[IP] more on "Strong" AI to be here within 25 years
Begin forwarded message:
From: Bob Frankston <Bob2-19-0501@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: July 14, 2006 7:22:27 PM EDT
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx, ip@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Cc: "'Jordan Pollack'" <pollack@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
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@xxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Friday, July 14, 2006 18:22
To: ip@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [IP] more on “Strong” AI to be here within 25 years
Begin forwarded message:
From: Jordan Pollack <pollack@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: July 14, 2006 4:28:13 PM EDT
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
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@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
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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