I think the next big AGI company should be named: FOOM!!
(With the exclamation points. That would certainly get people's attention). ~PM > Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2015 14:47:29 -0500 > Subject: Re: [agi] Aubrey de Grey vs self-improving machines > From: [email protected] > To: [email protected] > > On Sat, Jan 17, 2015 at 6:37 PM, Tim Tyler via AGI <[email protected]> wrote: > >> de Gray is arguing against the scenario where a recursively self > >> improving AI in a box goes FOOM! > > > > It seems like a straw man scenario. Has anyone seriously proposed it? > > There are some old proposals, for example Corwin's experiments on > containing AI in 2002. > http://www.sl4.org/archive/0207/4935.html > > Yudkowsky's Coherent Extrapolated Volition in 2004. > https://intelligence.org/files/CEV.pdf > > Of course this was before Google and Facebook got good at recognizing > images and natural language text. It was not so apparent then as now > that the internet is becoming AGI. Of course you cannot contain it or > turn it off. In order for AGI to gain human knowledge, it has to > interact with humans. > > Also, the internet looks like much less of a threat than a paperclip > maximizer. We understand that AGI is not a powerful optimization > process with a simple goal. We don't tell computers what to do. We > tell them how to do it because it is faster to share our own knowledge > than for it to figure it out on its own. There is simply no such thing > as a general purpose learning algorithm that you can give an arbitrary > goal to. Mathematically, there never will be. > > >> Most of what AI in general already knows comes from humans. AI cannot > >> learn human knowledge faster than humans can communicate, about 5-10 > >> bits per second, but that is faster than anything else. > > > > Machines can easily learn about all the images and videos freely available > > on the > > internet. They can slurp that information up over as many T1 lines as you > > have > > going into your data center. There's no 5-10 bits per second limit. > > Machines can only learn rapidly the things we already know. There are > some important questions that even very powerful computers cannot > answer quickly. Among the most important are how we can live longer. > Ray Kurzweil takes 100 pills a day, hoping to live to see the > singularity in 2045 and be immortal. But there is a problem. There is > not a single pill of any kind that is known to increase life > expectancy. It would take decades to find out. > > Sure, we have in-vitro and animal models. We can learn very quickly > that calorie restriction extends the life spans of fruit flies and > mice. We don't know if it works on monkeys. After decades of > experiments, it worked on one group but not another. There have been > no experiments on humans. We know that children reach puberty at a > younger age now than 100 years ago, probably due to more calories, but > people are also living longer. Calorie restriction probably works by > slowing growth. Fish convert 90% of what they eat into growth and 10% > to energy. Cattle convert 15% of their food to growth. Humans convert > 0.3%. > > We suspect that rapamycin and sirtuins mimic calorie restriction, but > the results are not conclusive and these drugs can have serious side > effects. Rapamycin suppresses the immune system. Some studies say that > light drinking increases life expectancy. Others say that any alcohol > increases the risk of cancer. We once thought that vitamin supplements > helped, but later studies proved that false. We thought that low fat > diets helped, but later studies found they did more harm than good. We > thought that a low salt diet helped, but later studies refuted that. > We thought that sunscreens helped, but skin cancer rates have been > increasing in tandem with sunscreen use. It turns out that sunscreens > block UVB but not UVA, and actually increase exposure to UVA (95-99% > of UV depending on angle of sun) because it is UVB that gives you a > tan, and a tan blocks UVA. SPF is rated by UVB blockage only. > > My point is that all of this knowledge took decades to learn, and the > problem is getting worse. New drugs now cost $2 billion to develop. > The cost doubles every 9 years. The rate of increase of life > expectancy has peaked at 0.2 years per year in the 1990's and is > declining. It peaked in the 1970's in developed countries. > > One would hope that we could build computer models of the human body > that would allow us to answer these questions faster. But we do not > have computer models of even simple chemistry. There is no program > that inputs a formula like H2O and calculates the freezing point of > water. The reason is that modeling the movement of atoms requires > solving Schrodinger's equation, which has exponential time complexity > except on a quantum computer. But even a quantum computer is no faster > than doing the actual experiment because all you have is an > exponential speedup of an exponentially slowed down algorithm. A > simulation always requires more computation and is less accurate than > the actual experiment. > > And of course, the human body is much more complex than H2O. The brain > executes 10^16 synapse operations per second on 10^14 synapses. The > body executes 10^20 DNA, RNA, and amino acid operations per second on > 10^23 bits of DNA. Even if Kurzweil's prediction of computing capacity > catching up with the brain in 2045, we will still be a long way from > simulating the body. After robots automate everything that humans can > do with their brains, senses, and muscles, there will still be plenty > of jobs testing experimental drugs. > > -- > -- Matt Mahoney, [email protected] > > > ------------------------------------------- > AGI > Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now > RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/19999924-4a978ccc > Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?&; > Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com ------------------------------------------- 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
