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Zeked
Skeptic Friend
USA
90 Posts |
Posted - 09/15/2008 : 16:24:28 [Permalink]
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It won't be many years now before adding a little chaos to a neural net will give it consciousness, creativity and insight beyond our own. It won't be long after that our rulers, markets and our industries will depend on AI over their own limited judgment. In some ways we are already there.
The singularity needs no protection, it needs restraint. How we protect our laws, liberties and freedoms today affects our future, with or without AI and nanobots. It is not inevitable doom like De garis and Kurzweil advocate in their blogs and books. We have the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Maybe we should make these documents mean something again before we feel our rulers are infallible. |
| Edited by - Zeked on 09/15/2008 16:31:02 |
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Ricky
SFN Die Hard
USA
4907 Posts |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
 Posted - 09/15/2008 : 16:44:02 [Permalink]
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Zeked said:
| It won't be many years now before adding a little chaos to a neural net will give it consciousness, |
I'm more convinced that consciousness is a result of computation. Subcognitave computational processes add up, perform enough of them fast enough, and you get cognition. Douglas Hofstadter is a proponent of this idea.
Subcognition as computation.... written in 1982. (link to .pdf of the article.)
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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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Zeked
Skeptic Friend
USA
90 Posts |
Posted - 09/15/2008 : 16:49:15 [Permalink]
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The stock market is traded and analyzed by many-many advanced AI algorithms. What is interesting is the advanced measures to look at AI trading weaknesses and come up with AI countermeasures to exploit them, and counter-countermeasures etc... Day trading aint what it used to be.
Industry is a heavy user of AI. Much is in user interfaces, search engines, and CAD. With all the money flowing towards security, AI is really getting into threat analysis, behavior modeling and pattern analysis.
Government, mostly defense, has really pushed AI. All the e-mails, phone conversations, bank transactions and god only knows what else - this is all been a boom for AI analysis. Not any wonder the NSA has the biggest and bestest computer systems. And how much do you want to bet the NSA has a three bit quantum computing system already? Back in reality, BAE has heavily invested in future AI systems for defense contracts. |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 09/15/2008 : 16:52:25 [Permalink]
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Zeked said:
| And how much do you want to bet the NSA has a three bit quantum computing system already? |
How much you got?
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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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Zeked
Skeptic Friend
USA
90 Posts |
Posted - 09/15/2008 : 16:54:03 [Permalink]
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Dude
| I'm more convinced that consciousness is a result of computation. Subcognitave computational processes add up, perform enough of them fast enough, and you get cognition. |
I've not read him. Looks interesting. Thanks!
I think it might be more than the sum of computations - the massive sensory input is critical to making one self aware as well, IMO.
He might state that. So I should shut up and read. |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 09/15/2008 : 17:00:43 [Permalink]
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Zeked said:
I think it might be more than the sum of computations - the massive sensory input is critical to making one self aware as well, IMO.
He might state that. So I should shut up and read. |
Yeah. He thinks that the computations are performed on sensory input. It takes 1/10th of a second to recognize a face. He calls that delay "subcognition". The hypothesis is that there are computational layers, each one dealing with more complex symbols (the base layer would be something like binary, then on up to something like the Deep Blue chess program running on the upper layer). So cognition is an emergent property of successively complex layers of computation.
Its a neat idea.
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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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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26021 Posts |
Posted - 09/15/2008 : 17:35:11 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Siberia
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. |
Yes, it is. So much so that a single neuron doesn't "understand" anything, but a conglomeration of them does "understand" things. So where does "understanding" (of anything) reside in the brain?
If we feed a sheet of calculus problems into a slot in a black box, and some time later a sheet of correct answers comes out of the slot, then who can say that whatever is inside the box doesn't "understand" calculus? |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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Ricky
SFN Die Hard
USA
4907 Posts |
Posted - 09/15/2008 : 17:47:17 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Zeked
The stock market is traded and analyzed by many-many advanced AI algorithms. What is interesting is the advanced measures to look at AI trading weaknesses and come up with AI countermeasures to exploit them, and counter-countermeasures etc... Day trading aint what it used to be. |
Forgive my ignorance, but I am not aware of exactly what AI takes place with regards to the stock market. What I've heard of thus far is simple conditionals such as "If A happens, do B". Can you please go more into detail behind what AI occurs here?
| Industry is a heavy user of AI. Much is in user interfaces, search engines, and CAD. With all the money flowing towards security, AI is really getting into threat analysis, behavior modeling and pattern analysis. |
User interfaces? You're considering that AI? For example, the user interface of the Windows? Again, by just saying "user interfaces", you aren't giving any example of AI.
Search engines, for example google, rely heavily on human input and text searches rather than AI. The input, again for google, is based on what pages are linked to each other. I'm not certain, but it would be a good idea to monitor what pages people visit which their search terms, but I don't know if it actually is.
How is CAD AI? It uses algorithms to "do things", certainly, but this is all based off of user input.
Government, mostly defense, has really pushed AI. All the e-mails, phone conversations, bank transactions and god only knows what else - this is all been a boom for AI analysis. Not any wonder the NSA has the biggest and bestest computer systems. And how much do you want to bet the NSA has a three bit quantum computing system already? Back in reality, BAE has heavily invested in future AI systems for defense contracts.
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I would imagine the NSA uses the computers for computation algebraic systems, primality testing, integer factorizations, and other algebraic coding techniques that I have only begun to learn.
You seem to be calling any computer program AI... |
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 |
| Edited by - Ricky on 09/15/2008 18:16:15 |
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Ricky
SFN Die Hard
USA
4907 Posts |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26021 Posts |
Posted - 09/15/2008 : 18:27:16 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Ricky
If you ask that black box a question that you didn't specifically program it for, it won't be able to answer you. |
I have no idea what's inside the black box. If it happens to be a first-semester calculus student, and you feed it a much more advanced problem, then of course it won't answer correctly.
But what if inside is an English major with millions of pages of instructions on symbol manipulation (never mentioning the word "calculus") written by a PhD calculus professor? Even if the correct answers come out of the box, the English major still doesn't understand calculus.
The point, of course, is that what "understanding" means isn't really clear. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 09/15/2008 : 18:27:22 [Permalink]
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Ricky, AI is a pretty broadly used term. Often it is used to mean any system that can perform a task. Automated systems, like a robotic assembly line, are considered a type of AI.
Computers like Deep Blue (the chess program), and the market analysis tools, are at the other end of our current AI.
Obviously we don't have anything that comes close to a Turing level artificial intelligence.
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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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Ricky
SFN Die Hard
USA
4907 Posts |
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Zeked
Skeptic Friend
USA
90 Posts |
Posted - 09/15/2008 : 20:38:44 [Permalink]
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Well it seems we need to define terms.
What is AI?
Intelligence is the degree to which a system approximates a knowledge-level system. Perfect intelligence is defined as the ability to bring all the knowledge a system has at its disposal to bear in the solution of a problem (which is synonymous with goal achievement). This may be distinguished from ignorance, a lack of knowledge about a given problem space.
Artificial Intelligence is simply the application of artificial or non-naturally occurring systems that use the knowledge-level to achieve goals.
So the bar for achieving AI is really much lower than one might expect.
Some AI is just fun to play with, such as ALICE. http://alice.pandorabots.com/
I once used an ALICE derivative with speech recognition/synth on a PC running standard XP to demonstrate AI for a classroom. It was made more entertaining by placing small family radio walkie talkies between the computer and a Robosapien robot so the children would appear to communicate with the robot toy. It gave the impression of intelligence and remembered all their answers and could choose from a database to direct relevant questions based on new knowledge. AIML is limited, but far from worthless. http://alicebot.blogspot.com/
A significant step up from this database query type system, http://www.imagination-engines.com/ This uses neural networks, either hardware or simulated in software, to achieve useful cognition that is adaptive and self teaching. This type of AI is what I think is the most powerful. This is what I was referring to, “adding a little chaos to a neural net will give it consciousness…” etc. This is the real deal.
Hugo de Garis, a.k.a. brainmaker http://iss.whu.edu.cn/degaris/ Instead of building smaller functional blocks is going for broke to simulate the whole shebang – the brain. Almost 10 years ago he threw the switch on his first FPGA "brain" and he has since not been sitting idle. de Garis does seem a bit gloomy in his predictions.
What is important to me as we step closer to the singularity is the protection of personal rights. That includes property rights, (keep your nanobots out). Our rights and freedoms have been eroded – and this was done by a clearly fallible government. All the moral and ethical issues of the singularity are more dire when it arises in a system of government that is not restrained, where personal freedom and liberty are restrictively issued.
I get the impression I am in a minority, on protecting personal rights over the benefit of the majority. |
| Edited by - Zeked on 09/15/2008 21:05:41 |
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astropin
SFN Regular
USA
970 Posts |
Posted - 09/15/2008 : 20:51:22 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Ricky
If you ask that black box a question that you didn't specifically program it for, it won't be able to answer you.
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So far.....that will change, and I think it will change sooner than most realize. You seem to be putting brains in some sort of "special" category. We will develop AI systems that will blow our punny brains out of the water....in every way possible.
Our brains are extremely intricate...but certainly not impossible to duplicate and then surpass using non biological technologies.
You think Kurzweil has underestimated what it takes to match a human brain....why? I think he has it pegged and his chess prediction is one (one of many) indicator that he has a grasp on the computing power of the brain. |
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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Is the Technological Singularity coming?
