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The Singularity

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by $100T2, Mar 10, 2011.

  1. Nettdata

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    Mr. Toast

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    There's a big difference between showing Intelligence, a la the Turing Test, vs. being able to have the same thinking and judgment capabilities as a human brain.

    I don't think people really understand just how hard it is to reproduce something that's even remotely similar to the human brain.

    [​IMG]
     
  2. dubyu tee eff

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    Thinks he has a chance with Christina Hendricks...

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    Evolution is not smart, but it programmed us didn't it?

    Because there are teams of computer scientists working on computers that can have conversations with other people such that they can't tell it is a computer. And they are making significant process very quickly.
     
  3. Nettdata

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    Quoted for truth.
     
  4. StayFrosty

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    Isn't it nuts? Who knows how many years of grotesquely failed experiments it would take to pull it off even if the technology did one day become feasible to even consider. I'd much rather take a time-consuming from of transportation than trust a machine to kill me and properly reconstruct my memories, personality, and charming good looks. I don't imagine it would take more than a few errors on the atomic level to completely fuck up the transportee.

    Even more messed up, if the machine creates a copy of you, what would stop someone from using a machine to create multiple copies of themselves? I guess that would be one way of attaining a type of immortality. Have an implant that uploads a new "file" of who you are every day, and if you die, zing, new copy.

    Yeah, I'm rambling here, but no more than these Singularity nuts. Even if it does become possible to create a machine with greater intelligence than the entire human race, complete with self-awareness, I wouldn't want to be around to see it. Just because you CAN do something, doesn't mean you should, and to think we could create self-aware intelligence and control it is the height of hubris and foolishness.
     
  5. Idiot Wind

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    This might be a poor metaphor, but those tests are as far from approximating human intelligence as the difference between fooling somebody on the phone into thinking you are a police officer, and fooling everybody around you in real life into believing the same for a long period of time.
     
  6. dubyu tee eff

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    Let's try this from a different direction. Human's are a somewhat arbitrary benchmark. I remember reading an article where they had programmed a computer that behaved the exact same way as an insect(I forget which one). It was on the news so I suppose it is safe to say, that's where we are now. So how long until we reach the point of being able to emulate other animals. I'd say once you reach the point of being able to emulate any of the great apes, you aren't too far away from human beings.

    My sense is that people would have significantly fewer qualms about saying we aren't too far from exceeding the intelligence of a chimp, and there is not a lot of difference between us and chimps.

    Also, if you disagree, at least tell me why. I'm willing to admit there is a very significant probability I am very wrong, especially given my lack of knowledge on the subject of computers.

    Idiot Wind, your metaphor is a fair one, but look at the progress that has been made and the time span in which it has been made in that field. Them scientists are moving pretty fucking fast.
     
  7. ghettoastronaut

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    I remember the last news story where a computer program had been designed which humans couldn't distinguish between robot / human about half of the time. The thing is, reading through the chat logs, it was obvious that the human controls knew that they were being compared to a robot, and further, the human test subjects also knew that they were having to distinguish between humans and robots. The conversations with the people simply did not read like someone had sat down to engage in a normal conversation.

    On an episode of the Colbert Report this week, there was an interview with the guy who wrote a book called "The Most Human Human", which talks extensively about designing machines to emulate humans. He pointed out that those characteristics which make us decidedly human are incredibly complicated processes. Walking down the street, avoiding puddles, and saying hi to passing friends and engaging in a conversation of varying length with that friend (depending on how well you know them, how long it's been since you last saw them, etc), while seemingly simple, are not, and programming a machine to do that is beyond our capacity. Other things come into play like lying, or understanding the difference between multiple perspectives of the world. And for that matter, dubyu tee eff, you're an economist, you know how humans make irrational decisions. Programming a computer to be very good at chess is nothing by comparison to any of these things.
     
  8. Idiot Wind

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    Frankly, I have little idea how far off chimp or insect intelligence is compared to humans. The genetic difference between chimps and humans is very small, but seeing how different their 'lifestyles' are while the two species have fairly similar physical attributes, I think that difference in intelligence is likely to account for that. As for insects, they appear to be pretty simple, but for example termite mounds are built with very precise north-south orientation by these little fuckers, and that orientation even takes local conditions into account. What I'm trying to say is that we have very little understanding how intelligence works, and our methods of measuring it are pretty rudimentary. Until we find out a lot more about it, we're stuck with simulating it by giving computers detailed instructions from which they are unable to deviate.
     
  9. Nettdata

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    Which is the problem.

    Simulating a brain isn't about defining and implementing an algorithm, it's about creating a learning machine. It's about teaching it how to learn from it's experiences, recognize similar circumstances, recollect that past, and then apply what it learned from that past to the current situation.

    Whether it's a chimp brain, or a human brain, we are so incredibly far, far away from doing anything like that it's not even funny.

    There's been talk of insects, and replicating their behaviour, but that is almost child's play in comparison.

    Insects are almost like primitive counting machines, in that their behaviours are quite simple to replicate. What is hard about them, however, is their "hive mind" mentality, in which the individuals seem to know how to fit into a larger system, much like a cog in a machine.

    There have been some pretty cool and incredible advances in creating learning machines that replicate some simple insects, some that learn to work together to become more than just the sum of their parts.

    Sure, these are all huge steps forward, but to think that they even begin to approach the level of complexity that is a human, or simian brain, is laughable. That's like saying "oh look, we've invented a bicycle, so tomorrow we'll have a faster than light spaceship". One does not automatically indicate the other.

    One of the powers of neural nets is that they can be used in situations where there ISN'T an algorithm that can be used. For instance, various monitoring applications, like monitoring an aircraft engine, benefits from such a neural network application because it's not just running through a pre-defined checklist of what constitutes a problem, it's making a decision based on what it's learned in the past. Theoretically this means that it can classify a situation it's never been in as a problem state, and react accordingly.

    This was part of the work I did in university 20+ years ago with untethered (radio controlled) underwater submersibles. Even primitive neural nets gave it the ability to "think outside of the box", if you will, rather than having to program for every conceivable situation.

    Neural nets, be they artificial or biological, aren't just a matter of applying heuristics to a given problem set using existing programming technology, it's a whole new paradigm.
     
  10. Lasersailor

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    Human Beings are the first animals (that we know of) that rely on Intelligence to survive, not muscles. Chimpanzees' muscles, for example, are 3-5 times stronger per unit weight than ours. They are intelligent compared to the rest of the animal world, but they still rely on their strength and speed to hunt and survive.

    Many animals could sense the magnetic fields of the earth. Human Beings figured out how to point to true north before anyone had even heard of a compass.

    It's getting a little bit off topic, but it gives you a sense of the differences in intelligence between Humans and everything else.

    Artificial Intelligence is about a problem solving computer that had no previous input - response programming solving any problem placed before it.
     
  11. selective misogyny

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    See the problem with predicting when and if the singularity will happen is that you're essentially trying to predict the future, which is why neither side can develop a definitive argument. Nobody has any idea what programming is going to be like in 30+ years. I agree with everyone saying that it's not possible with our current programming technique, but you can't say it's never possible because you can't predict the future. Fifty years ago nobody would've guessed the vast interconnected world of today, and not one of you can predict our capabilities fifty years from now.
     
  12. BL1Y

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    It looks like there's two different questions in this discussion: Will computers get artificial intelligence? and Will computers take over their own development?

    Right now I can go to Google Maps, pick two points, and it will tell me how to get from one point to another without a human having programmed in the route, just the rules for how to pick a good route.

    Doesn't seem too crazy to think that a much more sophisticated program might lead a computer to plot a map from our current technology to the next more powerful thing. And correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't computers now doing a lot of code writing, rather than having a human operator write everything manually?

    AI? Who knows. But, the next big step in getting to AI is likely having computers take over the task, working at rates that far outpace human potential.
     
  13. Celos

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    Do you mean to say that the amount of code required to perform tasks has reduced (true, due to the increasing abstraction of programming languages and the amount of readily available code libraries) or do you mean to say that computers are somehow generating programs based on the programmer's intent (ie. filling in the blanks)?

    The problem really isn't that scientists aren't working fast enough. What you said here essentially equates to "the next big step in getting to AI is getting to AI."

    Focus: In the near future: amped up versions of the neuroheadset.
     
  14. dubyu tee eff

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    I know I've spent a good bit of time on this thread making one point, but I think everything I was saying is somewhat pointless in the face of this:

    It seems to me like it is much more feasible to reach a point where we can start using transhumanist techniques to improve ourselves cognitively (and physically, for that matter). It seems like this point will come much sooner than a singularity. It's hard to put a time estimate on any of this stuff, but my completely arbitrary guess is that in 50 years or so, we will reach a point of transhumanism.

    Also, if the transhumanist visions come true, doesn't that sort of push forward the point of singularity? Singularity is defined by the point where AI overtakes human intelligence, but if we keep on improving our brains, that keeps pushing that point forward right? I'm sure many people more in tune with the communities have made this point. Anyone have any knowledge to kick?
     
  15. Nettdata

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    No, but a human collected all of the GIS (geographic information system) data that consists of positional and available route information. A rather simple "find least cost route" algorithm then rifled through that data to find the path. This has been around since the early 80's. Google has put a nice front end on it, and have added stuff like Street View to it, but it's not magical. As a matter of fact, the US Government freely provides all of that raw data to anyone who wants to download it.

    This is akin to you loading in a bunch of data into Excel, and then being amazed that the computer "automagically" found the maximum value in the data.

    Actually, it does. Batshit fucking crazy. With the mapping example, ALL of the data is provided to the computer in raw, easily quantifiable form. You are now asking it to not just process existing data, but evaluate, and create new data extrapolations based on... well, I'm not sure what.

    You're "logical next step" is so, not, it's not even funny.

    No, they're not. Programmers are being smarter, and writing better tools, and utilizing widely accepted standards, all in the hopes of taking advantage of other people's code to get the job done faster and easier. Sure, the specific programmer writing their app might end up writing less code, but that's because he's implementing a lot of code someone else wrote. It's not like the computer wrote the code on it's own, it's the programmer that said "hey, I want to have these 10 procedures, with this data model behind it, and i don't want to have to write all the setters/getters for ever procedure like I always have to do, so I'm going to rely on this auto-generating feature of my code-writing-application (IDE) to do it for me." The application then goes and writes a bunch of simplistic code that is based on templates and naming conventions that fleshes out the boring shit, and will be tweaked, but it's not like the computer thought of that all on it's own.

    Uhmm, no it's not.


    You guys seem to have some fucking weird ideas about what computers can and can't do. And the judicious use of "next logical step" and other such statements are quite entertaining, to say the least.

    Logical to whom, exactly? The weed-smoking watchers of classic sci-fi?
     
  16. silway

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    I am not a physicist by any means, but my understanding is that the way they "copy" a quantum particle involves a third particle in the process that somehow transmits the information between two other particles, but the original particle (that is an infinitesimal part of you) is destroyed. That, essentially, in order to deal with the uncertainty principle and reconstruct you *exactly*, to the quantum level, the "reading process" has to destroy you even as you're being recreated elsewhere.



     
  17. Nettdata

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    One proposed method of teleportation is using quantum entanglement.

    It's also the basic theory behind interstellar faster-than-light communication.

    <a class="postlink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_entanglement" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_entanglement</a>

    Basically, you have 2 or more particles that become entangled, and when you separate them, changes made to one are reflected on the other.
     
  18. StayFrosty

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    I can't find the link, but I read an article about the use of this for communication on the global scale. I can't remember if there had been any success yet, but I'm thinking there was an issue with moving from theory to actual application. Amazing stuff, regardless.

    People keep mentioning how computers are advancing at an exponential rate, but a lot of people seem to be forgetting that this is a direct result of humans learning about technology/physics/science at an exponential rate.
     
  19. Nettdata

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    I don't pretend to be any kind of physicist, but from what I understood, the particles had to be together when initially entangled, and then distanced from each other to where they were to be used.

    The big drawback was that the act of observing them would actually kill the entanglement, so they were effectively only able to be used once.
     
  20. Binary

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    Sounds like my sex life.