Matt Mahoney wrote:
--- Richard Loosemore <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
This whole scenario is filled with unjustified, unexamined assumptions.
For example, you suddenly say "I foresee a problem when the collective
computing power of the network exceeds the collective computing power of
the humans that administer it. Humans will no longer be able to keep up
with the complexity of the system..."
Do you mean "collective intelligence"? Because if you mean collective
computing power I cannot see what measure you are using (my laptop has
greater computing power than me already, because it can do more
arithmetic sums in one second than I have done in my life so far). And
either way, this comes right after a great big AND THEN A MIRACLE
HAPPENS step ...! You were talking about lots of dumb, specialized
agents distributed around the world, and then all of a sudden you start
talking as if they could be intelligent. Why should anyone believe they
would spontaneously do that? First they are agents, then all of a
sudden they are AGIs and they leave us behind: I see no reason to allow
that step in the argument.
In short, it looks like an even bigger non-sequiteur than before.
Yes, I mean collective intelligence. The "miracle" is that any interface to
the large network of simple machines will appear intelligent, in the same way
that Google can make a person appear to know a lot more than they do. It is
hard to predict what this collective intelligence will do, in the same way as
it is hard to predict human behavior by studying individual neurons.
I don't know if my outline for an infrastructure for AGI will be built as I
designed it, but I believe something like it WILL be built, probably ad-hoc
and very complex, because it has economic value.
This argument is *exactly* the same as an old, old argument that
appeared in science fiction stories back in the early 20th century:
some people believed that the telephone network might get one connection
too many and suddenly "wake up" and be intelligent.
I do not believe you have any more justification for assuming that a set
of dumb computers will suddenly become more than the sum of thir
collective dumbness.
The brain consists of many dumb neurons that, collectively, make
something intelligent. But it is not the mere fact of them being all in
the same place at the same time that makes the collective intelligent,
it is their organization. Organization is everything. You must
demonstrate some reason why the collective net of dumb computers will be
intelligent: it is not enough to simply assert that they will, or
might, become intelligent.
If you had some specific line of reasoning to show that the right
organization could be given to them, then I will show you that the same
organization will be put into some other set of computers, deliberately,
under the control of the factors that I previously described, and that
this will happen long before the general network gets that organization.
Richard Loosemore
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