The Technological Singularity and super intelligence revolution

[DGuller]

  Seriously?  You don't know what binary code is?  People can read it.  It's just not optimal for people. 

You are really hung up on scale.

[Razgovory]

some humans are capable of doing things other humans simply can't do. let's use tesla as an example. if we built teslabot, and teslabot was sentient, then teslabot could run through every single possible thought and idea in a much more efficient way than any human could possibly do. within this mass of thoughts and ideas, there's very likely some brilliant answer that humans haven't been able to reach (due to old age, real world concerns, some personal defect, etc.). through this answer, which is currently/contemporaneously unavailable to humans, teslabot uses it to solve some riddle we don't yet know exists. through this, I can see a situation where a robot eventually upgrades itself to being *actually* smarter than humans

it's not about whether the creator can create a machine that's smarter than the creator. it's whether there are things that currently exist that the creator doesn't know exist, things a machine could figure out

Presumably you wouldn't need a genius, you could just use Siege or Berkut or something.  The question is not can it think faster, the to that is answer is yes, but can it think thoughts that can't be thought by people.  Because we can't think thoughts that are beyond human comprehension it's hard to describe them.  If we made an artificial mouse brain that was much, much faster and could hold much, much more information then an ordinary mouse brain would the mouse be able to build a nuclear reactor?  No.  It's still a mouse brain.

I think what's confusing you guys, (and the fundamental mistake of magic computer proponents),is that intelligence isn't expressible as a number or a line on a graph.  Instead of intelligence think of horse power.  Let's say that a horse has one horsepower.  A wagon with 10 horses has 10 horsepower, a car has 100 horsepower, a submarine 1000, a jet 10,000, a ship 100,000 and space ship 1 million (I pulled these numbers out of my ass I have no idea how much horsepower each one has).  You can't get a 1,000 horses and expect to have a submarine.  They operate in a completely different way, use different principles and do different things.  It doesn't matter how many horses you put together, they won't act like a submarine.  The number of horses are differences of degree, the difference between a horse-drawn cart and a submarine is a difference of kind.

[Razgovory]

  Seriously?  You don't know what binary code is?  People can read it.  It's just not optimal for people. 

You are really hung up on scale.

You were the one who said you couldn't comperhend what the series of 1 and 0s mean.  How should I have read that?

[DGuller]

How should I have read that?

With much less smartass.

[Razgovory]

That wasn't smartass.  That was me being baffled.

[DGuller]

The point I was making is that just because you know the letters doesn't mean you can read the language.

[Razgovory]

That's a poor example since people can do that.

[DGuller]

I think I've tolerated your obstinate foolishness in this thread for far longer than most reasonable people would.  But all things come to an end.

[LaCroix]

raz, we can't know whether it's possible for mankind to ever have a thought (with enough knowledge, time, and luck) that could lead to the next great leap forward in machines (or nanohumans, I guess). it could be possible, though, just as it could be impossible. going to your 1,000 -> 10,000 analogy, we already sort of figured out how to reach 10,000 even though humanity is limited to 1,000. look at things like LHC and super computers. we take the data generated by these super machines and, with our thoughts, expand our knowledge of the universe. something similar could happen to reach singularity or whatever sci fi concept.

[Razgovory]

You are missing the point, Mr Cross.  It's not can man make a big leap in computers, certainly he can.  People have already done that.  The question is can make a machine built and programmed by people make a leap that human being don't even know exists.  The answer is no.  It's like Chimps building a tool to read books to them.  Not only can they not build it, they don't know it's possible since the idea of reading is forever beyond them.

[LaCroix]

You are missing the point, Mr Cross.  It's not can man make a big leap in computers, certainly he can.  People have already done that.  The question is can make a machine built and programmed by people make a leap that human being don't even know exists.  The answer is no.  It's like Chimps building a tool to read books to them.  Not only can they not build it, they don't know it's possible since the idea of reading is forever beyond them.

I thought in our hypothetical humans created AI -- machines had human-like minds

[Berkut]

I find it kind of weird to argue that humans cannot do what biology has already done without humans.

It is some kind of weird, "Watchmaker" kind of argument...

[grumbler]

I find it kind of weird to argue that humans cannot do what biology has already done without humans.

It is some kind of weird, "Watchmaker" kind of argument...

Prehumans cannot create humans, because humans could think thoughts that were beyond the capability of the prehumans.  I guess only Binky can create humans.

[Iormlund]

if we could inject sentience into computers, and we add in dguller's 500,000 analogy, then I think computers could eventually upgrade themselves

You don't need sentience to upgrade yourself. Mosquitoes became fairly proficient bloodsuckers without it. Life all over Earth is on a constant upgrade path and only a few species understand the concept of sentience.

[frunk]

I think it's a mistake to assume that machines will be limited to what humans can imagine.  First off, what humans can imagine changes over time, and isn't some constant against which anything can be calibrated.  Second, machines already have gone beyond what the humans that created it imagined.  There are genetic algorithms and neural nets that have achieved results that weren't anticipated ahead of time.