Eugen Leitl wrote:
Why evolution? Why not neuroscience?
...
I think that the ultimate source of intelligence is the process that
generates algorithms. That process is evolution, in all its self-adaptive
recursive evolvability-evolving glory. Biological evolution is a
process-generating process; an algorithm that generates algorithms (that
generates algorithms that...).
How about another metaphor. Imagine that we find a faster than light
space ship one day. Of course everyone will want to understand how it
works so that we can try to build some of our own. Now you could take
it apart piece by piece, watching various bits and pieces while
functioning, and then analyzing them in isolation. Recreate pieces,
sub-units, assemblies etc., until finally arriving at functional units
that can be put together into a new ship. Another strategy would be to
say, ok, we know the basics of physics and all of these materials we
have found, now lets explore the space of every possible arrangement of
these things things until we arrive at something that kind of does the
same thing.
I think it was an Baum's book, where he discusses the immense number of
parallel trials that have been occurring on earth since life arose.
Evolution takes such an incredibly large number of iterations, it seems
like the wrong way to get somewhere if you already know where you want
to go. Even in the history of life on earth, we haven't even scratched
the surface in terms of exploring the total space of possible proteins,
and working within the constraints of a limited set of possible base
pairs, codons etc. is already cutting the space considerably.
If you have a working model right in front of you, without a doubt it
makes sense to understand it as well as you can. Evolution is a good
exploration strategy that is well worth putting lots of effort into
further research and development, but I don't think it is likely to
stumble upon AGI unless it is being used to search a highly constrained
parameter space where it is really just tuning an already engineered design.
Ciao,
Jeff
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