Singularity

[Beerina]

Very interesting stuff, Pixy.

But your extrapolation hinges on, at least, the idea of simulating a neuron by a 1 Mflop operation. I suppose it would be more than possible to simulate the neurons in an ant's brains with computers today, given an ant's size. Has such been done?

Is there any evidence such massive calculations are actually required to functionally simulate a neuron? One need not attempt to simulate the chemical operations inside a cell in order to duplicate it. Chemical operations are nature's way, and don't necessarily need to be modeled.

In any case, the devil is in the programming. I am confident current desktops could simulate a human brain, if somewhat slowly. I predict when all is said and done, the vast majority of what goes on in the brain is not needed for human level intelligence.

Now what's needed for consciousness, the subjective perceptual experience, that's another story. It has features we can only observe from the inside, though we can "poke at the brain" and alter the experiences.

 

[Beerina]

Doesn't matter. A digital system can model an analog system to an arbitrary degree of accuracy.- PixyMisa.

Can an analogue system model a digital system to the same degree?

True analog computers, I suppose so. But you'd have to void much of the reason to create an analog computer in the first place -- the speed of light of calculations made by addition of waves rather than the finite time step-step-step of a digital system.

Digital computers aren't really analog ones, not the same way digital broadcast is actually analog broadcast. True analog computers are a completely different beast from digital ones.

 

[Beerina]

We've had operating systems that don't crash for forty years. Just because you choose not to run them doesn't mean they don't exist.

This is true. A stock Mac or PC boots up very quickly and shuts down very quickly. It's when you start adding all that AIM and MSM and, gosh, QuickTime needs to start a little thing and RealPlayer needs to start a little thing and something else needs to start a little thing to monitor icons and something else...

Like a clogged artery, it slows, and the more stuff, the more interactions can go wrong.

 

[Beerina]

Now, the next step is where I personally have my doubts about the Singularity.

By my calculation, in 2010 we will be able to build a computer as intelligent as a human, using only established technology (45nm chips aren't in mass production yet, but they have been made) and existing knowledge (it's a cell-function simulation of the brain; we don't need to understand anything about, say, consciousness; all we need to know is what the cells do and how they are hooked together).

That's a fairly large leap. I don't think it'd be like hooking billions of muscle cells together and getting a contraction. Consciousness may be more like ten million Mona Lisa paintings, all different, all coming up and functioning together at the same time.

Aside: Obviously it will be enormously difficult to build and program this machine, but we can start work now, because nothing much is going to change.

Yes, that is the problem.

The next step is this: In 2010, we can build a computer as smart as a human for $200 million. So by 2012 or so, when the 35nm process is in full production, we will be able to do it for $100 million... Or we can build a computer twice as smart for the same amount of money.

Strong vs. weak AI, which is to say, how inherently smart is the machine, and how fast can it think? An average human who thought a million times as fast as me might be able to beat the crap out of me easily, but could not beat me in an IQ test.

One of the key ideas of the Singularity is that once you have a computer twice as smart as a human, things begin to take off by themselves. The computer itself takes a hand in the research program. If it can come up with a modified neuron-simulation algorithm which is 50% more efficient than what we normal humans managed, then suddenly it is three times smarter than us. And then the new 3x computer can come up with better ways to build the chips or whatever...

Personally, I strongly suspect that we will run into the law of diminishing returns here. I think that a computer "twice as smart" as a normal human will be less than twice as capable at solving problems, and also that the problems associated with developing ever smarter computers will become less and less tractable. I could be wrong, of course.

Given many types of problems cannot be solved via shortcut, i.e. they must be solved by essentially simulating things then running time forward, I think such hyper-intelligences would have massive auxiliary experimentation virtual realities.

Trivially, and I've read a sci-fi story recently about this, an evil scientist captures normal human minds downloaded into a computer, resets them, and runs them as they do research, thinking they're normal humans in a normal world but highly fast forwarded, and he has hooks into all their virtual computers and simply reads the papers they type, then presents them as his own work in the real world.

 

[homer]

Maybe you might find reading the " Emperors new mind " by Roger Penrose helpful .

 

[Soapy Sam]

I didn't, Homer. I found it pretty incomprehensible.

While I don't dismiss Penrose so off-handedly as PixyMisa did, I have acquired the suspicion that where he veers into territory I feel I understand moderately well, he does not always make much sense. (I don't think he understands natural selection at all well, for example). Conversely, when he is operating on his own ground, I am incapable of following most of his reasoning. So I'm put in the difficult position of simply not having confidence in someone who is clearly a darn sight smarter than me.
This is Dawkins' "argument from personal incredulity", to which I plead guilty as charged. I suffer from it a lot, possibly including this thread.

I'd be interested to know why Pixy, who is also smarter than me, is so dismissive of Penrose.