one species into another is a hypothesis, a theory. It cannot be proven, only disproved.
The following cause me to have serious doubts as to its validity, though:
-Why are there so many different species? If the pressures of natural selection are at work on all organisms, shouldn't they act to produce similar (the fittest) organism?
-How does symbiosis come about? Before the symbiosis of cleaner organism and predator organism, there would be no incentive for the predator not to eat the cleaner, what with it obligingly popping into its mouth. The cleaner, however, would have an incentive not to clean (it could get eaten).
-The bombardier beetle? This beetle produces a jet of acid that it squirts to protect itself. It produces an enzyme to keep the acid from eating the beetle itself. Why produce the enzyme without the acid? How do you produce the acid without the enzyme (producing the acid without the enzyme would kill the beetle).
-Justice, Humour, Cooperation, Love?
In a survival of the fittest scenario, how do these "spiritual" qualities develop?
the mind is what the brain DOES,
not a thing.
Maturana, Humberto and Francisco Varela,
The Tree of Life, Shambhala Press, (I forget what year, look it up on Amazon)
The god of this world responsible for these atrocities is man himself, who chose to do such.
In the name of science you have murdered, and tortured.
Christians do no fear science, we embrace it, as it is from the one who created this world. The so called "flat earthers" were not accectped by the Christian church.
A literal translation of Job 26:10 is "He described a circle upon the face of the waters, until the day and night come to an end." A spherical earth is also described in Isaiah 40:21-22 - "the circle of the earth."
No doubt it would surprise you that the fathers of modern science were creation believing.
You put your faith in Scientific Fraud and falsifications. With known bad dating methods there is no "evidience for evolution" but there is much for creation.
And I do pray for the day when God will release us from the the worlds reign of terror.
here is a quote
t ml
Scientists who call themselves "creation scientists" are professionals, typically with advanced degrees from major universities, who are generally involved in the same types of work as the average scientist. The difference is that creation scientists have a "world-view", or "model" for their science which is based on the belief that an intelligent designer ("God") exists who created our universe and the natural things in it. The creation events were one-time events and are not taking place today. A large subset of creation scientists could be called "Biblical creationists", who take the first eleven chapters of the Bible to be real history, including the creation of all things in six 24-hour days, the existence of Adam and Eve as the first man and woman, the unnatural introduction of "death" into the perfect creation because of the disobedience of Adam and Eve, and the occurence of a world-wide flood (Noah's flood) which destroyed most life and greatly affected the processes operating on the
earth. Most creation scientists believe that the earth is "young" (on the order of ten thousand years), but this is a secondary issue. Biblical creationists believe that the Bible and true science are in full harmony with each other - there is no need to "check your brain at the door" when entering a church.
A major goal of creation science is to point out the weakness of evolutionary theory, because basically there are only two alternatives for how we got here, and if naturalistic processes are incapable of the task, then special creation must be the correct answer. On the positive side, creation scientists are developing alternative models and theories in many areas to help our understanding of how the universe works. It should be noted that much of day to day scientific activity is not heavily influenced by either evolutionary or creation assumptions, but much scientific energy has been wasted over the last century in the search for evolutionary evidences and experimental proofs, which have been unsuccessful so far and will continue to be. How much further might we be in some areas of scientific understanding if a model of special creation had been the working hypothesis?
for more information and plausible answers:
http://emporium.turnpike.net/C/cs/index.htm
http://www.christiananswers.net/creation/home.h
"Creation Scientists" are generally Christian fanatics that receive their degrees from the ICR. How do you get into the ICR? Big SAT scores? Good ACT scores? NO! All you need to do is sign a document that you will never publish any work that contradicts the bible. At the ICR (Institute for Creation Research) you get state of the art scientific apparatus, like a bible in every room, and sometimes even a microscope, but they hope someday to have an observatory.
..and if naturalistic processes are incapable of the task, then special creation must be the correct answer.
The ICR, although completely unaccredited with no published work in peer reviewed journal, produces many PhD's per year!
THAT'S a typical creation scientist. Behe's the best one, but Irreducible Complexity doesn't fly.
The major goal (actually only goal) is to try to give "creation science" the status of science. Good luck. Creation science has no independently testable hypothesis, thinks that God (in his infinite power) created starlight that appears to be coming from stars but was actually created in transit by God (so that light you see? It's the direct handiwork of God), and that evolution is a myth that has somehow fooled Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, and atheists alike. But don't worry, these "Christians" will straighten everything out because they have the one book directly written by God, the bible. And how do they know the bible is the direct inspired word of God? Well, it says it is, and it certainly wouldn't mislead anybody about that (although the Koran does, so kill a Muslim today and be Saved!!)
You have it all wrong. It wasn't creation, it was my dog, SAM, that did it, last week. He created all your memories, and everything else, last week. He told me so. SAM wouldn't lie to me. SAM is a good dog!! BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
Now what do actual scientists believe? That creation scientists are not objective, or stated in other terms, creation scientists aren't scientists at all.
You should question the so called facts of E theory since most of the originating evidence has been disproved, or proven frauldulent. Even the so called rebuttals that are claimed to refute creation are themselves refuted. There is no fact to support the ever evolving theory of evolution.
t ml
If evolution cannot be documented in the laboratory, the only other place to find it would be in the record of the earth's history. However, the fossil record clearly shows that macro-evolution has not taken place. The oldest fossils of a particular plant or animal are always fully-formed (not some simpler version), and look identical in all significant aspects to the same plant or animal living today (although many fossil types are extinct).
The near-oldest rocks, so-called "Cambrian" rocks, contain many complex creatures, like Trilobites now extinct). They are fully-formed, and there is not the slightest trace of a more primitive ancestor to be found in the older, "Pre-Cambrian" rocks. This period in evolutionary earth history is called the "Cambrian Explosion" because of the vast number of new life forms that appear abruptly. What is true between the Pre-Cambrian and Cambrian ages is also true between every other age - no transitional forms are found! The most frequently cited "intermediate form", the reptile/bird "Archaeopteryx" is really a bird that has some reptilian features (like teeth). It has a "mosaic" of traits (some bird, some reptile), but each trait is fully-formed (including the feathers). There are animals alive today that are mosaics (e.g. the duckbill platypus). A true reptile/bird intermediate would show reptilian scales "half-way" transformed into feathers.
Because the fossil record show abrupt appearance and "stasis" (no change), the evolutionary theory of "punctuated equilibrium" was developed by Gould and Eldredge for speciation, which basically says we don't see evolution in the fossil record because it happens fast in small isolated groups. It is an argument from lack of evidence.
The complexities of this world could not have evolved, the way one species interacts with the other. E believers simple add an ever increasing or decreasing amount of time. to their theories, "if it doesn't make sense just add time" and poof now it's "reasonable" that we jumped from an incredibly complex "random chance" to the incredibly complex world we live in.
The truth is out there,
http://www.christiananswers.net/creation/home.h
http://emporium.turnpike.net/C/cs/index.htm
which also has links to other sites
Of course you know that the "evidence" that the evolution "scientist's" argued was a man's tooth that won the case to teach evolution in public schools was ... an extinct pig's. They really got it right there didn't they with their "trust us we're scientists"
First, it wasn't a pig, it was Prosthennops.
Secondly, the only evidence that Henry Osborn (the current head of the American Museum of Natural History at the time) had to work with was a single fossilized tooth, sent to him in 1922 by a geologist. Osborn misidentified that single tooth as belonging to an ape, since all he had was a tooth. Osborn forwarded his findings to Clarence Darrow, however Judge Raulston (being the paragon of blind justice) would not allow any expert testimony whatsoever except that of William Jennings Bryan. So the evidence was never admitted to the trial.
In 1927, it was EVOLUTIONISTS, NOT CREATIONISTS that proved that Osborn was in error. Get your facts straight next time. Oh I'm sorry, that would imply that a creationist would actually have to learn something, I'd forgotten that creationism forbids this (fruit of knowledge and all).
For proof, I recommend that you read the TRIAL TRANSCRIPT instead of rattling all this bullshit off as fact when it's in the trial record. You're entire belief system is a lie. I wonder how nuts you're going to go when you finally realize that reality of your situation.
"THOU SHALT NOT LIE". well 9/10 isn't too bad.
You put your faith in Scientific Fraud and falsifications. With known bad dating methods there is no "evidience for evolution" but there is much for creation.
I know quite a bit about radioactive dating methods, care to tell me the specific problems you have with them so I'll convert?
And I do pray for the day when God will release us from the the worlds reign of terror.
Kill yourself then. It's a Catholic directive that suicide is a sin, you won't find it anywhere in the bible where it forbids the practice. If I'm wrong, point me to the chapter and verse.
Mainstream science ( reduced to the core believe-system ) is nothing but bad religion.
Just because people believe in it without understanding it doesn't make it bad religion, it just makes the believers stupid people. The world if full of them. Look in a mirror. You're a stupid person. Science has no philosophy, no moral code, it is entirely non-religious. It is a desperate attempt of a religious fool to compare the two on equal grounds.
Catholic church believes in God. Mainstream science believes in Einstein. Where is the difference ?
The difference is that Relativity can be confirmed by putting a cesium clock in a gravity well and testing the predicted time dilation and actual time dilation and noting they predicted = actual. But the bible is completely untestable, and many fundamentalists state that it is a sin to even attempt to test it.
Science is 100% testable, the bible is 100% untestable. See the difference now?
And what is to understand about religion? Study Scientology if you want to see the real goals of a religion, or mormonism for that matter. The purpose of a religion is to control people and a benefit to that control is making $. It's obvious. It explains why atheists (and Jews and Muslims) were killed in the Inquisition, the Inquisition itself, why the religion had to be spread, and tithing very neatly.
As pink floyd has said: Welcome to the Machine. It may be trite, but it is most certainly true. Religion just takes advantage of simply psychology. It's taking advantage of you.
If God wants me to do something, he should tell Himself, and Jesus should have written the bible, instead of a bunch of his followers 2 centuries or so after His death. Any why didn't God write the bible in unambiguous terms, couldn't God do this simple task? I think GOD could have, but men couldn't. Figure it out. Start testing the creation side and the science side yourself and do it objectively and see where you end up. You think science is a religion because you don't understand it, it's as simple as that.
If there is actually a powerful Evolutionary force at work in the universe, and if the open system of Earth makes all the difference, why does the Sun's energy not make a truly dead plant become alive again (assuming a sufficient supply of water, light, and the like)?
?
Why doesn't my car run when I pour gasoline all over it and light it on fire? There's certainly enough energy to make it move but it just sits there burning! Gee, I guess internal combustion engines don't work since dumping gasoline on it won't make it run!
See a problem with your logic? Of course not! You have FAITH!
Sorry, I must have missed something somewhere along the line (it was late). I thought we were talking about approaching a limit on the size of transistors; that the number of transistors in a given area is doubling every 18-24 months (or something, the rate is irrelevant).
The point I was trying to get across was that you can get around a planar packing problem by going vertical. Mind you, that is just a delaying tactic. We would soon hit the limit of transistors per cubic unit.
>There is a huge difference between a helium atom and a DNA molecule.
Only in scale. Put the appropriate materials in an appropriate container, and perform the appropriate procedure, and you will get a DNA molecule. DNA, at the molecular level, is nothing special.
It only becomes special in the context of what it is used for. It's not life in of itself.
> Justice, Humour, Cooperation, Love
Creationists seem to always wind up here. They demand from scientists explicit scientific explinations for attributes of human (or animal, I shouldn't be species-ist) behaviour and thought.
It's a tall order. There is no "theory of love" yet - we haven't gotten that far. It's possible to discuss things like Love and Truth in evolutionary or biological terms, but it's currently beyond our complete understanding.
That we don't understand it though, doesn't invalidate science. It is not necessary to have a Creator in order to have Justice, Humor, Love, Honour, or any other "spiritual" quality.
It saddens me that creationists cannot take delight in the fact that the Universe managed to create all that is good about life and humanity without any outside interference. It saddens me that they are willing to turn from the discovery of the ultimate Truth and instead choose to believe in a man-made fabrication.
God is a lie. Science is a blind man stumbling in the dark looking for Truth, and finding little bits of it as he gropes wildly.
That blind man may not be pretty, or easy to get along with, but he does have a hold on some small bits of Truth, while God, being a lie, has none.
I prefer Truth, or at least, the honest search for it.
DG
"A probabilistic information processor, if informed that certain actions may result in unpleasant consequences, will perform those actions with a lower probability."
no offence, but you really _should_ get out of the house more....
Ho ho. We'll put you guys down for the Arm, then. :)
I'll meet you on the battlefield in a century or two,
and we'll see who's less tham who.
No, I'm sorry, what am I thinking?
You'll all be dead by then.
there was a dolphin once and i thought it might be intelligent so i thought it would be really good to try some stuff to prove whether it was intelligent or not but if anyone told me that i should stand the other side of a wall and get it to try and convince me it could behave like a human would be the sort of person who if i was standing the other side of a wall to and they suggested that was a serious idea would fail a turing test as far as i was concerned because what intelligent human would assume that just because all humans behave intelligently and please dont make me justify that last statement it does not mean that all intelligences behave like a human
The moths would all be dead the birds would gobble them up well before the required mutation time
The Theory is that an external force(GOD) is required to create life, as we have shown and many have without knowing supported the fact that it takes matter, energy, and external guidance to create, otherwise decay on it own if the control isnt' there. read Point MADE enough please.
There is no way I can respond to so many post's, but there is another assisting thanks!
Evolutionists concede that mutation are the only source of NEW genetic in formation for natural selection to work on. Mutations are changes in the genes or chromosomes caused by radiation,chemicals or unknown agent. Mutations cause cancer but few if any have been proven to be "good"for an organism. Dr. H.J. Muller, who won the Nobel prize for his work on mutations said: "It isentirely in line with the accidental nature of mutations that extensive tests have agreed in showing thevast majority of them detrimental to the organism in its job of surviving and reproducing --- GOOD ONES ARE SO RARE WE CAN CONSIDER THEM ALL BAD" (Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 11:331). It should be remembered that only mutations occurring in the germ cells (sperm and eggs) can have any chance of being passed on to the next generation. The probability of getting five mutations ("good" or bad) in the same nucleus has been estimated to be 1 in 10 to the 22 power! If there was a population of 100 million organisms with a reproductive cycle of 1 day, such an event (5 mutations in one nucleus) would be expected to occur ONCE in 274 BILLION YEARS! Recent scientific evidence has shown that the survival of ALL living organisms depends on an incredibly complex DNA REPAIR mechanism that actually cuts damaged (mutated) sections of DNA out of chromosomes and replaces them with a perfect patch! There is a human disease called xeroderma pigmentosa in which the DNA repair mechanism is inactive. These people generally die from mutations caused in part by occasional exposure to the sun. It requires an immense amount of faith to believe that our body is the result of "lucky" mutations!
Bullshit, none of his points are valid. I've spent a lot of time in talk.origins and all of his arguments are standard creationist repeats. The 2nd law of thermodynamics, Piltdown Man, Nebraska Man, Irreducible Complexity (ala Behe). Don't expect me to take a mental defect with "The Truth is out There" on any merits. If he had bothered to actually check his facts, like the fact that Nebraska Man was never used in the Scopes Monkey Trial, he wouldn't be a creationist (the trial transcript is open to the public).
In short, the only way a creationist ends up a creationist is by putting blinders on and plugging his ears. There IS a ton of evidence for evolution. You only need to read DARWIN to know it. It's not just the Origin of the Species, but Emotions in Man and the Animals that confirms the theory. In fact, Darwin gave good evidences that you can test yourself. Not to mention that evolution has been duplicated in the lab, that self replacating molecules have been made and they mutate.
Punctuated Equilibrium may NOT be the actual device that makes mutations become apparent, there is debate on this, but there is a wealth of evidence that:
Mutations occur (proven)
Natural selection occurs (proven)
Apes are related to Humans (likely: 98% same DNA, blood transfusions possible, can even use organs from one species in another)
There is a lot more than just this. DNA evidence from Watson and Crick confirmed and provided the missing element for heredity, more than 50 years after evolution was proposed as a theory, which independantly confirmed the theory. Not only that, but DNA gets copied with mutations and you can observe this in the lab. Fusion and polypody are 2 known ways to create new chromosones.
Now, you say I'm being unfair for treating this guy like a nut? He is a nut. I'm not going to change his mind because of reason. If he was accessible to reason, he would realize there is NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER IN FAVOR OF CREATIONISM, NONE. "Evidence" (real of manufactured) against evolution is not evidence in favor of creationism. It's insane and stupid to think that Noah's Ark existed, the Tower of Babel existed, or any of that crap. It's a 5000 year old legend from another civilization, just like Beowulf or Zeus, and it will die like those legends and become myth eventually. It's arrogant to think you have a direct line with god and dangerous because so many other nutcases think they have the same direct line because of a 2,000 year old BOOK.
So, why should I waste my time? It's more pleasurable for me to simply poke fun of him. He is a member of a cult, and a thousand words and million logical and sane arguments aren't going to make him realize "gee, I was wrong, I guess I shouldn't have been tithing to the church for the last 15 years - mom and dad are nuts too!". He's beyond help until he does the work himself. I was a Christian once - then I independantly started reading about the Inquisition, the Taiping rebellion, the Children's Crusade of 1212, the "witches", the popes, the Lateran Treaty, etc. etc. etc. Christianity is no different than Islam, Mormanism, or any other cult. But don't take my word for it, read a history book. When you're done with that read a Creationists web page and enjoy a good bellylaugh.
Provide references to published scientific journals so I can confirm your lies, I mean claims.
Creativity? :) Good one! If it has "ivity" at the end, it must be valid!
How about PEER REVIEWED THEORY, and not the ravings of a lunatic with a degree from Copy Stop? No equations, no testability, no inferences from known data. This isn't a theory, it's a rant. Every theory draws future conclusions, what future conclusion does "Creation theory" draw?
Why is it that you don't you realize that you're just the American version of a Hari Krisna?
I'll forward this to talk.origins some time, it's been a slow newsgroup lately, the pro's will have a fun time taking it apart.
I don't want theory, I want EVIDENCE, STUPID. There is no evidence, so the theory isn't credible. That's why "creation theory" isn't a theory, it's a religion and why it's not taught in schools, dummy.
Here's my theory: my cat created the universe yesterday. Who needs evidence? I've got something much better: Lunacy!!
P.S. Fowarded that ludicrous site to talk.origins. Look for it tomorrow.
And yes there is much debate among evolutionist also, disproving each other. I never said a creationist had disproved otherwise. But it is a science and if you respect your faith in evolution, let it stand on it';s evidence alone.
I agree 100%. Let both theories (if you can call creationism a theory) stand entirely on their own merits. Let neither one be biased by any book or any writing of any man. Let both stand alone entirely on the evidence available, with no mention of Darwin, Jeusus, the Old Testament, Watson, Crick, or anything like that. Let the pure evidence stand for itself.
Read the transcript. I'll bet you $10,000 that the evidence of the tooth was not uttered in court. I'll bet MORE if you want (I have $40,000 in liquid assets). Creationists depend on propoganda. I'm a bit of a researcher on the subject. You wouldn't want to mention anything about Darwin recanting on his deathbed would you? Double or nothing?
Like it or not, you are a liar. Check for yourself. The trial transcript is available. I'll even provide you with a copy.
And the debate among evolutionists isn't about whether evolution happened but specific mechanisims that deal with evolution. Evolution is proven, period. The fossil record supports it, genetic programs support it, lab experiments support it. No credible scientist that actually earned his degree (instead of buying one from say the ICR) in BIOLOGY disputes the fact of evolution. Like it or not, you are insane. I see no reason to sugar coat it.
Hari Krisna! Hari Krisna! I wonder who long it will be before you shave your head, or become a Buddhist, or someother equally stupid thing. And all along the way, you'll never recognize that you have a disease. Because you alone are right, and all those stupid scientists are wrong, but some book written 5,000 years ago is right. No geological evidence for the flood, no explanation of how starlight from 15 billion light years away got here in 10,000 years, but it's true, it's true. Righ. Nutcase. Hari Kishna, looney.
Come on! I want that 10 grand.
:|
Or, research every single thing you see on a creationist page right down to its logical conclusion by going through ALL the science. Every goddamn bit of the shit is an absolute and unadulerated lie. EVERY bit of it. Some of the "facts" are easier to disprove than others.
I did this, until I realized, hey, there's an awful lot of liars on the "Christian" side of this argument. Then I realized that the "Christians" just repeat the same thing, no matter how many times they've been demonstrated to be incorrect. The law of entropy is an example of this, which I first saw in 1992 and have seen dozens of times.
You do more damage to your religion than help. Creation is provably false, and if you have to be a Creationist to be a Christian the conclusion is logical. Silly Creationists, fairy tales are for kids, not scientists, not even adults.
And if you ever see Eric Barger, say 'hi' to him. I think I scared him off the net after showing him about 5 falsehoods that are commonly repeated by creationists and then proceeded to demonstrate the logical inconsistencies of Christianity which are numerous. That taught preacher boy not to send spam to me to join his little "church".
You are the same type of people that believe in UFO's. You do realize that don't you? Hari Krisna, Hari Krisna..
Dummy, you're confusing origins of life with changes of life. One is abiogensis (well not really, but that's the closest term I can think of) the other is evolution. Evolution starts with life and makes no attempt to describe how life started.
However, the inability to create life by scientists isn't proof that "creationism" is the correct theory. Creation theory has no supporting evidence except so-called scientific "failures" (actually there are no failures in science unless no data is gleaned from it). Stop building strawmen.
Q) Why doesn't creation theory have any independant and testable data points?
A) because it is completely false.
That's the plain simple truth. Until there is evidence for the "creation theory" there isn't a creation theory at all. If you found a world wide flood in the geologic record, it would be evidence, none is found. If the geologic record indicated the world was 10,000 years old, it would be evidence, the earth is 4.5 billion years old. If we couldn't see stars over 10,000 light years away, there would be evidence, we can see stars 15 billion light years away.
Creation doesn't fly in the face of just evolution, but practically all science. Get over it. It's a primative myth passed down for 200 generations like Beowulf, nothing more. This is the 20th century, not the 10th. There is not evidence because the creation myth is wrong. Faith won't change the sciences.
Have you realized that you've been indoctrinated into a cult yet? I want my 10,000 bucks. Please bet me, I don't need it but WTF, I'm greedy! I'll even donate the money to a charity, like the ACLU. Put your money where you mouth is, cretinist.
This goes on all the time in talk.origins. Creationists selectively choose convenient bits of the fossil record, mischaracterize other bits and ignore the facts that are inconvenient. The final result is a lie. The guy did not point out his "several facts" in the context of the science associated with it.
If you have read Eldridge and Gould and have any criticisms of their theory, I'm open to hearing the critique, but calling it a copout without any criticism of their discussion of PE is not useful. Hint: PE may not mean what you think it might mean.
David Jensen
No doubt it would surprise you that the fathers of modern science were creation believing.
You mean like Isaac Newton? He was an alchemist as well. Guess that means you can turn lead into gold!
Gee, I wonder why no scientists were evolutionists before the theory of evolution was invented and forumulated in the early 1800's? Gee, why would somebody that lived in the 16th century not believe in a theory created in the 19th century. Gee. I'm having a tough time figuring that out.
I wonder why scientists in the 16th centure believed in creation... Hmm. The Inquisition ended in the 17th century. Gee, why would a scientist proclaim belief in a system that was the only one that was practiced? Gee. And the Catholic Church controlled 99% of the education at the time. Why would so many people be creationists during that time?
Well, I guess we'll never know!
Oh no, my Cat did it. BTW, my Cat told me to start a holy war against your cat. Your cat is the anti-cat. I'm sorry, but my Cat has spoken.
I am neither a yesterdayist or a last Tuesdayist, I'm a Catish. All yesterdayist and last Tuesdayist will spend an eternity in the infernal catbox for eternity for not following my Cat. My Cat doesn't do this because my Cat is evil, but my Cat is just. You will FEAR my Cat.
My Cat tortures you for eternity because of His infinite love. Have you heard the good word of my Cat? Fear and grovel before the almighty Cat, or suffer eternal damnation!! Of one thing I'm certain, it's that my Cat is GOD. He is Risen! No wait, he's lying down. Now he's asleep. But nonetheless, bow down before him.
Check your facts! Start with stuff you know. I know physics really well, I can prove the Earth is over 10,000 years old. It's simple to show there was never a global flood. It's easy to demonstrate that you cannot fit every species on Earth on a single boat (adult or infant). Look it up. Find out why creation scientists avoid simple everyday algebra.
If you actually go through the trouble of verifying the creationist argument against well known NEWTONIAN physics you will see that I'm right. Forget about evolution, work on the "Young Earth" and work from there. The Universe is at least 15 billion years old, and I can walk you through the science to demonstrate it. Test your faith.
I don't know the true religion. I don't know if there is a god. But I do know that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old minimum. I do know that the moon wouldn't have touched the Earth 65 million years ago. I do know how to calculate stellar distances. I do know the Inquisition happened, and I do know that the One True Religion wouldn't have killed 9 million innocents in the Dark Ages. Evaluate your faith. Whatever Christianity is, it's not a road to a utopia, history proves that adequately, and current fundamentalists like Bob Enyart, Reverend Tilton, and Jimmy Swaggart just provide more evidence.
I submit that the true religion cannot be used for evil and is incorruptible and Christianity is just about as far away as you can get from that ideal. God wouldn't allow the true religion to be used to commit acts of evil, unless God was evil. Contemplate that, creationist.
Conclusion: god is evil. Heaven is Hell. Lucifer must have had some reason to rebel against a being that created him and would therefore be more powerful than him, perhaps he did it on moral grounds. Or perhaps Lucifer and God are a creation of man. But this is just pontificating rambling. Get to your science work, creationist.
Not understanding something complex (even = our own brains) does not mean we can not design it. A silicon chip programmer probably does not program the whole chip by himself. (I will not elaborate, as the readers of Slashdot must be at least as intelegent as me and already get my point.)
Jeez, I hate being Anonymous Coward.
Hey buddy... it was 2061... not 64 or 65... it's alright though... I didn't know 2 people worked on 2001.
--b0sst0ne
I think that you're missing the point of the Turing test.
:)
What we start with is the question of what intelligence is. Is it the power to complete a mathematical proof? The power to debate the merits of a Parlimentary government structure? The power to love?
If we sat down and tried to think up a set of criteria that separates the intelligent from the non-inteligent, we'd fail. Computers can already do mathematical proofs (check out OTTER), puppies can love, and, well, what's there to debate about the parlimentary system?
What we can all agree on is that (most?) people are intelligent. Why? What's to lead us to belive that Mrs. X has intelligence? Well, we have nothing concrete. We assume they do because they're human, and so are we, and since we're intelligent, so are they. But we don't really have any evidence that, for example, they have emotions.
Now, the beauty of the Turing test is that it avoids the definition of intelligence. All it says is that something that can consistenly pass the test is indistinguishable from a person. Now, if that doesn't mean that the subject is intelligent, then I have to accept that I can't tell if all of those pesky people out there are intelligent.
In that case, where are we? Philosophically, we're fine, but in a functional sense, we're lost.
Reproducing intelligence in computers may be possible, but only because we define intelligence in our own narrow way. Artificial intelligence is no intelligence, it is the closest thing resembling the notion of intelligence we have at this moment. People don't even understand themselves yet. They may know the outter shell, the molecules, the plumbing, but they don't know the essence of things, they can only barely see a distorted image of the shallow surface they perceive as the truth. That, they can mimic in computers, and because their own conscience is limited they will not be able to tell the difference. This is reflected in the Turing test, which is not more than "what i see is there". Then again, if you want to get to know more about conscience maybe you should ask a buddhist instead of a mathematician. So in my opinion, this book is not much different from those people in the 60's who believed that we'd all live in glass bubbles all over the solar system by the year 2000. Evolution itsself is much more advanced than these futurists can grasp, and i believe the next hundred years will definately be interesting and bring us things we could have never imagined. But i also think they will not even resemble "spiritual computers", which in itsself is a contradiction in terms.
ps: About Deep Blue: A computer beating a chess player is the same as a bulldozer running over a flower. Brute force will get you there but it doesn't mean shit in terms of intelligence.
ps2: If i want to "merge" with something or reproduce i'd get myself a date and not some piece of metal. If you think otherwise it's time you get away from your computer and sniff in some fresh air from outside.
Borg Me, Linux ;)
I'll be the brain, personality and instincts. I'm good at that, but I cannot add with any serious impressiveness.
You be the nervous system doing my every whim
1) AI is going to need some *major* advances in the next 20 years, once that I don't think will happen fast enough. For one thing, AI now is still the same it was 20 years ago.
The best the computer could do was learn from its mistakes, and anyone who ever took a programming class can write something like that. Noone is still quite sure how the brain works, and until we understand that, we can't duplicate its functionality.
Take a look at a real AI example: speech recognition. It's been around for years, and the technology and accuracy is improving, but it still can't handle context of words. Go try the latest version of Dragon Dictate as an example.
2) Technology is starting to hit its limits. NPR had a report a few months ago about the fact that with chip manufacturers using smaller and smaller chips, there's no way to chips them without using X-rays (someone with a better knowlege of this back me up here). This indicates that Moore's law may be running into a brick wall in the next few years. With a limit in growth of CPU horsepower, you'll start to see limits on AI, since you need a lot of CPU speed to try and emulate the human brain.
Posted by HolyMackeralAndy:
Over ten years ago I saw Timothy Leary speak. He discussed this very thing. Nothing new.....
Posted by jonrx:
:)
Posted by Konstantinos Margaritis:
It is definately not, but of course that's what you learn in the universities.
If we naively consider the universe isotropic then it might perhaps be constant
But it has been proven that it behaves like a crystal, albeit its crystalic properties are really miniscule
But it does make c (that is the speed of light) dependant on the direction.
This has to do with the fact that Einstein based his theories on Riemann space.
The relatively new theories that are to complement Einstein's are based on Finsler spaces that are anisotropic by default and the speed of light is just a variable.
This sounds simple as an idea, to me at least. I mean why should the universe be isotropic? Isotropy is just a mathematical properties, however universe is characterized by properties like self-similarity, fractality, chaos, variety and quantum properties.
If one reads some cosmology, a crude and underestimatin analogy is that we are just a small ant colony that is out to explore the Pacific in a leaf.
We don't even know what is an electron, and we want to duplicate a brain full of correlating atoms and electrons!
Ha!
Posted by Dacre:
There is a new train of philosophy that suggests that the brain holds the answer to the conundrum of deterministic time.
If time is analysed in relativistic terms, then it becomes a dimension along which movement is possible but whose topography in relation to other dimensions is fixed - just as all events that happened last Thurday are unchangeable, all events that will happen next thursday are unchangeable.
Most people are personally convinced that it doesn't work this way, although they remain open to the possibility that in an unconscious universe (matter, atoms, stars and space dust etc)things might - accurate predictions could be possible.
If consciousness can be established, through quantum actions of the brain, to manipulate time in some way, then we regain free will, and the ability to manipulate events that we percieve as yet to take place by "warping" time itself. This suggests we each and all carry with us our little pockets of Heisenbergian uncertainty.
There is certainly activity taking place in the brain that demonstrates a potential for the organ to be functioning at a quantum level, and that it is these quantum interactions that may explain consciousness as the biological process governing this manipulation.
If this philosophy is true then it is unsurprising that transistor based neural nets remain "dumb" machines.
Perhaps the article on quantum dots posted a couple of articles after this one may be describing a milestone in the birth of the first true AI
Before you belive this go to a university and study logic. I did it in Math, but I understand philosphy has similar studies that aren't as difficult. All these arguements needs to be reconciled with Godell's incompleteness therom.
I think electricial engineers will tell you that moore's law isn't expect to hold our that long because the size of atoms is larger then the predicted size of a chip. Note sure exactly here since that isnt' my field.
I welcome the days when comptuers can do the boring difficult tasks. (there will be farmers though, but farmers have never made money, and so robots killing any possibility of money doesn't stop them.)
Musicains regularly work with computers to create music. I prefer the sound of accoustic music though, and I have heard musicians who cannot play a keyboard and never will be able to becuase they are outplaying a mechanical piano and the comptuers can't capture the feeling of a real piano.
Comptuers will help. The disabled will love the new mobility. The rest of us will enjoy other benifits. They won't take over. They can't. Go see some logic.
I suppose that this book will appeal to those who know nothing about technology. They buy (and belive) the national enquirer, the weekly world news and similear pappers.
First, a couple of facts:
It's not Kubrick's 2001 - it's Arthur C. Clarke's. Kubrick just did the movie.
Second, none of these predictions are new, and they're not particularly original. Ever read the cyberpunk authors, like William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, or Walter Jon Williams? They all predicted these things in the early '80s (or even before). I'm sort of underwhelmed by someone who came along nearly 10 years later and "predicted" these very same things, when in fact we were well on our way to fulfilling them and the "trends" weren't very hard to see at all.
The term Neo-Luddite is lifted from William Gibson, by the way. (but then, so is the term Cyberspace, so that's probably OK).
"The Age of Spiritual machines" surpasses most futuristic predictions of sci-fi writers and technologists.
Wrong. It apes them, and not very well from the sound of things. Sounds like John Katz needs to do a bit more reading before extolling the virtues of this kind of literature. It raises some interesting points, yes, so it's fodder for good discussions, but at the same time it's not original and doesn't seem to bring anything new to the table.
I'll check out a used copy sometime.
You'll notice something interesting: the engineering endrun attempted with AI has been failing miserably. Strong AI -- which is what you're talking about -- has been following in the footsteps of cognitive psychology and philosophy since its outset: it has repeated all the same mistakes, fallen into all the same fundamental quandaries... At least it's crystallized the frame problem.
Also of interest is that many of the big names behind computational functionalism as a theory of cognition are now jumping ship. These would be the founders of the field.
--
Change is inevitable.
Progress is not.
I do think it'll be a while before we understand how consciousness works.
--Phil ("The Meta-Turning test defines a species as intelligent if it seeks to apply Turing tests to devices of its own creation.")
355/113 -- Not the famous irrational number PI, but an incredible simulation!
This guy obviously is bored.
Anyone who says that the human brain is 'a million times more intelligent' than a computer is a twit, end of story.
/. IQ vote)
1. Just how do you measure intelligence? (see the SJ Gould book 'the mismeasure of man' for discussion on why you can't). (And the recent
2. This assumes that computers are intelligent AT ALL. They are no more intelligent than a rock, just more useful for some tasks.
While I'm at it, Moore's Law is heading for the rocks, because it's pretty obvious you CAN'T keep doubling the transistors/area forever, unless you invent sub-atomic transistors, which seem just a little unlikely. We are already nearing the barrier caused by the indivisibility of atoms - some storage devices have a bit density approaching the atomic density of the medium (IBM are getting close to one bit stored on just a few molecules)
But MOST OF ALL:
NO-ONE has even a vague shadow of a theory on how the brain actually works. We have no idea what it does, or how it does, much less how to start imitating it. Functional PET scans vaguely indicate that certain bits of it are more concerned with some functions than other bits, that's not very good is it?
Kurzweil can join Negroponte in the pit of fools who predict the exciting so as to get fame and media attention. Twit.
P.S. Just don't get me started on how genetic algorithms and neural nets are going to save the world of AI, because they probably aren't.
-----
" Obviously the amount of logic necessary for human intelligence fits inside the human brain"
You assume:
1. Logic is a necessary and sufficient requirement for intelligence
2. The mind is the brain
Today we compare the brain to computers
Before that we compard the brain to clockwork
Before that we compared it to a windmill
We don't seem to be learning. There is nothing about consciousness that suggests it requires a physical mechanism. There is simply a numerical correlation (not necessarily causal) between the existence of minds and the existence of brains.
Neither is proven or obvious. This is why more scientists should read philosophy (and vice versa)
-----
hm. it's 1999. is it the future yet?
Let me go down the checklist. . .
flying cars? nope
robot maid? nope
eternal youth? nope
matter transport? nope
cashless economy? nope
truth detecting machines? nope
Gee. Maybe by 2020, we'll have flying cars, and maybe Mr. Spacely will give me a raise so I can buy one. . .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Oh, we have some pretty good ideas about how the brain works.
but we don't have a fucking clue when it comes to the mind.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
. . . which says that Deep Blue wasn't really "intelligent" -
but still a FANTASTIC tool for whooping-ass on other human chess players.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
oh, the BRAIN may be deterministic, and operate by physical laws. But it's still open for debate whether the MIND is/does. . .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
-
an evil computer turning on it's creators and taking over the world. . .
that's a pretty old story, dates back to Frankenstien - no, Genesis. . .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
-
same with fusion. You realize that we've been 10 years away from fusion as an industrial power source since the 60's?
In the same vein, Apple has been going out of business for 20 years. . .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
"For example, although we have mastered flight and can fly higher and faster than anything God created on
this earth we still cannot faithfully reproduce the skill and the grace of a swallow or the nimbleness of a
dragonfly and I'll wager we never will"
swallow and dragonfly: prolly easy compared to the human mind.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Moore's law won't break down - Intel will just sell more Dual and Quad machines to make up for continuing to fall behind the curve.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
maybe the industrialized nations should have a holiday, two days every year, where they shut off all computers, and live life.
that way, when a failure occurs, people won't be so paranoid that the world will come to an end when their Windoze machines all blue-screen.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
" The social challenge will be how to re-distribute the
huge profits this brings to those that don't have the skills to get a job in a non-production environment"
Oh come on, we've already solved that problem.
rich++
poor--
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Guess I'm not at fault and shouldnt be punished for murder? Sillyness.
You are a highly complex probabilistic information processor. Modern science does not allow for anything as foggy as "free will".
That doesn't mean that punishments don't make sense however. A probabilistic information processor, if informed that certain actions may result in unpleasant consequences, will perform those actions with a lower probability. Just like an intelligent but deterministic chess computer, once it figures out that giving up the queen is usually detrimental, will refrain from doing so.
All the talk about "responsibility", "guilt and innocence", "free will" etc. is utterly meaningless; it's just a different way of telling those chess computers that they are going to lose if they make a mistake.
--
Nondeterministic Turing machines have nothing to do with polynomial time. He was probably confused about NP problems, like pretty much every layman.
--
I've written up this proposal in a bit more detail here.
--
I never got through GEB, but I think I'll pick it up again as a result of this discussion. I think, however that "using the axioms of the system as part of the system" would constitute an attractor in a chaos theory sense. No rigorous definition of identity would be necessary. The neural "algorithms" of the processor would "orbit" the contradiction, or "logical singularity" as I like to think of it, attempting to solve a "problem" that doesn't exist.
The "problem" might be the program's own purpose. ----"Who am I?"
*There's your contradiction.*
Godel implies a moreness or fuzzy outer boundary to all seemingly logical systems that would force an ever finer grain to the processing that a neural net would be brilliantly suited to. Intelligence MUST result eventually.
If this makes any sense to anyone, please rock on...
Brak: What's THAT?
Thundercleese: A light switch.. of TOTAL DEVASTATION!
You mean someone drank it?! Damn! I was saving that for later...
dylan_-
--
Igor Presnyakov stole my hat
You are a highly complex probabilistic information processor. Modern science does not allow for anything as foggy as "free will".
Yes it does. We don't live in a clockwork universe you know....those ideas are out of date. Oh, and free will does exist. Just because you can mimic the behaviour to a limited extent in artificial systems, doesn't mean that that's all there is.....
Of course, you can't prove this one way or the other (yet!), but I don't like to see opinion being represented as somehow scientific, just because you throw a computer and a chessboard into your examples.....I hope this doesn't come out sounding like a flame....
dylan_-
--
Igor Presnyakov stole my hat
Remember that living, thinking organisms "half-ass" algorithms to solve real-world problems. Nobody looks at a map and evaulates every route from DC to New York. They just kind of look at it, and decide to take 95, or maybe Route 1.
Also, DNA hardware is deterministic, it just goes through a whole boatload of permutations in parallel. AFAIK, quantum computing does the same thing, only more so, since the permutations don't "actually" happen. A proof of P=NP, now THAT would be progress. Maybe we should use some of this new cloning technology on Einstein's brain. Hmm...
If you could provide one piece of evidence for creation, I would appreciate it. You know it would be the first one.
I'm sure as hell glad you weren't in charge of the space program back in the sixties...
"Be nice, veer left, and never stop thinking" Iain Banks - Walking On Glass
The "Buy this book here" Amazon link is oddly directed to an overpriced "The Age of Intelligent Machines" rather than the more reasonably priced subject of the review "The Age of Spiritual Machines".
/. trying to boost commissions from Amazon b) editor put to sleep by Katz review or c) plain-old mistake. Naturally I'll plump for c) :-)
Possible causes include a)
For "Age of Intelligent Machines":
Amazon $35
BarnesAndNoble $35
Shopping $19.25
Kingbooks $21.50
1BookStreet $24.75
For "Age of Spiritual Machines":
Amazon $15.57
BarnesAndNoble $14.97
Shopping $16.86
Spree $14.97
(Interesting to see that Acses now seems to use Shopping too. Still no BookPool or Spree tho.)
Regards, Ralph.
Thinly shredded cabbage.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
And look what that got us! Pissed-off moon men, that's what!
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
I fail to see how a simplistic straight line exrapolation of empirical "laws" like Moore's law lead one to estimate the arrival time of computer based intelligence.
How about this for a law (Andy's Law).
"He who can program a thing, understands a thing."
The inverse is also true:
"He who understands a thing, can program a thing."
We do not have even a rudimentary knowledge of the nature of intelligence. Until we do there will be no real AI.
I wouldn't be too surprised if there's some sort of machine intelligence going in the future, (Not
before I become an real Old Fart of
course!!!!!!) but it'll probably be completely
different from human intelligence, as there's
some things that computers can do much better
than human!!!! (eg processing data!!!) And
course, they'll be in a box marked "computer",
not in a human frame!!!!! But on a network, there
could be times when you might be communicating
with a computer, and not be aware of it, which by
Turing's Test, means that it must be intelligent!!!
(Yeah, OK, it might really be a computer, and it isn't really smart, and it doesn't have a "soul", but you would only really say that if you know for sure that it's computer at the other end- if you didn't, you would only have your communications to go on, and if you can't tell the difference between that and a normal human on that basis alone, then how can you say it isn't human??!?!?)
As for Moore's law hitting a brick wall, well of
course that's going to happen sooner. But what's stopping people simply building more and bigger computers?!?! I think some readers are automatically associating anything "computer" like with just a computer in a single box like a PC in a "work room", but what about having loads of
computers all over the place, working in parallel?!?!? There's this really good networking system I've heard of recently- it's called the "Internet" or something...
===
===
Old Fart!!! Of tha SENIOR DADS!!!!!
http://surf.to/seniordads/
AI proponets have been predicting this stuff since early sixties. They just keep changing the date.
It's not the speed of processors or the amount of memory that needs to be compared to the human brain, it's the software. And nobody has any idea how to write it. We can't even agree on what is intelligence (see the IQ discussion) and somehow he expects to program intelligent machines.
I also predicated in the early 80s that Internet would be a big thing and that a computer program would become world champion chess player. I just didn't write a book about it. It was obvious then.
As far as jamming with "cybernetic musicians" I'm already doing that with drum machines and my computer.
...richie
P.S. For an interesting take on the philosophical problems of AI I suggest reading books by Stanislaw Lem.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
Augmenting humans using implanted computers, that is. Using the ability to vastly increase human capabilities could be very bad because human beings will still make mistakes. As an illustration, if someday people are able to plug right into their cars and have super reflexes, etc., there will still be lousy drivers.
Essentially, I don't want anybody to have near-infinite knowledge without near-infinite wisdom, and nobody's perfected a way to prevent human beings from making bad decisions. When they do, I'll be the first in line to have my own abilities massively augmented.
Anyone who understands the 2nd law of
thermodynamics knows that it only applies to
CLOSED systems. The Earth is not a closed
system. The energy released by the nuclear
reactions in the Sun allows any system which
can make use of that energy to decrease in
entropy. Meanwhile, the Sun is increasing
in entropy at a much faster rate. The net
change is that the entire Solar System has
increasing entropy, even though some individual
portions of the Solar System have decreasing
entropy.
Using your argument about the 2nd law, it
is possible to prove that BIRTH is just a
myth, because we can't create a new being
out of the disorder of food, water, and air.
-- Bret
2001 is the work of Arthur C. Clarke. As talented as he is in his own right, Kubrik "simply" directed the film version of Clarke's novel.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Who says it has to be human? One word, Furby.
(Wish I could remember the name of the robo-kitty)
In _Understanding_Computers_and_Cognition, Winograd an Flores argue against the possibility of an explicitly constructed intelligence. However, they *DO* allow for the possibility of artificial intelligence that is grown.
i -memo-871/memo.html
Presumably, these intelligences will be grown (or taught) in the real physical world. This would put their learning on the same time scale as human intelligence. Training in a virtual environment doesn't help. Most of what we consider human intelligence is rooted in our interactions with each other. To train in this interaction means that there must be people around. People interact on a human timescale not the accelerated in which we like to train a computer.
Given that the timescale for generating intelligence is more bounded by the time required for training than the computing power available, I believe that Kurzweil's timeframe is off. He predicts computers will be as smart as us in 2020. Well, that gives them about 20 years to develop the correct learning techniques and to start raising what is essentially a child. I think we'd be lucky to see intelligent machines by 2099.
For some good reading check out:
Winograd, Terry and Fernando Flores, Understanding Computers and Cognition: A New Foundation for Design, Addison-Wesley, Reading MA. 1987
Dreyfus, Hubert L., Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Division I of Heidegger's Being and Time, M.I.T. Press, Cambridge, MA 1991
Drefus, Hubert L., What Computers Still Can't Do: a critique of artificial reason MIT Press, Cambridge, MA 1992
Heidegger, Martin, Being and Time(tranlated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson), Harper and Row, NY 1962
Also:
http://www.ai.mit.edu/people/jcma/papers/1986-a
You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake -- but you could be if you got off your ass.
Most likely any such intelligence would be grown or trained. That means that they'd be more like us than an infallible automaton.
So a better wording is "Who would you trust to raise this artificial intelligence?" I know that I'm fine with someone I don't know raising my cab driver, but not that okay with not knowing who raised (trained) my doctor.
You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake -- but you could be if you got off your ass.
"A computer intelligence would likely not be impatient..."
--
This assumes that impatience is a negative trait that serves no purpose. IMO, computer intelligence, when it does emerge, will be evolved or trained -- not built (see a thread called Computer Intelligence and Philosophy for some reading material). Presumably, a computer intelligence generated in this way would find that impatience is a good solution to the forces that caused human to develop the trait in the first place.
You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake -- but you could be if you got off your ass.
.. is that man seeks to become more machine by making machine more man..
-
Thanks David. This is an awfully useful post...and not reflect much in Kurzweil's book. I wonder if he didn't get a bit carried away because his predictions are so far into the future that he couldn'tbe called into account for them.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
If anyone knows a thing about the 2nd law of thermodynamics they wouldn't believe in evolution.
Oh god I love this one. The second law applies to *closed* systems. The Earth is not a closed system, it gets heat from the the Sun. It is this that allows order to increase. I recommend you read a book on physics before presuming to understand it.
Any careful study of evolution THEORY ...
Yes evolution is a theory. Nothing *scientific* can ever be anything else. Belief in creation relies on faith. The desperate attempts to cast doubt on the theories which do not match the creation story given in the bible show nothing but insecurity. If you have faith, just get on with it.
shows the inaccuracies, the falsifications, that are believed even after disproved. It has been the single largest source of fraud in the scientific community.
If you can 'disprove' the theory of evolution, I would be amazed. The dearth of contrary evidence is staggering, as the bullsh*t that fills the creationist pamphlets you get your best ideas from demonstrates.
Going back slightly towards the topic, an AI would know exactly how it came into the world. Evolution would therefore be a rather less pressing subject for it. Would you accept it as impartial enough to adjudicate this, or would you ignore it as well ?
"To create any kind of upward, complex organization in a closed system requires outside energy and outside information. Evolutionists maintain that the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics does not prevent Evolution on Earth, since this planet receives outside energy from the Sun. Thus, they suggest that the Sun's energy helped create the life of our beautiful planet. However, is the simple addition of energy all that is needed to accomplish this great feat?
If this is the best 'proof' of your misinterpretation of the seconf law you can supply , I suggest you examine it carefully. It is not kind of proof at all. The author describes the 'claims' of 'evolutionists' (I love these rhetorical terms) concerning life on 'this beautiful planet'. He does not contradict them, he asks a question which is deliberately design to mislead, whether the addition of energy is *all* that is required to create life on a planet. The answer is 'no', but the author intends you to infer 'evolutionists' believe that shining a table lamp on a rock will bring ti to life.
Of course noone beleives energy is all that is needed for life. You need a lot of chemical goop as well, and a few million years. The chemical reactions required to start the process have already been conducted in the laboratory. So assuming the 'suchlike' in your rhetorical question can include these - the answer is 'yes'.
Bzzt. Wrong. The moths spend much of their time on birch trees. The original population *benefitted* from being light, and was therefore very likely almost entirely light. The post-industrialisation population benefitted from being darker in colour. The change required is small, and the population *may* have has a darker minority, which is why it happened so fast.
What is 'macro evolution' then ? Anything that happened long enough ago you can raise doubts as to the evidence ?
Evolution, as currently conceived, requires 2 steps, mutation and selection. The current examples involving bacteria, fruit flies, etc, involve both. The pepper moth example *may* involve only selection, but the accounts I have heard cast doubt on your claims here.
Macro Evolution or increased complexity of a species, is one of those "Concepts" that have yet to be proved and has NOT been observed.
What is an increse in complexity then ? I can demonstrate non-organic 'increase in complexity' to you till I am blue in the face. For example - if you take a mixture of suitable simple gases and pass huge currents through them you get a small number of organic molecules. The sequence of events required to produce one molecule is tremendously improbable, but given enough energy time and matter it will happen.
If this is possible outside of an organism, what makes it so hard inside of one ? I could argue that in having this argument I am increasing in complexity by refining my arguments.
You will believe whatever your bias allows you to believe. Your Objectivity is subject to your bias.
Of course it is, as is yours, so get down off your high horse. However, I take exception to your first statement, as I imagine does the first poster. It is the duty of every man who endeavours to follow the scientific method to lean over backwards to disprove what he would prefer to believe. I have personally trawled through the tripe creationists try to pass off as scientific literature, looking for even an ounce of merit, and have gone to the lengths of doing considerable research on particular points.
This is precisely what scientists find so objectionable about "creation science". You have already decided what is true. It is a matter of faith. You then go out looking for scientific foundations, and of course you find some, or rather you succeed in finding plausible reasons to cast doubt on the theory of evolution.
In addition to claim that life is constantly improving, I ask you where the object of your faith lies. I have yet to see clinical or reasonable evidence proving otherwise.
No modern scientist believes that evolution is progress. It is only change and adaptation.
I am glad to see you have faith in your God. I have faith in mine too, but I do not have faith in evolution. It is not an object of faith, it is a theory. Why you need to doubt it when it contradicts scripture, when scripture is quite capable of contradicting itself, I have no idea.
I can and have refuted him, and those reposting permutations of his argument. Earth is an open system, and therefore not subject to the second law in itself. The universe is probably a closed system - therefore evolution has a limited lifespam. There is nothing dogmatic about this - its just the law as it is usually understood.
The Mind Uploading Home Page
An Introduction to Mind Uploading and its Concepts
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Cheers,
RAK
http://minduploading.org
I seem to remember reading an article from
some Swiss professor. I believe he used some
words that you use at the end of your post.
I vaguely remember the topic of the article:
WW III will be fought between those who wish
and don't wish to allow computers to attain
consciousness. I found it through a link
from CNN about a year ago.
Artificial Intelligence is Stupid!
Talk about the pit of fools. I once got into a violent argument with Marvin Minsky a few years ago at a conference in Vancouver. My basic appraisal of Minsky is that he was quite excited by the possibility of creating computers that would take the place of human beings, because he had a very limited appreciation for what it meant to be human. I figure his Mom must have treated him badly or something.
You know the old saying that if all you've got is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Well, if Minsky had been a hammer maker, he would have called everyone Spike.
I also like to laugh at Microsoft's pathetic hyping of natural language interfaces. Fortunately for their competitors (apparently most of the rest of humanity, according to their legal team), their billions of dollars of research will be based on the same fundamental blunder, the belief that human thought -- and speech -- is just computer processing with a big wet mushy chip. The tragic part of this misperception is that it indicates just how dehumanizing technology can be to its chief acolytes; or did they start out that way?
Hmm...bile I couldn't find. Disdain yes, bile no :-)
Oh, and check your religion at the door when you step into the temple of AI. It is its own religion, and it IS a jealous god.
Minsky's version of AI doesn't believe in Jesus or Buddha or any of those guys. Of course, it wouldn't even believe in them when they were alive. Humanity's not its strong suit.
Let's first of all understand that Turing's famous test is the ultimate blonde of ideas, cute but vacant.
Turing himself suffered from an encrypted brain, having lost his privates key down the commode in a neighborhood pub during an ugly episode, which resulted in his having to goto the hospital for an enigma. When he was done, he looked like he'd been through a World War.
One big problem with his test for Artificial Intelligence is that is wasn't reflective enough. The question he didn't answer is what would it prove if a computer could spend an hour talking to Giraldo on the other side of the wall and not be able to tell it was a human being. And if the Giraldo suddenly stopped talking in mid-sentence, would the computer assume its counterpart had Blue Screened, Sad Mac'd, or Core Dumped? And would it contribute to his annual support contract fees? Would they marry and spawn threads?
What he also didn't follow up on were some of the broader implications of the test. For example, what would it prove if Turing spent an hour talking to a computer on the other side of a wall and wound up lending it five quid? Articial Stupidity?
Why are we trying to create AI robots when we haven't finished the air cars and autobake ovens? The whole thing is patently stupid. Specifically, why was 2009 chosen for the year that human musicians will "routinely jam" with cyber musicians? Why not 2008? What was the no doubt deep thinking behind this masterpiece? Every AI pronouncement I hear is grandiose, futuristic, and intellectually bankrupt. This is no exception. What do AI researchers do all day but scratch out these fanciful dalliances? Is it not time for some useful, real, artificial intelligence? Like a software diagnostics program that actually worked? Just the basic stale bread and bracken water would be nice. I don't need full tea at 4:00.
Same thing was said thirty years ago.
AI is a dead end. Go with Stanislaus Lem, he mentioned "Artificial Instinct", seems much brighter.
"What, I need a *reason* for everything?" --- Clavin "Should I or shouldn't I? Too late, I did!" - Hobbes
Merging humans with technology will remove autonomy and free will. Even a slave today still have free will to some degree. You can tell me what to think. You can even brain wash me. But I can still dream.
...
The machine doesn't dream
---
--- "Zathras talks to dirt, sometimes talks to ceiling and walls, but dirt is closer."
It would behoove everyone to understand the simplest meaning of the Turing Test:
if you can't tell the difference, there is no difference
of course humans won't have any respect for the artificial life they create until they anthropomorphize it somehow, byt sticking the computers inside human-looking shells, or giving them human names.
Well.. Most of what he writes, I consider destined to happen.. And I've felt that way for a long time (Artificial life was my specialist subject at Uni, and I've followed it since)..
The idea of packing transistors onto silicon, yes, I can see that hitting a limit very soon, as has been pointed out.. That's about the time that quantum devices take over. And that's a whole other kettle of fish..
It seems that people here forget about the other computational media available. Optical gateways, Bio-computers using neurons, quantum devices etc...
I agree that the law of doubling will fail soon. but I also consider that it'll result in the increasing of power by an order of magnitude. The same effect as leaving a horse and cart for a rocket engine.
As for intelligence... Who is really to define it?? It's stumped the greatest philosophers for many centuries now, and I think it'll carry on doing that, albeit more heatedly now, for centuries to come.
When you say that machines will take millions of years to evolve, or that they never will become sentient, consider out origins...
Small molecules that grouped together in a protein soup... That slowly learned how to replicate themselves, and form copies..
From there, in geological terms, the rise to sentience of the human race was quite fast.
And also, how do you rate the intelligence of humanity? We may be 'intelligent' now.. but do you consider cro-magnon man as intelligent?? And before that?
Where did we become intelligent?? At what point?
Is a Fish intelligent? If so, would a machine that has all the drives and behaviour of a fish be any less intelligent?
Machine learning will arise much much faster than did biological intelligence.
It's being nurtured carefully by a parent species.. Most of the people who have studied Alife have been surprised by the behaviour of their constructs.. Watching them behave in ways totally unexpected.
History is littered with people saying 'It can never happen, you're deluding yourself'... Flight was never possible.. Humans would never travel over 30 miles an hour, as that would prove fatal... The view that no weapon could be more powerful than the bow, as the destructive power would be truly unthinkable...
All commonly held beliefs at some points in time..
And relatively recently at that.
Currently, we exist in a society that views Alife as a threat; something to deny and deride. It's in a lot of human nature to destroy that which it does not understand.
In time, the next generation will grow up in a world where it is becoming commonplace (as is already starting to happen, at a truly basic level), so the concept will be less alien.
In the generation afterwards, it'll be accepted as a standard, and they'll laugh at the old views of the primitive society that couldn't comprehend every day life. Much as someon in the late 19th century couldn't comprehend an office worker going to work in the morning, sitting behind a computer, emailing documents halfway round the planet in seconds, and retrieving other information from another country inthe same timescale.. then looking through the 'eyes' of a mechanical construct that sits on another planet, which mankind has put there to gather information.
We take this for granted. Two generations ago, this would have been unthinkable..
I'm not sure of the timescales presented in that passage... But I firmly believe that what is proposed in it is not only a possibility, but an inevitability.
As for the idea of human/computer cybernesis at the cognisent level restricting your thinking... I'd beg to differ..
Once we obtain that level of understanding of the brain that we can actually bond memories/thought patterns into understandable/transmittable patterns, we get the closest to telepathy/telempathy that is possible.. The sharing of experience and emotion through a 'computer' link. The ability to fast process thought.. Raising intelligence by orders of magnitude.
As for the machines deciding to 'dispose of us'.. I find it unlikely...
The most optimal survival pattern is co-operation.
Time after time, this has been proven, both in theory and test.
Humanity, sadly, still clings too hard to it's origins in a simian style.. Rationally, I belive most people understand the true value of co-operation, but psychologically aren't equipped to live life fully in this way..
The hybridising of man with machine is a natural evolutionary step for a tool-using species.. We've used physical tools for all the years we've used physical force to achieve our wonders.
Now, we develop tools for the intellect.
The industrial revolution for the mind..
We've got as far as we have, because we're able to change.. And we'll make the next steps for exactly the same reason.
It's the point where we can become the greatest of our dreams, or the worst of our nightmares.
And sooner or later, we'll have to decide which..
Malk
The Turing Test does not speak to conscsiousness. But it describes the next be thing: observable proof of consciousness. What you seem to mean by consciousness is the subjective awareness of it. That is an entirely different notion altogether. The Turing Test is a way to prove scientifically that a thing has consciousness. When you say 'consciousness' you seem to mean your feeling of it. That is the stuff of poetry, not science.
if computers were as complex as a human brain, why wouldn't they dream? A dream is nothing more than mental images passing in succession in your mind's eye. I wonder more if the computers will desire. What will they desire. Intelligence is not the hallmark of life. Life is the hallmark of life. Intelligence is life's tool. Beyond our mind there is judgment. Judgment is not a function of intelligence, it is a function of wisdom. Wisdom is the moral limitations with which one governs the use of intelligence. Living organisms are also highly governed by things beyond intelligence. Instinct is one example; hunger, aversion to pain, attraction to pleasure are others. Intelligence is merely one function of an organism. I am all for a computer becoming a smart as the smartest person. If I had less facts to learn, I could spend more time pondering the goals, aspirations, plans, etc., the ways to implement the intelligence for everyone's good. Perhaps we would uncover in short order the fact of God,
and then we would increase our wisdom accordingly. Nothing can be greater than the creator. To computers, we are gods. If they do devolop intelligence; they will seek our counsel. If they become arrogant, then we will turn them off.
The farm hand lost his job to a robot. He opened a church, fed the poor, read linux documentation.
Speed and size are not the only relevant factors in intelligence. What computers lack is the ability to learn. How can it analyze the feedback from its own actions and determine if the outcome was sucessful? Although many researchers are tackling this problem (neural nets, HMMs), any real learning is still far away. Currently, computers are told by us humans what is right and what is wrong. If we are able to provide computers with all the correct repsonse to all the possible outcomes in the world, then they will be truely smart. Look for example at Deep Blue. How exactly did it beat Kasparov? By using brute force to identify all next possible moves. The outcomes of these moves were poredetermined weights established by chess Grandmasters. Intelligence my ass....
--weenie NT4 user: bite me!
"Computers are nothing but a perfect illusion of order" -- Iggy Pop
"Correct me if I am wrong but isn't that what your childhood was like? "
Exactly. My mind has the ability to learn. I am able to infer what is right/wrong now based upon what I learnt as I child.
--weenie NT4 user: bite me!
"Computers are nothing but a perfect illusion of order" -- Iggy Pop
Does the alleged machine intelligence mean that
we are going to get rid of Microsoft? Or will
there be Windows BD (BrainDead) for intelligent
machines which will significantly decrease their
intelligence, so that "an average person" can use
the machine?
Pretty cool stuff. We've certainly been thinking about it for a very long time. I just hope the machine would want to leave my shared wetware when we're done 'sharing'. Other than that, hook me up.
Even if one could manage to simulate the brain with a gargatuan neural net, by the virtue that it simulates the human brain, it will not be omniscient and all powerful the instant it is switched on. At the very least you will need 20 or more years to have it learn everything that we know. Perhaps much longer, if it takes the evolutionary path of some of the "first post" trolls on /.
Not to mention that the author assumes that the very first prototype they build will work correctly. What about all the years of research to figure out the best neural net configuration (something which even now is something of a black art)...
Summary: wishful thinking.
BTW, what makes him think that, with an intelligence equal or higher than ours, the computers would want to join the human race? A little obnoxious assumption, if you ask me.
running into a brick wall in the next few years. With a limit in growth of CPU horsepower, you'll start to
see limits on AI..."
Moore's law is only relevant here if you assume that future developments will do nothing but refine current technology. Sooner or later we'll run out of steam making silicon IC CPUs. But that doesn't mean that progress in computational processing will end. What about new technologies? Do you really suppose that none will ever be discovered? I don't know what will pick up where the Pentium XVIII leaves off, maybe quantum computers, maybe optical systems, or maybe something not yet discovered. But Moore's law as applied to ICs says nothing about the potential for increasing computational power in the future.
And you may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?
It's about time you got one.
Other posters have already pointed out most
of the fundamental problems with the predictions
made in this book. I'd just like to add that in
the event of such technologies being developed,
we should all chip in and buy Jon Katz a critical
thinking module.
K.
-
-- Proud descendant of semi-nomadic cattle-herders.
Your argument is based on a faulty premise, that living beings create more order than they do entropy. As a living being, I create entropy - for instance, in the form of waste heat. This entropy outweighs any order created by or in me.
Furthermore, there isn't a single "powerful Evolutionary force" at work, but loads of little successes and failures, that follow a trend.
My last post on this, btw. You sound like a nutter and life's too short.
K.
-
-- Proud descendant of semi-nomadic cattle-herders.
The argument that Moore's law is going to break down, therefore there will not be artificial intelligence is wrong. There are still many areas that we can expand computation. Chips right now are mostly 2-D, what happens when we can make them 3-D. We have also only begun to explore multiprocessing platforms. Obviously the amount of logic necessary for human intelligence fits inside the human brain. It doesn't matter if instead of taking 20 it takes 40 years to create a computer capable of intelligent thought.
Something is going to happen when that much logic is put into a single computer, or network of computers. It won't be the best scenario, and it won't be the worst. Perhaps by thinking about it now we can make the transition to whatever comes a little easier.
Ha. We are scheduled to reach the Singularity in the 30's. Barring infrastructural meltdown in Y2K, of course.
-- Moderation in all things, exceptions to all rules --
We need to understund that an intelligence can not understund itself...
... and so on down an infinite regress.
Why not? I've never understood this argument. The basis seems to be that in order to understand the mind, we would need to model the mind, and since if I try to model the mind in my mind then the model will be incomplete because I then need to model the mind with the model of the mind
I don't buy it. Just as I can understand a computer without needing to know every program that runs on it, I expect that I can do the same with the brain/mind system. I see no reason that I couldn't understand a mind that could, aong other things, understand a mind. Short circuiting the infinte regress.
And even if I can't, as one person, understand it, why can't two people each understand half? Or ten people? Or a thousand? And so forth.
Secondly, you don't have to understand something to build it (although it certainly helps). Alchohol was used by humans long before anyone knew what was going on. Superconducting was known and usable well before the physics that explained it was worked out.
SteveM
I think the problem is this - mind != brain.
Mind is to brain as digestion is to stomach.
The AI folks are counting on the fact that mind != brain, otherwise "minds" could not be realized on a different hardware platform. What the AI folks do believe is that minds are physical (and not mystical) entities. They believe, and rightly so, that Cartesian duality is wrong.
SteveM
...what it meant to be human...
...the belief that human thought -- and speech -- is just computer processing with a big wet mushy chip.
If you are taking a mystic or religious position, and arguing that there is something magical and non-physical about humans (ie not subject to physical laws) then I can't argue with you.
But if you are not claiming the above, then at one level of description (and by no means the only valid level) humans are physical entities that are subject to the laws of physics. AI argues that we should be able to create physical systems that are isomorphic to humans.
Now, it may be very hard to do this and our technology may not be up to the task. Or maybe the only physical system that exhibits these properties is regular old humans. But as a scientific discipline AI is in no way stupid.
SteveM
Look for example at Deep Blue. How exactly did it beat Kasparov? By using brute force to identify all next possible moves.
While we know how Deep Blue plays chess, we do not know how Kasparov or anyone else does.
We can ask them, and they'll tell us that they analyzed the moves and chose the best one. But what does that mean?
The brain is a massively parallel system capable of some incredible feats of compution. Close your eyes. Now open them. The brain rendered the scene in realtime. When you play catch, how do you solve the differential equations to determine where the ball will end up, and how to move yourself and your hands into place to catch it? How do you search through everything you know to answer the question, "what is the capital of Afganistan?" The search is usually quite speedy coming up with the answer, Kabul, or with the knowledge that you do not know the answer. How do you do these things?
My point is that we do not know how the brain does these things. Yet we talk as if we do, when we claim that computers do things differently than humans do. As far as we know, Kasparov did use brute force to evaluate moves, with only the good choices being passed to his concious awareness.
Do I believe that this is how he plays chess? No. But neither I, nor anyone else, can currently rule it out.
SteveM
How self-righteous we are to think that we can accellerate it!
We will very shortly be able to accelerate it. As we learn more about DNA and how to read and then write programs in genetic code, we will start to experiment on 'improving' ourselves.
We will be adapting ourselves to the environment, side stepping evolution, and at a much faster pace.
I hope we know what we're doing.
SteveM
We're still here, and we're still human. And we will forever be human.
Are you saying that evolution stops with us! How very arrogant.
SteveM
Summed up, it is Everything degenerates, it does not spontaneously develop, or advance. We see examples of this everywhere ie paint decays to dust, people age and die.
Yes of course, why didn't I see this! Why isn't every physicist proclaiming loud and clear that evolution is a fraud?!
Hmmm...
Why is it when I put water in a freezer it turns to ice, that can't happen, it would clearly violate the second law. Therefore: ICE DOES NOT EXIST!
And wait a minute, how do humans form in the first place, taking raw materials from food and arranging then in a quite complex manner, into livers and brains and muscles. Oh my! All clearly forbidden by the second law. Thus: HUMANS CANNOT EXIST!
Hmmm...
Yo bible boy, go get a good physics text book at your local library (you are permitted to read physics books aren't you, or have they been banned (which would explain why you don't understand the 2nd law, or evolution either for that matter)).
The second law applies to closed systems. The earth is not a closed system. We get plenty of energy from the sun. So while the entropy of some systems on the earth goes down, the entropy of the earth/sun system goes up. And the second law isn't violated.
So, summed up, things spontaneously develop all the time. Just add energy.
SteveM
The universe as a whole will run down and be incapable of supporting life. In about 100 billion years.
During this time energy flucuations may come into being that will allow local pockets of order to arise.
One such fluctuation is the sun. One such pocket is the earth.
If you are going to attempt to make religious arguments via science, at least understand the science first. Come back when you do.
SteveM
Clarke didn't invent the satellite either, he's a fucking pompous moron for thinking that and ought to be shot for suggesting it.
But he was the first to suggest geostationary orbits. And for that and 2001 (and a few other novels) his life should be spared!
SteveM
Well, I'm not sure I understand your argument, so my response might be off base but here goes ...
:) with statements like, I magically appreciate...and Sorry, just my intuition talking. Oops! That's not physical either...just human. doesn't change the fact that they are physical, in that they are allowed/enabled by the physical laws of this universe, although I would agree that it doesn't make sense to talk about them in physical terms. Just as it doesn't make sense to talk about software in terms of electrons and holes migrating through semiconductors.
I agree (I think) that human's are not limited to whatever it means to be a physical entity. At least from the inside. I think therefore I am and all that. I 'know' I have free will. I 'know' my feelings are real.
But none of that changes the fact that I am a physical entity in this universe and subject to the laws and constraints there in. I cannot do anything that isn't possible under those constraints. And if that means that my 'knowledge' of free will is in error, then so be it. (We used to 'know' that the earth was flat.)
Thus all those things you seem to be saying are uniquely human are so because physical law allows them to happen. Claiming that this is akin to falling into some kind of intellectual trap is to deny reality.
Maybe it is true as Penrose argues that we need new physics (i.e. quantum gravity) before we can fully explain the mind. Maybe, but I doubt it. I think he is several levels to far down.
I have no idea what your reeference to Schrodinger's cat is about. (I'm familiar with said cat, I just don't see your point.)
I don't see any dichotomy between physical or magical, I just deny that there is anything truely magical, in the sense that it is non-physical. Thus I see no reason that something like 'mind' could not be artificially created. I see no reason that 'mind' can't be revese engineered. I see no reason that what was developed under a methodology of blind search under constraints (i.e. evolution) can't be duplicated via a directed search (engineering).
And finally, the fact that you spice up (I was going to 'litter' by I think 'spice up' has better connotations
SteveM (did I pass the test?)
I have taken philosophy classes. And I've read quite a bit of philosophy since them. And as K. posts below, most of the philosophers that still cling to a Cartesian type mind/brain duality have not kept up with what we have discovered about this system.
t could be that mind supervenes on the brain (ie, things that affect the brain will have affects on the mind, but not necessarily visa versa)
Then what purpose would this 'mind' serve? A mind that can't effect the brain would have no input to your life at all. Here's a thought experiment. Imagine that there are two types of beings in the world. Those with a brain/mind of the type you propose, and those with just a brain. Under what circumstances would the behavior of these to types of entities differ? None, since the 'mind' can have no effect on the brain. This argument isn't original with me, and is the type of argument that has been used to show that duality (of the non-physical non-interacting type) just doesn't work. Duality of the software/hardware type, where mind & brain have effects on each other, doesn't suffer from this flaw.
If you're interested in reading a philosopher that has kept up with research in cognitive science and AI I suggest a good start is Daniel Dennett. His works are readily accessable and fun to read too.
I don't expect you'll agree with all his arguments. I don't, and my world view is much closer to his than I gather yours is.
SteveM
A major goal of creation science is to point out the weakness of evolutionary theory, because basically there are only two alternatives for how we got here, and if naturalistic processes are incapable of the task, then special creation must be the correct answer.
...but much scientific energy has been wasted over the last century in the search for evolutionary evidences and experimental proofs, which have been unsuccessful so far and will continue to be.
This is not science. And your premise, that there are two alternatives and if one is discproved the other must be true is incorrect in two senses. First, it is incorrect to say that there are just two theories. Second it is incorrect to claim that if one theory is shown to be false the other, by default, must be true.
In addition to your two theories there are the thoeries of spontanious generation and panspermia.
Disproving one theory does not prove another. If evolution is shown to incorrect, then we are back to square one. If creationism is to be accepted scientifically, it must be done via scientific evidence for creationism. All the evidence against other explanations does nothing to advance creationism as a scientific theory.
A trivial example of what I mean. Suppose someone tells you that red crows exist. To test this proposal you go bird watching. You see plenty of black crows. Each black crow that you see just tells you that black crows exist. It says nothing about the existance or non-existance of red crows. The only way to prove that red crows exist is to see one (or by analogy with creationism, paint one).
In the same way, each argument against evolution is a minus for evolution. It is not a plus for any other theory.
You again show your ignorance of what science is about by stating,
Science works by amassing evidence, such work is never wasted. And by claiming that it will continue to be wasted effort, you show your true stripes. Any scientific theory is only provisional. It represents our best understanding at this time, but is subject to chance as new evidence comes in. (As humans are involved it can be a messy process, but over the long run it works.) By your statement you are stating that there is no evidence that could show evolution to be true. That's not science, that's faith.
SteveM
If *you* are going to attempt to make religious arguments *pro* science, at least understand the religion first. Come back when you do.
I'm back. And I do.
And I understand the key difference between science and religion.
Religion is a belief system. Science is a belief system. However, a belief system does not a religion make.
Science is always subject to change, based on evidence accumulated. Sometimes the change happens fast, as with the acceptance of relativity over Newtonian mechanics, sometimes it's slow, as with plate techtonics. But it changes.
Religion is never subject to change. Infact original thought is prohibited (don't question, just believe, god works in mysterious ways) and punished (think inqusition, think about women in Muslim countries, think about Scientology and lawsuits).
No, science is not a religion.
SteveM
I am also skeptical of this figure. That's enough computing power to simulate every molecule in a honeybee's brain. Are you sure it's not 100,000,000,000 FLOPS (i.e. 100 GFLOPS). If I remember correctly, the computing power of the human brain was estimated at ~100 TFLOPS (in other words, about 1000x as much).
I won't say this will never happen, because you never know (the only thing I would be willing to predict will never happen is the ability to create or destroy energy/matter). But, here are two reasons I don't expect this to happen in the near future.
1) The exponential growth in the spead of CPUs *must* eventually hit a physical limit so we can't predict how fast CPUs will be in 20 years. Even if some sort of super-conductor or fiber-optics were used and even if the bit logic was on the atomic level we would still hit a physical limit.
2) Even if CPUs were fast enough (which the above *may* be) - you still have the software problem. So a computer won someone at chess - big deal. The logic for "learning" chess had to be created by someone (ie: not another computer) and it only learns from mistakes. Further, this AI can *only* learn chess - if someone wanted it to learn checkers, they would have to program that into the computer. For AI to reach that of humans, it needs the ability to learn *how* to learn. In other words, a computer would have to program itself to play chess - this will be the true test. But even more than this, the computer will have to take the inititive to learn. These are key differences between humans and all other life forms we know of. Humans have the ability to learn/discover new things, inovate on existing ideas, and then pass these ideas/skills to other humans - all other animals do not. For example - there are certian animals that use tools (most often a twig or leaf) to aid in the gathering of food. However, the tools are never improved and no new tools develop out of these existing tools - their use is instinctual. So if a computer must be programed every time it wishes to learn, it is not inovating or learning new things, it is just acting on what it already knows how to do (ie: it is acting on instinct)
Anyhow, I appoligize for the over general ideas, but I think you see my point. Now let the flames begin!
\forall code \in C, \frac{\Delta readability(code)}{\Delta t} < 0
math cannot explain the universe, it can only explain how certain aspects of the universe work. For example, the speed of light is constant regardless of point of reference - this is the basis of the special theory of relativity and why we know time is relative to speed and position. However, mathematicaly this does not make sense. Also, consider all the energy and matter in the universe. They either existed for all time (however, the decomposition of elements seems to suggest otherwise) which is totally illogical, or it came into existance, but this goes against the *laws* of conservation of energy and matter.
\forall code \in C, \frac{\Delta readability(code)}{\Delta t} < 0
"The Earth is not a closed system"
depending on how you define a closed system, the earth is within a closed system - the universe. To say otherwise would be saying that forces outside of physical laws are acting on earth.
\forall code \in C, \frac{\Delta readability(code)}{\Delta t} < 0
I read an article recently that highlighted the
difficulties of maintaining the Moore's Law
momentum. Basically, it was the quantum-effect
problem retold, and suggesting that there may
be a flat spot coming while these difficulties
are overcome. However, the article also
suggested that the mass market for processors
may have to shift away from computing devices
and into more general appliances in order to
keep the economic momentum going.
I happen to believe that there will be a
relatively small (one or two year) glitch in
the curve, but that the push will continue
all the way down to nano eventually.
As to the economics of CPU (memory/IO/storage)
production - there are an awful lot of people
who still have no personal access to the
technology that we (the Slashdot We) take for
granted.
C-x C-s
Downloading the human brain? Come on.
Realistically - Yes, human will eventually be replaced in most production environments. Totally automated factories are probably within reach in the next 20 years. The social challenge will be how to re-distribute the huge profits this brings to those that don't have the skills to get a job in a non-production environment.
Yes, computers will be blindingly fast in 20 years time. Capable of simulating insect-like intelligence at a level sufficient for automated carpet cleaners that run around at night without bumping into things, or driving our cars for us on the free-way (yes, a silicon insect intelligence can probably drive better than we do, it is always paying attention)
Human like intelligence in silico? Sure, when you have a computer that can accurately simulate the human brain - all the neurons, all the connections, and do it in real time. Even if moore's law continues until 2100 I don't think we will get there, as our computers are serial, and the brain is massively parallel. Can anyone who knows more about this than me estimate what kind of processing power it would take to simulate a neural network the size of our brain on a serial silicon chip? If we come up with a way of creating billions of artificial neurons and actually physically wiring them together, then we might have something.
Then there is the problem of programming this brain...
-josh
it looks like the former is a much bigger challenge than the latter. the problem is that the human brain is a massively parallelized multiprocessing machine, and emulating it in a serial (von neumann) processor will be a futile attempt. we need to develop algorithms that use the serial characteristics of the processor, rather than try to improve hardware...
My other car is a cons.
simulating a human brain in hardware? that has to be the silliest myth of modern computing.
just thinking of it this way - human brain is a massively parallel machine. computer processor is a serial machine. simulating the former in the latter will be linear in the number of neurons simulated, but exponential (and possibly with pretty big constants!) in the number of connections between them! we can't even properly build neural networks of size of an insect brain, let alone human. besides, there's the small issue of neural networks being 'opaque' to the creator - all's good when they work, but when they break it's difficult to figure out why.
it seems that we'd get farther by concentrating on advancing 'traditional' symbolic artificial intelligence, rather than simulating huge neural networks on puny serial hardware...
r
-- "away, connectionism!"
My other car is a cons.
I hope that's a quote. I'll vomit if you really mean this.
...suckling from the sweet amnion of life...
I remember the discussions that were the best part of my AI class. The difference between intelligence and knowledge. How do you separate the two, in terms of computing? How do you even define the former - except maybe that intelligence is the ability to synthesize and validate new knowledge from old knowledge.
:)
Computers will excell at that which they already do well, data processing. They'll be able to provide medical diagnoses based on symptoms, financial modeling and weather forecasting, all sorts of quantitative tasks which humans can't do as fast. They'll handle lots of raw data, distill it, and act on it. Pretty much what we do, isn't it?
Peripherals will broaden our senses, enhance our experience of an increasingly computerized world, and make us realise that there are some things that just can not be replaced by a machine.
Consider an AI social worker or psychiatrist. It maybe be an interesting AI exercise, but could a person get over the hurdle of using one to actually solve an emotional problem? Would anyone go to confession, knowing they're spilling their guts to a microprocessor, that will then use a hash table to look up the appropriate penence?
No, computers will become prevalent, and we will become dependent on them, but not more so than we have become dependent on machines. The industrial revolution invited speculation similar to this. We're still human.
It was once thought that people would not be able to breathe on a steam locomotive. It was thought that the rush of air would suck air out of our lungs. We now fly across the Atlantic in 2 hours, and we've been to the moon. It was thought that the first nuclear test might ignite the atmosphere, and all life would cease.
We're still here, and we're still human. And we will forever be human. Evolution took billions of years to get this far. How self-righteous we are to think that we can accellerate it! We are a product of it. We are, at this point, the epitamy of evolution; and if we have anything to say about it, we will remain top-dog for a long, long time. Evolution has bestowed upon us a great gift, greater than on any other species. We can radically alter our environment. Not ony do we adapt to it, we adapt it to us!
That's all that will happen. We've created computers, and made them part of our environment. We're adapting them to service us (a'la Borg), as we adapt ourselves to use them to our benefit.
They will no more change us, then we have changed the Earth. Hmmm, maybe that's not such a good point after all.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
simulating a human brain in hardware? that has to be the silliest myth of modern computing.
:)
Right, let's just file it with all the other truisms, like:
Who would ever want a personal computer. - Digital
The telephone is not profitable. - Western Union
It'll never fly. - RCA re: Led Zepellin
No one will ever use all 640K. - W. Gates III
Ugh! Fire of no use! - Groak, the missing link.
Saying it can't be done, just might tee someone off enough to make them go and do it, just out of spite.
BTW: Is there any open source AI? That is, besides Eliza, as in something actually useful?
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
besides, there's the small issue of neural networks being 'opaque' to the creator - all's good when they work, but when they break it's difficult to figure out why.
:)
Hmmm, sort of like a real mind, isn't it?
You make excellent points, and they're all true. But they can all be rebuked with a simple "Yet." AI/NN is still a young science. Traditional AI, as in knowledge base systems, truth validation, and all that other huey, is not much more then a dump of all possibilities. It's all provided by the programmer, and the system happily falls though it like a huge if-else-else... Where's the I in that AI?
We don't know how the human mind works yet, NN is our attempt at simulating something we do not understand. The fact that it's 'opaque' just may be a clue that we're on to something. They do learn, and they do make corrections for making poor choices. As do my cow-workers, and I'm not convinced they're all human either. - Or intelligent for that matter.
Just as an aside, modern air-craft don't work like birds, but they're the fruit of our attempt to emulate them. I think that, in the end, AI will work, but we'll all be surprised at the how.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
In about 30 years I plan on leading a jihad to remove all computer controlled equipment from everybody that is stupid. When this great day nears, I hope that I will have many followers from /.
Sci-fi and technology just don't mix with stupidity. It's almost as bad as drinking and driving. Arghhh, let it go. There is no future for computers, as we shall smite them from this earth.
I'm really tired, excuse the outburst, need coke. Oh yeah, and I have to run an NT based network, lots of computer angst.
Dinyar
My machine is already spiritual - I have given it this ability, it is my own spirituality. We will not evolve into a new species, we will evolve - as will our science.
Smart computers? Yes. No distinction between humans and computers? Highly improbable. Even if I incorporate technology inside me, it is just technology being used by me.
The other concept that is frequently abused is the difference between information and knowledge. Information can easily be referenced, accessed and accumulated by computers -usually faster than humans. However knowledge, the EXPERIENCE that comes with information is somethings humans do better, and I suspect always will.
I don't believe that humans (or any biological life) would be innately superior to computers (or any mechanical life) that were equally as functional. Biological life is not more sacred than the machine. I do believe we are more spritual. We have something that cannot be replicated, built, or manufactured no matter what we evolve to - a spirit.
I never wonder if we could make them as smart as us, but always wonder IF we should?
Didn't anyone watch Evolver on sci-fi? or Terminator and T2? Or more recently Virus????
Hey HAL tried to killed everone on that ship.
I for one hope we don't become a race of cyborgs!
Only 'flamers' flame!
Unless you're implying that the human brain is not a machine, that it doesn't think by physical laws, Godel's theorem doesn't rule out AI. In other words, our brains are just as limited by Godel's theorem as AI's would be. See _Godel,Escher,Bach_ by Hofstadter for details, and also because it's great.
Chris
This comes back to a classic argument that I've seen on slashdot, and in many other places: Is digital _really_ better than analog? When was the last time that you saw an object move in digital space?
We have determined taht the primary cause of human intelligence is not genetics or design, but the training that goes into it. Until we truly understand how our own brains work and can selectively train individuals to be intelligent, there is not a reason in this world to beleive that computers can attain any measure of intelligence. Excuse the coldness of this example, but I can buy a dog for $35 from the humane society, and it can actually interact with me and understand what I say. It's also completely devoted to me (not like windows...).
My point is this: We've been studying lab mice for how many years, and we can't even understand how the intelligence of a mouse works? How, then, do we presume to say that we will understand the nature of our own intelligence well enough to duplicate it in a machine?
The computer has its purpose, but I doubt that digital technology will be able to produce a machine with the intelligence of my cocker spaniel, much less that will rival my own. And, if the day arrives, hopefully I'll have perished.
True science means that when you re-evaluate the evidence, you re-evaluate your faith.
> ... increase the speed of the signal. Is the speed of light fast enough for you?
Electrical energy already travels at the speed of light. Optical computing has problems of its own, however (not the least of which is the fact that it is difficult to make it do digital cheap and fast).
I don't think this is going to happen that soon. ...
20 years sounds a little bit to fast for me
and if Windows still is mainstream then, then we are still at approx. the same level as we are now...
I am ready to integrate, hook me up :) In a way, we already are one with our computers. Just ask any Linux nut.
-Master Switch, one more element in the machine
For example, in 1906, the average car cost--in 1993 dollars--about $53,000; by 1918, the inflation-adjusted cost was less than half and the quality was about twice as good. Some intellectuals of that era saw the Ford Motor Company as the model for a better America. (See this essay by DeLong for more details.)
Alas, this trend has not continued for the past 80 years. Perhaps computer technology will maintain its growth rate for as long as Kurzweil etal. predict, but I wouldn't bet my 401(k) on it.
send all spam to theotherwhitemeat@ropine.com
You may, with any Turing machine, implement any other Turing machine less complex in space and time than the first one. The human brain may not be a Turing machine, however, I think that any modell of the brain may not be implemented using the same brain, for the same reason... So, why can't two brains understund one? It is possible to understund smaller parts; We may allready understund one brain-cell; which is a part of the brain. We may however never understund the overview, since no one may ever know the hole thing and explain it to us... The only thng left is to use the Random Creator; Put a random set of nstructions together in a random order. Test if it has become intelligent. If not, repeat until intelligent...
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
Animals mostly behaves more logical than humans; at least from a darwinistist's view... And "humanity" is what we call a behavoir which is not the standard human egoism...
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
"You can't possibly ask Katz to read math books."
LOL!
You've hit the nail on the head about Katz. To report on a subject in a way that adds value, you need a pretty good understanding of the subject - unless you're writing for an audience with an even more limited understanding. Some rudimentary analytical skills also don't hurt (such as, say, the ability to distinguish between problems caused by UPS during shipping, vs. the intent to install Linux on a machine...)
For an example of a writer adding value to a subject (while simultaneously doing a bit of a snow job), check out the article by Michael Lewis (author of "Liar's Poker") in last weekend's New York Times Magazine, about the near-demise and bailout of Long Term Capital Management.
Of course, Lewis probably gets paid more than Katz, but if so there's a reason for that...
"it seems that we'd get farther by concentrating on advancing 'traditional' symbolic artificial intelligence, rather than simulating huge neural networks on puny serial hardware... "
Traditional symbolic AI is unlikely to ever achieve much than the traditional applications, e.g. grammar checking, grading essays, playing chess.
You're right about the advantages of the massive parallelism of neural networks. So, we have to build *real* neural networks in hardware (or wetware?), not simulate them on serial hardware (which as you point out is doomed)
"there's the small issue of neural networks being 'opaque' to the creator - all's good when they work, but when they break it's difficult to figure out why."
That's what psychologists are for...
Is Jon Katz an artificial intelligence? It took me way too long to work it out, but all the signs are there. The liberal use of the latest buzzphrases, to hide lack of actual content. The slightly off-base parotting of well-known concepts, as though he doesn't quite get it.
It also explains that interminable "Road to Linux" series which never manages to achieve actual use of Linux. Since the Katz software is presumably running on Linux, for Katz, writing about Linux is like exploring one's own subconscious - a task which can only be done incompletely, at best.
Hats off to CmdrTaco for an awesome piece of coding! Is it written in PERL? What hardware does Katz run on? (Hmmm, wonder if that matchbox-sized computer has anything to do with this?)
Schneier's quote talks about trying *all* guesses in parallel. Presumably the number of guesses such a system can handle is unbounded. However, going through a "whole buttload" of computations in parallel is still deterministic, it would just be "n" times faster than a serial solution, where n equals the size of a buttload.
This is itself a naive, or at the very least incomplete, view. When assessing the capabilities of another intelligence, there are philosophical limits to the degree to which we can determine it by such "hard" measurements as, say, brain mass, number of neurons, etc.
The limitation here is not necessarily in the perceiver, but rather in what it is theoretically possible to perceive, and at what level. [For example, you probably won't be able to tell that I'm imagining a pink penguin just by sticking a probe in my brain. And if you stick enough probes in my brain, I'll stop thinking about the pink penguin and start wondering "what are all these probes doing in my brain?" instead, which would spoil the experiment.]
There are good arguments which say that intelligence cannot be assessed by hard physical measurements, and that the only way to assess it is by interacting with the intelligence itself, not with the underlying substrate. You have to ask it questions and see how it responds. This is the basic reason behind the Turing Test.
We do this all the time when we meet new people - while we might make initial assessments based on superficial characteristics such as appearance, assuming we're open-minded, ultimately we're left assessing the person based on what they say or do, and on how they respond to us.
Assessing an intelligent computer will work the same way. If the computer is capable of holding its own in a conversation, or responds well to an intelligence test for which it has not been specifically prepared, or is able to self-direct its activities the way humans do, then it would qualify as intelligent.
And if you disagree with that, watch out, because next thing you know the computers will be marching (or wheeling) through the streets, demanding equal rights and an end to discrimination against silicon-based lifeforms!
That was the point I was trying to make, but I probably stated it ambiguously.
but for any given nondeterministic step it handles some finite number of inputs
True, but I was responding to this:
Isn't "going through a whole buttload of computations in parallel" exactly what non-deterministic machines do?
Free will is an illusion anyway.
Merging with computers would only make that more obvious.
The same things were said 20 years ago, and 30 years ago, and look where we are now... Brute force chess playing programs.
As for the Turing test, yes, it might be possible to program a computer to fool a human, but does that mean that the computer can think? Does it mean that is has a consciousness? Does it mean it should have rights? Or does it just mean that it can fool humans... The Turing test is one of the most flawed AI tests, but it also happens to be the most famous.
I used to give the AI field the benefit of the doubt, but after taking a course in the philosophy of AI, I am a skeptic. There are so many things in volved in our thinking and consciousness that even we do not understand, how can we get a machine to do/become what we can't understand ourselves?
Kurtzweil points out some things that show more intelligence in machines. Voice recognition is getting pretty good. In five years it will be great. When a computer can understand what you say, it can quickly formulate all sorts of linkages. Anything you say may have a few possible interpretations. A computer can spawn multiple threads of possible meaning. As more data is gathered, it can drop non-likely meanings and add new potential meanings.
One of the neat logical algorithms in the book on intelligence was (paraphrase), "is this the best answer? If yes, you are done, if not, take a step closer".
Computer prophesies out 100 years may be far fetched. The neat thing is he speculates a possibility.
There is some good computer generated art in the book. The computer generated poems didn't do anything for me, but I prefer visual and auditory stimuli.
Having computers generate poems and music is just a demonstration that computers can be programmed to do things that once upon a time were thought to require intelligence.
I think the "Dick Tracy" watch of communications is feasable in 10 years.
Comparing a computer to a bee's brain is difficult. Today's voice recognition shows that computers are beyond insects in some areas.
It will be tricky to go beyond humans in all areas, but it is a fascinating read.
Remember the premise for the Terminator movies? I know this all sounds cool in a comic book kind of way, but anyone who has coded anything longer than a CSC assignment know how hard it is to make clean code. Would you really want to hook yourself up to buggy code?
My other Slashdot ID is much lower.
Although many researchers are tackling this problem (neural nets, HMMs), any real learning is still far away. Currently,
:) )
computers are told by us humans what is right and what is wrong
This is not entirely true especially the part about NN's. They can be trained in two ways:
1 using supervised learning
2 using unsupervised learning(duh).
These two methods form the major part of learning in all mammals, altough the later seems to be the more intelligent(=human) one. It's basically learning from your mistakes. (Hey if I run head first into a wall it hurts) and generalising it (maybe i shouldn't run into oak trees either).
The unsupervised learning method is computationally very intensive especially for processor based computers, since they have to emulate the mechanisms used by parallel computers (like that thing in your head, you know, the one that hurts when you bang it against that wall
Which brings me to the subject of the original post, speed is not the only factor, well yes it is when you need to emulate things. The only way to recreate a brain is to grow it out of dna, which is ok, but ethical questions arise when you stuff a piece of brain in your proxy server and tell it to remember all the pages you went to.
Although "The Machine Stops", by E. M. Forster, doesn't have a bio-mechanical species, it does depict a society ruled by machines. People are so immersed in technology that they worship machines as people now worship god(s).
"The Machine Stops" is a cool cautionary tale. I don't think "The Age of Spiritual Machines" is suggesting the same course of events, since it has machines merging with people, but the message in "The Machine Stops" shouldn't be ignored.
"Luncheon meats make the sawdust in your stomach explode."
Again it happened. The guy pointed out several facts from the fossil record, and the above poster retorted "There's tons of evidence" and ended his rant with "See what happens when you mix LSD with church?". Simply because someone disagrees with you doesn't mean he is nuts or drugged up. I am not a creationist, but this guy has brought up some valid points, punctuated equilibrium seems more like a cop out then anything else.
I have done some research and this is what I have come up with.
Basic Creationist Tenet:
The earth is 10000 years old
Refutation:(one of at least)
Astronomy and Big Bang theory have prooven that
the universe is >= 18 billion years old
Basic Evolution Tenet:
Man has evolved from a
one-celled organism
Refutation:(one of at least)
Fossil Record shows fully formed species
Conclusion:
Noone knows what the FUCK is going on.
Thank you
I don't think your arguments hold any water. To say that , "well we can't find evidence for evolution in the fossil record because it's not easy" is a very poor argument. Perhaps you should do some research as well.
Not in my opinion. I find it as simple as this: Do I make conscious decisions on my own "free will" or are all my actions simply planned out for me, a part of some big, albeit buggy, program. If you don't believe in free will, then who wrote your "program"? Perhaps we are all just reacting to our environment, but personally I find this notion extremely depressing as it also implies that our very existence is in effect meaningless. But hey, whatever floats yer boat.
There are, of course, other larger issues, like consciousness. Or even ones perception of beauty, (i.e. why do I prefer the color blue over green?). Will my computer prefer pink? Damn, I hope not!
Just another set of predictions about something that isn't nearly understood. Just like every other prediction of related "artificial intelligence", the mountain will suddenly appear bigger the closer we get to it.
...
I'm betting on millions of years of evolution
On the scale of things, the human brain is Mount Everest and these predictions are just folks at a rest stop on the Jersey pike staring though a fogged window in the mens rooms at a torn post card from Tibet (that they are sure is the real thing).