I suppose in order to justify my cost estimate I need to define more precisely what I mean by AGI. I mean the cost of building an automated economy in which people don't have to work. This is not the same as automating what people currently do. Fifty years ago we might have imagined a future with robot gas station attendants and robot sales clerks. Nobody imagined self serve gas or shopping on the internet.
But the exact form of the technology does not matter. People will invest money if there is an expected payoff higher than market driven interest rates. These numbers are known. AGI is worth $10^15 no matter how you build it. An alternative goal of AGI is uploading, which I believe will cost considerably less. How much would you pay to have a machine that duplicates your memories, goals, and behavior well enough to convince everyone else that it is you, and have that machine turned on after you die? Whether such a machine is "you" (does your consciousness transfer?) is an irrelevant philosophical issue. It is not important. What is important is the percentage of people who believe it is true and are therefore willing to pay to upload. However, once we develop the technology to scan brains and simulate them, there should be no need to develop custom software or training for each individual as there is for building an economy. The cost will be determined by Moore's Law. (This does not solve the economic issues. You still have to pay uploads to work, or to write the software to automate the economy). > > Software is not subject to Moore's Law so its cost > will eventually > > dominate. > > So creating software creating software may be a high payoff > subtask. If it is possible. However, there is currently no model for recursive self improvement. The major cost of "write a program to solve X" is the cost of describing X. When you give humans a programming task, they already know most of X without you specifying the details. To tell a machine, you either have to specify X in such detail that it is equivalent to writing the program, or you have to have a machine that knows everything that humans know, which is AGI. > > A human brain has about 10^9 bits of knowledge, of > which probably > > 10^7 to 10^8 bits are unique to each individual. > > How much of this uniqueness is little more than variations > on a much > smaller number of themes and/or irrelevant to the task? Good question. Everything you have learned through language is already known to somebody else. However, the fact that you learned X from Y is known only to you and possibly Y. Some fraction of nonverbally acquired knowledge is unique to you also. What fraction is relevant? Perhaps very little if AGI means new ways of solving problems rather than duplicating the work we now do. For other tasks such as entertainment, advertising, or surveillance, everything you know is relevant. > Google to the best of my knowledge is pursuing a some areas > of narrow > AI. I do not believe they are remotely after AGI. Google has only $10^11 to spend, not $10^15. -- Matt Mahoney, [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- On Thu, 9/11/08, Samantha Atkins <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > From: Samantha Atkins <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Subject: Re: [agi] Re: AI isn't cheap > To: [email protected] > Date: Thursday, September 11, 2008, 3:19 AM > On Sep 9, 2008, at 7:54 AM, Matt Mahoney wrote: > > > --- On Mon, 9/8/08, Steve Richfield > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On 9/7/08, Matt Mahoney <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > wrote: > > > >>> The fact is that thousands of very intelligent > people have been > >>> trying > >>> to solve AI for the last 50 years, and most of > them shared your > >>> optimism. > > > >> Unfortunately, their positions as students and > professors at various > >> universities have forced almost all of them into > politically correct > >> paths, substantially all of which lead nowhere, > for otherwise they > >> would > >> have succeeded long ago. The few mavericks who > aren't stuck in a > >> university (like those on this forum) all lack > funding. > > > > Google is actively pursuing AI and has money to spend. > If you have > > seen some of their talks, you know they are pursuing > some basic and > > novel research. > > Google to the best of my knowledge is pursuing a some areas > of narrow > AI. I do not believe they are remotely after AGI. > > > > > > > >>> Perhaps it would be more fruitful to estimate > the cost of > >>> automating the > >>> global economy. I explained my estimate of > 10^25 bits of memory, > >>> 10^26 > >>> OPS, 10^17 bits of software and 10^15 dollars. > > > > You want to replicate the work currently done by 10^10 > human brains. > > Hmm. Actually probably only some 10^6 of them at most are > doing > anything much worth replicating. :-) > > > A brain has 10^15 synapses. A neuron axon has an > information rate of > > 10 bits per second. As I said, you can argue about > these numbers but > > it doesn't matter much. An order of magnitude > error only changes the > > time to AGI by a few years at the current rate of > Moore's Law. > > > > Software is not subject to Moore's Law so its cost > will eventually > > dominate. > > So creating software creating software may be a high payoff > subtask. > > > A human brain has about 10^9 bits of knowledge, of > which probably > > 10^7 to 10^8 bits are unique to each individual. > > How much of this uniqueness is little more than variations > on a much > smaller number of themes and/or irrelevant to the task? > > > That makes 10^17 to 10^18 bits that have to be > extracted from human > > brains and communicated to the AGI. > > What for? That seems like a very slow path that would > pollute your > AGI with countless errors and repetition. > > > This could be done in code or formal language, > although most of it > > will probably be done in natural language once this > capability is > > developed. > > Natural languages are ridiculously slow and ambiguous. > There is no > way the 10^7 guesstimated unique bits per individual will > ever get > encoded in natural language anyway (or much of anything > else other > than its encoding in those brains). > > > Since we don't know which parts of our knowledge > is shared, the most > > practical approach is to dump all of it and let the > AGI remove the > > redundancies. > > Actually, of the knowledge the AGI needs we have pretty > good ideas of > how much is shared. > > > This will require a substantial fraction of each > person's life time, > > so it has to be done in non obtrusive ways, such as > recording all of > > your email and conversations (which, of course, all > the major free > > services already do). > > What exactly is your goal? Are you attempting to simulate > all of > humankind? What for when the real thing is up and > running? If you > want uploads there are more direct possible paths after the > AGI has > perfected some crucial technologies. > > > > > > > > The cost estimate of $10^15 comes by estimating the > world GDP ($66 > > trillion per year in 2006, increasing 5% annually) > from now until we > > have the hardware to support AGI. We have the option > to have AGI > > sooner by paying more. Simple economics suggests we > will pay up to > > what it is worth. > > Why believe that the real productive intellectual output of > the entire > human world is anywhere close to or represented by the > world GDP? It > is not likely that we need to download the full contents of > all human > brains including the huge part that is mere variation on > human primate > programming to effectively meet and exceed this productive > > intellectual output. I find this method of estimating > costs utterly > unconvincing. > > - samantha > > > > ------------------------------------------- > agi > Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now > RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ > 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/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=111637683-c8fa51 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
