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Sunday, July 26, 2015

Better Than Intelligent

Upgraded and Adapted from the Moot to this post, a reader says about the belief in Artificial Intelliegence:
I doubt that anyone is calling current software "intelligent". They call it narrow AI in some cases, but it has nothing to do with intelligence, it's just a term. I do think though that intelligence can arise just from algorithms, but they would have to be far more sophisticated than what we have now and furthermore intelligence, as we have it in humans, relies on numerous kinds of inputs related to biological processes, so I doubt it can be copied 100% in a computer, in a way it's also a result of some "broken" or imperfectly working algorithms, we tend to break down, be overzealous, ignore some facts and put others on pedestal... we are prone to search for patterns everywhere, faces on Mars, aliens who built pyramids etc. So I would agree that it would be very hard task to replicate human consciousness in a computer, because it's inherently flawed and a jumbled mess...
To these familiar but nonetheless rather revealing observation, I reply:
 
I  doubt that anyone is calling current software "intelligent". They call it narrow AI in some cases, but it has nothing to do with intelligence, it's just a term. 
 
The application of the "term" intelligent is what calling it "intelligent" means, surely? But I fancy you have stumbled on some subtlety that eludes me. 
 
I do think though that intelligence can arise just from algorithms 
 
Your belief in that possibility is not yet an argument for it, I fear. Given that you admit that artificial intelligence hasn't happened and could only happen if greater "sophistication" of an unspecified character happened as well, I cannot say things are looking up for your article of faith as yet. But do keep your chin up. Just because generations of cocksure True Believers have been nothing but serially wrong on this score for as long as computer programming has been around is no reason to entertain any doubts about it or suggest any qualifications of it, right? 
 
intelligence, as we have it in humans... [i]s also a result of some "broken" or imperfectly working algorithms, we tend to break down, be overzealous, ignore some facts and put others on pedestal... we are prone to search for patterns everywhere, faces on Mars, aliens who built pyramids etc. So I would agree that it would be very hard task to replicate human consciousness in a computer, because it's inherently flawed and a jumbled mess... 
 
It seems a little bit strange to me to describe as "broken" the only intelligence on offer, as compared to an intelligence which doesn't exist to be broken or otherwise. But I have never been able to follow religious logic particularly well in any of its forms: They tell me god is all good even when He is bad and all-knowing even when She is all-powerful and hence should be able to do anything including that which They don't or can't know? It's a pickle! I am fairly sure mine is an intelligence too "broken" to make sense of such things.
 
Presumptuous though it may seem, I want to say I am sorry that you seem to have such a low opinion of your own intelligence and that of your fellow humans. This insecurity and, sometimes, even self-disgust is commonplace among techno-transcendental futurists, I have found. I do hope that you will come to terms with your fears and hostility to your limits as a living, error-prone, aging, mortal being -- if that is what is happening here -- as you become a more experienced adult sort of person.
 
There is a suggestion in your phrasing that perhaps you actually identify in some way with the non-existing machine intelligence you regard as not only possible but superior despite its non-existence -- hence you seem to describe the errors and passions and ignorance that articulate the play of human thought as rather inferior, as though you observe them from an alien or Olympian height.
 
Of course, the artificial intelligence futurists so dote on in its imaginary perfection often looks to be a projection of their own errors and passions and parochialisms, after all, as the objects of human faiths tend so often to be... Perhaps a futurist scared of aging and disease likes the idea of an intelligent selfhood that is not tied to the frail vulnerable body one cannot command? Perhaps a shy or thoughtful person who has been frustrated or derided in company likes the idea of an intelligent selfhood capable of a compelling super-logical argumentation immune to the humiliations of emotion and error and derision from others one cannot control? 
 
In such a case I daresay we might all of us have a bit of a laugh at these human, all too human, follies as theirs and yours and (however different they may be) mine, together one day over wine.

2 comments:

jimf said...

> > intelligence, as we have it in humans... [i]s also a result
> > of some "broken" or imperfectly working algorithms. . .
>
> There is a suggestion in your phrasing that perhaps you actually
> **identify** in some way with the non-existing machine intelligence
> you regard as not only possible but superior despite its non-existence --
> hence you seem to describe the errors and passions and ignorance
> that articulate the play of human thought as rather inferior,
> as though you observe them from an alien or Olympian height.

http://samvak.tripod.com/narcissistmachine.html
---------------
I like to think about myself in terms of automata. There is something so
aesthetically compelling in their precision, in their impartiality, in their
harmonious embodiment of the abstract. Machines are so powerful and so
emotionless, not prone to be hurting weaklings like me. . .
Machines are my folk and kin. They are my family. . .

-- Sam Vaknin, "Narcissist, the Machine"
====


---------------
"Clocks are more interesting than people."

"How so?"

"They're more accurate, more predictable. . ."

"They're more intricate."

"Clocks?"

"No, people. . . [T]hat's. . . because [a person] is not a mechanism. It is
not an it; it is a he or she -- . . . not predictable
because not mechanical. . . [H]uman."

"Human? What's 'human' suppposed to encompass?"

". . .[C]hanging and being unpredictable."

"What's so hot about that?"

"Hot, cold -- we are what we are -- humans, not clocks."

"A clock is still easier to cope with."

-- Theodore Isaac Rubin, "Lisa and David"
====


---------------
'It sounds... like abolishing pretty well all organic
life.'

'. . . It is simple hygiene. . .
If you pick up some rotten thing and find this organic
life crawling over it, do you not say, "Oh, the horrid
thing. It is alive," and then drop it? . . .
And what do you call dirty dirt? Is it not
precisely the organic? Minerals are clean dirt.
But the real filth is what comes from organisms --
sweat, spittles, excretions. , , The impure and
the organic are interchangeable conceptions.'

'What are you driving at, Professor? After all, we
are organisms ourselves.'

'. . .In us organic life has
produced Mind. It has done its work. After that we
want no more of it. We do not want the world any
longer furred over with organic life, like what you
call the blue mould -- all sprouting and budding and
breeding and decaying. We must get rid of it.

-- C. S. Lewis, _That Hideous Strength_
====


---------------
Squishy, biologically-based AIs seem to be getting more
common in contemporary science fiction. . . [but p]eople
on this list do not fantasize about being "uploaded"
into giant squishy, gurgling, pulsating
biological brains; diamondoid processors are a much more
appealing idea. We want to ditch these squishy bodies, not be
transferred into even ickier ones.

-- me, 15 years ago
(via http://extropians.weidai.com/extropians.2Q00/5576.html )
====


---------------
[A]nother interesting bias among the
singularitarians. . . [is] be burning desire. . .
to amass and retail evidence of the unwashed
masses' inability to think like professional mathematicians. . .

This. . . [serves] two rhetorical and/or psychological purposes. . ."

1. [It demonstrates] the superior intelligence
and rationality of the AIs who will not be subject to these
failures, and

2. [It demonstrates] the superior intelligence
and rationality of people. . . who, through lucky Algernonic genetics or the
assiduous practice of certain skills (the "Way of Rationality")
have **already**, prior to shuffling off this mortal coil,
placed a toe on the coily beginning of the Yellow Brick Road
to superintelligence.

-- me, 8 years ago
(via http://amormundi.blogspot.com/2007/10/superla-pope-peeps.html )
====

Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da

jimf said...

> > . . .the belief in Artificial Intelliegence:
>
> I doubt that anyone is calling current software "intelligent". They
> call it narrow AI in some cases, but it has nothing to do with intelligence,
> it's just a term. I do think though that intelligence can arise just
> from algorithms, but they would have to be far more sophisticated than
> what we have now. . .

Pay no attention to that moderator behind the curtain!

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/26/magazine/when-the-internets-moderators-are-anything-but.html
-------------
When the Internet’s ‘Moderators’ Are Anything But
JULY 21, 2015
By ADRIAN CHEN

. . .

The hottest tech companies no longer want to run communities, with all
their messy, unprofitable human drama. Instead, they want to make platforms:
slick, frictionless, infinitely monetizable. Companies like Facebook and
Google try to create the illusion that their platforms are moderated by
algorithms, not people. They quietly employ huge teams of human moderators,
working under strict nondisclosure agreements, and yet these platforms
feel the same pressure as Reddit to expand faster than their human
resources allow. . .
====