Just out of interest, apart from any other considerations (I agree it's more practical for schools to use free software from a purely economical point of view), but why aren't these schools already in posession of compliant licenses?
Is it suddenly alright for educational establishments to pirate software?
I don't think anyone has any doubts that we can afford to pay for content of various kinds, well at least the dwindling minority here that aren't 15 year old kids anyway. The problem has never been whether we're able to pay for stuff it's whether we want to pay for it.
Modern day Western socioeconomic culture has been deeply influenced by the "ideals" of capitalism, in which we expect things to come as cheaply as possible, and in which consumption is the lubricant that greases our lives. We exist solely to consume, and anything else is pretty much a wasteful side effect. And unfortunately, because of this drive to consume, we end up feeling that we're owed something, and that by getting stuff cheaper or for free we're ahead of the game.
Most of us here wouldn't notice a cent or two coming out of our bank accounts for being able to access decent, high-quality content online, but if we can get away without paying, then we'll whine until the cows come home! Couple this with an almost-Luddite fear of giving out account details online thanks to sloppy computer security and media fear-mongering, and you can see how micropayments are not ready for the primetime yet.
I think it's just a sign of the times. Just as people here would rather use Napster to get songs than find a way to ensure the artist gets paid fairly, people will always go for the free option, even when it leads to the end of the product they were after. Such is today's culture - firmly short-sighted and selfish.
I will admit to not knowing enough about PCP to have an opinion on the matter... hmm, it's a dissasociative anaesthetic according to this, and the problems come from both of these properties.
Whilst it does sound bad, I'd be tempted to wonder who would do it if cheap, clean alternatives existed? I mean, it hardly sounds like a worthwhile buzz does it? The trouble with illegalisation is that addicts are often tempted to take whatever they can get hold of without regards for consequences.
Some chemicals are demonstrably more dangerous than others, so addictive that they'll drive people to committ crimes to pay for their next fix. Some drugs can cause violent activity. I think it is pretty reasonable to restrict access to them because they aren't always "victimless crimes."
The onwards march of science now gives companies and governments another tool in the fight against consumer "rights", a concept spurned by laissez-faire captialists (it interferes with wealth creation after all). And despite the God-given gift of our Constitution by our noble Founders, the rights of every American to live how they please have been slowly stripped from them in court case after court case and paid-for piece of legislation introduced to our lawmakers. For unfortunately, the Founders were only men, and despite their far-seeing attempts to ensure freedom for all Americans, they could not have forseen the evils that modern society has made for itself.
Like other schemes this will be introduced in the name of the greater good. The Government will undoubtedly start marking money as a means of tracking down criminals, especially drug users and dealers, who always a handy foil for attacking freedom, and counterfeiters (already aided by the Monopoly money we use here). If we're lucky we'll be told, if we're not it'll be buried in a press release about a new set of baknotes being released, with the majority of people kept in the dark my the major news houses, always willing to turn a blind eye in exchange for other news rights to more people-friendly news stories.
And where do these tactics lead? Past experiance has shown that whenever new measures such as this are introduced, the criminals get smarter - witness the discovery of an almost-finished submarine in Columbia for smuggling drugs! When they find a way to get around this (and let's not forget how we're quite happy to skim the profits off of laundering drug money while decrying where it comes from), what will the Government do next?
Will it be us that gets a chip next? As chips get smaller it will become a simple task to embed one under your skin, which could provide data on you wherever you go, whatever you do. Consider the development of air-powered "hyposprays" and how easily they could be adapted to chip you from the moment you were born. Think this is unlikely? Perhaps so, but we've been warned about it for a long time, and it is inevitable that governments like ours act only to increase their own power, while denying honest citizens their own.
When the X-Files first came out it was interesting and innovative, catching the mood of the time perfectly and holding it with well written stories and interesting characters. There was a good balance of one-off shows and the main story arc, and it was all original material.
And now? The main characters have left or are leaving, we're seeing the same old shit time and time again and it's just not exciting any more. I gave up after the film came out, and I've not missed it at all.
It's just a pity that studios feel the need to extend shows beyond any kind of reasonable shelf life, and that far too many writers are all too willing to make a quick buck by going along with it. Let's face it, most writers just aren't talented enough to keep coming up with fresh ideas for years and years, and so we see recycled crap repeating itself again and again. Let it die for Christ's sake!
And even worse, there's the resurrected show, in which studios decide that they can re-milk a dead cash cow. There's a new Star Trek series coming out (oh joy), and even worse, new Babylon 5 as well (ugh). This is just riding on the backs of those viewers who are so fanatical about these things they'll spend their money on it no matter what, which in my book is pretty low.
Out of curiosity, why is it only sci-fi gets this kind of rabid fandom? Other genres have shows which are popular, but it seems only Trekkers and whatever it is B5 fans call themselves are willing to fork out big bucks for some kind of novelty alarm clock which plays their show's theme tune. Is it a substitute for a healthy social life? I just don't get it myself.
Errrm, "is" not the same as "==" in Python in all cases. "==" will check for equality, "is" checks to see if they are the same thing. When you're talking about objects, there is a difference.
Now, for AI, a Turing machine could theoretically simulate all known physics to any arbitrary degree of accuracy, even for the entire universe, random processes included, from beginning to well in the future. (From which one immediately wonders what metaphysics generates the randomness of quantum events.)
It has been proven that the smallest possible system that can simulate the Universe is the Universe itself, which is kind of obvious really. So your Turing machine is either the Universe, or impossible.
Plus, there's the issue of whether a Turing machine can truly simulate the real world to an arbitrary degree of accuracy. I guess that depends on how it's fundamentally made up, something we don't have a decent handle on yet.
You're still talking about practical concerns here? This calculations is simply an upper bound upon the amount of processing that can be done with 1kg occupying 1liter of volume. Nothing more. It's purely about information processing, not even about "computers" per se.
Besides, even if it was concerned with how this might be acheived, how the hell is he going to work all that stuff out? Obviously, such technology would be way beyond what we have today, so there's no way for him to use realistic figures. So trying to add practical details is a waste of time, kind of like trying to calculate how fast we'll be able to travel in the future. We know the theoretical limit (the speed of light), but we can't say what technology will be available in the future and so cannot make any useful predictions.
How is IF A > B THEN so much different than IF rand() > B THEN ? Why does one cause intelligence and the other not? If it is obvious that blindly following rules is not intelligent, why then isn't it obvious that randomly following rules isn't intelligent also?
Consider quantum computers - they are most definitely not Turing machines! Introducing quantum effects is not just adding a randomiser into the equation, it changes the way things work at every level.
Physics, however, is man made. In your own counter argument you said Moore's observation applies to technology and knowledge, two inherent ingredients to physics.
To use a phrase: bollocks. Physics is inherent to the Universe, and is independent of what we know about the Universe and how we are able to manipulate it. Obviously, our knowledge of physics changes, but the underlying principles remain the same.
As our technology and knowledge grows so does our ability to penetrate to the "underlying truths of nature". Hence why we no longer believe newtonian physics to be accurate.
But they are still accurate, we just now know they are only accurate within a certain domain (speed much less than the speed of light, low masses). What the author is talking about is how the fundamental physical laws of this Universe constrain processing power. Quantum mechanics (the basis of this article) is undoubtedly not the whole picture (which is why superstrings are the focus of such intense research), but in their domain it is correct, and so are the observations made in this article.
To exceed the limitations described here we will have to do our processing in some other domain - perhaps if we recreate conditions at the very start of the Universe when it was still 10/11-dimensional then we can harness additional computing power, but that wasn't what the article was talking about.
I deliberately include quantum effects, assuming they do have an effect, because that is the most likely place for something that can't be simulated on a Turing machine to occur.
And if they do have a role, then no Turing machine can emulate the brain, no matter how powerful.
No, I remembered quite well. Something that appears to be random isn't necessarily random, it may merely be chaotic. I'm not speculating on whether that is true or not, but it is possible, and I can consider either case.
No, the collapse of the wave function is truly random, although the probabilities of what state we end up in are deterministic and calculable. There is no pattern to it other than that of statistics.
But even if continuous, it would still be following rules. Would rule following now be intelligent?
You could consider quantum mechanics to be a set of rules, but they're a vastly different set of rules than those used by Turing machines (IF...THEN basically). This is what I think the key difference is.
Every year we seem to think we know every thing there is to know about physics, biology and any other science.
You don't know many scientists do you?:)
If your assertion is true, then why would they bother doing it? If there was nothing left to know, then there would be no point in being a scientist, and no new research projects coming up.
We are convinced that our current theories are laws of nature.
The term "law of nature" is pretty loaded, and I doubt it would apply in many cases. And even then, such laws aren't universal. Consider Newton's "laws". Although they're called such, they're only applicable in certain domains (speeds much less than that of light, relatively low masses) and are only approximations to relativity. Similarly, our current physical theories (general relativity and quantum field theory) are only approximations to some higher theory which contains both. No scientist is convinced what we have now is the final "law of nature".
And every year some discovery shatters that belief in a given discipline.
I'll admit there have been, and probably always will be, some pretty amazing new discoveries that do come as a big suprise, but shattering belief? I think not. If anything, they often serve to spur on research into the various fields.
Whilst scientists can easily be as guilty of hubris as anyone else, you're portraying them in a far worse light than is deserved IMHO.
He's talking about the theoretical maximum limit of processing power, not what is actually acheivable. Even in the article he says that there are good reasons for using less than this, and practical concerns like architecture don't come into it at all.
It's not bad science at all, it's theoretical science.
His "calculation" is nothing more than a change of state in a quantum system. In real life, any calculation is likely to involve something more complex than this - the time taken for a single change of state is the theoretical minimum time for a single operation.
No matter how the machine works, it must involve state changes in order to have calculation of any kind. Barring completely new physics involving something other than normal matter, his calculation is correct.
I'm afraid you're mistaken about energy and momentum not having discrete eigenstates. In any attractive potential (and when it comes down to it, every particle in the universe is in some net attractive potential), a particle and only occupy a limited set of eigenstates (bound states), each with a specific, discrete energy and associated momentum.
Okay, true. The usual use of moving a particle from infinity into a field to calculate potential energy is somewhat of a trick, and there is always some kind of field involved, either EM or gravitational. Space is never 100% flat;)
What about if I use my obscenely powerful computer to simulate with absolute perfection every atomic (and sub-atomic)interaction in a volume of space that happens to contain a person?
Leaving aside the (im)possibility of an infinitely powerful Turing machine, since then such things may be possible, I'm not sure about the praciticality of such a machine existing. After all, the human brain is quite rediculously complicated, and the processing capacity required to perfectly emulate it is still unknown, as we don't know enough about how the brain works to calculate it yet.
And before you start on about neurons, remember that there are other structures which have effects that we are still discovering. There may be smaller structures completely unknown to use at the moment that play important parts. One discovery some years ago was the role of nitrous oxide as a neurotransmitter - rather than travelling along axons and dendrites it diffused through the brain, meaning that there are non-local effects that hadn't been realised until that point.
So I don't know whether it would be possible or not. I suspect not.
There are some good arguments against this 'simulated intelligence' thought experiment but if we could simulate the brain inside a Turing machine, it would be more difficult to draw a distinction between what our brain does and what a Turing machine does.
Well if we can simulate our brains perfectly inside a Turing machine, then our brains are Turing machines and I'm wrong. However, I don't think I am:)
Sorry if I didn't make the distinction clear enough, but I was talking about Strong AI -"consciousness" basically. I don't disagree that computers will be highly intelligent, I just don't believe that Turing machines will ever be conscious.
QM has shown us that space and time are digital on a small enough scale through duality theory and superstrings, although even this isn't certain - we really don't have a good enough grasp of the underlying mechanisms of superstring theory yet to be certain. But I don't recall energy or momentum having discreet eigenstates, so it's not truly digital.
But apart from that, these effects are on a small enough scale (10^-33 cm and 10^-43 sec) that they are for all intents and purposes irrelevent to structures like we're talking about here. Even for systems such as the hydrogen atom we can assume space and time are continuous - the brain is a somewhat grosser system than that, although quantum effects may have a role to play.
Basically unless we can perfectly model the brain at around the Planck scale then any question of discreteness is totally irrelevent and we can assume all processes are analog. And even if we could you're still forgetting the randomness inherent in quantum mechanics with respect to collapse of the wave function and the creation of virtual particles. So as a model, it would instantly diverge from reality anyway...
The point is that no matter how powerful computers get, they are still Turing machines. Whether they run at 1KHz or 10^100THz, they still operate on the same principles, and as such will never demonstrate true intelligence, ie. semantic understanding.
I think the point he was trying to make was that the Turing test is the only test we have for intelligence. How do I know that you, my girlfriend or anyone else is intelligent? The answer- I don't but I assume that you are because you act in a way that I consider intelligent.
No, you're right. But you and your girlfriend work in roughly the same way as me, whereas the computer works on totally different principles. Therefore, while I'm justified in assuming you're also intelligent, I'm going to give the computer a hell of a lot more structiny before making such claims.
What is the proof that the human barin does not operate by 'blind adherence to rules'?
We simply don't know enough yet to say for definite, but the fact that it has both a changing topology and is analog would indicate it doesn't work in the same manner as a Turing machine, as would the Chinese room experiment.
Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. I meant to imply Cyc has no use as the basis for AI, not that it didn't have any use in the field at all:) And it's just the sort of thing expert systems need as well...
Searle proved no such thing as your assertion; he merely provided a series of thought experiments which force us to think about what intelligence might actually consist of.
And very good ones at that, which demonstrate the underlying principles of Turing machines, and show how they cannot produce semantic understanding, merely syntactical manipulation of data.
If it looks intelligent, and acts intelligent in all conceiveable circumstances, then we'll be forced to conclude that it is intelligent, even if we know what's going on under the hood.
Bzzzt! Wrong... the Turing test says nothing about whether something is intelligent, merely whether it can fool a person. There are already some pretty good pieces of software out there about this, and they'll get better in the next few years. But they won't be intelligent. Blind adherence to rules is not intelligence.
Are you suggesting that, should we one day discover the secrets of the emergent behaviour of the human brain (reducing it, therefore, to "a simple rules system"), that we will suddenly cease to be intelligent?
Now here's your category error. You are assuming that the brain is also a Turing machine and that by some miracle of "emergent behaviour" intelligence arises. But that's obviously not true, as Searle showed, because Turing machines cannot be intelligent!
Sorry folks, but Cyc has nothing to do with the future of AI at all. It's just a big list of rules that might be nice for certain expert systems, but it will never produce anything intelligent, no matter what part of the company's PR you buy into.
The fact is that no modern computer, no matter how powerful it gets, will ever be capable of creating true AI. Sure, they may pass the Turing test, but so does Theo de Raadt, and I can simulate his responses with nothing more than a few rules and a large table of swear words!
Unfortunately, the Turing test is no indicator of strong AI at all, just a very good rules system. Searle proved years ago that no rules-based system (ie. a Turing machine) can ever be truly intelligent, no matter how much so it seems.
Sorry, but Cyc is just a nice toy and of no use in serious AI research.
Because we don't know what we're doing yet. Tamper not with forces you don't understand.
That sounds like a surefire recipe for holding back progress...:) If people had never decided to play around with things they didn't understand, science would be in a sorry state.
Sure, we need to be careful, but we shouldn't lose out on an opportunity because there's a one in a million chance something will go wrong. After all, what are the odds of that happening?
Slashdot Mirror
Just out of interest, apart from any other considerations (I agree it's more practical for schools to use free software from a purely economical point of view), but why aren't these schools already in posession of compliant licenses?
Is it suddenly alright for educational establishments to pirate software?
I don't think anyone has any doubts that we can afford to pay for content of various kinds, well at least the dwindling minority here that aren't 15 year old kids anyway. The problem has never been whether we're able to pay for stuff it's whether we want to pay for it.
Modern day Western socioeconomic culture has been deeply influenced by the "ideals" of capitalism, in which we expect things to come as cheaply as possible, and in which consumption is the lubricant that greases our lives. We exist solely to consume, and anything else is pretty much a wasteful side effect. And unfortunately, because of this drive to consume, we end up feeling that we're owed something, and that by getting stuff cheaper or for free we're ahead of the game.
Most of us here wouldn't notice a cent or two coming out of our bank accounts for being able to access decent, high-quality content online, but if we can get away without paying, then we'll whine until the cows come home! Couple this with an almost-Luddite fear of giving out account details online thanks to sloppy computer security and media fear-mongering, and you can see how micropayments are not ready for the primetime yet.
I think it's just a sign of the times. Just as people here would rather use Napster to get songs than find a way to ensure the artist gets paid fairly, people will always go for the free option, even when it leads to the end of the product they were after. Such is today's culture - firmly short-sighted and selfish.
I will admit to not knowing enough about PCP to have an opinion on the matter... hmm, it's a dissasociative anaesthetic according to this, and the problems come from both of these properties.
Whilst it does sound bad, I'd be tempted to wonder who would do it if cheap, clean alternatives existed? I mean, it hardly sounds like a worthwhile buzz does it? The trouble with illegalisation is that addicts are often tempted to take whatever they can get hold of without regards for consequences.
Some chemicals are demonstrably more dangerous than others, so addictive that they'll drive people to committ crimes to pay for their next fix. Some drugs can cause violent activity. I think it is pretty reasonable to restrict access to them because they aren't always "victimless crimes."
I suggest you read this
The onwards march of science now gives companies and governments another tool in the fight against consumer "rights", a concept spurned by laissez-faire captialists (it interferes with wealth creation after all). And despite the God-given gift of our Constitution by our noble Founders, the rights of every American to live how they please have been slowly stripped from them in court case after court case and paid-for piece of legislation introduced to our lawmakers. For unfortunately, the Founders were only men, and despite their far-seeing attempts to ensure freedom for all Americans, they could not have forseen the evils that modern society has made for itself.
Like other schemes this will be introduced in the name of the greater good. The Government will undoubtedly start marking money as a means of tracking down criminals, especially drug users and dealers, who always a handy foil for attacking freedom, and counterfeiters (already aided by the Monopoly money we use here). If we're lucky we'll be told, if we're not it'll be buried in a press release about a new set of baknotes being released, with the majority of people kept in the dark my the major news houses, always willing to turn a blind eye in exchange for other news rights to more people-friendly news stories.
And where do these tactics lead? Past experiance has shown that whenever new measures such as this are introduced, the criminals get smarter - witness the discovery of an almost-finished submarine in Columbia for smuggling drugs! When they find a way to get around this (and let's not forget how we're quite happy to skim the profits off of laundering drug money while decrying where it comes from), what will the Government do next?
Will it be us that gets a chip next? As chips get smaller it will become a simple task to embed one under your skin, which could provide data on you wherever you go, whatever you do. Consider the development of air-powered "hyposprays" and how easily they could be adapted to chip you from the moment you were born. Think this is unlikely? Perhaps so, but we've been warned about it for a long time, and it is inevitable that governments like ours act only to increase their own power, while denying honest citizens their own.
So what? Who cares?
When the X-Files first came out it was interesting and innovative, catching the mood of the time perfectly and holding it with well written stories and interesting characters. There was a good balance of one-off shows and the main story arc, and it was all original material.
And now? The main characters have left or are leaving, we're seeing the same old shit time and time again and it's just not exciting any more. I gave up after the film came out, and I've not missed it at all.
It's just a pity that studios feel the need to extend shows beyond any kind of reasonable shelf life, and that far too many writers are all too willing to make a quick buck by going along with it. Let's face it, most writers just aren't talented enough to keep coming up with fresh ideas for years and years, and so we see recycled crap repeating itself again and again. Let it die for Christ's sake!
And even worse, there's the resurrected show, in which studios decide that they can re-milk a dead cash cow. There's a new Star Trek series coming out (oh joy), and even worse, new Babylon 5 as well (ugh). This is just riding on the backs of those viewers who are so fanatical about these things they'll spend their money on it no matter what, which in my book is pretty low.
Out of curiosity, why is it only sci-fi gets this kind of rabid fandom? Other genres have shows which are popular, but it seems only Trekkers and whatever it is B5 fans call themselves are willing to fork out big bucks for some kind of novelty alarm clock which plays their show's theme tune. Is it a substitute for a healthy social life? I just don't get it myself.
Errrm, "is" not the same as "==" in Python in all cases. "==" will check for equality, "is" checks to see if they are the same thing. When you're talking about objects, there is a difference.
Now, for AI, a Turing machine could theoretically simulate all known physics to any arbitrary degree of accuracy, even for the entire universe, random processes included, from beginning to well in the future. (From which one immediately wonders what metaphysics generates the randomness of quantum events.)
It has been proven that the smallest possible system that can simulate the Universe is the Universe itself, which is kind of obvious really. So your Turing machine is either the Universe, or impossible.
Plus, there's the issue of whether a Turing machine can truly simulate the real world to an arbitrary degree of accuracy. I guess that depends on how it's fundamentally made up, something we don't have a decent handle on yet.
You're still talking about practical concerns here? This calculations is simply an upper bound upon the amount of processing that can be done with 1kg occupying 1liter of volume. Nothing more. It's purely about information processing, not even about "computers" per se.
Besides, even if it was concerned with how this might be acheived, how the hell is he going to work all that stuff out? Obviously, such technology would be way beyond what we have today, so there's no way for him to use realistic figures. So trying to add practical details is a waste of time, kind of like trying to calculate how fast we'll be able to travel in the future. We know the theoretical limit (the speed of light), but we can't say what technology will be available in the future and so cannot make any useful predictions.
How is IF A > B THEN so much different than IF rand() > B THEN ? Why does one cause intelligence and the other not? If it is obvious that blindly following rules is not intelligent, why then isn't it obvious that randomly following rules isn't intelligent also?
Consider quantum computers - they are most definitely not Turing machines! Introducing quantum effects is not just adding a randomiser into the equation, it changes the way things work at every level.
Physics, however, is man made. In your own counter argument you said Moore's observation applies to technology and knowledge, two inherent ingredients to physics.
To use a phrase: bollocks. Physics is inherent to the Universe, and is independent of what we know about the Universe and how we are able to manipulate it. Obviously, our knowledge of physics changes, but the underlying principles remain the same.
As our technology and knowledge grows so does our ability to penetrate to the "underlying truths of nature". Hence why we no longer believe newtonian physics to be accurate.
But they are still accurate, we just now know they are only accurate within a certain domain (speed much less than the speed of light, low masses). What the author is talking about is how the fundamental physical laws of this Universe constrain processing power. Quantum mechanics (the basis of this article) is undoubtedly not the whole picture (which is why superstrings are the focus of such intense research), but in their domain it is correct, and so are the observations made in this article.
To exceed the limitations described here we will have to do our processing in some other domain - perhaps if we recreate conditions at the very start of the Universe when it was still 10/11-dimensional then we can harness additional computing power, but that wasn't what the article was talking about.
I deliberately include quantum effects, assuming they do have an effect, because that is the most likely place for something that can't be simulated on a Turing machine to occur.
And if they do have a role, then no Turing machine can emulate the brain, no matter how powerful.
No, I remembered quite well. Something that appears to be random isn't necessarily random, it may merely be chaotic. I'm not speculating on whether that is true or not, but it is possible, and I can consider either case.
No, the collapse of the wave function is truly random, although the probabilities of what state we end up in are deterministic and calculable. There is no pattern to it other than that of statistics.
But even if continuous, it would still be following rules. Would rule following now be intelligent?
You could consider quantum mechanics to be a set of rules, but they're a vastly different set of rules than those used by Turing machines (IF...THEN basically). This is what I think the key difference is.
Every year we seem to think we know every thing there is to know about physics, biology and any other science.
You don't know many scientists do you? :)
If your assertion is true, then why would they bother doing it? If there was nothing left to know, then there would be no point in being a scientist, and no new research projects coming up.
We are convinced that our current theories are laws of nature.
The term "law of nature" is pretty loaded, and I doubt it would apply in many cases. And even then, such laws aren't universal. Consider Newton's "laws". Although they're called such, they're only applicable in certain domains (speeds much less than that of light, relatively low masses) and are only approximations to relativity. Similarly, our current physical theories (general relativity and quantum field theory) are only approximations to some higher theory which contains both. No scientist is convinced what we have now is the final "law of nature".
And every year some discovery shatters that belief in a given discipline.
I'll admit there have been, and probably always will be, some pretty amazing new discoveries that do come as a big suprise, but shattering belief? I think not. If anything, they often serve to spur on research into the various fields.
Whilst scientists can easily be as guilty of hubris as anyone else, you're portraying them in a far worse light than is deserved IMHO.
He's talking about the theoretical maximum limit of processing power, not what is actually acheivable. Even in the article he says that there are good reasons for using less than this, and practical concerns like architecture don't come into it at all.
It's not bad science at all, it's theoretical science.
His "calculation" is nothing more than a change of state in a quantum system. In real life, any calculation is likely to involve something more complex than this - the time taken for a single change of state is the theoretical minimum time for a single operation.
No matter how the machine works, it must involve state changes in order to have calculation of any kind. Barring completely new physics involving something other than normal matter, his calculation is correct.
I'm afraid you're mistaken about energy and momentum not having discrete eigenstates. In any attractive potential (and when it comes down to it, every particle in the universe is in some net attractive potential), a particle and only occupy a limited set of eigenstates (bound states), each with a specific, discrete energy and associated momentum.
Okay, true. The usual use of moving a particle from infinity into a field to calculate potential energy is somewhat of a trick, and there is always some kind of field involved, either EM or gravitational. Space is never 100% flat ;)
What about if I use my obscenely powerful computer to simulate with absolute perfection every atomic (and sub-atomic)interaction in a volume of space that happens to contain a person?
Leaving aside the (im)possibility of an infinitely powerful Turing machine, since then such things may be possible, I'm not sure about the praciticality of such a machine existing. After all, the human brain is quite rediculously complicated, and the processing capacity required to perfectly emulate it is still unknown, as we don't know enough about how the brain works to calculate it yet.
And before you start on about neurons, remember that there are other structures which have effects that we are still discovering. There may be smaller structures completely unknown to use at the moment that play important parts. One discovery some years ago was the role of nitrous oxide as a neurotransmitter - rather than travelling along axons and dendrites it diffused through the brain, meaning that there are non-local effects that hadn't been realised until that point.
So I don't know whether it would be possible or not. I suspect not.
There are some good arguments against this 'simulated intelligence' thought experiment but if we could simulate the brain inside a Turing machine, it would be more difficult to draw a distinction between what our brain does and what a Turing machine does.
Well if we can simulate our brains perfectly inside a Turing machine, then our brains are Turing machines and I'm wrong. However, I don't think I am :)
Sorry if I didn't make the distinction clear enough, but I was talking about Strong AI -"consciousness" basically. I don't disagree that computers will be highly intelligent, I just don't believe that Turing machines will ever be conscious.
QM has shown us that space and time are digital on a small enough scale through duality theory and superstrings, although even this isn't certain - we really don't have a good enough grasp of the underlying mechanisms of superstring theory yet to be certain. But I don't recall energy or momentum having discreet eigenstates, so it's not truly digital.
But apart from that, these effects are on a small enough scale (10^-33 cm and 10^-43 sec) that they are for all intents and purposes irrelevent to structures like we're talking about here. Even for systems such as the hydrogen atom we can assume space and time are continuous - the brain is a somewhat grosser system than that, although quantum effects may have a role to play.
Basically unless we can perfectly model the brain at around the Planck scale then any question of discreteness is totally irrelevent and we can assume all processes are analog. And even if we could you're still forgetting the randomness inherent in quantum mechanics with respect to collapse of the wave function and the creation of virtual particles. So as a model, it would instantly diverge from reality anyway...
The point is that no matter how powerful computers get, they are still Turing machines. Whether they run at 1KHz or 10^100THz, they still operate on the same principles, and as such will never demonstrate true intelligence, ie. semantic understanding.
I think the point he was trying to make was that the Turing test is the only test we have for intelligence. How do I know that you, my girlfriend or anyone else is intelligent? The answer- I don't but I assume that you are because you act in a way that I consider intelligent.
No, you're right. But you and your girlfriend work in roughly the same way as me, whereas the computer works on totally different principles. Therefore, while I'm justified in assuming you're also intelligent, I'm going to give the computer a hell of a lot more structiny before making such claims.
What is the proof that the human barin does not operate by 'blind adherence to rules'?
We simply don't know enough yet to say for definite, but the fact that it has both a changing topology and is analog would indicate it doesn't work in the same manner as a Turing machine, as would the Chinese room experiment.
Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. I meant to imply Cyc has no use as the basis for AI, not that it didn't have any use in the field at all :) And it's just the sort of thing expert systems need as well...
Searle proved no such thing as your assertion; he merely provided a series of thought experiments which force us to think about what intelligence might actually consist of.
And very good ones at that, which demonstrate the underlying principles of Turing machines, and show how they cannot produce semantic understanding, merely syntactical manipulation of data.
If it looks intelligent, and acts intelligent in all conceiveable circumstances, then we'll be forced to conclude that it is intelligent, even if we know what's going on under the hood.
Bzzzt! Wrong... the Turing test says nothing about whether something is intelligent, merely whether it can fool a person. There are already some pretty good pieces of software out there about this, and they'll get better in the next few years. But they won't be intelligent. Blind adherence to rules is not intelligence.
Are you suggesting that, should we one day discover the secrets of the emergent behaviour of the human brain (reducing it, therefore, to "a simple rules system"), that we will suddenly cease to be intelligent?
Now here's your category error. You are assuming that the brain is also a Turing machine and that by some miracle of "emergent behaviour" intelligence arises. But that's obviously not true, as Searle showed, because Turing machines cannot be intelligent!
Sorry folks, but Cyc has nothing to do with the future of AI at all. It's just a big list of rules that might be nice for certain expert systems, but it will never produce anything intelligent, no matter what part of the company's PR you buy into.
The fact is that no modern computer, no matter how powerful it gets, will ever be capable of creating true AI. Sure, they may pass the Turing test, but so does Theo de Raadt, and I can simulate his responses with nothing more than a few rules and a large table of swear words!
Unfortunately, the Turing test is no indicator of strong AI at all, just a very good rules system. Searle proved years ago that no rules-based system (ie. a Turing machine) can ever be truly intelligent, no matter how much so it seems.
Sorry, but Cyc is just a nice toy and of no use in serious AI research.
Because we don't know what we're doing yet. Tamper not with forces you don't understand.
That sounds like a surefire recipe for holding back progress... :) If people had never decided to play around with things they didn't understand, science would be in a sorry state.
Sure, we need to be careful, but we shouldn't lose out on an opportunity because there's a one in a million chance something will go wrong. After all, what are the odds of that happening?