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astropin
SFN Regular
USA
970 Posts |
 Posted - 09/15/2008 : 11:27:06
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http://singinst.org/overview/whatisthesingularity
I find Kerzweil to be a fascinating character. There is little question about his genius, but many of his ideas come off sounding rather "woo woo". The guy is obsessed with immortality....or at least extreme longevity. Can't say I argue...I'm all for extreme longevity...I picture aging as a disease....therefore there's a cure out there somewhere. Nanotech looks like the best bet. Of course that which can cure you can often kill you even quicker.
Will "Drexler's" nonobots become a reality?
If so, will they appear as quickly as Kerzweil predicts? (roughly 2030's)
Will human level AI become a reality?
If so, will it happen as quickly as Kerzweil predicts? (roughly 2020's)
If so, will AI that FAR SURPASSES human levels happen by 2040?
If so.....then what happens?
For me.....I hope yes. I don't see where it isn't possible. I do see where it could result in our destruction as easily as to our benefit. But that fact alone will not prevent it from happening. I don't think you can stop technological progress. You can attempt to prepare for it.
If true it's coming and coming very fast....faster than most people would be ready for. That could be a major problem.
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I would rather face a cold reality than delude myself with comforting fantasies.
You are free to believe what you want to believe and I am free to ridicule you for it.
Atheism:
The result of an unbiased and rational search for the truth.
Infinitus est numerus stultorum |
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Ricky
SFN Die Hard
USA
4907 Posts |
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Simon
SFN Regular
USA
1992 Posts |
Posted - 09/15/2008 : 12:33:33 [Permalink]
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I have heard of the concept; but I am a bit suspicious.
One of the thing is Moore's law: 'processing power doubles every two years' that is almost always quoted.
First of all; it's not really a law, more like an observation. The fact that it, roughly, happened in the past is not an indication that is will necessarily happens over the next decades.
Second: especially as, because we'd need smaller and smaller processors, we are going to run into problem as the quantum mechanic are becoming relevant.
Also, how do you define intelligence?
Computers are already 'smarter than human' in many respects.
The article touch on that, mentioning that we need 'smarter computers'. Ok... and how?
The article offers no answer.
I guess, it is possible. I do not see any absolute impossibility[1] but I would not expect it so soon.
As to how and when it will happen. Well, live and learn... but that could be a really exciting time.
Also: because Kimiko is the cutest!.
[1] Excepte for the rapture, of course, that should be any minutes now. In fact, probably nobody will ever read this post. So there, why I am even bothering (start making fart noise with his armpits). |
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
Carl Sagan - 1996 |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26020 Posts |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
 Posted - 09/15/2008 : 12:51:57 [Permalink]
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Predicting the future is dicey business. Kurzweil has made some reasonbly accurate predictions in the past though.
He is, I think, on to something with his observation of the rate of increase in the speed of knowledge acumulation and technological advance. The specifics though? I dunno. AI is , as Ricky points out, a hard problem. |
Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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astropin
SFN Regular
USA
970 Posts |
Posted - 09/15/2008 : 13:15:58 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Ricky
I can pretty confidently say that there is no way AI can be developed by the 2020's. We're still stuck with the same problem as we were in 1970, and there has been relatively little progress on it. Computers can function well with a deep and narrow field, but when it comes to wide and shallow fields, they are clueless. Learning has become a bit more advanced, but not by nearly enough. Neural networks are becoming vastly more complex as the hardware gets better, but still far enough away from anything resembling intelligence.
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Since Kurzweil has already answered your question I will let him do it. Outtakes from http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?m=4:
I still run into people who claim that artificial intelligence withered in the 1980s, an argument that is comparable to insisting that the Internet died in the dot-com bust of the early 2000s.6 The bandwidth and price-performance of Internet technologies, the number of nodes (servers), and the dollar volume of e-commerce all accelerated smoothly through the boom as well as the bust and the period since. The same has been true for AI.
A rash of AI companies occurred in the 1970s, but when profits did not materialize there was an AI "bust" in the 1980s, which has become known as the "AI winter." Many observers still think that the AI winter was the end of the story and that nothing has since come of the AI field.
Yet today many thousands of AI applications are deeply embedded in the infrastructure of every industry.We are well into the era of "narrow AI," which refers to artificial intelligence that performs a useful and specific function that once required human intelligence to perform, and does so at human levels or better.
Every aspect of understanding, modeling, and simulating the human brain is accelerating: the price-performance and temporal and spatial resolution of brain scanning, the amount of data and knowledge available about brain function, and the sophistication of the models and simulations of the brain's varied regions.
we will have detailed models and simulations of all regions of the human brain by the late 2020s. Until recently, our tools for peering into the brain did not have the spatial and temporal resolution, bandwidth, or price-performance to produce adequate data to create sufficiently detailed models. This is now changing. The emerging generation of scanning and sensing tools can analyze and detect neurons and neural components with exquisite accuracy, while operating in real time.
Future tools will provide far greater resolution and capacity. By the 2020s, we will be able to send scanning and sensing nanobots into the capillaries of the brain to scan it from inside. |
I would rather face a cold reality than delude myself with comforting fantasies.
You are free to believe what you want to believe and I am free to ridicule you for it.
Atheism:
The result of an unbiased and rational search for the truth.
Infinitus est numerus stultorum |
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astropin
SFN Regular
USA
970 Posts |
Posted - 09/15/2008 : 13:28:32 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Simon
I have heard of the concept; but I am a bit suspicious.
One of the thing is Moore's law: 'processing power doubles every two years' that is almost always quoted.
First of all; it's not really a law, more like an observation. The fact that it, roughly, happened in the past is not an indication that is will necessarily happens over the next decades.
Second: especially as, because we'd need smaller and smaller processors, we are going to run into problem as the quantum mechanic are becoming relevant.
The Law of Accelerating Returns
by Ray Kurzweil
An analysis of the history of technology shows that technological change is exponential, contrary to the common-sense "intuitive linear" view. So we won't experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century -- it will be more like 20,000 years of progress (at today's rate). The "returns," such as chip speed and cost-effectiveness, also increase exponentially. There's even exponential growth in the rate of exponential growth. Within a few decades, machine intelligence will surpass human intelligence, leading to The Singularity -- technological change so rapid and profound it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history. The implications include the merger of biological and nonbiological intelligence, immortal software-based humans, and ultra-high levels of intelligence that expand outward in the universe at the speed of light.
Also, how do you define intelligence?
Computers are already 'smarter than human' in many respects.
The article touch on that, mentioning that we need 'smarter computers'. Ok... and how?
The article offers no answer.
Passing the "Turing test" is generally accepted. Of course by the time virtually everyone agrees that an A.I. has passed the test A.I. will probably have surpassed us.
I guess, it is possible. I do not see any absolute impossibility[1] but I would not expect it so soon.
I still see no glaring flaws in Kuraweil's reasoning....he may very well be wrong....but there is no pressing evidence against his theories.
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My responses in red |
I would rather face a cold reality than delude myself with comforting fantasies.
You are free to believe what you want to believe and I am free to ridicule you for it.
Atheism:
The result of an unbiased and rational search for the truth.
Infinitus est numerus stultorum |
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astropin
SFN Regular
USA
970 Posts |
Posted - 09/15/2008 : 13:34:42 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dude
Predicting the future is dicey business. Kurzweil has made some reasonbly accurate predictions in the past though.
He is, I think, on to something with his observation of the rate of increase in the speed of knowledge acumulation and technological advance. The specifics though? I dunno. AI is , as Ricky points out, a hard problem.
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Agreed...predicting the future is very dicey...most fail miserably. But I find his "Law of accelerating returns" very fascinating. So far it appears to be damn near spot on.
AI is a VERY difficult problem....possibly the last one we will need to solve (as biological humans anyway). But exponential technological growth is a freight train (if it holds). |
I would rather face a cold reality than delude myself with comforting fantasies.
You are free to believe what you want to believe and I am free to ridicule you for it.
Atheism:
The result of an unbiased and rational search for the truth.
Infinitus est numerus stultorum |
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Ricky
SFN Die Hard
USA
4907 Posts |
Posted - 09/15/2008 : 13:34:44 [Permalink]
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Since Kurzweil has already answered your question I will let him do it. |
If you truly believe that, either I am not making my point clear enough or you are not understanding what I am saying.
A rash of AI companies occurred in the 1970s, but when profits did not materialize there was an AI "bust" in the 1980s, which has become known as the "AI winter." Many observers still think that the AI winter was the end of the story and that nothing has since come of the AI field.
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That is precisely not what I said.
Yet today many thousands of AI applications are deeply embedded in the infrastructure of every industry.We are well into the era of "narrow AI," which refers to artificial intelligence that performs a useful and specific function that once required human intelligence to perform, and does so at human levels or better. |
I agree completely with Kurzweil here, and even used the same exact term. But to call this "intelligence" is misleading. A human can do single variable calculus all day long without understanding what the symbols mean. It would just be at that point symbol manipulation and nothing more. This is exactly what a computer does. But on the other hand, a human understands what a derivative means, what it represents. Calculus isn't just symbol manipulation and in that sense, computers can't do calculus.
we will have detailed models and simulations of all regions of the human brain by the late 2020s. Until recently, our tools for peering into the brain did not have the spatial and temporal resolution, bandwidth, or price-performance to produce adequate data to create sufficiently detailed models. This is now changing. The emerging generation of scanning and sensing tools can analyze and detect neurons and neural components with exquisite accuracy, while operating in real time.
Future tools will provide far greater resolution and capacity. By the 2020s, we will be able to send scanning and sensing nanobots into the capillaries of the brain to scan it from inside. |
I find this prediction to be rather unfounded and unconvincing. There is also no evidence to suggest that even if we do have detailed models of and simulations of the brain that this will have any positive influence on the field of AI. I'm not saying that's what we shouldn't be focusing on, but there is a huge chasm between model of the brain and a working AI.
And of course there is the date discrepancy. First he predicts nanobots by 2030's and now 2020's? |
Why continue? Because we must. Because we have the call. Because it is nobler to fight for rationality without winning than to give up in the face of continued defeats. Because whatever true progress humanity makes is through the rationality of the occasional individual and because any one individual we may win for the cause may do more for humanity than a hundred thousand who hug their superstitions to their breast.
- Isaac Asimov |
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astropin
SFN Regular
USA
970 Posts |
Posted - 09/15/2008 : 13:38:34 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Ricky
[quote]
And of course there is the date discrepancy. First he predicts nanobots by 2030's and now 2020's?
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Sorry....the date discrepancy is probably mine....I was working from memory on those.
You don't think having detailed models of the brain would influence A.I.? |
I would rather face a cold reality than delude myself with comforting fantasies.
You are free to believe what you want to believe and I am free to ridicule you for it.
Atheism:
The result of an unbiased and rational search for the truth.
Infinitus est numerus stultorum |
| Edited by - astropin on 09/15/2008 13:39:50 |
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astropin
SFN Regular
USA
970 Posts |
Posted - 09/15/2008 : 13:45:58 [Permalink]
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| Also....I'm not some fanatical Kurzweil lover. I just find his theories very compelling and have not seen a rock solid argument against them. He could be wrong....but even if he is I think it's more a matter of time (which he lays out in detail) than execution. Nanobots & AI are coming; unless we destroy ourselves first (IMHO). |
I would rather face a cold reality than delude myself with comforting fantasies.
You are free to believe what you want to believe and I am free to ridicule you for it.
Atheism:
The result of an unbiased and rational search for the truth.
Infinitus est numerus stultorum |
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Simon
SFN Regular
USA
1992 Posts |
Posted - 09/15/2008 : 14:21:38 [Permalink]
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If am iffy on the law of accelerating returns myself.
I mean, for the longest time, progress was so slow that a logarithmic progression would not have been too different from a linear one. Not to mention, periods like the fall of the Roman Empire when the technological levels actually went down in most of the world.
It has mostly been for a short time (at the scale involved) that this model seems to fit better, and such a time has been too short to really extrapolate it as being a law.
The US in the last 20 years, for example, have experienced what seems like a decrease in scientific literacy of its population as well as a decrease of science standing.
I am not necessarily disagreeing, once again, just seeing that I am reserving my judgement for the moment. |
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
Carl Sagan - 1996 |
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Siberia
SFN Addict
Brazil
2322 Posts |
Posted - 09/15/2008 : 15:04:27 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Ricky
I agree completely with Kurzweil here, and even used the same exact term. But to call this "intelligence" is misleading. A human can do single variable calculus all day long without understanding what the symbols mean. It would just be at that point symbol manipulation and nothing more. This is exactly what a computer does. But on the other hand, a human understands what a derivative means, what it represents. Calculus isn't just symbol manipulation and in that sense, computers can't do calculus.
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That's pretty much it, isn't it? Personally, I would consider a computer intelligent when it is capable of understanding what it is doing... and that in itself is a very abstract concept. While we are advancing towards the notion of computers that can "learn" and associate and, to some degree, understand the meaning of things, methinks it'll be more than twelve years until we get to "human" level. We are, after all, in 2008.
Possible? Most likely yes. This quick? I don't think so. |
"Why are you afraid of something you're not even sure exists?"
- The Kovenant, Via Negativa
"People who don't like their beliefs being laughed at shouldn't have such funny beliefs."
-- unknown
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 09/15/2008 : 15:08:23 [Permalink]
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Simon said:
The US in the last 20 years, for example, have experienced what seems like a decrease in scientific literacy of its population as well as a decrease of science standing.
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Which, oddly(/sarcasm), has nothing to do with the observed rate of technological advance.
While the time period may be too short to infer a "law", the hypothesis seems to fit the date for this time period fairly well.
It's like Moore's "law". While it probably shouldn't properly be called a law, the observed trend fits the predicted trend...so far.
Kurzweil has a fair track record, he doesn't claim absolute certainty in his predictions, and his reasoning (within the context) is sound. He is a credible person and it is impossible to dismiss him out of hand. He predicted, in 1990, that a computer would beat the best humans at chess by 1998. Deep Blue beat Kasparov in 1997.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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Simon
SFN Regular
USA
1992 Posts |
Posted - 09/15/2008 : 15:17:41 [Permalink]
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I am not dismissing him by any stretch. Just stating my lack of conviction either way.
Indeed, the trend I spoke of has not affected the rate of innovation but I am not sure if it will last. Already, the number of researcher and graduate students that have to be 'imported' in the US has greatly increased in the last decades.
I am not confident about inferring anything about it but the trend seems real.
I am just not sure.
If the war lasts 100 years, if the price of oil keeps going up, research's funding might suffer a lot. |
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
Carl Sagan - 1996 |
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Ricky
SFN Die Hard
USA
4907 Posts |
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Is the Technological Singularity coming?
