Fair enough about simulating biological brains then, but I still don't think guys who are working towards what would be regarded as a 'thinking' machine are necessarily unethical people. There is generally more than one way to do any one task, so even if computers end up using a completely different methodology to a biological system, it's not so far fetched to think that someone could build a machine that would be capable of passing the turing test in the next century or two. Just having a conversation is only a small part of what a brain can do, but we already have computers that can walk, manipulate objects in a 3D environment and so on. A lot of AI has turned out to be more difficult than people thought it would be at the middle of last century, but I don't think it is futile to keep chipping away at it, it's sometimes the only way to make progress. If you'd rather the money was spent for other types of research then I understand, but personally I think that AI is a very interesting and beneficial field of study (I was going to do AI for my honours year at University, though I ended up just not even doing my final year project out of general depression and apathy from other areas of my life, though I still find the whole field of AI to be fairly interesting). We already have pretty good spelling and grammar checkers, and handwriting/voice recognition is steadily improving over the years. Decent voice recognition especially could be good for helping otherwised disabled people (or simply as an extra control mechanism for anything where you are already using all your limbs, like in a car). As someone who has spent a bit of time just thinking how to recreate human behaviour in computer games, and recently was just doing a basic bit of language parsing to make a more friendly query interface for one of my applications, I'm pretty sure I understand the challenges that AI researchers face, and I can definitely see the benefits of more research into computers that have human-like reasoning abilities and so on.
It was funny to see comments from people who had used my bots in Counter-Strike, attributing behaviour to them that I knew for sure was just a coincidence rather than an ability that I had coded (was a particular form of teamwork - eventually I did work quite a lot of 'teamwork' stuff in there - I had called the bot TEAMbot after all - but at the time that the person had made the comment, it was all in their imagination:p ). When you think about it, it doesn't matter what process is actually being used behind the scenes, as long as the outputs appear to be 'intelligent'.
As long as they are just walking, running and climbing then it doesn't matter too much. When they start coming back from the future and ripping your heart out with their bare hands, then you need to be worried.
Current tyre technology works fine at speeds upward of 150mph (depending on the tyre you buy, they are all rated differently and proper racing tyres need to be 'warmed up' before they grip properly), it's just the drivers that are the issue. It could improve safety slightly, but it would hardly be 'phenomenal' considering that most accidents are due to the drivers rather than the cars. There will always be idiots trying to push a vehicle beyond what it can actually do (that's fine on a racetrack, not so much on a public road). Aside from that, speeding tickets are also a nice steady stream of income for certain governments.
Not if he has his own super nano-bots protecting him! He'll just start giggling uncontrollably as the tickly little wars go on all over and inside his body
Well, it's maybe better to assume that other people are idiots who understand cars better than computers;) Actually, I probably would have a much better chance of designing a working car than a working computer.. a combustion engine is a lot simpler than a memory management unit.
Oh yeah I forgot about that, the changing network addresses without a reboot has been very convenient for me recently while working on a project on a different subnet.
Ah, so babies can talk, do advanced calculus calculations and drive a car right out of the box can they? We have some basic survival instincts, but a baby left to its own devices will end up as little more than a fairly bright animal.. no language, not much tool usage.. a lot of our abilities are learned rather than built-in.
Fair point. I think in that case, ask the computer *how*, but don't give it any guns or giant mechanised tanks;) And it would probably be better to examine the crime rates, taxes, police, health and education spending etc and let the computer examine variations of those, rather than use capital punishment (though that could be a valid method too if it's shown to work well as a deterrent..:s I don't think it does work well as a deterrent though, does it?)
Surely quantum effects can be simulated? It's been a while since I read anything about quantum mechanics, I can't remember anything that precluded the idea of simulating a quantum system, just that reading a quantum state would end up changing the actual state. So you would probably be able to scan at least small parts of a brain, but in the process you may screw them up. Even if a quantum system can't be accurately built in software, we have built quantum computers, so we could run parts of the simulations in hardware.
Simulating an entire brain is almost useless anyway, as it doesn't serve much purpose. Especially since our brains are so error prone and easily fooled. But understanding the principles of how we learn, store, process and recall knowledge is all useful for building machines that can do what we already do, but much faster and more objectively.
I 'dated' her online for 1.5 years before we ever met, does that make it more geeky?:P I managed to fuck up all my human connections pretty badly in the last year or two, so there's hope for me yet! Exes actually just refers to two, the last of which I ended pretty quickly when I saw how crazy interested in shallow stuff like shopping and external appearance, rather than anything meaningful. I think my standards may be a bit too high >.>
I had a Quadro lying under my bed for the last few years, though I think I threw it out, would have been an easy method of trying to play Vette had I thought of it (the idea didn't occur to me that I could find really old games on the net back when I used it a bit more regularly) *facepalm* Well, I've had several Macs (from the Classic up until my current Macbook Pro), most of which died or were thrown away, though one was given away. I wouldn't feel guilty about downloading some old ROMs and OS CDs anyway:)
You know what I meant. Sure there are inbuilt instincts and stuff, but as far as stuff like language is concerned, a lot of that is imprinted at certain ages rather than hardwired - any baby can learn any human language.
You could always copy the state of a human brain in its developed state and simulate from that (if you had advanced enough scanners), though that raises even more ethical issues IMO.
I wasn't suggesting that a sentient computer *has* to be built by simulating a brain either. I don't see why ethics gets in the way of continuing to try to understand 'intelligence'. You can work out how a brain works with fMRI, psychological studies and such. As long as you understand the principals involved then you can approximate them in an algorithm, just as we can already simulate and calculate (not always successfully of course) what is necessary for landing ships on Mars, or calculate fluid flow around a body. Those things are much simpler than understanding the brain, but if we continue to work on duplicating the separate functions of the brain, then one day we'll be able to put everything together and have something that appears to 'think'. In fact, AIBOs already managed to make great pets for people in the past as they do some pretty 'clever' things and can be somewhat anthropomorphised in people's minds.
Depends on your definitions really;) I had a heated debate with one of my exes about the semantics of stuff like this before. Was rather stupid in hindsight, people shouldn't necessarily have to have exactly the same concept in their mind for words as long as they understand that other people may be using them slightly differently. I used to try to point out that we meant the same thing but were expressing the ideas differently, which is sometimes true, but sometimes probably just a subtle attempt at manipulation.
What reason do you have to believe that all efforts will fail? A computer powerful enough to simulate all the cells in a brain would presumably be able to do everything a brain can do? Brains are like blank slates then take 25 years of training before they are regarded as fit for specialised jobs - a computer that was capable of forming semantic links and organising them properly would be able to give the illusion of understanding, and in fact can do a passable job in limited domains (thinking about for example medical 'knowledge base' type systems which take symptoms and work out possible causes). It is beyond our current understanding to build a proper thinking computer, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't work towards it. If we did it properly then we really would be able to build computers that could work out logical and more objective conclusions for problems (given enough factual input data to allow it to make unbiased 'decisions').
Unless you want to say that there is some mystical element to brains, there is nothing precluding the eventual design and building of 'sentient' computers, surely? Beyond our own fear of what would happen if we did such a thing, as evidenced by plenty of 20th century fiction. Building sentient computers could even be regarded as a type of evolution, as they would then be able to improve upon themselves at an exponential rate..
Considering computers can't even truly understand the meaning behind stuff like 'do you want fries with that?' (sure you could program a computer to ask that and give the appropriate response.. in fact no understanding is required at all to work in a fast food store, but that's beside the point:p ), I don't think you need to worry so much about limiting their consciousness just yet.
What about 68k support? I remember playing 'Vette!' as a kid and thinking how great it was (had a level of detail that you rarely get today, even with GTA you can't go to a gas station to fill up your tank yet). I've got an Intel Mac now and downloaded a whole bunch of old ROMs that I have fond memories of, but Hellcats and Vette! don't work.
Well, it was a pretty awesome machine, and I've considered replacing the PSU on it a few times just to use it for gaming again, but if I ever get back into serious PC gaming I might as well get something with PCIe. I like not having to boot into Windows at home though, games and video calling were the two things tying me to Windows before. Skype didn't have video capability on Linux when I last tried it, though I have an Intel Mac now which does, though I'm no longer in a long distance relationship so I don't actually care anymore! So now it's just down to the gaming, and with my PS3 able to drive my HDTV quite nicely, it should be at least a couple of years before I feel the need for a more powerful beast..
Basically I'd still be happy with Windows 98, it did everything I needed, worked with my wireless card (obviously just using the app that came with the card) - I honestly can't think of anything I do these days that I couldn't also do on that machine. XP is more stable and able to recover better from application crashes though - you can continue using it for a lot longer without rebooting.
Yep, if paypal can't get the exact 2 pennies that it put into your account, they won't be taking any pennies! They probably write on them with a marker pen first before taking them along to the bank.
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Fair enough about simulating biological brains then, but I still don't think guys who are working towards what would be regarded as a 'thinking' machine are necessarily unethical people. There is generally more than one way to do any one task, so even if computers end up using a completely different methodology to a biological system, it's not so far fetched to think that someone could build a machine that would be capable of passing the turing test in the next century or two. Just having a conversation is only a small part of what a brain can do, but we already have computers that can walk, manipulate objects in a 3D environment and so on. A lot of AI has turned out to be more difficult than people thought it would be at the middle of last century, but I don't think it is futile to keep chipping away at it, it's sometimes the only way to make progress. If you'd rather the money was spent for other types of research then I understand, but personally I think that AI is a very interesting and beneficial field of study (I was going to do AI for my honours year at University, though I ended up just not even doing my final year project out of general depression and apathy from other areas of my life, though I still find the whole field of AI to be fairly interesting). We already have pretty good spelling and grammar checkers, and handwriting/voice recognition is steadily improving over the years. Decent voice recognition especially could be good for helping otherwised disabled people (or simply as an extra control mechanism for anything where you are already using all your limbs, like in a car). As someone who has spent a bit of time just thinking how to recreate human behaviour in computer games, and recently was just doing a basic bit of language parsing to make a more friendly query interface for one of my applications, I'm pretty sure I understand the challenges that AI researchers face, and I can definitely see the benefits of more research into computers that have human-like reasoning abilities and so on.
:p ). When you think about it, it doesn't matter what process is actually being used behind the scenes, as long as the outputs appear to be 'intelligent'.
It was funny to see comments from people who had used my bots in Counter-Strike, attributing behaviour to them that I knew for sure was just a coincidence rather than an ability that I had coded (was a particular form of teamwork - eventually I did work quite a lot of 'teamwork' stuff in there - I had called the bot TEAMbot after all - but at the time that the person had made the comment, it was all in their imagination
As long as they are just walking, running and climbing then it doesn't matter too much. When they start coming back from the future and ripping your heart out with their bare hands, then you need to be worried.
Current tyre technology works fine at speeds upward of 150mph (depending on the tyre you buy, they are all rated differently and proper racing tyres need to be 'warmed up' before they grip properly), it's just the drivers that are the issue. It could improve safety slightly, but it would hardly be 'phenomenal' considering that most accidents are due to the drivers rather than the cars. There will always be idiots trying to push a vehicle beyond what it can actually do (that's fine on a racetrack, not so much on a public road). Aside from that, speeding tickets are also a nice steady stream of income for certain governments.
Not if he has his own super nano-bots protecting him! He'll just start giggling uncontrollably as the tickly little wars go on all over and inside his body
Never mind the construction purposes, I want a car that I can park on the side of my office building!
Well, it's maybe better to assume that other people are idiots who understand cars better than computers ;) Actually, I probably would have a much better chance of designing a working car than a working computer.. a combustion engine is a lot simpler than a memory management unit.
Oh yeah I forgot about that, the changing network addresses without a reboot has been very convenient for me recently while working on a project on a different subnet.
Ah, so babies can talk, do advanced calculus calculations and drive a car right out of the box can they? We have some basic survival instincts, but a baby left to its own devices will end up as little more than a fairly bright animal.. no language, not much tool usage.. a lot of our abilities are learned rather than built-in.
Fair point. I think in that case, ask the computer *how*, but don't give it any guns or giant mechanised tanks ;) And it would probably be better to examine the crime rates, taxes, police, health and education spending etc and let the computer examine variations of those, rather than use capital punishment (though that could be a valid method too if it's shown to work well as a deterrent.. :s I don't think it does work well as a deterrent though, does it?)
I grew up in my basement, you insensitive clod!
Surely quantum effects can be simulated? It's been a while since I read anything about quantum mechanics, I can't remember anything that precluded the idea of simulating a quantum system, just that reading a quantum state would end up changing the actual state. So you would probably be able to scan at least small parts of a brain, but in the process you may screw them up. Even if a quantum system can't be accurately built in software, we have built quantum computers, so we could run parts of the simulations in hardware.
Simulating an entire brain is almost useless anyway, as it doesn't serve much purpose. Especially since our brains are so error prone and easily fooled. But understanding the principles of how we learn, store, process and recall knowledge is all useful for building machines that can do what we already do, but much faster and more objectively.
Yeah she got the prize for best grades in her tri-state area apparently, she must have had to think a coupla times in her life.
I 'dated' her online for 1.5 years before we ever met, does that make it more geeky? :P I managed to fuck up all my human connections pretty badly in the last year or two, so there's hope for me yet! Exes actually just refers to two, the last of which I ended pretty quickly when I saw how crazy interested in shallow stuff like shopping and external appearance, rather than anything meaningful. I think my standards may be a bit too high >.>
I had a Quadro lying under my bed for the last few years, though I think I threw it out, would have been an easy method of trying to play Vette had I thought of it (the idea didn't occur to me that I could find really old games on the net back when I used it a bit more regularly) *facepalm* Well, I've had several Macs (from the Classic up until my current Macbook Pro), most of which died or were thrown away, though one was given away. I wouldn't feel guilty about downloading some old ROMs and OS CDs anyway :)
You know what I meant. Sure there are inbuilt instincts and stuff, but as far as stuff like language is concerned, a lot of that is imprinted at certain ages rather than hardwired - any baby can learn any human language.
You could always copy the state of a human brain in its developed state and simulate from that (if you had advanced enough scanners), though that raises even more ethical issues IMO.
I wasn't suggesting that a sentient computer *has* to be built by simulating a brain either. I don't see why ethics gets in the way of continuing to try to understand 'intelligence'. You can work out how a brain works with fMRI, psychological studies and such. As long as you understand the principals involved then you can approximate them in an algorithm, just as we can already simulate and calculate (not always successfully of course) what is necessary for landing ships on Mars, or calculate fluid flow around a body. Those things are much simpler than understanding the brain, but if we continue to work on duplicating the separate functions of the brain, then one day we'll be able to put everything together and have something that appears to 'think'. In fact, AIBOs already managed to make great pets for people in the past as they do some pretty 'clever' things and can be somewhat anthropomorphised in people's minds.
Depends on your definitions really ;) I had a heated debate with one of my exes about the semantics of stuff like this before. Was rather stupid in hindsight, people shouldn't necessarily have to have exactly the same concept in their mind for words as long as they understand that other people may be using them slightly differently. I used to try to point out that we meant the same thing but were expressing the ideas differently, which is sometimes true, but sometimes probably just a subtle attempt at manipulation.
What reason do you have to believe that all efforts will fail? A computer powerful enough to simulate all the cells in a brain would presumably be able to do everything a brain can do? Brains are like blank slates then take 25 years of training before they are regarded as fit for specialised jobs - a computer that was capable of forming semantic links and organising them properly would be able to give the illusion of understanding, and in fact can do a passable job in limited domains (thinking about for example medical 'knowledge base' type systems which take symptoms and work out possible causes). It is beyond our current understanding to build a proper thinking computer, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't work towards it. If we did it properly then we really would be able to build computers that could work out logical and more objective conclusions for problems (given enough factual input data to allow it to make unbiased 'decisions').
Unless you want to say that there is some mystical element to brains, there is nothing precluding the eventual design and building of 'sentient' computers, surely? Beyond our own fear of what would happen if we did such a thing, as evidenced by plenty of 20th century fiction. Building sentient computers could even be regarded as a type of evolution, as they would then be able to improve upon themselves at an exponential rate..
Quick - someone send me back so I can bang AC's mom!
Considering computers can't even truly understand the meaning behind stuff like 'do you want fries with that?' (sure you could program a computer to ask that and give the appropriate response.. in fact no understanding is required at all to work in a fast food store, but that's beside the point :p ), I don't think you need to worry so much about limiting their consciousness just yet.
When you're writing a new operating system.. yes!
What about 68k support? I remember playing 'Vette!' as a kid and thinking how great it was (had a level of detail that you rarely get today, even with GTA you can't go to a gas station to fill up your tank yet). I've got an Intel Mac now and downloaded a whole bunch of old ROMs that I have fond memories of, but Hellcats and Vette! don't work.
Well, it was a pretty awesome machine, and I've considered replacing the PSU on it a few times just to use it for gaming again, but if I ever get back into serious PC gaming I might as well get something with PCIe. I like not having to boot into Windows at home though, games and video calling were the two things tying me to Windows before. Skype didn't have video capability on Linux when I last tried it, though I have an Intel Mac now which does, though I'm no longer in a long distance relationship so I don't actually care anymore! So now it's just down to the gaming, and with my PS3 able to drive my HDTV quite nicely, it should be at least a couple of years before I feel the need for a more powerful beast..
Basically I'd still be happy with Windows 98, it did everything I needed, worked with my wireless card (obviously just using the app that came with the card) - I honestly can't think of anything I do these days that I couldn't also do on that machine. XP is more stable and able to recover better from application crashes though - you can continue using it for a lot longer without rebooting.
Yep, if paypal can't get the exact 2 pennies that it put into your account, they won't be taking any pennies! They probably write on them with a marker pen first before taking them along to the bank.
You could try writing your shopping list on a 2 by 4 and get someone to smack you about a bit with it?