On Sun, Jan 11, 2015 at 9:43 AM, justcamel via AGI <[email protected]> wrote:
> Consciousness is fundamental, Consciousness is a distraction. The requirements of AGI are to be able to do everything that a human could do. These include among other things, recognizing what it sees and hears, understanding and using language, navigating, manipulating objects, predicting human behavior, recognizing and expressing human emotions, and recognizing and creating art, music, and humor. It is permitted to have superhuman capabilities such as increased memory and processing speed, additional sensory inputs (sonar, radar, infrared, increased visual acuity, ultrasonic hearing, wireless internet, etc.), improved speed and strength, and no need for sleep or rest. We must also be able to control them in ways that we cannot control humans. For example, we must continue be able to make them willing to work without pay, as we do now. Without this control, we might as well just hire humans. These requirements are dictated by funding. People don't want to work and don't want to die. AGI would solve both of these problems. The value of all human labor is world GDP divided by market interest rates, or $1 quadrillion. The value of 7 billion human lives, all of whom will eventually die and would pay anything not to, is world GDP times life expectancy, or $5 quadrillion. If AGI were an easy problem, we would have solved it by now. Nowhere in this list is there a requirement to have phenomenal consciousness or any other property that has no observable effect on behavior. There is an obvious requirement to *appear* to be conscious and to have emotions in order to solve the second problem, but that is not the same thing. If a robot looks and behaves like a human, then that is sufficient for the appearance of consciousness. If a robot can predict and recognize human emotions, then it can also be programmed to express these emotions appropriately. Solving AGI will take decades of global effort, but we will do it because it is that important. It took evolution 3 billion years at a rate of 10^31 DNA base copy operations per second to solve it the first time. Don't set yourself up for failure by thinking there is some magic that will solve the whole thing in one fell swoop. It will be solved by lots of people each making small advances. Be happy that other people are working on it too. -- -- 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
