Elon Musk: Artificial intelligence = "summoning the demon"

[slimmouse]

^^^^^^^^^^^

Or maybe, "This is James Randi. Can I have my million?"

[justdrew]

^^^^^^^^^^^

Or maybe, "This is James Randi. Can I have my million?"

but the worrisome thing is, the next statement might be... "ok, now you all need to start building a few more hundred billion of these brains, it's terrible over here"

(although I suspect that wouldn't be the case in actuality)

[DrEvil]

Dr Evil said:

Not 'think' in the human sense, but 'think' as in loading a pornographic image into memory every 7 seconds and doing some light processing on it.
And thinking is basically information processing, isn't it?

I'm not a fan of comparing the inner workings of consciousness to the current technological level. The Victorians convinced themselves that humans were basically steam engines etc. It's (possibly unintentially) dehumanising and a bit fanatical in my opinion.

Does thinking include 'imagination' in your lexicon, or is that another phenomenon entirely?
I don't see thinking, or especially 'imagination' as basically processing information at all. In fact, comparing 'thinking' to 0's & 1's running through non-living matter (no matter how many functions it can perform per second) and calling it AI is fantasy, afaic.

I'd say thinking and imagination are at least closely related. Imagination is a more free-form, associative type of "standard" thinking. It's years ago since the first patent was awarded to a machine (a specialized antenna for NASA if I remember correctly).

And yeah, obviously we're not steam machines or classical computers. I would be surprised if our brains don't use quantum mechanics in some way for instance, simply because I don't think evolution makes any kind of distinction between classical and quantum physics. If it's useful it gets used, and there's already plenty of research showing that plants and animals use quantum mechanics in various ways (plants for photosynthesis, birds for navigation etc.).

Bottom line - do I think we will have conscious machines any time soon? No. Do I think it's theoretically possible? Yes.
Or to put it this way - I don't think Kurzweil will be around to see the Singularity.

[zangtang]

forgive my entry-level attempt at contribution :

slightly surprised that no-one has cross-referred this to the supposedly valid mathmatico-philosiphical supposition (scratch that ; proposition) that we are all actually (as in, really really)
WITHIN some higher civilisations/programmers wankdream/nitemare of a computer simulation.....

if that was/is actually (as in, really,really) the case....(which i've never entertained seriously, but great hash pipe conflation)

then us creating an artifiicial intelligence is going to require a word for .......meta mata.....higher level of abstraction

anybody fancy trying to write a filmscript?................which wecould then characterize as an emergency call subroutine.....

why cant cosmologists admit that they're looking for proof of God?

there could be a possibility that a true artificial intelligence would also be a summation of human yearning/striving seeking and would unknowingly lay down a roadmap
for us to follow our collectively suspected but perennially suppressed righteous path.....................you know, doing it right

but then a true intelligence is not going to ignore our subconscious is it?

which means you're all dead and i'm surrounded by great legs and firm tits

game over.

[jingofever]

slightly surprised that no-one has cross-referred this to the supposedly valid mathmatico-philosiphical supposition (scratch that ; proposition) that we are all actually (as in, really really)
WITHIN some higher civilisations/programmers wankdream/nitemare of a computer simulation.....

The way I see it, if AI, and I mean artificial consciousness, not computer vision or language processing (not "understanding") and other computational and tractable problems that involve information processing, is possible then it is the same as a simulation. But any simulation that is compressing the real world into some coding scheme is not actually what it is simulating, it is merely a lot of symbols that a conscious entity interprets as the thing that is being simulated. To get an "actual" simulation, that is, real consciousness, would require "drawing up a very detailed map", paraphrasing Baudrillard. The full relevant quote:

If once we were able to view the Borges fable in which the cartographers of the Empire draw up a map so detailed that it ends up covering the territory exactly (the decline of the Empire witnesses the fraying of this map, little by little, and its fall into ruins, though some shreds are still discernible in the deserts - the metaphysical beauty of this ruined abstraction testifying to a pride equal to the Empire and rotting like a carcass, returning to the substance of the soil, a bit as the double ends by being confused with the real though aging) - as the most beautiful allegory of simulation, this fable has now come full circle for us, and possesses nothing the discrete charm of second-order simulacra.

Now that I have typed it out I am not sure it is actually enlightening. I was reminded of it anyway. What I mean is that I think consciousness is a physical process, not something that is computed. Like you cannot cook food over a simulation of fire, no matter how clever your algorithms are. To create artificial consciousness I think would require building an actual brain, not a simulation that is in actuality a few pieces of computer memory rapidly changing state in a way that people would agree looks kind of like how we have quantized consciousness.

[82_28]

Here's what has puzzled me in the past year as I have observed birds and insects to a great degree. I'm just wondering where the fuck they get their "programming" from. They ARE programmed! Because they know how to avoid a finger, how to take to the air and etc. While I "believe" in the concept of evolution -- something is fucking programming these entities. They just know how to move around and do what they've been "told". It fully puzzles me on biological and mythical levels. How the fuck does a spider know how to spin a web? Like seriously, how? How does a bird build a nest? I'm not turning creationist on you -- absofuckinglutely not! But there is some strange programming in all living creatures including flora that we haven't seriously considered. I suppose Rupert Sheldrake has among others.

[Jerky]

82_28, pick up The Lucifer Principle and read that. It helps you get your head around the self-replicating/programming aspect of biological life.

Email me at jerkyleboeuf@gmail.com if you'd like a digital copy.

YOPJ

[82_28]

Oh, I've read the Lucifer Principle. I think I bought it the day it came out many suns ago. Howard Bloom, right?

[Jerky]

Yup. Anyway, if you or anyone else would like a digital copy, contact me at the address above. Sometimes it's nice to have an easy reference copy online.

I've personally purchased six hard-copy versions and given them as gifts over the years - and gotten probably a few dozen more people to buy it, via the Daily Dirt - so I feel somewhat justified in my illicit generosity here.

Jerky

[DrEvil]

Here's what has puzzled me in the past year as I have observed birds and insects to a great degree. I'm just wondering where the fuck they get their "programming" from. They ARE programmed! Because they know how to avoid a finger, how to take to the air and etc. While I "believe" in the concept of evolution -- something is fucking programming these entities. They just know how to move around and do what they've been "told". It fully puzzles me on biological and mythical levels. How the fuck does a spider know how to spin a web? Like seriously, how? How does a bird build a nest? I'm not turning creationist on you -- absofuckinglutely not! But there is some strange programming in all living creatures including flora that we haven't seriously considered. I suppose Rupert Sheldrake has among others.

Both spiderwebs and birds nests can be made using pretty simple rules. The final result is an emergent property of those simple rules. A birds nest, for instance, could be boiled down to something like:
- Place twig
- Move one inch to the left
- Rotate 10 degrees
- Repeat

Something similar could get you a spiderweb too.

Or beehives. They create perfect hexagons, but bees aren't "programmed" to make hexagons. They spit out their goo in a circle, but a bunch of circles squeezed together like that naturally makes hexagons, so the complex structure (a bunch of hexagons) is just a byproduct of lots of bees going in circles.

If I'm not mistaken our DNA works in a similar way. It doesn't contain an actual blueprint of our bodies, just a bunch of instructions for when something should start growing, and when it should stop. The macroscopic structures (bones, organs etc.) naturally emerge from those basic instructions (this is extremely simplified, obviously, and I could be completely wrong).

[82_28]

It just baffles me watching these creatures. Sure a twig here a spun web there and I am completely wrong too. I just don't think there is a way to totally explain the behavior of (insert example here). I noted this because it's a lot like turning on your new cellphone and it downloads the updates and then becomes "good to go". I have absolutely no idea, but there is some sort of "intelligence" at work that a lot of "our kind" don't consider. There's no real answer because as far as I know, we're the only earthlings that ponder this shit and live long enough with a language(s) that can transmit data outside of our strands of DNA. I'm basically baffled at the open-endedness of it all yet the certainty that it all comes to an end.

[DrEvil]

Your phone is actually another good example. If you go down far enough it is made entirely of transistors (the "thinking" parts, anyway), very simple devices that work together to do all the fancy stuff your phone does. There's a few dozen layers of abstraction between the transistors and your eyeballs, but the basics are just transistors put together to make logic gates of various kinds, which in turn "make" logic, which works its way up through ever more abstract layers until it becomes Angry Birds.

Edit: About spiders - check out Portia. The most awesome spider ever (apart from the fact that all spiders must die!), it can simulate a larger brain than it actually has by dividing a problem into small chunks and processing one part at a time, and then add up the results in the end.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portia_%28genus%29

[slimmouse]

surely their has to be some form of extremely fast and interactive morphic resonance going on here ?...the first 30 seconds of the video makes the point Same with fish.

[DrEvil]

Probably not. Sorry.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flocking_%28behavior%29

It is considered an emergent behavior arising from simple rules that are followed by individuals and does not involve any central coordination.

[slimmouse]

Probably not. Sorry.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flocking_%28behavior%29

It is considered an emergent behavior arising from simple rules that are followed by individuals and does not involve any central coordination.

You see the problem here? They have just given you some kiind of term for whats going on, without explaining what you see, or in other words how they manage to do this.

explaining this phemomena as flocking is all well and good, but it doesnt explain this in any kind of fashion that makes sense to anybody watchiing it.