Both of the neuroscience Nobelists (Eccles; Hubel) who aided us in our never-ending failure of an AI project have years ago passed away. Still we soldier on, even if the goal recedes further and further away from us. During the week we gather up AGI ideas we would like to communicate, and then on a Monday like today we pounce.
Sheltering in place from the coronavirus, we spend an inordinate amount of time spreading AGI memes in several dozen subReddits which are germane to our tilting at AGI windmills, Miguel. Recent developments in the Reddit ecosystem have suddenly made it fun and enjoyable to game the ecosystem. Since most of the geniuses of Earth and the finest minds of humanity are gathered here on the AGI Mail List, your Eminences are the first to hear the following story, nay, confession of an AGI addict. For years there were only a few subReddits which let you declare a "flair" or descriptive name-tag from a rigid list of available options, and even fewer allowed you to edit the text of your chosen flair. Suddenly in this Spring of 2020 Reddit has gone wide open on the permission for Redditors to choose and edit their assigned flair. ["They shouldn'a done that" -- famous Mentifex quote.] Do you realize what happens when you grant Persons-Of-No-Account like Mentifex the Power of the Flair? Extremely flairbuoyant behavior is the ineluctable result. Why, there was one recent incident at http://old.reddit.com/r/singularity/comments/hcddgg/software_20_andrej_karpathy_lead_tesla_researcher/fvetf0x where Mentifex commented with the single word "Thanks" and let his username ("AiHasBeenSolved") and his Chosen Flair ("AI Mind Maintainer") carry the entire message on the medium, Mr. McCluhan. When your wannabe-AGI-er Mentifex started using more presumptuous Reddit flairs, suddenly Redditors started taking the Old AGI Dude much more seriously than before.At http://old.reddit.com/r/consciousness/comments/h9gmos/what_is_consciousness_in_a_nutshell/fuwna32 one adroit comment by AiHasBeenSolved launched a major discussion of "What is consciousness in a nutshell?" Your Truly, Oh Advanced Sapients, learned that certain subReddits possess more than a million signed-up adherents ripe for zapping with memetic infection, such as the http://old.reddit.com/r/iamverysmart subReddit "Where everyone is a quantum scientist". Your not-really-worthy-to-be-here incipient sapient Mentifex learned the trick of embedding a link inside a comment near the top of an "iamverysmart" discussion so that he could then at https://livetrafficfeed.com/live/ai.neocities.org watch the world map of sometimes more than a hundred curious Redditors innocently click the link and, depending on their intelligence quotient, get their high-IQ minds infected or their low-IQ minds befuddled. "Cut to the chase", you mutter? Okay, three days ago your Merry Memester saw a Redditor asking in the neuroscience subReddit what you can do with a neuroscience degree. But there was a message indicating that some one had [GASP!} posted a non-academic link and now the offending Comment was being held up pending moderator approval. Dear Titanic Intellects -- you would not tolerate such interference, and neither did Mentifex.He carefully crafter a no-link no-wait message which appeared beneath http://old.reddit.com/r/neuroscience/comments/hbz1m0/what_can_you_do_with_a_neuroscience_degree/fvc5lpj as a comment stating "AI Mind Maintainer is one option," which prompted "what is it?" as a request for the following meanwhile CENSORED elaboration: "AI Mind Maintainer (q.v.) is a proposal for neuroscientists and computer scientists to work on the maintaining and governance of artificial AI Minds composed of memory channels and concepts resulting in volitional free will and conceptual thinking. Such AI Minds already exist as software coded in Perl and Forth and (tutorial) JavaScript. Each AI Mind achieves Natural Language Understanding (NLU) by assigning quasi-neuronal associative tags to verbal input words so that a sentence of thought is retrievable in the course of _spreading activation_ and association from concept to concept. Thought occurs in English or in Latin or in Russian. The result is AI guaranteed to think." While wily Mentifex had evaded obstruction in his meme-spreading, CENSORSHIP eliminated both his messages, but not before neuroscientists used Google to find and visit the http://ai.neopcities.org/maintainer page, as shown by the following livetrafficfeed records: [United States] [Mobile Safari] [iOS] A visitor from Richmond, Virginia using Mobile Safari Version 13 on iOS 13.3.1 (Apple iPhone) referral from "Google" viewed "AI Mind Maintainer Overview and Job Description" Just now [United Kingdom] [Chrome] [Mac] A visitor from Cramlington, England using Chrome Version 83 on Mac 10.15.5 (Apple) referral from "Google" viewed "AI Mind Maintainer Overview and Job Description" Just now [United States] [Firefox Mobile iOS] [iOS] A visitor from Mountain view, California using Firefox Mobile iOS Version 26 on iOS 13.5.1 (Apple iPhone) referral from "Google" query "ai mind maintainer" viewed "AI Mind Maintainer Overview and Job Description" 5 hrs 57 mins ago [United States] [Firefox Mobile iOS] [iOS] A visitor from Mountain view, California using Firefox Mobile iOS Version 26 on iOS 13.5.1 (Apple iPhone) referral from "Google" query "ai mind maintainer" viewed "AI Mind Maintainer Overview and Job Description" 5 hrs 44 mins ago [United States] [Firefox Mobile iOS] [iOS] A visitor from Mountain view, California using Firefox Mobile iOS Version 26 on iOS 13.5.1 (Apple iPhone) viewed "AI Mind Maintainer Overview and Job Description" 3 hrs 58 mins ago [Netherlands] [Mobile Safari] [iOS] A visitor from Almere stad, Flevoland using Mobile Safari Version 13 on iOS 13.5.1 (Apple iPhone) referral from "Google" viewed "AI Mind Maintainer Overview and Job Description" 3 hrs 36 mins ago [United States] [Firefox Mobile iOS] [iOS] A visitor from Oak harbor, Washington using Firefox Mobile iOS Version 26 on iOS 13.5.1 (Apple iPhone) viewed "AI Mind Maintainer Overview and Job Description" 1 hr 19 mins ago [United States] [Chrome] [Windows] A visitor from Glendale, California using Chrome Version 83 on Windows 10 referral from "Google" viewed "AI Mind Maintainer Overview and Job Description" 52 mins ago [United States] [Chrome Mobile] [Android] A visitor from Tallahassee, Florida using Chrome Mobile Version 83 on Android 10 (Samsung GALAXY S9+) referral from "Google" viewed "AI Mind Maintainer Overview and Job Description" 6 mins ago "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." John Gilmore ------------------------------------------ Artificial General Intelligence List: AGI Permalink: https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/Tae9d50059e61cb46-M3f6e89e49508c054d3a3c29a Delivery options: https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/subscription
