Philosophically, "intelligence explosion" in the sense being discussed here is akin to ritual magic - the primary fallacy is the attribution to symbols alone of powers they simply do not possess.
The argument is that an initially somewhat intelligent program A can generate a more intelligent program B, which in turn can generate... so on to Z. Let's stop and consider that first step, A to B. Clearly A cannot already have B encoded within itself, or the process is mere installation of already-existing software. So it must generate and evaluate candidates B1, B2 etc and choose the best one. On what basis does it choose? Most intelligent? But there's no such function as Intelligence(S) where S is a symbol system. There are functions F(S, E) where E is the environment, denoting the ability of S to produce useful results in that environment; "intelligence" is the word we use to refer to a family of such functions. So A must evaluate Bx in the context of the environment in which B is intended to operate. Furthermore, A can't evaluate by comparing Bx's answers in each potential situation to the correct ones - if A knew the correct answers in all situations, it would already be as intelligent as B. It has to work by feedback from the environment. If we step back and think about it, we really knew this already. In every case where humans, machines or biological systems exhibit anything that could be called an intelligence improvement - biological evolution, a child learning to talk, a scientific community improving its theories, engineers building better aeroplanes, programmers improving their software - it involves feedback from the environment. The mistake of trying to reach truth by pure armchair thought was understandable in ancient Greece. We now know better. So attractive as the image of a Transcendent Power popping out of a basement may be to us geeks, it doesn't have anything to do with reality. Making smarter machines in the real world is, like every other engineering activity, a process that has to take place _in_ the real world. ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=106510220-47b225 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
