Engineered Organisms

[Kailea]

Re: Engineered Organisms

humans can compete with androids, by becoming cyborgs. Not sure how I would feel about that myself though to be honest.......

[Taskmage]

Re: Engineered Organisms

I saw a graph in Time a month or two ago that projected the power of a processor to exceed that of a human brain by 2020, and by 2050 to exceed the processing power of all human brains combined. (My dates may be a little off.) That's if Moore's law holds fast, which is a matter of much debate. It's a possibility at any rate that soon human beings will no longer be the vanguards of evolution. It's a possibility I find as exciting as frightening.

---------- Post added at 01:19 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:16 PM ----------

The Hob avatar seems appropriate for this conversation.

[DakAttack]

Re: Engineered Organisms

Overreact, much?

[Armando]

Re: Engineered Organisms

I saw a graph in Time a month or two ago that projected the power of a processor to exceed that of a human brain by 2020, and by 2050 to exceed the processing power of all human brains combined. (My dates may be a little off.) That's if Moore's law holds fast, which is a matter of much debate. It's a possibility at any rate that soon human beings will no longer be the vanguards of evolution. It's a possibility I find as exciting as frightening.

That may be true, but I'm not convinced that android AI will be better than ours. The way I see it, we don't even know how our own minds work, let alone how to make an AI that's better than our own intelligence. We'll probably simply succeed at making their AI mirror our own mind, and thus they'll be prone to the same sort of mistakes as we are. At best they'd be faster at solving problems, but not necessarily any better at acting rationally or being devoid of emotion.

[Feba]

Re: Engineered Organisms

It only takes one self improving machine. There's really no difference between the biological and the technological, except that reproduction on a human life timescale and reproduction in an "how long does it take me to make this better chip I designed" scale are hugely different. Once they reach the point where they progress faster than we do, there's nothing left for us to do.

[Kailea]

Re: Engineered Organisms

Persocoms?! where!

[Taskmage]

Re: Engineered Organisms

That may be true, but I'm not convinced that android AI will be better than ours. The way I see it, we don't even know how our own minds work, let alone how to make an AI that's better than our own intelligence. We'll probably simply succeed at making their AI mirror our own mind, and thus they'll be prone to the same sort of mistakes as we are. At best they'd be faster at solving problems, but not necessarily any better at acting rationally or being devoid of emotion.

It's a valid objection. It's easier to predict how hardware might develop as opposed to our utilization of that hardware.

I don't think focusing on emulating the human mind is necessarily in the best interest of AI development. Animal minds are based heavily on "good enough" heuristics designed to make do with our very limited and incomplete apprehension of reality. Some amount of that will undoubtedly be necessary in a strong AI—it's a pretty weak intelligence that can't make a decision without perfect information—but there's a great deal of baggage we carry around, emotions related to procreation and predation for example, that I think would be best left out of the next generation of mind.

How would you define a better intelligence outside of being better at problem-solving?

[DakAttack]

Re: Engineered Organisms

It only takes one self improving machine. There's really no difference between the biological and the technological, except that reproduction on a human life timescale and reproduction in an "how long does it take me to make this better chip I designed" scale are hugely different. Once they reach the point where they progress faster than we do, there's nothing left for us to do.

Define self improving machine.

[Kailea]

Re: Engineered Organisms

Define self improving machine.

think of a self aware android that could repair and upgrade itself on a constant basis.

[Taskmage]

Re: Engineered Organisms

Basically you would need an AI that designs faster chips faster than we can, an AI that can optimize its own code, and these AIs would need to be able to control their own production factors. With those three things machines would be essentially no longer need humans.

[Aeni]

Re: Engineered Organisms

Funny how people throw around the phrase, "playing god". I mean, who's to say that we aren't play things of some "god" out there? There's intelligent life out there and many probably a lot more advanced than our own. They don't need to reveal themselves to us, because we're deemed insignificant and quite possibly inconsequential to their own lives.

If you think about it in that fashion, then everything people talk about regarding cyborgs and what have you seem quite trivial in comparison.

[DakAttack]

Re: Engineered Organisms

Basically you would need an AI that designs faster chips faster than we can, an AI that can optimize its own code, and these AIs would need to be able to control their own production factors. With those three things machines would be essentially no longer need humans.

And this is all fantasy, so why is everybody freaking out?

[Takelli]

Re: Engineered Organisms

And this is all fantasy, so why is everybody freaking out?

Actually... Not really.

[Taskmage]

Re: Engineered Organisms

Because it's becoming easier and easier every day for those fantasies to start translating into realities.

[Kailea]

Re: Engineered Organisms

And this is all fantasy, so why is everybody freaking out?

the way computers and CPU and other tech stuff is advancing, this is not fantasy at all, and soon will be reality.