--- On Mon, 9/22/08, Steve Richfield <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >My proposal: Much like the "College of Science" at nearly all univesities was >subsequently chopped up into freestanding departments like Physics, Chemistry, >Biology, etc., so now CS departments need to be chopped up, at minimum to >separate the small minds from the real advances. The Department of >Computational Intelligence needs to be completely separate from the Department >of Information Technology (that the present CS department chairman can head), >the Department of Predictive Computation, etc. Only after this happens can ANY >money be productively spent in an educational research environment.
Your hypothesis that there is some great undiscovered truth that will solve AGI is speculation. Even if some great discovery is made, on the order of the discovery of the principles of electricity, flight, or computation, history shows that technological progress still consists of lots of incremental improvements over many years. This is my basis for the cost estimate of AGI. We can wait for improvements or spend more money now. The optimal balance is a payoff at market interest rates on a global economy, which is on the order of $1 quadrillion. As for software costs, I am assuming that we transfer our knowledge in the most efficient way, mostly through natural language and unobtrusively through pervasive surveillance of our normal activities. We have about 10^10 human brains with 10^9 bits of knowledge each, of which I assume 90% to 99% is not unique to any single human. This leaves 10^17 to 10^18 bits. Currently, about 10^14 or 10^15 bits is on the internet in readily accessible form (indexed by the major search engines) and doubling every year or two. I defined a rather arbitrary threshold, but keep in mind that progress is incremental. We observe the internet getting gradually smarter. Compare Google today with Google 5 years ago. It is better at understanding simple natural language queries, and now gives you maps and images in addition to increasingly relevant links from a larger web. AGI also makes it easier to collect the knowledge it needs to improve. Surveillance is becoming more pervasive because it is cheap and we demand it. In 10-20 years, if I search for "where was Steve Richfield last Saturday", I will get a map with links to video from hundreds of public cameras indexed by facial recognition software and license plate readers, links to all your phone calls, emails, text messages, and recorded face to face conversations with a synopsis of the conversation subject extracted from your transcribed and indexed speech, instantly sent to anyone who has an interest in what you are talking about. At the same time, you will be notified of my query. This is what we want. Publishing every detail of your life makes you safer. Nobody can steal your identity if anyone can retrieve your photo, fingerprints and DNA to verify who you claim to be. It also puts you in contact with others who share your interests. It lets advertisers direct to you only messages that you are really interested in, rather than the spam we now get. There are clear benefits to phone conversations like: Alice: Hi dear. Could you pick up some Chinese on the way home? Bob: OK, the usual? Wok-in-the-Box: Your order will be ready in 5 minutes. Oh, you could have private conversations if you wanted to, but we really don't want privacy. If we did, we would be encrypting our email instead of using public services like Yahoo and Gmail that record everything and use AI to deliver targeted ads and customized search. Why do you think we are having this conversation in a public forum? -- Matt Mahoney, [EMAIL PROTECTED] ------------------------------------------- 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=114414975-3c8e69 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
