Artificial Intelligence

Thread Starter

theamber

Joined Jun 13, 2008
325
I saw this link and I want to share it.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jun/20/artificial.intelligence

It talks about making machines like humans and the author thought it to be an error.
While it is true that people are still wild animals (at least some are) and act as wild as our long ancesters did. I personally think that animals act acordingly to their surroundings better than us. The best thing that we have is innovation, invention, the ability to think and work in our minds with things yet unknown or undiscovered. We have the ability to invent and solve problems and obtain the necesary data from nowhere (actually from a mix of things lose in our brain) that click at that instant. Everything is posible for the human mind. But I think computers can never acomplish that, computers always need to find some data stored in their programs in order to do something.
With respect to our body I think is the most advanced device for the time it lived when it started to evolve. The good thing is that evolution takes time in order to make sure the changes are going to be good. Of course there may be may external factors that can change evolution. So it may take a while until we can develop wheels in our feet to move on the asphalt. Meanwhile we found a shortcut to it; by desperately inventing cars with its negative consequences.
About the article I agree in part with the author. But I think that nature knows better than us why we are how we are and we may never know why.
There are infinite number of ways to go from one point to another and sometimes the shortest distance may not be the best.
 

Norfindel

Joined Mar 6, 2008
326
I think that, as we are somewhat out of the natural selection mechanism for survival, evolution won't work for us as with the others species. To be honest, what option had we other than survive by using our brain?

Probably the best areas we need to develop for our future are genetics, ecolology (including nature-friendly tech), and more importantly, stop being so greed, and careless about everything, and start doing things right, instead of massing a few extra bucks. Lack of knowledge was the reason some years ago, but not anymore. Greed is destroying the world.
 

Ratch

Joined Mar 20, 2007
1,070
To the Ineffable All,

Now we hit upon one of my favorite subjects, evolution. I have no trouble believing in the evolution of the airplane, train, integrated circuits, etc. After all, intelligent people worked on those things to make them what they are. However, I just cannot see how something that is not living can arrange itself randomly into a complicated living creature like a cell. There just is not enough time in the universe for that to happen and sustain itself. Besides, in all things that happen, the random path is always from order to disorder. I challenge anyone to show me an example where order comes from disorder. Randomly, there are too many ways to go wrong and very few ways to go right. So the mechanism for evolution is missing and the theory should be discarded. They say that some people had a hard time disputing Darwin during his time. They tried to do it with religious arguments and ridiculous pontification. It would have been so much more effective to dismiss all the religious arguments, and let the theory fall on its inability to show how order or higher order comes from chaos or simple order. Natural selection? All that means is that the weeds are going to take over your garden unless you pull them. Awaiting your comments. Ratch
 

Wendy

Joined Mar 24, 2008
23,415
I disagree with the assertion it can't be done. Whether it should be done is a different issue, but we can simulate anything, given the basic knowledge, which we are far way from having at this time. Doesn't mean there aren't other ways of accomplishing the same goal, there usually are.

I've always felt AI was a incorrect label. We already have AI, in that it isn't real, but artificial, and it is easy to tell the difference. The day we come up with a true intelligence, be it totally non-human, I feel synthetic intelligence is a more correct label, in that it is real but created by other than natural means.
 
Last edited:

recca02

Joined Apr 2, 2007
1,212
Ratch said:
...show me an example where order comes from disorder.
What about a unicellular being evolving into a multicellular one?
What about Chemical reactions in which and ordered chain or ring is formed to achieve higher stability?( Almost all -i don't remember otherwise- chemical reactions take place to achieve higher stability- the question is do they always become ordered? What exactly do we consider ordered? ).

According to thermodynamics a system always become disordered unless sufficient energy is released from system -gibbs free energy ( been quite a while since I brushed my thermodynamics knowledge) eg; water freezing to ice. Here water freezes to an ordered state.


Well as far as the risk involving AI are concerned, I agree. We have enough trouble with greedy men. I mean a m/c which thinks like human. My centrifugal pump will ask for free weekends and come up with silly excuses to not work. :D

As far as evolutions with m/c is concerned, I think it is possible but we haven't reached that stage yet. Nanotechnology will be the start of it IMO. Evolution can only start with large number of nano level m/c forming a system which seeks stability and over time grows into a more complex system. I believe something similar led to evolution of life on earth.
 

Ratch

Joined Mar 20, 2007
1,070
recca02,

What about a unicellular being evolving into a multicellular one?
What about Chemical reactions in which and ordered chain or ring is formed to achieve higher stability?( Almost all -i don't remember otherwise- chemical reactions take place to achieve higher stability- the question is do they always become ordered? What exactly do we consider ordered? ).
Yes, what about a unicellar being evolving? When or where did/does that happen?

Chemical reaction products achive that higher stability by changing into a simpler state of order.

Order means a condition of logical or comprehensible arrangement among the separate elements of a group.

According to thermodynamics a system always become disordered unless sufficient energy is released from system -gibbs free energy ( been quite a while since I brushed my thermodynamics knowledge) eg; water freezing to ice. Here water freezes to an ordered state.
Yes, always as predetermined by its molecular structure and the energy it contains. That never changes, always the same. No chance for a different way of happening that evolutions say is needed, is there?

As far as evolutions with m/c is concerned, I think it is possible but we haven't reached that stage yet. Nanotechnology will be the start of it IMO. Evolution can only start with large number of nano level m/c forming a system which seeks stability and over time grows into a more complex system. I believe something similar led to evolution of life on earth.
What is m/c? Please define your acronyms at least once.

How are large numbers of nano m/c's (whatever they are) going to do that randomly when order never comes from chaos. How are non-sentient unthinking things going to get together and plan to be more complex? Something like that did not happen and could not happen with respect to life on Earth. Ratch
 

beenthere

Joined Apr 20, 2004
15,819
In case anyone wonders where some of the posts went to, I split off the ones most concerned with evolution into an Evolution thread.
 

Wendy

Joined Mar 24, 2008
23,415
Thank you.

Anyone remember the whoopa about neural nets? They were big news for a while, right after fuzzy logic, then disappeared from the news. I still waiting for practical chips using the concept for video/audio processing and other uses.

At the risk of repeating myself from that earlier thread Dave mentioned one of the core questions is, if and when we come up with real machine intelligence, do we give it civil rights? It may be we create something perfectly happy to be a slave, or has no sense of self preservation, but this seems like a risky proposition. One of the ways to prevent a bloody revolution is to create alternatives, and if this hypothetical machine is truely intelligent making it a slave seems wrong, at least IMO.
 

beenthere

Joined Apr 20, 2004
15,819
Or, for that matter, expert systems? They were going to replace every high school dropout. But it looks as if the people writing such things have to be very good at that task...

The whole concept of intelligence is so poorly defined and understood that do it artificially is a bit of a reach.

It might be possible and even desirable to create some form of artificial intelligence that can do some of the things that the expert systems were supposed to accomplish. Running a power plant with absolutely tireless attention and utterly correct decisions is very attractive. There are a bunch of other functions that could be so automated.

Do we worry about civil rights for a power plant controller? I doubt that it will become an issue for such an application.

The usual hobgoblin is some self-aware computer or robot. Dozens if not hundreds of stories exist about such things, usually with bad endings. Lots of movies, too - "The Matrix" & "Terminator" come to mind, along with "2001". Then you ask yourself, "how does a computer become self-aware?", and relax. Self as defined as anything on this side of the interface is ludicrous (hi, my name is 127.0.0.1).
 
Last edited:

Wendy

Joined Mar 24, 2008
23,415
Like I said, we're not there, or even that close, but I do believe the day will come.

It's funny, I just came back from seeing the movie Walle, which is what we're talking about in a fundamental sense. The movie was so much fluff, but it was fun.

A theme from a lot of stories is it is accomplished accidentally, which is bull. When we do it it won't be an accident. I do think the day it happens it won't be as predictable as we'd like, unintended consequences will abound, and there will be quirks that no one predicted. This is why I think people better put some thought into it before it happens.

The concept of synthetic intelligence is also bound with Von Neuman machines, self replicating machines. The day something like that is possible a lot of other things are possible, terraforming for example. At this point money becomes meaningless, and all sorts of projects are possible. There are possibilities for things to go wrong, but there are also possibilities for things to go right too, just like the rest of our history.
 
Top