Generational Dynamics World View

[David Horn]

(10-28-2019, 04:58 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: ** 28-Oct-2019 World View: Algorithms for the Singularity

(10-28-2019, 01:25 PM)David Horn Wrote: Give this a moment's thought.  Why should something so drastically different be imaginable in any real degree?  The best thought exercise I ever heard, (note: it's not mine to claim) made the point perfectly.  Get in a Wayback Machine, and travel to Runnymede at the time of the signing of the Magna Carta -- surely an example of advanced thinking for its time.  Once there, find someone to harangue about the future, and expound to him or her (most likely, him) about the Internet. For that matter, just get them to understand life in the 21st century. No one in that time would have had a usable benchmark for anything we take for granted.  Air conditioning and automobiles would be magic, but the internet -- simply beyond comprehension.

For us, the Singularity is our future "Internet".

The thing is that the Singularity is not drastically different at all.

Here's an example.  The first major chess-playing program was written in the 1960s, using the "minimax algorithm."  The way that algorithm works is "if I play A then you'll play B and I'll play C or if I play A and you play X then I'll play Y."  So the algorithm creates a tree of possible moves and responses, and uses that to select the best move.  It was a pretty weak chess player.

So when IBM's Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov to become world chess champion in 1996, it was using the EXACT SAME minimax algorithm.  The only difference is that computers were much faster in 1996.  In the 1960s, the move tree was only about 3 levels deep, but in 1996, on an IBM supercomputer, it was more like 15 levels deep.

So there's nothing mystical about a computer chess champion.  In fact, this was already recognized in the 1960s that one day the 1960s computer program would be world champion on a sufficiently fast computers.

The Singularity is exactly the same.  A computer making decisions to win a war or invent a new widget can do so with the same minimax algorithm, except that the tree will have to be much wider.  This is well understood, and the only question is how long it will be before computers are fast enough. I estimate 2030.

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You mentioned quantum computing in a previous post.  Quantum computing is perfect for this application because a quantum computer should be able to perform millions of pattern matching tests in a few microseconds.

Once again, there's nothing mysterious, magical, or spiritual about this.  There's no need for God to breathe on an AI computer to give it a soul.  The algorithms are well understood today, and all that's needed is a fast enough computer.

You just proved my point.  You've assumed a continuum that evolves directly from the Von Neumann machine of today.  The emerging technology that we'll call the Singularity will most likely differ as dramatically from a Von Neumann machine as our brains do.  More to the point, what that means in practice is totally beyond our meager ability to define in any meaningful way.

If you look at my .sig, you'll see that intelligence, knowledge and wisdom are discrete characteristics.  AI requires the first, and will be driven by the second, but the third is optional.  The HAL9000 in "2001: a Space Odyssey" was intended as a warning.  A computer of that capability operating on a quantum platform would reside easily inside a cellphone.  The warning was too optimistic.