Is the Singularity really nearer now? I offer an overview of the man and his ideas, and Chris Edwards reviews Kurzweil's new book The Singularity is Nearer
Robert Heinline in a novel published in the 1940s, Methusalahs Children, told us how to extend human life span by a technology that has been known to farmers since Neolithic times: Selectively breed humans for longer life spans.
In the story, the rest of the humans, the ones not part of the long-lived minority, not beleiving their longer life span was the result of selective breeding and thinking it must be from some medical discovery they were keeping secret, tried to capture the ones who resulted from the breeding program to torture the supposed secret of long life out of them. The long lived were frorced to flee from earth to avoid being rounded up and forced to reveal a supposed secret they did not posess.
Today, most of the world still is composed of followers of religions that would consider tampering with human life span immoral and a defiance of God's will. I suspect the computer freaks have not taken into account the posibility that there might be some opposition to their pipe dreams.
The many developers of AI did a very good job in the marketing side of this. They were able to convince a majority of people that it was taking over all of life and unstoppable. People bought into their angle of presentation. The resulting fear was the point.
Kurzweil does all of science a favor by inspiring us with real possibilities. He doesn't have to be right about most things. He has done enough homework to be worth reading. Chances are very good that at least SOME of his predictions will be on target. That's an enormous service to the public.
In reading Edwards review, I hear the tone of "fact or false" that is so prevalent in technical dialogue. Everyone wants the power to be the smartest person in the room. I wonder if a machine passes the Turing Test will it then be more humble or arrogant?
The 'problem' with Kurzweil is Kurzweil, but I won't belabor that because he is not only a genius but eminently accomplished as well. His thing with AI is that it will just keep developing and then at some point reach sentience and that simply is not going to happen. 'It' can already mimic sentience, but one thing it cannot do is be conscious. Part and parcel of the problem is that we cannot even agree on exactly what that is and how it works. The neuroscience folks gave up on trying to find Neural Correlates of Consciousness (NCC) and my theory is that it is because Hameroff and Penrose are closer to the truth about it than people realize. Regrettably, instead of focussing on the mechanism in the neural substrate, Penrose flew off on a quest for cosmic consciousness based on quantum entanglement that just obfuscated the whole thing. Nutcases literally came out of the woodwork (figuratively) to jump on the "we are all connected" theme (...and there's your spiritualism Michael).
No matter, at some point we will have the tools and the wherewithal to determine once and for all if conscious awareness indeed has a QM foundation and how it operates. At that point we can move in a direction to create an AI that Kurzweil is talking about when he says 'singularity'.
Kurzweil seems a bright sort but like mant successful people cannot bear the idea of a world wirhout him. Scared of death. Previous predictions of the future throughout the past turn out to be lamentably off target. Stephen Wolfram notes in his ideas concerning rhe Universe as a computational system that while one might look back into the past what happens much farther back than one’s own lifetime becomes mur irreducibly complew to work out. There is no algorithm to jump forward to the future one just has to let the future continue. In all its easier for the highly fortunate to be optimistic but it only takes one psychopath to destroy any nation or the world.
My bet is, and always has been, that nothing that Kurzweil predicts will come out. I'm not quite saying I think he's a crackpot but I'm near (pun intended). Besides, what do his predictions matter? Things will be what they will be regardless of them. I hope they won't come true. I'm especially terrified about the idea of extending natural life span or messing with that.
Robert Heinline in a novel published in the 1940s, Methusalahs Children, told us how to extend human life span by a technology that has been known to farmers since Neolithic times: Selectively breed humans for longer life spans.
In the story, the rest of the humans, the ones not part of the long-lived minority, not beleiving their longer life span was the result of selective breeding and thinking it must be from some medical discovery they were keeping secret, tried to capture the ones who resulted from the breeding program to torture the supposed secret of long life out of them. The long lived were frorced to flee from earth to avoid being rounded up and forced to reveal a supposed secret they did not posess.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methuselah%27s_Children
Today, most of the world still is composed of followers of religions that would consider tampering with human life span immoral and a defiance of God's will. I suspect the computer freaks have not taken into account the posibility that there might be some opposition to their pipe dreams.
You will not live forever. If you want to, you aren't a good person. If you believe someone who says you will live forever, you are in a cult.
"Skeptic." L-fucking-mao!
I have no doubt that AI will become as conscious as people are, as soon as they become both embodied and social, two pre-requisites in my opinion
A reverse Turing test is nearer: let random people prove they are human by chat alone and many will fail
The many developers of AI did a very good job in the marketing side of this. They were able to convince a majority of people that it was taking over all of life and unstoppable. People bought into their angle of presentation. The resulting fear was the point.
Kurzweil does all of science a favor by inspiring us with real possibilities. He doesn't have to be right about most things. He has done enough homework to be worth reading. Chances are very good that at least SOME of his predictions will be on target. That's an enormous service to the public.
In reading Edwards review, I hear the tone of "fact or false" that is so prevalent in technical dialogue. Everyone wants the power to be the smartest person in the room. I wonder if a machine passes the Turing Test will it then be more humble or arrogant?
The 'problem' with Kurzweil is Kurzweil, but I won't belabor that because he is not only a genius but eminently accomplished as well. His thing with AI is that it will just keep developing and then at some point reach sentience and that simply is not going to happen. 'It' can already mimic sentience, but one thing it cannot do is be conscious. Part and parcel of the problem is that we cannot even agree on exactly what that is and how it works. The neuroscience folks gave up on trying to find Neural Correlates of Consciousness (NCC) and my theory is that it is because Hameroff and Penrose are closer to the truth about it than people realize. Regrettably, instead of focussing on the mechanism in the neural substrate, Penrose flew off on a quest for cosmic consciousness based on quantum entanglement that just obfuscated the whole thing. Nutcases literally came out of the woodwork (figuratively) to jump on the "we are all connected" theme (...and there's your spiritualism Michael).
No matter, at some point we will have the tools and the wherewithal to determine once and for all if conscious awareness indeed has a QM foundation and how it operates. At that point we can move in a direction to create an AI that Kurzweil is talking about when he says 'singularity'.
Kurzweil seems a bright sort but like mant successful people cannot bear the idea of a world wirhout him. Scared of death. Previous predictions of the future throughout the past turn out to be lamentably off target. Stephen Wolfram notes in his ideas concerning rhe Universe as a computational system that while one might look back into the past what happens much farther back than one’s own lifetime becomes mur irreducibly complew to work out. There is no algorithm to jump forward to the future one just has to let the future continue. In all its easier for the highly fortunate to be optimistic but it only takes one psychopath to destroy any nation or the world.
My bet is, and always has been, that nothing that Kurzweil predicts will come out. I'm not quite saying I think he's a crackpot but I'm near (pun intended). Besides, what do his predictions matter? Things will be what they will be regardless of them. I hope they won't come true. I'm especially terrified about the idea of extending natural life span or messing with that.