JR sez:
>Good question. Also, how do we keep the idea of a transcendent
>machine from becoming a religious meme?
i would argue, no offense intended at all towards the singularity folks,
that it already is a religious meme. singularity is supposed to solve every
problem since the time you burnt your toast to cats and dogs living together
in harmony, which smacks of faith to me.
not that i think greater than human intelligence wont' solve problems we
can't on our own, but perhaps the singularity will not be the incredible
force you're expecting. what if self modifying humans with their patterned
parallel processors are never overtaken by machine intelligences? it's just
as likely as a human who is self modifying has less far to go to become more
intelligent than a human, all he would have to do is become ANY smarter. a
machine intelligence doesn't exist yet. going from 60 to 61 is easier than 0
to 61, even with our design flaws.
just a theory.
i do however, believe that expert systems and ultratech/ultrasoftware will
play a role in improving us, as we're unlikely just to do it through
biological manipulation(gene therapy, bioware, etc). although you could just
add a bunch of grey matter and see what happened.
(a wonderful quote from a bad movie:
"....so, what does a 18 foot predator with a brain the size of a flat-head
V12 engine think about?..."
-Deep Blue Sea )
the bottom line is that trancendant AI is cool, and massively
useful(theoretically). but it's also not here. so we need to be careful
where we put our trust(faith?). as long as we're not sitting on our butts
waiting for momma AI to come and fix our problems, the religious nature of
"awaiting the singularity" won't be an issue.
my big question, is, when the singularity does occur, how do we keep people
from treating it like a GOD, or a Demon. no matter how logical and well
constructed it is, being treated like a god would hamper both it's
situation, it's flexibility, and it's psychology(assuming a general
intelligence would have a similar psychology to other general intelligences,
such as humans, being given absolute worship and power has a tendency to
mess with your head and hamper your effectiveness)
justin
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