Ray Kurzweil On How We'll End Up Merging With Our Technology (foxnews.com) 161
Mr.Intel quotes a report from Fox News: "By 2029, computers will have human-level intelligence," Kurzweil said in an interview at the SXSW Conference with Shira Lazar and Amy Kurzweil Comix. Known as the Singularity, the event is oft discussed by scientists, futurists, technology stalwarts and others as a time when artificial intelligence will cause machines to become smarter than human beings. The time frame is much sooner than what other stalwarts have said, including British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, as well as previous predictions from Kurzweil, who said it may occur as soon as 2045. Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son, who recently acquired ARM Holdings with the intent on being one of the driving forces in the Singularity, has previously said it could happen in the next 30 years. Kurzweil apparently ins't worried about the rise in machine learning and artificial intelligence. In regard to AI potentially enslaving humanity, Kurzweil said, "That's not realistic. We don't have one or two AIs in the world. Today we have billions." He shares a similar view with Elon Musk by saying that humans need to converge with machines, pointing out the work already being done in Parkinson's patients. "They're making us smarter," Kurzeil said during the SXSW interview. "They may not yet be inside our bodies, but, by the 2030s, we will connect our neocortex, the part of our brain where we do our thinking, to the cloud... We're going to be funnier, we're going to be better at music. We're going to be sexier. We're really going to exemplify all the things that we value in humans to a greater degree." You can watch the full interview on Facebook.
For those of you who playa hate, we've got 1 word (Score:2, Funny)
EXTERMINATE
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Borgs assimilate, not exterminate. Borgs are the liberal version of Daleks. (I know, flame-war fuel; so be it.)
That'd make an interesting flick: Borg vs. Dalek. If Daleks win, no more Borg; if Borg wins, we get Borleks or Dalborgs or Balorks or Borks. Okay, I admit, the movie idea is borked.
What, no Cyberman love? (Score:1)
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They couldn't be dorks - those are the audience.
Optimistic or deluded (Score:1)
I'm not sure.
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Both. And as long as there are enough morons that eat up his quasi-religious "predictions", also successful.
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I take it you have never seen Star Trek?
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I came up with a skit for this once. Star Trek: The Millennial Generation
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I vote for deluded. There's a hojillion reasons to believe he's fundamentally wrong about his previous predictions, mostly due to his mysticization of both technology and human consciousness.
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Seconded. If he thinks computers will have human level intelligence in 12 years, then he might not be intelligent enough to understand, what human (or animal) intelligence is, and that computers aren't on that path.
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He's just a run-of-the-mill snakeoil salesman.
Exactly.
Who in their right mind believes "(w)e're going to be sexier" when it's manifestly obvious that we're getting fatter and more slovenly, and "(w)e're really going to exemplify all the things that we value in humans to a greater degree" when technology has allowed people to magnify their inner selfishness, stupidity and general asshattedness without the worry of someone slapping them or punching them in the nose.
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Everyone will have a computer master. The computer will know everything about its human slave and I mean everything. The computer will know the exact measurement and weight of its human. The computer will know the color and texture of every part of the human's body. We will demand this so the computer will tell its human when and what to eat, when and how long to sleep, how and how long to exercise. It will warn the human if anything is going wrong long before the human is aware of the problem. We wil
Brainhacking (Score:2)
He's talking about connecting our brains directly to the internet.
Why waste time trying to make yourself conform to some arbitrary societal ideal of sexiness, when you can just hire someone to brainhack your desired lover to make their ideal conform to you?
Surgery nanobots.. (Score:1)
Whatsit and thingy at Tenagra. (Score:2)
Me on why Kurzweil is an utter loonball.
Re:Whatsit and thingy at Tenagra. (Score:4, Insightful)
Yep. Pretty much anyone who goes on about the Singularity is a loon. Not because it's necessarily a fundamentally loony concept, but because it attracts loons like moths to a flame.
The second indicator is putting a date on the dawn of strong AI. We likely need a hardware breakthrough (I'm hopeful it'll be memristors, they look promising and we've already made them), but we also need a massive increase in our understanding of how a mind works, how it emerges from the physical properties of a brain, how to create a physical structure that can replicate that, and how to program instincts into it. Maybe that'll be in a dozen years, maybe it'll be in hundreds of years, and maybe we'll never figure it out because even a simplified model is too much for a human mind to work with.
I'm OK with smart machines (if we can instill them with a form of Asimov's Laws of Robotics), but I'm not holding my breath waiting for them. For now it looks like we're going to get mindless but very complex systems that can do most things better than humans, but still don't come anywhere near crossing the boundary to actual intelligence or self-awareness.
Excessive extrapolation (Score:3)
Yep. Pretty much anyone who goes on about the Singularity is a loon. Not because it's necessarily a fundamentally loony concept, but because it attracts loons like moths to a flame.
Kurzweil is (obviously) a smart guy but I think he isn't quite as smart as he seems to think he is. He is the master of over enthusiastic extrapolation. I've listened to several interviews with him. He'll take some current technology that resembles some bit of sci-fi tech and use that as evidence that we are already doing whatever the sci-fi tech is supposed to accomplish as if he can predict the future. The singularity is an interesting concept but he treats it like it's some sort of mathematical inevi
unius tunius timeo (Score:3)
Kurzweil is a ground-floor card-carrying member of the Extrapolarian Society. I've been following his shtick forever.
He actually was, once upon a time, as smart as he thinks he is, but then he flunked Latin, and now he's become Exhibit A for hominem unius tunius timeo [wikipedia.org].
The actual challenge here isn't to figure out how much he's wrong. The challenge is to figure out how much he's right. And he's more right than most people think. But they can't get past how wrong he is, and still there shooting fish in
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Yeah, that's what I get out of him. He has made some good predictions or at least popularized them when they weren't well known at the time, but all most people do is make fun of all the vitamins he takes in the quest for whatever. I'm sure I would have specialized in different subjects had I not read some of the things he wrote and I'm grateful for that.
It's funny, I read a couple of his books and don't even remember some of the looney things he said (uploading our consciousness and immortality by 2035 or
It isn't intelligent, therefore it isn't AI. Yet. (Score:3)
There are two distinct and easily identifiable problems with his ideas here.
First, flat out, there is no AI at present. When AI arrives, we'll know it, because it'll tell us so in no uncertain terms. What Kurzweil is actually talking about, which we can be absolutely certain of due to his claim that these systems are all around us right now, is specifically non-intelligent augmentation, and although within that context he's probably right to think that there will be a huge push to make that positive, his se
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Yeah, I don't buy into his AI and live forever stuff, but he was right about the sensors, miniaturization, smartphone and how society would react to them. Most people aren't aware of how much miniature sensors have changed the world.. It's one of the things I think about a lot because there are a very finite number of things that are measurable and we're close to being able to measure them all and with grater accuracy than can be used.
This has lead to great economic growth in the recent past, but is ending
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What he's also right about is the strong possibility of successively more intimate integration of technologically leveraged capabilities altering our innate capacities in very significant ways. And while silicon tech is pushing some of its limits, biological tech is just now in the very most nascent stages of becoming useful, and that seems to be by far the most likely key to augmentation. I'm quite confident we
Making predictions (Score:2)
The actual challenge here isn't to figure out how much he's wrong. The challenge is to figure out how much he's right.
That's the challenge with anybody who makes predictions about the future and not unique to him. People have been doing this for millennia and if you throw enough vaguely plausible sounding BS out there, some of it is probably going to be right. With a smart guy the batting average might be a bit higher but it's still not going to be anywhere near perfect. You'll note that he doesn't bring up the stuff he was wrong about later on. With many of them (see "psychics" and clergy) they are simply making shi
Also, Kurweil misunderstood evolution (Score:2)
As I wrote to Kurzweil in 2001 (reposted by someone else along with four others I sent): http://heybryan.org/fernhout/k... [heybryan.org]
From that email:
There is not necessarily an adaptive value to intelligence in a
certain niche -- because intelligence has power, mass, heat-dissipation,
and time costs. For example, consider the Hydra, which is a tiny
multi-tentacled aquatic creature that lives off of stinging smaller
organisms like Daphnia and pulling them into its body cavity. It has a
simple neural net it uses to coordinat
Knowlege (Score:1)
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We aren't meant to remember things perfectly forever, it would drive us mad. Just go watch Strange Days or something similar.
The human mind evolved this way for many many reasons. Even the way we remember and forget is important. Do you want to be faced with the conscious decision to forget your dead loved one? I could never willingly do that, press a "button" to turn them off. But eventually you learn to deal with it.
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Pretty much anyone who goes on about the Singularity is a loon. Not because it's necessarily a fundamentally loony concept, but because it attracts loons like moths to a flame.
Great way to start a post. Really shows a lack of bias.
For now it looks like we're going to get mindless but very complex systems that can do most things better than humans
You make the mistake of believing that human brains are leaps and bounds more advanced than (say) chimp brains. They're not. The difference is very very significant yet very very slight (in an evolutionary sense). Reevaluate when you expect us to create AI that reaches chimp levels. Then add ten years. Maybe twenty.
In any case be sure to evaluate your arguments against the 'loony' Singularity concept for a primate life form of choice, such as chimps. Th
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Yeah, so you've just misinterpreted my opening sentence and made a lot of assumptions about my position, especially that last one.
That puts a high probability of you being in the 'Singularity Loon' group.
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1. So what is your prediction as to when we'll have AI that reaches the level of chimps?
2. Do you agree with me that after we've reached chimp-level, human-level is very swiftly attained and if not, why not?
Why do people pay attention to Kurzweil? (Score:4, Interesting)
He's the absolute king at predicting stuff that never happens. He's always talking 10 years ahead - everything with him is "In , is going to happen..."
He's absolute crap - he reminds me of guys who talk all kinds of bollocks about crypto and don't actually understand modular arithmetic ;).
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I like the comparison. Or those that claim "what humans can encrypt, humans can decrypt" and other bullshit.
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I will admit that on a few occasions I have encrypted something I could then later not decrypt... ;)
Most don't (Score:2)
But people with enough money to sponsor him sure want you to hear him.
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https://www.bing.com/search?q=... [bing.com]
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https://www.forbes.com/sites/a... [forbes.com]
About two seconds of googling. I'm sure that, if I gave a sh** about Kurzweil, I could come up with dozens and dozens examples of his horsesh** that hasn't happened...
But what people are trying to convey is... (Score:1)
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He plots tends on semi-log axis and picks the straight lines.
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The brain is an information processing machine, with inputs and outputs.
It really isn't and this method of thinking about the brain isn't helping to figure out how it actually works. This gives a decent overview of why the brain isn't a computer. [aeon.co]
When you think about it, our brains evolved over time and so will have been built on top of something approximating simpler organisms around us today, which is to say a purely reactive nervous system like that of a Jellyfish [wikipedia.org]. Add in the fact that sensory deprivation [wikipedia.org] causes us to become unhinged and sensory overload can be quite debilit
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This is pure BS. Not a single human being understands how the brain functions. There are input and outputs, that's for sure, but "information processing" is nothing more than a conjecture which hasn't been proven by anyone.
The better question is... (Score:3, Insightful)
People still take Kurzweil seriously?
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Apparently. There are a lot of idiots around on this planet.
Soo.. (Score:1)
There will be smart ones but most will be stupid when connected in groups together, and only perform short time calculations instead of working on a long term plan to raise the quality of all components for everyone?
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You just automated Washington DC.
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Mistah Kurz claims we have billions of AIs already. Where are they hiding? Or does he have a different standard for what he considers an AI than mine? I don't consider it an AI unless it can make jokes like a Culture Mind.
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"Hmm.. we could have all our politicians in little boxes... very handy, that..." - Breughel, "Max Headroom: 20 Minutes into the Future"
Mistah Kurz claims we have billions of AIs already. Where are they hiding? Or does he have a different standard for what he considers an AI than mine? I don't consider it an AI unless it can make jokes like a Culture Mind.
It's the same line of argument that you hear all the time on slashdot. A thermostat is a "Weak AI" as it "senses" things and "responds" to them. Therefore, it's just a question of improving computer power to get Strong AI.
Tosh, pure and simple.
Who IS this idiot? (Score:2)
MOD PARENT UP (Score:2)
Smart people can say stupid things (Score:2)
It turns out we know quite a lot about consciousness, and how the brain does it.
No we really do not. We know some about it but consciousness but our understanding is rather superficial. We don't even have a widely agreed upon definition of what it is so to claim we know a lot about something we can't even clearly define is something of a preposterous declaration. The community studying it has sort of a gestalt ("I know it when I see it") working definition that is useful but hardly definitive.
I can't help but reflect on the irony of someone like you calling someone like Kurzweil, who has two degrees and several inventions under his belt, an idiot.
I hold two degrees and have several inventions to my name, though admittedly mine are less
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Who and when (Score:2)
"Widely agreed upon" is in no way the same as "no one knows."
Someone may know. If they do, it may be something that can be duplicated technologically, sooner, or yes, later. Likewise, even if no one knows today, that does not mean that someone will not know tomorrow.
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I can't help but reflect on the irony of someone like you calling someone like Kurzweil, who has two degrees and several inventions under his belt, an idiot.
Like many people on slashdot, he is a programmer and sees everything as being just a programming challenge.
Futurist = Idiot (Score:3, Informative)
And nobody does both parts better than Kurzweil. Clueless, full of himself and with the grandest predictions.
The reality is, if machines get to the intelligence level of a dog by that time, the actual experts will be ecstatic because that is very unlikely to happen. Human-level intelligence is not even on the table, i.e. there is not indication at all that it is possible. In fact, even said dog is a stretch and may turn out to be infeasible in this universe. (If you are a physicalist and argue that humans are purely physical and hence machines must be able to reach that level of intelligence, then you are a moron on the level of Kurzweil, because that is not an argument based on facts. The scientific facts about the nature of humans as sentient beings are that it is unknown how they do intelligence and consciousness and hence it is unknown whether it is a physical mechanism or not. That is why people that claim physicalism must be the truth are no better than any other religious or quasi-religious fundamentalists. They claim truth where they just have belief.)
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The scientific facts about the nature of humans as sentient beings are that it is unknown how they do intelligence and consciousness and hence it is unknown whether it is a physical mechanism or not.
Physical processes (as that is what the brain does) lead to a result you don't understand so it isn't actually a result of the physical processes? You listening to yourself here?
That is why people that claim physicalism must be the truth are no better than any other religious or quasi-religious fundamentalists. They claim truth where they just have belief.
Uh-huh. There is no evidence whatsoever for non-physical explanations of anything, the brain contains hundreds of billions of cells which work together in ways we're just gaining the barest understanding of, and you think the people who believe that could be the source of intelligence are the whack-jobs?
Dude, delusional doesn't even
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The scientific facts about the nature of humans as sentient beings are that it is unknown how they do intelligence and consciousness and hence it is unknown whether it is a physical mechanism or not.
Physical processes (as that is what the brain does) lead to a result you don't understand so it isn't actually a result of the physical processes? You listening to yourself here?
You do not and cannot know whether that is all. It is highly unscientific to claim it.
That is why people that claim physicalism must be the truth are no better than any other religious or quasi-religious fundamentalists. They claim truth where they just have belief.
Uh-huh. There is no evidence whatsoever for non-physical explanations of anything, the brain contains hundreds of billions of cells which work together in ways we're just gaining the barest understanding of, and you think the people who believe that could be the source of intelligence are the whack-jobs?
Dude, delusional doesn't even begin to explain what you are. And before you get off on your inevitable mindless rant, do keep in mind that "somebody said so" and "I don't understand it" do not constitute evidence.
There is an important difference between "can be" and "is". And actually the indications for "can be" look worse and worse every day.
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And actually the indications for "can be" look worse and worse every day.
Only to a superstitious twit like you.
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Funny. You seem to have run out of arguments. The difference may be that I am an actual scientist, while you confuse science and religion.
Troll or fool? (Score:2)
Funny. You seem to have run out of arguments.
He stopped bothering because once one realizes one is arguing with either a troll or a fool the best path is to stop trying to be reasonable.
The difference may be that I am an actual scientist, while you confuse science and religion.
I very much doubt that you are an actual scientist given your demonstrated lack of understanding of what science actually is. If you are an actual scientist I recommend considering a change of careers. Rapidly.
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Indeed. And I have to say that all these experiments to even only create intelligence (if that is possible separately from consciousness) are highly interesting. So far, absolutely everything in that direction has failed completely (not counting "weak AI", as it is something that does not require understanding, consciousness or general intelligence) and at the same time having even a tiny glimmer of general intelligence ("strong AI") would be extremely valuable in a large number of fields and hence there ha
Re:Futurist = Idiot (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not highly unscientific to claim that everything we observe in the universe has a physical cause (that is, a cause we can detect and observe) because science by its very nature deals only with observable reality. The idea that somehow because something is not fully understood we should assume a non-physical cause is illogical and goes against the principles of science.
Before you can argue for 'non-physical causes' you need to demonstrate that such exist, the burden of proof is on you to show that such processes are not only possible but actually real, and then further demonstrate how a non-physical process can be detected and how it can interact with the world. And if you did manage to somehow demonstrate such a cause and how it can be detected, guess what? At that point it's no longer a 'non-physical cause' but part of the natural world and the physical realm. This is precisely why substance dualism has not been taken seriously by anyone with half a brain for a couple of centuries: 'non-physical process' AKA 'soul' AKA magic is just a placeholder for 'things we do not yet understand."
You don't get to assert causes which have not been proven to exist and then claim that those causes are somehow responsible for things we have a thus far incomplete understanding of. That's a textbook case of argument from ignorance and the age-old theological argument rehashed:
-Matthew Stewart [wikipedia.org], The Courtier and the Heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza, and the Fate of God in the Modern World (2006)
-Baruch Spinoza [wikipedia.org], Ethics (1677).
When the core of your argument lies on premises that could be understood to be false by men living over 300 years ago, you know you're in need of education.
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You confuse "Science!" and "God". The only thing that is in everything is the second. Science has no problems with gray areas and unknown things. Religion has.
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I do not.
I never claimed it does, I said that science doesn't entertain arguments which involve invisible/undetectable magical causes. You seem to be incapable of understanding the flaw in your position, you said: "You do not and cannot know whether that is all. It is highly unscientific to claim it." Which is incorrect because it's essentially saying that it's unscientific to dismiss supernatural causes and claims. I
Invoking magic (Score:3)
You do not and cannot know whether that is all. It is highly unscientific to claim it.
You claimed that "it is unknown whether it is a physical mechanism or not". This is both a preposterous (intentional?) misunderstanding of what a scientific claim is and simultaneously a bunch of pseudo-scientific malarkey. Basically you invoked magic in your argument - unrooted in any physics or observed phenomena we are aware of. You asked us to prove a negative and to ignore what we actually do know. That's not science, that's just the sort of mental masturbation you get from first year college stude
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Underrated
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Funny, because there is zero evidence for your stance as well. And you do not understand science at all. You seem to think that something that has no scientific explanation cannot exist. That is not how science works. Science makes statements about things that are known and limits itself to that and leaves the rest open for future discoveries.
We do have a few indicators though: No intelligence is observable except in humans. Consciousness is completely unexplained (there is no mechanism for it in Physics at
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You are an idiot if you think I do that. I am arguing with half a century of research that has found nothing at all that can create or explain human-level intelligence or consciousness and I am arguing that this is a rather strong indicator that both are be created by physical processes in the brain may be a faulty assumption.
Incidentally, about the only path left by physics to create intelligence and consciousness is some quantum "magic" and I do not think "magic" has a place in science.
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It's a bit of a leap from "they haven't found it yet" to "it can't be found".
Human level processing power, NOT intelligence (Score:4)
People always mistake processing power for intelligence. They are NOT the same, anymore than memory = intelligence.
The ability to remember more facts than the human mind can does not make your smarter than a human. Nor does the ability to do math calculations faster mean anything either.
Intelligence is an entirely different thing than either memory or math (math includes logic and pattern recognition).
Robots are no where near being actually intelligent. None of our attempts to create it have come anywhere near close, we are qualittaively unable to create the smallest amount of real intelligence.
There is the CHANCE that as they are given enough processing power and enough memory that we might make a breakthrough - or more likely they could spontaneously develop intelligence.
But the statement that it will happen is patently ignorant of the issues involved and the current state of the science.
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We already have computers with human-level processing power - Just not many, and you're not going to fit them in your living room.
What we haven't gotten anywhere close to is a computer with the general intelligence of say, a bumble bee.
The problem is that we still have basically no $#@! clue what intelligence *is*, much less how to create it artificially. We can train sophisticated "neural networks" to solve complex but extremely limited-domain problems, but we're no closer to creating an actual intelligen
Not done yet, so never will do it (Score:3)
More importantly, the idea that things will not be done in the future because we do not know how to do them today flies in the face of history.
To misquote Bill Gates "We tend to overestimate what can be done in a decade, but underestimate what can be done in a century".
As to merging with machines, I think it will happen. In the same way that meat merges with a mincing machine.
http://www.computersthink.com/ [computersthink.com]
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Reread my comment.
I specifically said that I believe that the first AIs will likely be simulated human brains - and that they will have been created specifically to find out how human brains work, because we still won't really understand that.
*Eventually* no doubt we'll work out how to lobotomize a simulated human into something like the thing you describe, and some time much later we'll understand what we're doing well enough to build a synthetic intelligence to order. Assuming of course that those undes
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I have not. In fact I think you may have done so yourself.
We've made robots capable of doing a great many of the things we lump under the umbrella term of "intelligence", and yet meaningful comprehension and reasoning, the production of a recognizable "mind", remains perpetually out of reach - to the point that AI researchers are almost unanimous in declaring that creating a "true" AI, something demonstrating at least a reasonable amount of general intelligence and awareness of it's environment, is far, fa
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somebody will figure out a way to grow enough neuronal tissue to make a biological analogue of the brain
I don't see it happening in next ten years thought
Well, perhaps not for you. The rest of us figured out how to produce not only an entire functioning human brain, but an entire body for it as well. It does, however, require a woman.
Before you start screaming "SJW", go upstairs and ask your mother about the process. Don't be so quick to start it though. It takes about 9 months for the initial development, and years of further training and debugging afterward. Even after all that, there's no guarantee it'll function as you initially hope. (Trust me, s
In 2029 (Score:3)
we will sit in the basement of a burned down house gnawing on the rotten leg of a dog, while wars and civil wars are ravaging the world. At least if things continue the way they do now.
Filter (Score:2)
With the right neo-cortex-filter you can get fake news directly into your brain.
Can't wait.
But OTOH perhaps we'll get an ad-filter for the visual nerve, so that all advertisements in real life are changed to nekkid ladies.
Naturally homeless people and other bums will be depicted as beautiful moveable objects, but not so beautiful to warrant attention.
And we could clean up the surroundings all in our brains, fantastic natural landscapes, brand-new infrastructure instead of crumbling bridges, and for some peo
We will? (Score:2, Insightful)
You can watch the full interview on Facebook.
No, I can't, because I'm not about to give up what little privacy I have to that POS site. If it's something worthwhile watching, put it on YouTube* so everyone can see it instead of being in another walled garden.
* This does not imply that everything on YouTube is worth watching
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Fox News, such a reliable source of (mis)informati (Score:1)
What if Kurzweil doesn't make it? (Score:2)
What if all the switches get stuck on destroy [spotify.com]?
Linear thinking (Score:2)
Linear thinking is belief that what is present today will be present tomorrow, only stronger. Whereas nature and human societies go in cycles. So Kurzweil is extrapolating from a short time window.
Human level intelligence (Score:2)
This could also mean that we're getting dumber faster than I thought.
Idiocracy: The prophecy has come to pass.
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Yes, we do have human-equivalent AIs, but they are also slightly dumber than a drunken pug.
Poor Kurzweill (Score:2)
I don't wish him ill but ... (Score:1)
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Well, but, how happy *are* we? (Score:2)
That's certainly true, but it's also true that to even get a sense of what that might be like, you'd have to indulge in methamphetamine or similar. Multiple, sustained orgasms might give you a hint too. Plus they probably wouldn't burn your brain right out of your head, so in that sense, they're a little better than methamphetamine for personal research. :)
Pretty sure there's plenty of room for more happy.
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Are you sure about that?
Average life expectancy, excluding child mortality, has only increased moderately since the stone age.
They only had to work a few hours per day to provide food, clothing, etc., so they likely had a lot more free time than anyone with a "real job" does today.
Their work directly contributed to the survival and well-being of themselves and their families, no pointless soul-killing jobs for a paycheck.
They already had alcohol and other drugs, and many board games.
Nobody was dramatically
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Interesting. There are still parts of the world where you could go and live at that technology level, and live that lifestyle.
And yet, you aren't jumping at the chance.
Why is that, exactly?
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Who says I'm not?
It's not necessary to forgo technology to opt out of the rat race of modern society, you just have to be willing and able to recognize and reject the majority of it's cultural precepts.
Technology itself is not the problem - the problem is in the cultures that have co-developed with it. To the point that modern society does not actually offer a clearly superior quality of life.
Allow me to turn your question back on itself - if modern society is so vastly superior to the alternative, why are
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>You have changed the subject. We were talking about technology.
No, we're not. From the comment I replied to:
> Compare modern life to the stone age, and it is awesome
The technology has improved a lot, there's precious little evidence that the quality of life has done so as well, and some evidence that the opposite is true.
As for your digression on Trump's wall - that's irrelevant. I was talking about stone-age cultures not jumping ship to join the modern world. Mexico, etc. are already fully cultur
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You're out of your mind. The amount of work that had to be done just to feed yourself varied wildly based on location. At absolute best, yes, you only had to work a couple of hours a day. At worst, and much more common, you were perpetually on the edge of starvation and constantly looking for food. You are whatever you could find or kill. Today your local grocery store has a larger variety of foods that any king could have ever wished for a couple of hundred years ago.
You also leave out the complete lack of
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I had no idea our ancestors were so incompetent that they were often on the edge of starvation and had to eat anything they found, when clearly that is not the normal situation for any other wild animal.
As for the wide variety of foods at the grocery store - I'll admit I believe I enjoy it, but it has nothing directly to do with quality of life. In fact, numerous studies have shown that having more than a very few choices actually *lowers* happiness - the belief that having more options make us happier is
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Arguably all apperance of intelligence, natural or artificial, is nothing more than immitation of other intelligent behaviour.
AI can most definitely be real intelligence, but it is intelligence that just happens to be artificial, rather than (implicitly) natural. Natural is fairly well defined... it refers to things that are produced entirely by natural phenomenon, such as evolution, which has led to human beings having what we call intelligence. Artificial is anything that that isn't natural, so we'r