On Mon, 25 Sep 2000, J. R. Molloy wrote:
> >But then
> > this is all just distant futuristic fantasy, right? And we the public can
> > sit back and know that private and military AI research is many decades
> > away from any such state of development.
> > FWP
>
> Nope. It's not fantasy at all. It's real. It's here. It's now.
> Learn it, love it, live it.
Well, JR, my investigation of the matter tells me that the knowledge in
the public domain alone is sufficient that a mega-project could be
undertaken now to develop AI to surpass human equivalency and it would be
analogous to the man-on-the-moon effort from a 1960 vantage point. In
other words, put 10 years and x billion $ into it and we can expect to
succeed. Between 2000 and 2010 might require tens of billions, even
hundreds of billions of dollars but we can plan it out now and we can see
that applying known technology on a large scale will solve most of the
problems. The "unknowns" refer to innovations/inventions to go forward. I
think these are in four categories: (1) visual object
recognition/itemization in cluttered environments; (2) voice recognition
with lots of static/background noise and a not-so-clear
signal; (3) reading-question-answer sequences or data mining from text (ie
reading ability); (4) conversational programming, ie getting a machine to
converse as well as a human.
It is even possible that some private/military budgets have done it
already. If not, they must be trying to develop it. No first rate military
could let this go by. But whenever I contemplate the prospect of this
being here-and-now it boggles my mind as much as considering the prospect
that ufo's and grey aliens are here. Frankly it is hard to imagine
conversing with a robot as you would with a human and being able to
consult with that robot as an extremely capable professional in many
fields (engineer, doctor, lawyer, you name it). Hard to imagine that robot
being able to add to its knowledge base faster than any human (learn new
material). And consider that such a capable machine could work 24 hours a
day and could replicate itself.
It is in that context that the Kurzweil statement from the web site you
gave me is plausible,
<http://www.business2.com/content/magazine/indepth/2000/09/12/17734>. "It
is not the case that we will experience 100 years of progress in the
21st. century; rather we will witness on the order of 20,000 years of
progress (at today's rate of progress, that is)." Mind boggling...
20,000 YEARS OF PROGRESS IN 100 YEARS
I can logic this out in the context of what a $100 b. investment in Honda
Humanoids for example should yield in 10 years. And I can imagine those
conversing Honda Humanoid's in 10 years time with capabilities as
above. Then I say, "I'm just fantasizing". There really is a psychological
shut-off mechanism operating here. So I keep going out for the "reality
checks" as I did recently in some correspondence with Minsky and
Engelberger. Well, they couldn't talk me out of my "fantasy" so it goes
on.
FWP
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