Human beings make machines that are more powerful than they are, and can do things that they cannot do. Jim Bromer
On Tue, Feb 12, 2019 at 10:36 AM Matt Mahoney <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Sun, Feb 10, 2019 at 7:46 PM Alan Grimes <[email protected]> wrote: > > I've read about half a book that I highly recommend to you: "Our Final > > Invention" by Barrat. The book is kinda stop-and-go, with really > > engaging factual sections combined with OH-GOD STOP BORING ME!!! > > Wired-itis biographical sketches. I think that will help you understand > > what we mean by "superintelligence". > > > > Once you have an AGI, it is almost certain that you will be able to find > > a way to improve it, from there it's off to the races... > > I looked up the reviews on Amazon. It's a series of interviews by a > film maker with AGI experts like Yudkowsky, Kurzweil, Omohundro, > Vinge, Dyson, Musk, Bostrom, Tegmark, etc. I am somewhat doubtful that > events are happening as fast as many of them claim. Vinge's 1993 > prediction of a singularity in 2023 (almost certainly between 2005 and > 2030) looks in doubt, at least to me. > > The premise is that if we can make superhuman intelligence, then so > can it, but faster. We don't know how it will do that because we > aren't that smart. It will be magic. But I don't buy it. Intelligence > depends on knowledge and computing power. An agent can't create > another agent that knows more than the parent, so any improvement must > come from computing power and increased capacity to learn. Every > example of exponential self improvement works that way, from a colony > of bacteria evolving drug resistance, to a company investing its > profits, to human civilization augmenting itself with language, books, > and the internet. In any case, computers already know more than us and > can compute faster than us, and have been for so long that we don't > even notice. > > We have had faster than exponential growth in population, the economy, > and in global computing power for centuries. The economy is roughly > proportional to e^(.0001t)(2100-t), which has a singularity at year t > = 2100, but also a good fit to e^(0.03e^0.01t), which is > super-exponential but does not have a singularity. There are many > other rough fits, with or without singularities. Some keep going up > forever. Some peak and go down. Take your pick. The future is really > hard to predict. > > I believe that if Moore's Law is to continue, we will need to soon > switch to computing by moving atoms instead of electrons. Clock speeds > stalled a decade ago. Transistors are already down to about 100 atoms > across, which is as small as you can make them and still distinguish P > from N type silicon. They still use 10^5 times as much energy per > operation as your brain. That's important as long as the biggest and > least reliable component in your smart phone is the battery. > > Freitas worked out the physics of self replicating nanotechnology in > https://foresight.org/nano/Ecophagy.html > It is quite interesting that artificial life has nearly the same > limits on size, speed, and power as DNA based life. We can make robots > as small as bacteria but no smaller. They can replicate in tens of > minutes and consume energy on a par with living organisms. We might > marginally do better. We already have solar cells that are a little > more efficient than chlorophyll. But marginally better is good enough > to displace DNA based life. The biosphere encodes 10^37 bits of memory > in DNA and performs 10^33 DNA, RNA, and amino acid transcription > operations per second. Moore's Law suggests we will get there in the > 2080's if it continues at the current rate of doubling global > computing capacity every 1.5 years. That is far from certain, of > course. > > Nanotechnology does not need to be self replicating, of course. > Airplanes are safe because they are not birds and can't make baby > airplanes. Likewise, I think it will be easier to build nanobots in > factories like we build silicon chips. Nevertheless, the technology of > putting atoms precisely where we want them will get cheaper. Once it > is possible for anyone to buy cheap molecular scale 3-D printers, > people are going to experiment and build these things, just like cheap > computers enabled people to write viruses and worms. > > -- > -- Matt Mahoney, [email protected] ------------------------------------------ Artificial General Intelligence List: AGI Permalink: https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/Ta6fce6a7b640886a-M488d96821d232a3716307bd4 Delivery options: https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/subscription
