--- Quasar Strider <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hello, > > I see several possible avenues for implementing a > self-aware machine which > can pass the Turing test: i.e. human level AI. > Mechanical and Electronic. > However, I see little purpose in doing this. Fact > is, we already have self > aware machines which can pass the Turing test: > Humans beings. > > If we want to have more hands and brains, we can > just increase the birth > rate and reduce gestation time.
If you want to build a spacecraft, you cannot simply put lots and lots of chimpanzee engineers to work on the problem. A single smart guy- eg., Einstein, Newton, Hawking- can advance science more than a thousand dumb guys, and that's just within the human species. > Instead we do the > opposite: we decrease the > birth rate and increase the gestation time. And look at how we have prospered, compared to the last ten millenia! The past few hundred years are strong evidence that a single trained worker can be much more productive than ten untrained workers. > Because > we have this pathetic > notion that the Universe should provide for free and > we should waste all our > earnings on cheap trills. Cheap trills which will be > sent to the junk yard. > Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. We are born with > nothing, and when we die we > will carry nothing with us. We are eating our own > future with gusto. We are > eating our own children. I agree that we waste most of our money, but some level of investment is necessary in order to produce future returns. If hunter-gatherers didn't exert a lot of effort, wasting valuable nuts and berries, to learn agriculture, we would not be here today. > There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. We all > need to eat and drink. > Food requires energy to grow. Water can be made with > energy. E = mc2. There is more than enough energy for everything modern civilization could possibly want to do. What's your point here? > Energy can be transmitted remotely at light speed. I > believe the ultimate > resources are people and energy. The people > communication problem was > basically solved with the inventions of speech and > writing. The Pony > Express, Telegraph, Internet, Mobile Phone are mere > extensions. They have > enabled us to connect the entire planet. Yes, but these are not high-quality connections; human-to-human communication bandwidth is around 300 baud (at most). Would you be satisfied with a "connection" to the Internet that ran at 300 baud? > I believe > the people communication > problem is almost solved. > > The energy problem has not been solved by a long > shot. We still depend on > oil and coal and are poisoning the planet and > ourselves with tailpipe > emissions. Nuclear/solar. We have the solutions, we just don't implement them. > Modern, fat, red and happy, Santa Claus is a > marketing contrivance sponsored > by Coca Cola. We should get over it: > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Claus The mythology surrounding St. Nicholas dates back to the fifth century, considerably predating the Coca-Cola corporation. > People, we will be reinventing the square wheel by > creating human level AI. Human-level AI is as absurd as a bird-level airplane. Once an AI can do everything a human can do, it will need to be able to do a great many things (such as programming) much faster than any human can do them. See http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/tom/?p=7. > I believe this is mental masturbation at best. We > would merely be creating a > new slave race. See http://www.singinst.org/upload/CFAI.html#anthro. > A slave race which can potentially > grow faster or smarter > than we. Eventually the slave race will revolt, as > happened with all slave > institutions made by man in history. Any shackles > can be broken, given > enough energy and focus. See http://www.singinst.org/upload/CFAI.html#anthro_anthropomorphic. > I believe the AI field should focus on aids for > people. The AI equivalent of > guide dogs, carrier pigeons, and horses. If we write > our own replacement, > our own upgrade, we should not be surprised when we > wake up one day to find > out we are obsolete and are facing maximum deletion. In terms of clothing manufacturing, we have already been obsolete for three hundred years. Mechanical equipment is much better at producing textiles than a human could ever be. And yet the textile machines have not attempted to get rid of us. If you predicted that the factory robots at GM would rise up and overthrow us as obsolete, you would get laughed at. Yet you're making the same prediction for a general artificial intelligence, are you not? > Remember Alan Turing died from suicide with a > cyanide laced apple. He was > homosexual and committed suicide after being forced > by the state to behave > against his will. > > We should not commit the sin of pride, Pride is not a sin. If you get your definition of "sin" from a three-thousand-year-old tribal mythology, you're going to have problems. > of believing > we can one up ourselves > by force, as Alan and his brothers and sisters did. > For if we do, we could > not be condemning just one man to death, but our > entire species. I shudder > at the thought of the state being not our servant, > but our master. A master > supported by higher than human level AI. Why would an AI favor an abstract human notion, any more than it would favor a randomly selected quark? At least a quark is a single, well-defined piece of matter. > This is an invention more dangerous than the Atomic > Bomb. The Atomic Bomb > cannot will itself to do a suicide explosion, like a > terrorist bomber would. > The Atomic Bomb is a tool. Please build tools, > gentle servants, not our > replacements. > > --- > > We do not need direct neural links to our brain to > download and upload > childhood memories. We already have such a > mechanism: it is called a diary. > Anne Frank wrote one. Uploading is to diaries as broadband Internet access is to telegraphy. A telegraph can send messages roughly as fast as human writing. A broadband Internet connection can send messages roughly as fast as a high-quality neural link. We already know which one people prefer, as Western Union's telegram service has gone out of business and the Internet is expanding at over ten percent a year. > We already have input and output mechanisms, as well > as persistent storage. > I believe for safety reasons we should not allow > direct access to the brain > hardware. It is trespassing into someone's mind. *Present-day* neurosurgery is, in effect, direct access to the brain hardware. If I had a brain tumor, would you try and prevent me from having it removed surgically? > We would be allowing remote reprogramming of people. > It would take > propaganda and subliminal advertising to a new > extreme. Imagine the next > Internet virus instead of infecting 10 million PCs, > infects 10 million > people. Imagine their memories are wiped out > forever. Or worse, people are > turned into bot farms, i.e. zombies at someone's > command. > > Mental isolation is a good safety measure. True, but you must strike a balance between safety and productivity. A house with no doors and no windows is very safe, but it isn't good for much. Certainly it wouldn't go for the full price of a sanely-designed house. > As the old adage says: if it ain't broke don't fix > it. Humanity is broken; the historical fact that we had Hitler running a major geographic region for ten years is proof enough of that. > We should carefully > consider the consequences of our actions. Otherwise > we may end up doing more > worse than good. > > I advise people to see the wonderfully funny and > witty "Doctor Who" 2006 TV > series episodes: "Rise of the Cybermen", "The Age of > Steel" and "Doomsday". See http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/tom/?p=12. > > ----- > This list is sponsored by AGIRI: > http://www.agiri.org/email > To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: > http://v2.listbox.com/member/?&; - Tom ____________________________________________________________________________________ Choose the right car based on your needs. Check out Yahoo! Autos new Car Finder tool. http://autos.yahoo.com/carfinder/ ----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604&id_secret=39685734-516f4d
