Re: Human AI to superhuman (Re: Max More)

Emmanuel Charpentier (emmanuel_charpentier@yahoo.com)
Wed, 9 Sep 1998 05:32:09 -0700 (PDT)

I would like to share some of my thoughts about AI.

The main one is that there is only one design yet available that can result into intelligence: it's our brain (or any animal brain). The basic concept used is neural network, and more particularly what I would call associative net (our persona is made by all the associations our brain hold).

This kind of net is very good at recognising patterns, storing meaningful data, procedural data, historical data, having emotions
(it's not a free assumption, we can discuss it), making mistakes,
learning...

I don't think we can come up with a totally new kind of architecture, even rule based systems that could lead to some of those features would finally be an associative net (you associate premisses to conclusions, left hand to right hand of the equation). Or anybody has a proposal?

And in a inconsistent world, a world where not everything can be explained (yet:), a world full of seemingly irrationality, this kind of net can survive, or even better, can live and prosper.

From that point of view, it means that at least one of the AI advantage should be dropped:
"3.The ability to perform complex algorithmic tasks without making mistakes, both because of a perfect memory, and because of a lack of
distractions."

And, if a system never make any mistake, it will probably not allow mistakes either... And how can any system have a perfect memory? And if you store all the data available, how can you use it? Don't you transform it, analyse, synthetise it, modify some of your memories in the light of new information? No human being has a perfect memory
(some perform great tasks at memorising -some- kind of data), and
losing memory is even a necessary feature.

We can also argue about: "1.The power to perform repetitive and boring tasks that do not require full human intelligence, not as well as a human, but generally cheaper. "

Humans perform repetitive and boring tasks all the time, my heart can tell you! Note: The heartbeat control (hypothalamus???) allows for mistakes, and makes some from time to time, and it's perfectly normal (in fact, I think that a young heart is generally less constant in its beat than an old one...).

Manu.



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