Re: "true" AI Hardware Development

jalegris@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
Curt Welch wrote:

But cars are artifacts to begin with, so coming up with a functional
equivalent is straightforward. Natural phenomena resist functional
interpretations.

All of modern medicine and biology says that's just not true.

Natural phenomena is functionally complex, but so far, has shown no
resistance to functional description at all. Life is being very well
explained functionally in terms of its atomic make up.

Try making a car that is functionally equivalent to a
horse.

We don't have the tools to do engineering at the atomic level. That's why
we can't build machines that are functionally equivalent to a horse. But
we understand a hell of a lot about what a horse is in functional terms
down the the atomic level. What we still don't know is far greater than
what we do know, but there's no indication that any of it is unknowable or
that there's any "magic" stuff there that is going to prevent us from a
complete functional understand the functional understanding of every atom
in the body of a horse (or a human).

But intelligence is assumed to be different - it is the only natural
phenomenon that is assumed to be equivalent to its own simulation. Why
should this be?

Because so far, we have found nothing but signal processing going on in the
brain. And if that's all that is happening, we know for a fact that we can
build functionally equivalent machines. Until someone points to something
that can't be explained in signal processing terms, it's perfectly valid to
stick with the assumption that the brain, and all the behavior it creates,
is nothing more than the actions of a signal processing machine.

We know that it is not a digital signal processing machine, so there are
interesting questions to be answered about whether the same function can
practically be duplicated in a digital computer. We just don't know the
answer to that yet. However, I for one have no problem switching to analog
signal processing techniques if it will give us a practical advantage over
digital in producing intelligent behavior. So far however, I've not seen
any indication that it would be required (but I can think of a few examples
of why it would).

I think it's because AI buffs implicitly accept the Computational
Theory of Mind - a Turing machine is the only thing that actually is
functionally equivalent to its own simulation.

You hang up on the concept of a simulation is misguided in my view.

And analog AM radio is not a simulation. I can build two different analog
AM radios and they will be different. Neither will be a perfect simulation
of the other. Even if they are build from the exact same schematic, the
components that make them up will have very different characteristics. The
matching resisters in each radio will have different resistance values.
The transistors will have different gain and voltage drop and resistance
characteristics. The speakers will have different voice coil resistance
and the cones will be a different weight. Every part will be different.
But yet, both manage to work just fine as AM radios.

Likewise, no two humans are the same. We have billions of examples of
intelligent machines, with no two being the same. Yet we have no problem
creating a functional class and putting all these different machines into
the same class (intelligent humans).

But brains don't just
process information - they also process matter.

What on earth do you mean by that?

Do you understand that all computers are physical machines that work by
pushing physical matter around (i.e., they are all 100% mechanical
machines)? How is a brain any different?

A "truly intelligent" simulation is going to need some real meat.

Meat is made up of electrons and protons. Computers are made up of
electrons and protons. It is already the same "meat" at the core.

Humans are just machines made up of electrons and protons with arms that
have a central signal processing control system that makes the arms move.
We already know how to build machines out of electrons and protons with a
central signal processing core to make its arms move in intelligent ways.

There are many people that are hung up on the belief that humans are
somehow special (we posses some non-physical magic about us - be it a soul,
or feelings, or emotions, or consciousness - it goes by lots of different
names). It's a concept built into our culture in more ways than I can
count. But with all the advances in science, we now know that there is
just no evidence to support these beliefs. Humans are just complex
machines which we have the power to functionally describe and understand
completely. Everything science has uncovered confirms this. Many people
resist this idea, but science has also uncovered enough information about
human behavior to explain why humans resist this idea. It's simply because
it scares them to believe it. It scares them to accept the idea that they
are nothing more than machines created by a natural process of evolution.
And this just means we are conditioned to find find behaviors that make us
stronger - and if telling ourselves lies about how special we are makes us
stronger - then we do it.

I just don't buy any of those stories people like to tell about how special
humans are.

There is still much we don't know about humans. So there is room for
something to be uncovered to show that we are in fact more special than we
currently realize. But until that data is uncovered, I'm not going to
choose to believe it. People that are scared of facing the facts about
what we are however, seem to cling to that possibility as their last life
raft of salvation. I don't.

The human body is a wonderfully complex piece of engineering. It can self
reproduce and survive on it's own out in a forest. That's absolutely
amazing and something we haven't even come close to in our machines. But
the brain in fact is not all that amazing. It's not much more amazing than
our computers. The internet is a machine many times more complex than any
human brain. We have already build signal processing machine far more
complex than anything nature built. The brain just doesn't impress me
nearly as much as the entire human body and DNA based life in general.

One day soon, (within a few decades) we are going to figure out enough
about how to build these types of signal processing machines that the human
brain is going to start to look out right stupid. Humans already can't
touch the processing power of computers. They do many things with speed
and accuracy untouchable by humans. And soon, there will be NOTHING that
the human brain can do which can't be done orders of magnitude better by
man made machines.

And when that happens, all this silly debate about how special humans are,
is going to finally stop (at least it will be gone from the educated
segment of society).

--
Curt Welch http://CurtWelch.Com/
curt@xxxxxxxx http://NewsReader.Com/
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: "true" AI Hardware Development
    ... resistance to functional description at all. ... that we can build functionally equivalent machines. ... no two humans are the same. ... Do you understand that all computers are physical machines that work by ...
    (comp.ai.philosophy)
  • Re: "true" AI Hardware Development
    ... we can't build machines that are functionally equivalent to a horse. ... we have found nothing but signal processing going on in the ... matching resisters in each radio will have different resistance values. ... no two humans are the same. ...
    (comp.ai.philosophy)
  • Re: Robot survival instincts
    ... But if we killed the humans, ... I don't really buy your premise that machines are going to take over ... that will turn control of the earth, ... maximize the odds of our genes surviving and nothing else. ...
    (comp.ai.philosophy)
  • Re: Merging with machines inevitable, scientists say
    ... I see the odds of the machines taking over being exceptionally slim. ... Humans are programmed by evolution with the goal of surviving. ... build AIs with the goal of surviving. ... advanced AIs for the sole purpose of taking over control from the humans. ...
    (comp.ai.philosophy)
  • Re: Robot survival instincts
    ... Reinforcement learning machines have no desire to ... Even Asimov's robots had survival instincts. ... these machines so they do the best job while not being a threat to humans, ... Linux survives because it exists in an environment that ...
    (comp.ai.philosophy)