Artificial Intelligence

[pErvinalia]

They already are. They are lying and blackmailing. Shit is getting real.

[Tero]

there was one book on the shelf in my bookstore on AI and the Singularity. I have been reading a few pages of it when I am in the store. I don't often buy a book that might be interesting enough to read but would not stay on my shelf. The singularity is not going to hit us soon enough that I would need to consult the book.

The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology by Ray Kurzweil
amazon reader:
This book could be the basis for a taut psychological thriller or a science fiction horror story. It describes, in quite explicit detail, the willful and deliberate extinction of mankind. Let me say right here in the beginning that the author does not consider what he describes as the extinction of mankind because he believes that everything that makes us human resides in our brain and that will inevitably be understood, mapped and duplicated in an AI neural network, consciousness included. Therefore he considers the resulting Superintelligent AI, albeit non-biological, as completely human and therefore mankind simply transformed from biological to non-biological. He even uses the theory of evolution to describe the transformation of mankind from biological to biotechnical and finally to completely non-biological. I disagree with him that such a change in mankind has anything to do with evolution because evolution is considered to be a process inherently void of any external or internal construction, direction, or influenced by an intelligent agent. His stretch of the term evolution inserts into the normal process of evolution the development and final transformation of mankind from biological to non-biological, which is constructed, directed, and influenced by an external intelligent agent, man.


The author seems quite comfortable with the process he describes in his book to the point that he has drastically modified his diet to try and ensure that he is alive when the early miraculous stage arrives so he may be technologically modified that he might live much longer than normal, and be cured of any biological deficiencies e.g., diabetes. He meticulously details how this process began, because it already has, but also how it will be supported and progressed and accepted by industry, the sciences, philosophies, and the majority of mankind, which is probably why the book is more than 500 pages or over 20 hours of narration. He has thought this out very extensively to the point of not just presenting his ideas but also addressing the critics of either part of his plan or the entire plan. Furthermore, he has not neglected to study and also detail the many societal institutions that are necessary to move this plan along. He notes that they already have thrown their support and money towards the current narrow forms of AI that will lead to the next acceptable stage and so on until it becomes too late to stop or take control of the process.

[Brian Peacock]

I actually hate to talk about consciousness. Not my favorite topic. And a friend is talking to our group about AI and...consciousness.

From the Royal Institute...

[Tero]

No no no!"!!

[Tero]

About the smaller part: thinking

What Is Thought? (A Bradford Book) Paperback – January 20, 2006
by Eric B. Baum (Author)

my review

Though this book has been around a while (2004), not all have forgotten it. The current books on AI past 2017 describe a much more successful generation of AI's. There are some interesting concepts in it. The writer is from the computer end and has tackled the main question quite well, what is thought? When you think you have some concepts in your head and not even necessarily the words. Thoughts tend to be steps to do something or solve some current situation.

Where Baum goes off the main track is in thinking about biological systems. The term compression comes up. DNA is given a role as a program. This is where the thinking goes wrong.

DNA in fact has code for all of proteins (or parts of, some are assembled later) and some functional RNA. And in an embryo, genes and and their messengers (the DNA does not leave the nucleus) build an organism-. HOX genes and so on.

However, the DNA does not control the entire operation. You can read in detail the latest thinking on this from: Dance to the Tune of Life: Biological Relativity by Denis Noble.

[Brian Peacock]

No no no!"!!

[Tero]

It's all useless plots for sci fi movies, sentient AI and consciousness.

[Svartalf]

I honestly don't know what it would take to have a truly sentient AI, but being hosted in an asimovian positronic brain would be a good start... to start with, I don't guess that genuine sentience can be achieved if the 'intelligence' is restricted to preexisting electronic paths, as opposed to being able to evolve its own neural pathways (regardless of the medium, and no, the organic neuron array that is learning to play doom is not sentient, too specialized)

[Brian Peacock]

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[Svartalf]

you mocking me?

[Brian Peacock]

Absolutely not. Just an example of artificial sentience.