On 06/05/2016 02:22 PM, Robert Wall wrote: > This one, titled "Where do minds belong? > <https://aeon.co/essays/intelligent-machines-might-want-to-become-biological-again> > (Mar > 2016)" discusses the technological roadblocks in an insightful, highly > speculative, but entertaining manner.
"Those early intelligences could have long ago reached the point where they decided to transition back from machines to biology." The gist of this essay is a perfect example of trying to answer an ill-formed question. It's entirely based on an unjustified distinction between machine and biology. I'm all for justifying such a distinction. And invoking von Neumann, energetics, and "neuromorphic architectures" exhibits a bit of context most others don't manage. But discussing a move to machine intelligence and then a potential move back to biological intelligence without giving even a hand-waving mention of the difference between the two is conflating cart and horse. And to beat around the bush so much is maddening. Maybe there's currently a dearth of click-bait value left in the "what is life" genre. So, perhaps Scharf and Aeon are exhibiting their awareness of a buzzphilic audience. It would have been responsible, as long as you're going to mention Church-Turing and von Neumann anyway, to point out that both von Neumann and Turing went quite a ways in demonstrating that biology and machines are not very different. To me, the _problem_ isn't one of AI. The problem is this unjustified dichotomy between machine and biology. A correlate problem is the (again probably false) distinction between life and intelligence. -- ☣ glen ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
