From: Harvey Newstrom (mail@HarveyNewstrom.com)
Date: Tue Jun 17 2003 - 20:00:03 MDT
Ramez Naam wrote,
> Most AI researchers that I know of are not overly concerned with
> processing power. They think the fundamental problems of AI are
> design problems.
>
> But as you point out, roboticists do care about computing power.
>
> I find this an interesting dichotomy, actually. Roboticists, computer
> vision researchers, and the like deal in interacting with the messy
> physical world.
This makes sense to me. Robotics is hardware. AI is software.
Characteristically speaking, software is more predictable and can be made to
work. We are just working on making it smaller, cooler, faster. Software
is not very predictable. We seem to be making it more bloated, more
"cooler", and slower.
In the future we want the AI(software) to design the hardware. If only we
could figure out a way to do the reverse! This is probably where uploading,
simulation, and evolution come in. This might be a creative compromise, but
it also might lead us to building things we don't understand.
> Right now if I had infinite computing power and wanted to do it I'd
> employ an evolutionary technique. Unfortunately, this is Eliezer's
> worst nightmare - a new form of intelligence grown by evolution and
> not necessarily friendly to us.
I agree - on the nightmare part. This also is similar to how software is
built today. It is "evolved". Not in the true sense of the word as we mean
it. But it grows in little pieces. As things break, we find a way to
adapt. It becomes a bloated inefficient collection of junk code rather than
a sleak, elegant, well-designed thing. In fact, some people have argued
that faster hardware helps prop-up poorer programs. If you have excess
speed, why be efficient? If you have excess memory and disk, why conserve?
If you can reboot in a couple of minutes, who cares if you crash? But for
AI, I certainly don't want errors, bugs, security holes, and crashes every
day.
-- Harvey Newstrom, CISM, CISSP, IAM, IBMCP, GSEC Certified InfoSec Manager, Certified IS Security Pro, NSA-certified InfoSec Assessor, IBM-certified Security Consultant, SANS-cert GSEC <HarveyNewstrom.com> <Newstaff.com>
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