Dave:I believe that technological progress has been accelerating for quite some time now. In fact, that is hardly debatable
Yes, but that isn't the issue. What Lanier points out is that so far we only have machines that are *fragments* of living systems - rather like those horror movies, where you have a fragmentary limb, like a hand, or even a head, moving around, without any system to support it. We don't have anything that is even remotely close to a *whole* living system. We have what looks like the raw technology - robotics and computers can produce something akin to the various limbs and faculties of human and animal systems. But we can barely begin to integrate those parts in a living-system-like way. The odd robots like Honda efforts, that *appear* to have whole bodies, cannot begin to function like whole living systems, with "full possession and integration of all their parts and faculties". They can only use v. fragmentary parts of their limited brains and bodies. And they can only achieve one small task, compared with the fabulously rich economy of activities that any animal or human develops and conducts. Now we have no idea about at what rate technology will progress towards whole living machine systems with whole economies of activities. Zero. Which doesn't stop AGI-ers making idiotic predictions on a regular basis. Whereas we have reasonable ideas about the future progress of many "fragmentary" machines. The many AGI-ers like you, who think it is possible to produce disembodied, "fragmentary" machine brains/intelligence, have no real conception of the difference between fragmentary and living system machines. And, generally, both science and technology have extremely little understanding of the difference - or of what is required to produce a living system. This isn't a small matter. Only a "systems AGI", that does recognize the difference, can begin to call itself a serious as distinct from a fantasy technology. ------------------------------------------- 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=8660244-6e7fb59c Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
