Re: Group topic: Kurzweil + Singularity.

On 26 Apr, 21:59, HMSBeagle <jsb...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 25 Apr 2007 08:59:15 -0700, feedbackdroid <feedbackdr...@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:



On Apr 23, 7:48 pm, Vend <ven...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 23 Apr, 23:25, HMSBeagle <jsb...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Thank you everyone for your replies.
I have several points.

1) The singularity may happen but it will not be AI technology.
Yudkowsky is simply wrong. Intelligence is not a software problem.
It is a problem of behavioral science. Strong AI is about how
artifacts interact with this particular world.

AFAIK, Strong AI is the philosophical queston on whether it is
possible to create intelligent artifacts. It is not a paradigm.

GOFAI claimed that
intelligence was a type of "thinking".

AFAIK, GOFAI is the class of techniques involving solely the
manipulation of high-level, domain-meaningful symbols.
It is a term used in retrospect to characterize the early attempts at
solving AI problems.
In my understanding, it makes no philosophical claims.

NewFAI says that intelligence
is a type of behavior.

I don't know this one.

I found Beagle's comments to be a little strange here. Does this mean
NewFAI is exactly what the 2 behaviorists on this forum contend it to
be? Does anyone ELSE [in the actual AI community] share this opinion?

What the hell is the phrase "actual AI community" referring to?
You're going to have to tell me what that is exactly before I can
respond to this post.





2) In my humble opinion, possible candidates for the "Singularity" are
the following:
- Fusion power

I thought that research on fusion power has been stalled for 50 years
or so, hasn't it?

- Nanotech

'Nanotech' seems to be the current synonym for 'magic'.

- Fountain of Youth: Genetics research produces a way to live
forever (or really long eg 300 years)

Not sure. Biological polymers, including DNA, deteriorate over time.
Tissues lose strength due to the deterioration of the structural
polymers like collagen. I don't know if there is any simple way of
fixing that.

The original 3 pillars of the singularity were AI, nanotech, and
genetic engineering.

Beagle substitiuted his own for AI because, from his other comments,
he thinks new energy sources rather than intelligence is the key to
life in the future. But the singularity is really about "transforming"
society, not finding a way to keep 9-billions of people in energy in
the future

3) Someone has said that the Singularity is a "Rapture for Geeks". I
want to expand on this idea here. The point I will make is that even
if they build super-human AI, it won't matter to most people and will
not transform society.

It sounds like the CEO of IBM claiming that the world would had needed
only 2 or 3 computers.

Super human AI will run the computers of the world in the future, and
it **WILL** matter to most people. It will be the ultimate extension
of current-day outsourcing and globalization.

Today, american jobs are outsourced to India and also [communist]-
China, of all places.

Recently I bought a notebook computer online from that good old red-
blooded and patriotic american company *Hewlett-Packard*, and it was
built and sent from Kunshan near Shanghai on mainland China [so I
found out by looking at the bill of lading after the computer was
delivered].

http://www.google.com/custom?&q=kunshan+china

http://www.ketd.gov.cn/english/index.asp
=================
By the end of September 2002, more than 900 companies have been set up
with investments from 38 countries and regions across the world,
mainly in the business of IT industry and the production of precision
machinery and daily-life stufff.
=================

That is how HP got to be the current #1 computer company in the world.
Think about that. It's mindboggling. HP got to be #1 by outsourcing
american manufacturing to cheap "communist" labor. Thanks, Carly
Fiorina.

And just wait till essentially ALL of intellectual function is
outsourced to super-intelligent computers in the future. The next few
comments of Beagle sound incredibly short-sighted. "... will not
penetrate outside of university walls ...".

If it costs $14 million to build a single super-human AI, no company
on earth will ever use it. (Why pay $14 million for a single piece
of hardware that is a little more clever than a human, when you can
hire a full-blown human for $5/hour in India?) The military might
use it. A couple of universities in Europe might have one. But
that's about it. It's cost/benefit analysis. Cost/benefit analysis
is precisely what has moved all the HP jobs to Kunshan. You know what
I'm saying here is true.

The benefits would be that the AI costs would be mostly one-shot and
the AIs probably wouldn't join trade unions.

Outsourcing jobs to reduce costs can't work forever. The more the
developed countries outsource, the more the undeveloped countries
develop. Sooner or later, the system has to reach an equilibrium.

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: bill gates claim about security vulnerabilities per LOC inUnix versus Windows
    ... > countries that have very low wage costs and above all human greed, ... development costs. ... largely subsumes the outsourcing point, ... If development costs are the reason for inadequate attention to ...
    (SecProg)
  • RE: Rare job posting
    ... they drastically reduce the costs associated with their IT ... Outsourcing is about people not about HW & SW. ... if a platform has many security patches released each and every ... Ask any outsourcing company for a quote on them managing 10 standalone servers vs ...
    (comp.os.vms)
  • BUSINESS: Luo+ng re? vo+i Global JobWare war
    ... BUSINESS: Luo+ng re? ... SPECIAL REPORT -- OUTSOURCING ... Other developing countries see ... plus advantages such as closer proximity to U.S. and European ...
    (soc.culture.vietnamese)
  • Cuba in new list of countries with potential outsourcing capabilities
    ... Cuba in new list of countries with potential outsourcing capabilities ... Gartner analyst Frances Karamouzis said Cuba, which has a population of about 11 million people, is "an interesting prospect" for outsourcing because of its educational programs in math and computer science. ...
    (soc.culture.cuba)
  • Re: Group topic: Kurzweil + Singularity.
    ... only 2 or 3 computers. ... of current-day outsourcing and globalization. ... If it costs $14 million to build a single super-human AI, ... (In other words, because of Capitalism). ...
    (comp.ai.philosophy)