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Bradski
Guest
So maybe the ones that you think are deep and meaningful.
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And wrong again.
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Bradski
Guest
So what is the difference between a religion that is shallow and meaningless ans superstition?
You’re asking a question based upon a faulty premise.
Why should I bother entertaining it?
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Solmyr
Guest
That reminds me of the question:
Q: which people belong to a religious sect?
A: those who attend the church next to yours.
And then those who attend that other church are just superstitious, since they worship some “false” gods.
So easy and obvious.
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Bradski
Guest
The proposal was that superstitions as far as AI is concerned won’t last long.
Again I will ask the question, based on the original proposal: What do you consider to be the difference between superstition and religion where the religion is not just yours and would include ones that are not deep and meaningful (and therefore by inference, shallow and meaningless)?
Your religion?
So just the deep and meaningful ones?
So we are left with other people’s religions (not just yours) and ones that are not just deep and meaningful, so we can include those that are shallow and meaningless.
Again I will ask the question, based on the original proposal: What do you consider to be the difference between superstition and religion where the religion is not just yours and would include ones that are not deep and meaningful (and therefore by inference, shallow and meaningless)?
I think that vz has inadvertently painted himself into a corner. He wants to hold ‘religion’ up against superstition (not surprisingly) but graciously doesn’t want to simply nominate his own, but…is left holding a candle for those that aren’t ‘deep and meaningful’.
Yes.
That was the proposal.
And that precisely is what I responded to.
You’re attempts to place words in my mouth missed the mark each time.
Superstitions and religions are not the same thing.
And as such will be treated differently in this theoretical AI.
The optimists here wish to believe man will create an AI that can think and reason philosophically, then they need to address the inevitable. That the machine may well create it’s own religion.
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Lion_IRC
Guest
I like your idealism.
But increasing speed isn’t going to fool the people who build those faster machines into thinking that the machine is ‘smarter’ than its creator.
Name me one earth-shattering, awesome, technological invention from the past 5,000 years which we don’t now view as mundane…nay…archaic!
What you’re arguing is that 25th Century kids wont (still) be doing the equivalent of the way my daughter reacts when I try explaining what a ROM pack meant to Atari gamers or what a dial-up modem ‘handshake’ sounded like. Or the way kids in the 80’s looked at black & white television wondering what it must have been like in the old days of the 1970’s. Or the way people in the 1920’s viewed the motor car and wondered why it had taken so long to invent a machine that could outrun a horse.
I think you underestimate the ability of the human mind to evolve ahead of the pace of technology - technology which is wholly invented/designed and built by humans.
Answer the challenge - Name me one earth-shattering, awesome, technological invention from the past 5,000 years which we don’t now view as mundane with the benefit of hindsight.
Saying that a computer is smarter than a human is like saying that a bulldozer is stronger than a human.
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Bradski
Guest
I agree with you. There isn’t one.
Time was I could strip a car and reassemble one. And I could teach someone from the 15th century how to do it. It was basic mechanical engineering. Same with a plane. Flight is pretty basic engineering as well. When computers came out I could programme the things from first principles. I knew how they worked.
But now…
You don’t list your whereabouts but even if you are on the other side of the planet, we could, within a few minutes and with a just few keystrokes, hold a video call with each other. And we’re reaching the point where I have a rough idea how it works but it’s getting away from me. I cannot intuitively grasp how a picture can make it’s way from your iPad or PC through different waypoints, up into orbit (into orbit!), back down and make its way to my house and then somehow jump from the box in the corner to this screen.
And this type of technology is gaining speed. This isn’t something that many people understand at all. More and more people know less and less about how the world works.
I think you are looking at it the wrong way. We weren’t blasé about cars because we had to make sure the thing kept working so most people could work on them. But ever looked under the hood of a modern car? Now we are blasé about them. Turn the key and expect it to start. Hit the keys on your iPad you and expect to talk to family in another country in a few seconds. Sooner than I’d care to guess, you’ll just walk into your house and make a verbal request to be connected to a hologram of the same family.
Depending on your age, either your children or your grandchildren will accept things that we can’t envisage as just part of normal life. And they will have no idea whatsoever how they work.
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tonyrey
Guest
It all goes to show that the power of the mind is greater than anything else in the universe when it comes to creative hindsight, insight and foresight, a fact noted by Pascal (who was no fool) over five hundred years ago. If he hadn’t died at the age of 39 he would have added to his list of discoveries…
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tonyrey
Guest
Precisely! Brute force doesn’t equal a child’s intelligence.
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tonyrey
Guest
A machine cannot understand itself let alone explain the nature and purpose of existence!
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tonyrey
Guest
You are assuming religions have nothing in common even though they all have the same fundamental moral, social, personal and spiritual values and principles about which scientists tells us nothing whatsoever…
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BobCatholic
Guest
evil is an absense of good.
The good thing about AI is that it uses reason. The bad thing about AI is that it can reason itself into doing evil
All you have to do is see how people rationalize and justify all kids of evil.
AI is unable to distinguish truth from falsity. It assumes everything is true until a contradiction happens. Then where does it go?
Then the programmer must step in and program his or her moral code into the system. Oops. Then it is not really intelligent because it did not figure it out.
Mocrosoft bot got racist. OK, so time to insert code that says racism is wrong. Then wait for the next contradiction. - but in this case there was no contradiction yet according to the program. The contradiction was between software requirements and functionality.
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o_mlly
Guest
This, I think, is a “dog bites man” story.
When AIphaGo can go against its programming code and “sin,” so to speak, then we have a “man bites dog” story.
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ThinkingSapien
Guest
Okay, using that definition how does one determine whether there is an absence of good in something? What about something that has a mixture of constructive and destructive outcomes?
I’m going to ask what will sound like another silly question here, but what do you mean when you say that “it uses reason”? Also, since you are using the word “good” here to refer to AI here it sounds like you are saying that there’s not an absence of good in AI?
This give me the impression you are viewing many most A.I.'s as being an attempt at strong AI. I don’t think it is the case that Strong AI is their goal. To quote an explanation provided in another thread:
Some have started using a different vocabulary to close the gap between the researcher’s/developer’s intentions and how the general public interpret words (ex: “Machine Learning.”)ThinkingSapien said:
I guess that makes it very clear that you are not one of the optimists I spoke of.
And I agree with you.
I believe creation of a self-aware intelligence is something only God will be able to grant as only God has the understanding of this intelligence.
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Solmyr
Guest
There is an IBM operating system called “CICS” (consumer information control system) which is well over half a million lines of assembler code. It was developed for decades, and it is still in use. There is no human who could understand its code. So how can anyone establish if the behavior of a hugely complex system goes against its original code? Answer: no way. These systems are not developed by a small group of people, in a short period of time.
To show you the difficulties, here is a ONE line “C” program. Try to figure out what it does.
Code:
#include <stdio.h>
main(t,_,a)
char *a;
{
return!0<t?t<3?main(-79,-13,a+main(-87,1-_,main(-86,0,a+1)+a)):
1,t<_?main(t+1,_,a):3,main(-94,-27+t,a)&&t==2?_<13?
main(2,_+1,"%s %d %d
"):9:16:t<0?t<-72?main(_,t,
"@n'+,#'/*{}w+/w#cdnr/+,{}r/*de}+,/*{*+,/w{%+,/w#q#n+,/#{l+,/n{n+,/+#n+,/#\
;#q#n+,/+k#;*+,/'r :'d*'3,}{w+K w'K:'+}e#';dq#'l \
q#'+d'K#!/+k#;q#'r}eKK#}w'r}eKK{nl]'/#;#q#n'){)#}w'){){nl]'/+#n';d}rw' i;#\
){nl]!/n{n#'; r{#w'r nc{nl]'/#{l,+'K {rw' iK{;{nl]'/w#q#n'wk nw' \
iwk{KK{nl]!/w{%'l##w#' i; :{nl]'/*{q#'ld;r'}{nlwb!/*de}'c \
;;{nl'-{}rw]'/+,}##'*}#nc,',#nw]'/+kd'+e}+;#'rdq#w! nr'/ ') }+}{rl#'{n' ')# \
}'+}##(!!/")
:t<-50?_==*a?putchar(31[a]):main(-65,_,a+1):main((*a=='/')+t,_,a+1)
:0<t?main(2,2,"%s"):*a=='/'||main(0,main(-61,*a,
"!ek;dc i@bK'(q)-[w]*%n+r3#l,{}:
uwloca-O;m .vpbks,fxntdCeghiry"),a+1);
}
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o_mlly
Guest
Well. let’s see here … first clear the parentheses then google some lines of the code and presto: “Reverse Engineering the Twelve Days of Christmas” pops up at – Thomas Ball at Microsoft Research.
The point, I think, is that whatever men invent can be understood by other men, given inclination and time. But when men attempt to understand the Creator’s beings, not so much.
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tonyrey
Guest
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