more on "Strong" AI to be here within 25 years

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Amos Jessup <amos () san rr com>
Date: July 16, 2006 12:45:20 AM EDT
To: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Subject: Re: more on "Strong" AI to be here within 25 years

There is a second path toward strong AI which is used occasionally in
robotics at Carnegie Mellon, which is to provide a system with a  
small set
of rules, and then feed it a large number of transactions and  
interactions,
and it will learn, itself, how best to apply those rules.

I won't hazard a guess as to how the relationship between human  
associate
and such an auto-didactic system would be different in terms of  
augmenting
both parties, but I suspect if the interactions were largely with the  
same
or similar persons, it would be more satisfactory than could be  
reached by
detailing more and more complex algorithmic solutions.

A



On 7/15/06 05:52, "David Farber" <dave () farber net> did kindly say:

> Begin forwarded message:
>
> From: Brad Templeton <btm () templetons com>
> Date: July 14, 2006 7:39:08 PM EDT
> To: David Farber <dave () farber net>
> Cc: pollack () cs brandeis edu
> Subject: Re: [IP] more on "Strong" AI to be here within 25 years
>
> On Fri, Jul 14, 2006 at 06:22:12PM -0400, David Farber wrote:
> > Begin forwarded message:
> >
> > From: Jordan Pollack <pollack () cs brandeis edu>
> > Date: July 14, 2006 4:28:13 PM EDT
> > To: dave () farber net
> > Subject: Re: [IP] "Strong" AI to be here within 25 years
> >
> > I'm sorry, but baloney is still baloney, because Moore's law doesn't
> > increase the quality and complexity of our software. We'd see
> > something coming on supercomputers or grids. Alternative views about
> > the next 50 years are in the current issue of IEEE Intelligent
> > Systems,
> > *http://tinyurl.com/hul5g
> >
> > *IEEE unfortunately charges a fee, but my paper "Mindless
> > Intellligence" is available free at http://ectomental.com
>
> Oddly, Moore's law gives the illusion of increasing the quality and
> complexity
> of our software, particularly in the fields of "former AI."  (Former
> AI is stuff
> that used to be called AI, but once we figured out how to do it,
> people stopped
> calling AI due to the fundamental theorem of AI.)
>
> For example, in fields like speech recognition, OCR, and visual  
> pattern
> recognition, while it would be foolish to say there have been no
> algorithmic
> advances in these fields, a sizeable amount of the progress has come
> because
> interesting algorithms designed decades ago became computationally
> workable
> do to Moore's law trends.
>
> There is one path to machine intelligence (non-artificial) which does
> not require
> any advances in complexity of software.    Namely, if we can, in the
> next 25 years,
> learn how to reverse engineer the nervous system at the underlying
> level so that
> we can build things which act just like neurons, glial cells and
> their associated
> systems out of something else besides natural proteins, then we can
> simply copy
> the "software" (patterns of interconnections, chemical flows and
> rules) from
> protien brains into this new substrate, without understanding it at
> the higher
> level.
>
> To give an analogy, a capable hardware engineer, who knows only about
> IC design
> and digital logic, can build Hydra, the world's best chess player,  
> just
> by copying the software into hardware she builds.   She need not have
> any understanding
> of chess, or indeed anything above the level of the machine
> instruction set.
>
> However, should this transfer of a human mind into another substrate
> take place,
> this person would be unconstrained by many of the rules which bind us
> as biological
> beings.  In particular, much has been written about how such a person
> could
> engage in "recursive self-improvement" using the ability to tinker
> with their own
> makeup in experiments, seeking improvements.   The then improved
> person could continue
> this process -- doing even better at it, in an explosive increase.
>
> While it is far from certain this will happen in 25 years, it is also
> foolish to
> suggest it can't happen in that period of time.   While we don't yet
> have a sufficiently
> good model of the neuron, nothing we know suggests this is
> impossible.  (Rationalizations
> about microtubles notwithstanding.)

--
ABILITY

The superior man is distressed by
the limitations of his ability;
he is not distressed by the fact that men
do not recognize the ability that he has.

            Confucius



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