Artificial Super Intelligence - are we ready for it?

[trish]

If only one person who ever walked the face of the earth was a witness to GOD, the God exists. Period.

Agreed. This is a tautology. If I witness a tree, then a tree existed at the time and place I witnessed it. But I actually have to witness a tree, and not a cardboard cutout of a tree. Experiencing an illusion of a tree might lead me to claim that I witnessed a tree when I did not. That’s one problem. Another is, the tree may no longer exist. It might have died, been burned in a fire or bulldozed. Still another problem is: if I was the only witness, then billions of other people will only have heard or misheard the story of my witnessing a tree second hand or third or fourth or fifth etc. Maybe I witnessed a long island tea and it got misreported.

We meet various problems of this sort in the Turing test. One may only be witnessing artificial intelligence and believe one is witnessing real intelligence, real sentience, real thought processes and real consciousness.

The original concern of this thread was to draw attention to the dangers of developing machines of superintelligence. Stephen Hawking raises the specter sentient machines that develop and work toward their own goals while crushing humanity beneath their treads.

I have to say this sounds more like science fiction to me, than reality. This is not to say that as we lay off more and more workers, our machines won’t soon prove hazardous to our economic health; or as some of us become more and more interconnected, those left out will be not left behind...educationally, culturally and socially. Here I think I’m in agreement is Stavros.

Our only disagreements are 1) whether or not we ourselves are machine who are conscious by virtue of the physical integration of their parts and their complex physical interactions with an enormous, chaotic and hugely varied world ; and 2) whether or not machines crafted by humans may someday also be sentient in the same way.

Stavros takes the position that we are more than the sum of our parts and the extra bit that we are is the soul. I am satisfied that post #73 demonstrates that argument is fallacious. However, just because the argument is fallacious, it doesn’t follow that its conclusion if false. But I’m left without any good reasons for adopting the soul-hypothesis.

Buttslinger brings up the question of the existence of a creator god. I’m not sure if such a creature has much to do with the issue being discussed other than by analogy. I presume that if there’s an almighty, all knowing, all powerful, everywhere present divinity who uploads and installs souls into human babies as they are born, or conceived or whenever, then that deity can just as easily upload and install a soul into just about anything he wants: a tree, a frog, a fortress or a droid that speaks in beeps and whistles. So the soul-hypothesis doesn’t really prevent machines from being sentient. One needs an additional hypothesis: no person (deity, human or of some other race) will ever give a machine a soul and no machine will ever acquire one by any means. Of course such a hypothesis just begs the question we’ve been trying for several pages to answer.

I see my main difference with some posters here as a matter of perspective. It is not, however the perspective of Science as opposed to Religion. Few of the views I presented in this thread are scientific, they are rather naturalist. The opposing perspective is that human autonomy and sentience have an unnatural origin. One proposal is that our essential selves are not of this world; they are souls. Souls are something unnatural. They transcend nature. They do not consist of any of the things that constitute the reality of nature. They are not made from molecules, or elementary particles, or strings, or any other kind of natural matter or energy. They are bestowed upon human bodies by creatures from Divine and Demonic worlds who sometimes transgress the borders of the natural world and stay its laws to effect their own will.

[Stavros]

[QUOTE=trish;1618827]
We meet various problems of this sort in the Turing test. One may only be witnessing artificial intelligence and believe one is witnessing real intelligence, real sentience, real thought processes and real consciousness.
The original concern of this thread was to draw attention to the dangers of developing machines of superintelligence. Stephen Hawking raises the specter sentient machines that develop and work toward their own goals while crushing humanity beneath their treads.

-From today's Telegraph (in the link there is also a video):
Robot passes self-awareness test

A simple experiment has shown that robots have greater self awareness and deductive powers than previously thought
Robots might be even cleverer than we realised.

A simple experiment carried out in New York has demonstrated that robots not only have greater powers of deduction than previously acknowledged but are also aware of their own limitations.
Scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York built three robots who were all put through what is known as the “three wise men” test.
It sounds like a child’s fable.
The robots played the role of the three wisest men in the kingdom who were summoned by the monarch to his court.
In the tale, the king placed a blue or white hat on the wise men’s heads - without telling them which colour they have been given.
The first sage to deduce the colour of his hat was appointed as the king’s adviser.
In the New York experiment, the test was tweaked by Selmer Bringsjord.
Two of the robots were programmed to be unable to talk, the third was not.
All three were then asked to say who who had the power of speech.
The robots all tried to say “I don’t know”.
But the one who could hear its own voice realised it had not been silenced and added “Sorry, I know now.”
The “winning” robot jumped two important logical hurdles.
Firstly, it understood the question. Secondly and crucially, it heard its own voice and finally used this information to give the correct answer.
The significance of the experiment is that it shows that robots can be developed to have some human qualities such as self awareness and deduction.
Mr Bringsjord will present his findings at the RO-MAN conference in Japan which runs from August 31 to September 4.
In Japan a new hotel planned for Nagasaki is planning to use robots to greet guests, make them coffee and even carry luggage to their rooms.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...ness-test.html

I have to say this sounds more like science fiction to me, than reality. This is not to say that as we lay off more and more workers, our machines won’t soon prove hazardous to our economic health; or as some of us become more and more interconnected, those left out will be not left behind...educationally, culturally and socially. Here I think I’m in agreement is Stavros.

Our only disagreements are 1) whether or not we ourselves are machine who are conscious by virtue of the physical integration of their parts and their complex physical interactions with an enormous, chaotic and hugely varied world ; and 2) whether or not machines crafted by humans may someday also be sentient in the same way.

Stavros takes the position that we are more than the sum of our parts and the extra bit that we are is the soul. I am satisfied that post #73 demonstrates that argument is fallacious. However, just because the argument is fallacious, it doesn’t follow that its conclusion if false. But I’m left without any good reasons for adopting the soul-hypothesis.

-I am not sure that I suggested the soul is 'an extra bit' of humans, rather that is something we have which science has not really been able to explain or because it says it does not exist; just as it has a problem defining what consciousness is, because the sum of being human is clearly not just the body and to say, whether or not we ourselves are machines who are conscious by virtue of the physical integration of their parts and their complex physical interactions with an enormous, chaotic and hugely varied world is to me a weak argument that merely accepts consciousness as what it is. Science doesn't look at the heart in that way.
It has been argued that ants are completely unaware that humans exist, yet they must have consciousness that enables them to interact with each other to provide food and shelter. How can we know that our own conscious awareness of ourselves does not exclude other living beings? Science tells us this is not the case, yet still cannot explain consciousness without reducing it to the equivalent of electricity or whatever it is that powers this computer.

I see my main difference with some posters here as a matter of perspective. It is not, however the perspective of Science as opposed to Religion. Few of the views I presented in this thread are scientific, they are rather naturalist. The opposing perspective is that human autonomy and sentience have an unnatural origin. One proposal is that our essential selves are not of this world; they are souls. Souls are something unnatural. They transcend nature. They do not consist of any of the things that constitute the reality of nature. They are not made from molecules, or elementary particles, or strings, or any other kind of natural matter or energy. They are bestowed upon human bodies by creatures from Divine and Demonic worlds who sometimes transgress the borders of the natural world and stay its laws to effect their own will.
-I don't believe I have stated that I believe humans are God's creation and that the soul is the proof of this claim, which leaves us with the problem of whether or not we have minds, souls, consciousness and what these might be other than pulses generated by sunshine and water.
Is the irony of all this not in the image of a world of one set of machines -humans, being taken over by another, AI? At one point does anyone make a qualitative assessment of the two? And on a measurable scale of values, is one species superior to the other? As the creators of computers have we become Gods destined to be overthrown by our own creation?

[trish]

Thanks, Stavros, for the link to theTelegraph article. I have to read more carefully, but offhand I must say I’m not convinced the experiment requires anything more of the three programs than routine logic solving capabilities.

-I am not sure that I suggested the soul is 'an extra bit' of humans, rather that is something we have which science has not really been able to explain or because it says it does not exist; just as it has a problem defining what consciousness is, because the sum of being human is clearly not just the body...

I apologize then for misrepresenting your position. The claim “We are more than the sum of our parts,” requires us to interpret “sum” and “more”. As I’ve pointed out, a car engine is more than the sum of its parts if we interpret “sum” as a mere bag of disassembled parts lying in a bin and “more” as the difference between what the assembled engine can do as opposed to the bin of parts. In this example the “extra bit” is the natural interaction of the configured parts in accordance to the laws of thermodynamics. The whole, the parts and the “extra bit” are all encompassed by the natural world. If this is how you employ the words “sum” and “more” we have no disagreement_just a semantic misunderstanding. Somehow, I suspect this is not the case.

It has been argued that ants are completely unaware that humans exist, yet they must have consciousness that enables them to interact with each other to provide food and shelter. How can we know that our own conscious awareness of ourselves does not exclude other living beings? Science tells us this is not the case, yet still cannot explain consciousness without reducing it to the equivalent of electricity or whatever it is that powers this computer.

As far as I know science hasn’t explained or reduced consciousness to anyone’s satisfaction. Some philosophers (like Dennett and the Churchlands) make extravagant claims for science in this regard, but none what what they do can be called science. I do not have much hope that we will explain consciousness anytime soon. I only claim (from my preferred perspective) that it is a natural phenomena. There are a lot of phenomena that remain unexplained. The source of dark energy (if it really exists), why the Sun is 99.7% of the Solar System by mass but only 3.5% by angular momentum, the escape of information from behind the event horizon of black holes, the origin of life on Earth etc. My inclination is to assume these are all natural phenomena. I may be wrong in some instances, but whether they are or not is clearly independent of whether or not we humans have an explanation for these phenomena.

-I don't believe I have stated that I believe humans are God's creation and that the soul is the proof of this claim, which leaves us with the problem of whether or not we have minds, souls, consciousness and what these might be other than pulses generated by sunshine and water.

Again I apologize for misstating your view.

Is the irony of all this not in the image of a world of one set of machines -humans, being taken over by another, AI? At one point does anyone make a qualitative assessment of the two? And on a measurable scale of values, is one species superior to the other? As the creators of computers have we become Gods destined to be overthrown by our own creation?

Not unlike a king who usurped by his son, or the businessman who is so consumed by the company he created he forgets to live. Kids! Why can’t they be like we were, perfect in every way?

[sukumvit boy]

A refreshing step back and look at the future of robotics an AI , featuring David Pogue of Google , Bill Gates and Elon Musk....

[Stavros]

In response to the above posts, might I suggest that there is an obsession with humanoid robots but that AI might best be taken into areas which do not require the construction of a pretend human? We already have the internet, and computing married to geography has produced the Geographical Information Systems which we hope will better predict earthquakes and tsunami (separately or together), climate patters, maybe even volcanic eruptions, and this seems to me to be more useful than spending millions to get Charlie to make me a cup of coffee and me worrying that he might have poisoned it.

Transport is one area where AI can usefully replace cars, for example. I don't see why commuters into the major cities, be it in the USA or anywhere else, should drive when an integrated and wholly automated railway can do it. Moreover, this service could easily run 24 hours a day 365 days a year because 'robots' or AI don't need sleep and don't need rights at work either. Although this is another example of technology replacing humans, I think we under-estimate the power of AI to do things that are positive, as Sukumvitboy's youtube links suggest. After all, real life is different from Hollywood.

[buttslinger]

It could be that Bill Gates already has an android that looks unearthly beautiful, fucks like a wildcat and cleans the entire house, but he'll be remembered for turning the world on to "Windows"
It is possible THE ONE PERCENT already control the entire world, I mean, how much do they need to own before people get suspicious that the game is rigged, 65%? 80%??????
Maybe computers have reasons that 50% is the number where the public at large is complacent enough not to get pitchforks and torches and attack their summer homes....
First and foremost, there is a computer called HUMAN NATURE that always seems to win out, so far at least. Sometimes human nature puts the individual before the whole of humanity.
Science Fiction writers of the 1800s would have been laughed at if they predicted that we would have the power to turn the world into a radioactive dust storm for the next ten thousand years. Maybe computers should kill everyone at age thirty. Death Panels. NO FEAR!!!

[buttslinger]

My niece had a job where she was kinda on the ground floor of Obamacare, taking advantage of the obvious benefits of a nationwide base of doctors and patients, trying to eliminate the clusterfuck of American Health Care. The old doctors with illegible handwriting hated it. The younger doogie howsers who grew up on a computer got it.

The obvious advantage to a nationwide SUPERINTELLIGENT computer is that it could take your eyeprint and compute which job you're most likely to excel at, which Hotel in Vegas would suit you best, which car insurance is best.........all the mysteries of the universe enlightened. Hopefully a supercomputer would eliminate all the corruption and waste from A to Z, and robots would give everyone a 24 hour work week. Not nationwide unemployment. Rather than a Computer that dominated everyone's life, everyone would have a personal Secretary who is plugged into everything.

If you could connect your personal computer into the personal computer of a car and immediately compute fair market value, this might actually spur car makers and owners to get with the American Program of delivering what the people want. Plug your phone into the local supermarket and pick up your weeks worth of healthy food delivered at the drive-thru. Chart the map that puts every American onto the road to the American dream. Every personal computer would have 99 Supreme Court Judges built in. To determine what's fair. Then the Japanese could fine tune it to be more productive.

Integrating 300 million plus Americans into a computerized system would mean there would be lots of bugs to get out, but ultimately it would result in less shit work than is done now. You might have to turn off the entire system on Sundays so people actually look at each other again. I doubt it would even get considered until drive time to work is four hours and the price of gas goes up to $20/gallon. Squeeky wheel gets the grease.

People might actually get to a place where they don't have to embrace all their problems. Ready?

[trish]

http://nyti.ms/1TN7ipe

[sukumvit boy]

Nice "Times" article Trish...strange to think that war could be made less horrific by AI but I have seen the terrible consequences of land mines and unexploded cluster bombs in places like Cambodia where it seems like every 10th person is missing some part of an extremity. Those were truly 'stupid' weapons as well as the primitive mindset that deployed them.

[sukumvit boy]

Love these little classic SiFI pics of yours buttslinger , like this Fritz Lang Metropolis.
and I Robot a while back.