James Rogers wrote:
> 
> This does not follow, and it baffles me that so many relatively
> knowledgeable people have simply accepted it.  Distributed computing,
> *particularly* over slow high-latency links, is totally unsuitable for a
> very large percentage of the algoriİhm space (and essentially *every*
> plausible AI architecture).
This is a seed AI we're talking about.  Suppose that humans had evolved to
write code.  Can you imagine them talking about the difficulty of daily
life in a 3D-world?  "Oh, yeah, right, like you're going to filter through
trillions of incoming photons in all directions to build up a model of
multidimensional objects that rotate and accelerate and deform. 
Impossible."
If it's even theoretically possible for a human being to write distributed
code, then you have to figure that a reasonably mature seed AI that
started out on a tight Beowulf network will be able to adapt verself
pretty easily for the Internet.  Or FPGAs.  Or nanocomputers.  Or a
galactic abacus if that's what's available.
I wouldn't want to develop an AI running on the Internet *initially*. 
With this I agree.  But I do not agree that network latencies - or
firewalls, for that matter - would present a significant obstacle to a
mature, computer-native general intelligence.
--              --              --              --              -- 
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky                          http://singinst.org/ 
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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