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

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Bob Frankston <Bob2-19-0501 () bobf frankston com>
Date: July 14, 2006 7:22:27 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net, ip () v2 listbox com
Cc: "'Jordan Pollack'" <pollack () cs brandeis edu>
Subject: RE: [IP] more on "Strong" AI to be here within 25 years

I’ve long been in interested in Moore’s law and how it works. I wrote  
a chapter in on the topic in the ACM’s Beyond Computing book (http:// 
www.frankston.com/?name=BeyondLimits) and have continued to try to  
understand the phenomenon. It’s an effect that occurs when we have  
key conditions. The most important is that we don’t care about the  
result – anything that works works. Thus if Intel produces a Unix CPU  
and Microsoft uses it as a Windows CPU Intel doesn’t tell them they  
are wrong – it takes advantage of the opportunity. As Bob  
Seidensticker points out in Future Hype, hyper-growth is not entirely  
new.

I like to use roulette as an analogy – you will lose if you care  
which number the ball lands on. You can make any number a winner by  
finding value in whatever the ball lands on. If you can’t double the  
speed of the CPU, you do multicore.

It is this dynamic – taking advantage of opportunity rather only  
allowing narrowly defined solutions --- that allows demand to create  
supply by finding uses and being less picky. If Gordon doesn’t want  
his law to be used for economics I’ll claim it as Frankston’s law.

It’s also the engine of evolution – more to the point, co-evolution –  
you aren’t evolving solutions to fixed problems. You are finding  
which problems match on of the available solutions. You’re going from  
N possibilities to NxM or combinatorial possibilities.

If, by strong AI you mean machines more intelligent than use you have  
a problem in defining intelligence. I agree with Seymour Papert that  
intelligence is about powerful ideas. Unfortunately you can’t  
necessarily derive the powerful ideas from first principles. This is  
where the co-evolution issue becomes more important – you play to  
your strengths. There isn’t progress – just opportunity. If a  
creature happens to be better on land vs water it will go where life  
is easier. If one is crowded it may just lose but a creature that  
happens to taken advantage of an empty niche will thrive. Note that  
we are not the dominant species – it’s just that the bacteria were  
occupying the prime real estate so we had to move out to the sticks.

If you are capable of computing all the positions of the planets in  
Ptolemy’s system you may never have to discover the heliocentric  
model. You’ll have all the details but none of the insight.

The Internet is a good example of this – if you control the entire  
infrastructure you do SS7. If you are forced out of network and have  
to fend for yourself you’ll do IP and learn how to take advantage of  
opportunities rather than becoming the bestest telephone system in  
the entire shrinking world.

Andy Clark has a written a number of books on AI, his first, Being  
There, Putting Brain, Body and World Together Again shows that  
intelligence itself emerges from context and is not just the  
accumulation of facts.

I am a fan of AI in the sense of coming to terms with complexity and  
autonomous behavior. For me it’s applied philosophy.

But I do question the concept of a singularity -- at very least there  
isn’t a single optima. So what if you have a very intelligent  
machine, why would it even deign to acknowledge your existence? It  
would be too busy with deep thoughts of cosmic significance – or  
maybe it will just use all its tremendous powers to bet on the  
ponies. But that might still be too difficult to predict.

Looking at Jordan’s article I’m not surprised that that we are making  
similar points.



-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber [mailto:dave () farber net]
Sent: Friday, July 14, 2006 18:22
To: ip () v2 listbox com
Subject: [IP] more on “Strong” AI to be here within 25 years







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

Intelligence” is available free at http://ectomental.com

Jordan





From:         Mike Cheponis <mac () wireless com>

Date:          July 13, 2006 11:01:19 AM PDT

Subject:      “Strong” AI to be here within 25 years



“The advent of strong AI (exceeding human intelligence) is the

most  important transformation this century will see, and it will

happen  within 25 years, says Ray Kurzweil, who will present this

paper at  The Dartmouth Artificial Intelligence Conference: The

next 50 years  (AI@50) on July 14, 2006.”



Much more at: <http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/

articles/art0683.html>



Weblog at: <http://weblog.warpspeed.com>





--

Professor Jordan B. Pollack   Dynamic & Evolution Machine Org

Computer Science Department   FaxPhone/Lab: 781-736-2713/3366

MS018,  Brandeis University   http://www.demo.cs.brandeis.edu

Waltham Massachusetts 02454   e-mail: pollack-at-brandeis.edu

Multiplayer Education Games   FOR FREE! http://www.beeweb.org






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