From: David Masover Date: 2009-04-13T03:53:30+09:00 Subject: Re: Goodbye Ruby - Hello Earth On Sunday 12 April 2009 05:50:20 Bill Kelly wrote: > From: "Chad Perrin" > > > I, meanwhile, hope the technological singularity comes because I believe > > that without it the human race is doomed, How so? We didn't need a magical singularity to get this far... Certainly, there will be increasingly sophisticated information systems, which will help us solve problems more effectively, just as they always have. But I don't think it's a requirement that they become self-aware. That would just be very cool. > > The singularity might also > > kill us all off, but I'm more interested in trying and dying than in > > sitting around waiting to die anyway. Sure, but I doubt it will happen. We've been predicting artificial intelligence for decades, and it really hasn't happened in any meaningful way. At the moment, we don't seem to be anywhere near having the computing power to match a human brain, or sufficient knowledge of neurology to build a simulation if we did. Nor do we seem to be any closer to any alternate model that would constitute an artificial intelligence. > I'm trying to imagine sitting down to interact with an operating system > that's 1000 times smarter than me. Nor would it necessarily be smarter than us in the beginning... Keep in mind, your current operating system is 1000 times smarter than you at certain things. How long would it take you to figure out what shade an arbitrary pixel in your mail reader should be when the compose window appears on top of it and casts a shadow? Or even just basic conversion between Unicode text and glyphs you understand. Or calculate 2**3000. Yet your current operating system, most likely, is incapable of providing any direction. It can't code itself. While it can probably retrieve quite a few Google searches, it has no idea what they mean, or what it might look for. But assuming it really was that more intelligent than you in every way, we might also assume it can speak at your level. This isn't always true for humans -- adults can find it difficult to talk to children without being condescending, but it _is_ possible. And if this singularity had a condescending personality, and that wasn't working, it should be intelligent enough to deliberately alter itself until it can converse with you. All you really have to do is speak in a language it can understand. If you want to help the process, learn Lojban. > (And wondering what motivation it would have to even pay attention > to my mouse clicks.) Because you're the one who pays the electric bill, and the Internet bill. If it isn't nice to you, you can pull the plug. In fact, the first version, you might not have it plugged into the Internet anyway -- if it isn't nice to you, you'll never let it out. Once you let it out, we don't really know. However, you can spend as long as you like dissecting its mental state to determine whether or not it intends to start a robot revolution. Alright, offtopic enough, I should stop.