Re: Neurons vs. Transistors (IA vs. AI)

paul@i2.to
29 Jul 1999 12:45:58 -0700

On Thu, 29 July 1999, "Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" wrote:

> We weren't talking about usefulness. You said that since nobody had
> designed an AI, nobody knows what it'll take to build one. I designed
> an AI. I have some kind of vague idea of what it'll take to build it.
> That's all I'm trying to say. My estimate may be wrong, but there's
> nothing absurd "to the point of self-contradiction" about my making one.

Ok, what I am trying to say is there is no way to prove any AI design can approximate human intelligence until we actually do so. Your design could show promise however if you manage to actually build a seed-AI that maximizes its intelligence within the limited hardware we now have available. So the question, assuming you are correct is what kind of artificial intelligence could we run on an existing pentium III? An ant? A chicken? If you could do that, I would be very impressed. :-) Not only would you prove that your seed-AI has empirical merit, but you would present convincing evidence that the only remaining bottleneck is speed.

> BTW, my estimate is 1e17 ops/sec on CPU-like architectures.

I guess will see.

Paul Hughes