Re: How Robots Will Steal Your Job

[Programmer Dude]

You can see some samples in the Spiritual Machines book I mentioned
earlier. I have NO idea how I would write such a program.

I get bored fast by synthesizer music played by *humans*. I find
the random "musings" of a machine of even less interest.

 

[Programmer Dude]

There are several orders of magnitude more ants on the planet than
humans, although they haven't "messed up the entire biosphere"
AFAIK - just a few picnics.

Green plants, of course, messed up the biosphere pretty badly when
they evolved. Pumped all that toxic oxygen gas into the atmosphere;
pulled out all the carbon dioxide. Of course, it depends on how
broadly you're going to categorize them as to whether one can say
that "algae have taken over the world," or "deciduous trees have
taken over the world," or whatever.

For real messing-up-biosphereness (following humans), I vote for
rodents. They've managed to get pretty much everywhere, and eat
up lots of indigenous populations.

...the difference is that rats and trees don't care.

They also lack intent, but your point is well taken!

 

[FM]

Genes solve the problem of perpetuating their existence, because genes
that don't, don't survive. The genes require a certain art to pull
this off, not non conscious intent. I think you are equating
intelligence with conscious intent + ability to solve a problem.
I am using it to mean merely the ability to solve a problem.

By that definition, it is impossible to compare intelligence.
In fact the whole concept becomes redundant, since existence
would imply intelligence.

Dan.

 

[FM]

Yes, AND it is a problem solving process. If it mutated too slowly
there would not be enough natural variation to select from. If it
mutated too fast too many individuals would die young.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean since both of the above
if's do happen in nature all the time. Regardless, nature
consistently selects for lower mutation rates.

Dan.

 

[Roedy Green]

Either there is direction, or there is random selection. Which is it?
The two are mutually exclusive, as Richard was trying to explain.

There is RANDOM mutation, but gets its direction from natural
selection. Which genes survive to the next generation is NOT RANDOM.

Natural selection implies no conscience intent. It is just that
rabbits that run faster breed more often than slow ones.

Evolution has a direction -- toward faster rabbits. There is not
necessarily anything other than wolves providing this direction.
There are limits to how fast rabbits can go without getting in trouble
on other constraints (e.g. food consumption).

You can even write genetic computer algorithms that work on the same
principle, of mindlessly mixing the most promising designs from a
previous generation and keeping on the best for the next. The
process, though random, because of the direction imposed by the
pruning, homes in on better and better solutions.

In Theology, you might say you needed a God to start the whole process
going (i.e. inventing quantum mechanics and chemistry) but it is self
running. Evolution works just fine without any divine tinkering.

 

[Roedy Green]

Personally I see no evidence of direction in evolution.

The direction is in fitness to the environment. Surely you have read
Darwin on the finches and how each was specialised to its niche?

What about the various insects that imitate flowers or twigs almost
perfectly?

 

[R. Steve Walz]

I am aware of no fundamental law that says a system must be incapable
of understanding itself.

--------
Signal theory has a principle that an array of regions cannot ALWAYS
be represented by less than that number of identified regions in a
signal. I think that does it. But you're right, in a way, if the
pattern is repetitive, it COULD be represented by less detail. That's
the principle of compression, but, as I said, you can't ALWAYS do that.

A system based on surprisingly simple
concepts can become mindboggingly complex once the number of
components starts growing large. And yet, all you need to understand
to be able to describe the system are those simple concepts and a very
powerful computer to simulate large scale integration.

 

[FM]

Read some of the works of the late Stephen J. Gould.

I did.

It does not require a god for random selection to have a directed
purpose. Natural selection provides that direction.

It could have a direction. It wouldn't have a purpose.

Dan.

 

[FM]

getting a computer to *think* is kinda like getting a submarine
to swim (or something like that .

computers can only make sense of something if *we* can make sense
of it, because *we* tell the computer what to do. in the game of chess
we try to think X moves ahead, so when we write the chess playing
proggy its much easier to merely depth/breadth search.

Even though the computer still does thinks *hundreds* of moves ahead
of a human player, a human player can still beat it.

In chess? First, chess programs don't look that anywhere
near that far ahead. About 20 half moves is close to the
upper limit even with selective extensions for midgame.
Second, top GMs (just about the only ones with a legitimate
chance against top chess programs these days) routinely
look further than that when they need to. The real
advantage comes from the breadth and accuracy of their
search, not depth.

Dan.

 

[R. Steve Walz]

If you thought a problem was beyond the range of brute force
searching, you would say that anyone or anything that solved it,
namely you, had to be intelligent.

You may be unaware that is how you are internally solving it.

If someone later solves it and lets you peak in the black box and you
see it is a brute force search of likely regions of solution space
using special purpose hardware to help, then you decide this no longer
counts as intelligence. You move the goal posts.

Unless it is mysterious and something only I have, it can't be called
intelligence. This is a sort of religious worship of homo sapiens.

----------------
What people mean by intelligence is that a consciousness has itself
developed a solution for a problem, and has done so by awareness of
its parts and their function, and the fathoming of its nature. This
does NOT admit of ANY purely unconscious brute force solution, or any
solution that is not developed and thoroughly understood by consciously
fathoming the problem's nature. If we move the goal-posts it was only
because we decided from being fooled, that they were originally in the
wrong place.
-Steve

 

[R. Steve Walz]

It was Einstein who was astounded that the universe was as
comprehensible as it was. It is very nice of it to be so simple that
even monkeys like us can figure out the basic principles.

However, having created an AI program of sorts, and seen it do things
that surprised ME, I have much higher hope for AI generally.

What passes for intelligence can be faked as, and likely is, a lot of
bullwork, dull computation.

Note that it takes time to come up with a new solution, perhaps on a
walk in the park. You are often not even aware of the process by
which the answer appears.

I'm surprised that with the success of neural nets at face recognition
many still believe that computers are only big calculators.

--------------
After working with deductive programs that diagnosed power grid faults
in the 1980's, I am impressed by how effective non-conscious programs
can be at diagnosis, but it is much like the AI problem of the 1980's
where they discovered that things we think of as hard were easy, and
vice versa. I now reserve my awe for a program that expresses its
self-awareness and other awareness to me.

-Steve

 

[Roedy Green]

I think my theory is that, you are wrong when you say "delta can be
quite a lot smaller than that". That's simply not true when you are
contrasting Java with ocaml *and* that interpreter size will be
enormous. (How so? ocaml is so much more than Java semantics-wise, you
would be stuck in mud trying to realize all of those mechanisms with
Java)

Imagine trying to simulate Abundance in Forth. In Abundance, programs
can run forward or backward in time.

 

[Roedy Green]

It could have a direction. It wouldn't have a purpose.

The only "purpose" I can see to existence is perpetuation of the
species. We seem to have that wired in. Any being that seriously
questioned it gets wiped out of the game.

Then again, in one of my mystical moments I was told that there is no
fundamental purpose to the universe, but the good news is, every being
is free to create as many as they want.

 

[Roedy Green]

I'm not sure exactly what you mean since both of the above
if's do happen in nature all the time. Regardless, nature
consistently selects for lower mutation rates.

Mutations are nearly always harmful. That it why cockroaches keep
them so low. They got a good design, and now they have effectively
frozen it. That is why DU is not an ideal fuel for making testicle
warmers.

On the other hand, if you have no mutation, you have no variation, and
no way to respond to changes in the environment or any way to better
adapt to the existing one.

I would not be surprised to discover that stress increases mutation
rate, as call to hurry up evolution in changing times.

 

[R. Steve Walz]

Don't you think "random selection" and "directed purpose" are
mutually exclusive?

 

[Corey Murtagh]

--------
Signal theory has a principle that an array of regions cannot ALWAYS
be represented by less than that number of identified regions in a
signal. I think that does it. But you're right, in a way, if the
pattern is repetitive, it COULD be represented by less detail. That's
the principle of compression, but, as I said, you can't ALWAYS do that.

Understanding the brain may not require total knowledge of it, including
everything contained within, etc. By analogy it is possible for a
computer to contain a complete schematic diagram of every circuit it
possesses, which is analogous to 'knowing' how it works, without having
to also have a record of the current state of all of those millions of
semiconductor components.

Although analogy is always suspect - especially when it comes from me :>
- I think that one is fairly good. At the very least we have the
capacity to understand a lot more about the brain than we do
currently... after all, at this point we know very little.

I think it is axiomatic that it is impossible for an intelligence to
have absolute knowledge of itself. There's a lovely little recursive
'proof' of that

 

[Roedy Green]

No? If I say, "Knock, knock," and you answer, "Who's there?"
That would seem to indicate you were conscious.

You can go to Disneyland and play with the animatronics that can play
that same game. There does not necessarily have to be anyone home.

I have a pet south american catfish on my desk. He has learned my
actions when I am about to feed him, and he gets quite excited and
races up and down. He is obviously aware of me, and has computed some
way of guessing when feeding time is. But is there anybody home
inside? I presume there is. Most people would presume not.

I remember once I was working late and I typed the word "****" on my
computer, and it chastised me. I nearly jumped out of my chair. I
discovered a co-worker had put a "****.bat" on my machine. For a short
instant it seemed as if my computer were conscious.

Then there is this whole business of out of body experiences. I know
people are telling the truth, since I had one myself. Now this does
NOT prove your consciousness can live WITHOUT a body, just that you
can have an experience that feels exactly like being outside your
body. However it suggest that perhaps consciousnesses inhabit bodies.

The question that intrigues me is not can computers or other creatures
compute things that man can, or compute things he can't, but is there
anybody home in them, and if so how is it different from the thing
that is home in me that experiences pain and pleasure and worry.

Does this experiencer just materialise wherever there is a "brain" or
maybe it takes much much less a built-in side effect of Quantum
Mechanics. Or are they like Buddhist souls seeking incarnation?

It seems to me as if most people act as if there was nobody home in
other beings human or otherwise. They seem to treat them like objects
in the way, or giant playdolls. I think happen partly because of the
limitations of language. Everyone else seems so dull and stupid
compared with yourself. Inside your mind is going a mile a minute.
Everyone else's minds appear stopped, uttering a clumsy fragment every
once in a while. Yet if you look at your own inadequate utterings,
how far they are from what you really meant...

 

[Corey Murtagh]

Imagine trying to simulate Abundance in Forth. In Abundance, programs
can run forward or backward in time.

I can't imagine it. I could to it in C++ fairly readily though

BTW: nice bit of marketroid nonsense you've got there.

 

[R. Steve Walz]

Well then the computer will never be intelligent, because it
can't home in on the solution by itself, it has to have
another "species" in the loop, either so it can measure the
other species reaction (which is a result of judgement on
the other species part), or it needs the other species to
tell it what a desirable solution is. By itself, it's just
a dumb bunch of parts.

 

[R. Steve Walz]

Are you trying to tell me that cats aren't self-aware? My cat takes
exception to that. She's quite aware - if perhaps a little deluded,
from our limited, human point of view - of who and what she is.

You obviously don't know cats.