David Clark
Thu, 15 Jan 2009 14:28:04 -0800
You make a very good point BUT human intelligence doesn't come from the 6
billion individuals there are currently living on Earth or from the dead humans
of the past. Most humans don't contribute very much to the collective
knowledge of mankind. The number of contributing humans could be as few as
10's of millions or so.
I don't think this is a problem for AGI because, if you could create an AGI
with about the level of intelligence of a single human, you could duplicate it
quickly and exactly to as many individual computer systems as you desired.
Humans have many ways of communicating with each other but all are very slow
and imprecise, unlike computer systems, so many less computers could probably
do more with less. The computer systems could have a much more flexible mental
architecture than humans are capable of. Eg: 1 second 1 mind the next second
millions of minds. These minds could be cooperative, competitive and
everything in between and change this structure as needed.
Human minds don't deal accurately with detail (unlike a computer) and therefore
how many times must a human revisit the same idea to develop that idea in any
meaningful way? How much does human's very small variable space (7-12 things)
reduce our metal abilities? A computer has no such limitation. Human minds
wander and get tired quite quickly unlike a computer and how much does that
degrade our intelligence?
A computer AGI would have so many basic differences with humans that trying to
compare some number of humans to some particular AGI system wouldn't be very
meaningful. Your observation, however, that an AGI of about human intelligence
won't have the intelligence of humanity, is still correct. I only question how
much more computing power a human level AGI would have to have to out perform
humanity.
The other thing that complicates this analysis is that it is very unlikely that
an AGI will out perform an average human in all ways, ever. There will be
things the AGI does MUCH better than humans and other things humans do better
than it will ever do. There are things that are only relevant to humans and
although these abilities are important to humans, they will always be
irrelevant to any AGI (sex, eating a balanced diet, bringing up kids, etc). An
AGI could be totally deficient in all these areas and still perform very well.
-- David
----- Original Message -----
From: Valentina Poletti
To: agi@v2.listbox.com
Sent: Tuesday, January 13, 2009 6:17 PM
Subject: [agi] just a thought
Not in reference to any specific current discussion,
I find it interesting that when people talk of human like intelligence in the
realm of AGI, they refer to the ability of a human individual, or human brain
if you like. It just occurred to me that human beings are not that intelligent.
Well, of course we are super intelligent compared to a frog (as some would say)
but then again a frog is super intelligent compared to an aunt.
Anyways my point is, the reason why we have achieved so much technology, so
much knowledge in this time is precisely the "we", it's the union of several
individuals together with their ability to communicate with one-other that has
made us advance so much. In a sense we are a single being with millions of
eyes, ears, hands, brains, which alltogether can create amazing things. But
take any human being alone, isolate him/her from any contact with any other
human being and rest assured he/she will not achieve a single artifact of
technology. In fact he/she might not survive long.
So that's why I think it is important to put emphasis on this when talking
about super-human intelligence.
That was my 2-in-the-morning thought. I guess I should sleep now.
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