My comments posted to http://multiverseaccordingtoben.blogspot.com/
1. Intelligence depends on knowledge and computing power. A program that rewrites itself cannot gain Kolmogorov complexity. Therefore, self improvement will come from acquiring hardware and learning from the environment. 2. Freitas has estimated ( http://www.foresight.org/nano/Ecophagy.html ) the maximum rate that nanotechnology can acquire hardware using molecular computation. It is limited by energy costs to be about the same as biology, which is already near the thermodynamic limit. A gray goo accident would take about as long as a pandemic. 3. Computers are already smarter than humans in some ways but not others. The smartest computer system in the world now is the internet. That is what we need to watch. Specifically, we need to watch for self-replicating agents, which already exist in pure software form. Hardware self-replicators will be a threat once molecular 3-D printers and DNA manipulation equipment becomes cheap enough for everyone to own, just like everyone has computers and could potentially write viruses. -- -- Matt Mahoney, [email protected] ------------------------------------------- AGI Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/21088071-f452e424 Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=21088071&id_secret=21088071-58d57657 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
