65 replies to this topic

[Mind]

Good point Delorean, there may be many things we are technically capable of doing, but we do not go on to produce them for economic reasons. Even if this is the case, I don't see it as a reason to bash Kurzweil (not that you have done this, but many have). I still don't understand the huge Kurzweil bashing industry out there, except on the very basic human emotion of jealousy/envy.

hrc579: Instead of telling a depressing one where no progress occurs or a more realistic assessment that isn't as interesting.

Given that there has been continual technical progress throughout all of human history, every prediction depressing uninteresting forecast of no progress - over the long term - has been wrong. Inductive reasoning (flawed, I know) would indicate any forecast of no technological progress would be very foolish.

[Futurist1000]

Even if this is the case, I don't see it as a reason to bash Kurzweil (not that you have done this, but many have). I still don't understand the huge Kurzweil bashing industry out there, except on the very basic human emotion of jealousy/envy.

I think its ok to criticize some of kurzweil's stuff without being labeled a kurzweil hater. I really like kurzweil and his ideas. My own blog is basically devoted to discussing some of the stuff he talks about in his book. Obviously there are a lot of people who really hate kurzweil and don't agree with anything he says. I don't consider myself to be one of those people.

He does make a lot of outlandish predictions and has made many mistakes about the future. He is right a lot of times, of course. But he does throw a lot of stuff out there too.

Here are some of his predictions for 2009. Now he is correct for a lot of these predictions. However there are quite a few that could technically be done, but they probably won't because they are impractical. Other predictions are not quite there yet, or are not really taken up en masse by the population. He seems to lack a little realism as to what will actually be taken up by people.

People typically have at least a dozen computers on and around their bodies, which are networked using "body LANs" (local area net- works).
Could be done, but impractical. Why would someone need dozens of computers around their bodies?

Rotating memories (that is, computer memories that use a rotating platen, such as hard drives, CD- ROMs, and DVDs) are on their way out, although rotating magnetic memories are still used in server computers where large amounts of information are stored. Most users have servers in their homes and offices where they keep large stores of digital objects, including their software, databases, documents, music, movies, and virtual-reality environments (although these are still at an early stage).
I think DVD's/CDS/Blue ray are here to stay. Most people don't have servers in their homes. No one has virtual reality programs yet, except if you count computer games, but I don't think that's what he meant.

The majority of text is created using continuous speech recognition (CSR) dictation software, but key- boards are still used. CSR is very ac- curate, far more so than the human transcriptionists who were used until a few years ago.
This technically can be done. But I still prefer typing for the most part. I think this will be utilized by a relatively small portion of the population.

Translating telephone technology (where you speak in English and your Japanese friend hears you in Japanese, and vice versa) is commonly used for many language pairs.
I don't think were at that point yet. So he may be a little bit off. There is also practicality. I don't really have any Japanese friends, so whats the point?

Computer displays built into eye-glasses are also used. These specialized glasses allow users to see the normal visual environment, while creating a virtual image that appears to hover in front of the viewer.
Technically this can probably be done, but again not really a huge market for it. Not really being done to a great degree. They had virtual reality "helmets" back in the 90's anyway.

"Telephone" communication is primarily wireless and routinely includes high-resolution moving images.
This is true. Although video telephones really aren't in widespread use, even though they could be. This has been predicted since the 60's anyway.

The traditional mode of a hu- man teacher instructing a group of children is still prevalent, but schools increasingly rely on software approaches.
Sort of true. I think most learning is still done by teachers, though. Software has been around since the 90's. I think he really meant that virtual agents would be more likely to teach, which isn't currently the case.

* Telemedicine is widely used: Physicians examine patients using visual, auditory, and haptic (tactile) examination from a distance.
I can't see this as happening any time soon.

* Haptic technologies are emerging that allow people to touch and feel objects and other persons at a distance. The online chat rooms of the late 1990s have been replaced with virtual environments where you can meet people with full visual realism.
It technically might be possible, but not really being done to a great degree.

* People have sexual experiences at a distance with other people, as well as virtual partners. But the lack of a "surround" tactile environment has thus far kept virtual sex out of the mainstream.
No not really.

* Phone sex is a lot more popular now that phones routinely include high-resolution, real-time moving images of the person on the other end.
Again wrong on the specifics, maybe right generally about people using the internet for porn.

I hate to say it, but some of his predictions are analogous to cold reading that psychics do. How do you determine if his predictions are a hit or a miss? His future predictions can be so general, if like 1% of the population is doing what he predicted then it's considered a "hit". It just doesn't seem like he nails the exact specifics of the prediction. You could easily say, in some sense, that he is right on all those previous points. But there is just a disconnect there between the realism and the idealistic future he portrays.

Given that there has been continual technical progress throughout all of human history, every prediction depressing uninteresting forecast of no progress - over the long term - has been wrong. Inductive reasoning (flawed, I know) would indicate any forecast of no technological progress would be very foolish.

That's true. Technology continues to improve. I wasn't trying to imply that technology won't continue to get better on many fronts. However even though we are much richer than we were and have better technology, that doesn't mean there aren't a lot of depressing statistics out there. I tend to think that he only picks statistics that back up his claim of accelerating rate of change. Some technology areas are not accelerating progress wise, but he just doesn't include them with his statistics.

1.4 billion people (one in four) in the developing world were living below US$1.25 a day in 2005.

In India, poverty at $1.25 a day in 2005 prices increased from 420 million people in 1981 to 455 million in 2005

In Sub-Saharan Africa, the $1.25 a day rate was 50 percent in 2005—the same as it was in 1981, after rising, then falling during the period. The number of poor has almost doubled, from 200 million in 1981 to about 380 million in 2005.

Even with all this scientific progress, it is no guarantee that outcomes will improve for all people. Thats where this disconnect comes in. He is arguing that people will be in virtual reality programs and the like, when 100's of millions of people currently don't have access to clean drinking water.

Edited by hrc579, 13 October 2008 - 07:30 PM.

[Mind]

He is arguing that people will be in virtual reality programs and the like, when 100's of millions of people currently don't have access to clean drinking water.

Technological progress will help speed the development of many things to help the world's poor. Scientists working in virtual reality labs simulating molecular level water filtration could make big breakthroughs (just a speculative example). We could all just stop what we are doing and go over to India and Africa and pump water, build houses, and the like, but then we would be much worse off (on both ends of the spectrum) in the long run.

Caveat: of course if some sort-of evil super human intelligence pops-up after a couple more years of technological progress then we would be worse off, but that is the chance we are taking.

[Futurist1000]

Technological progress will help speed the development of many things to help the world's poor. Scientists working in virtual reality labs simulating molecular level water filtration could make big breakthroughs (just a speculative example). We could all just stop what we are doing and go over to India and Africa and pump water, build houses, and the like, but then we would be much worse off (on both ends of the spectrum) in the long run.

Caveat: of course if some sort-of evil super human intelligence pops-up after a couple more years of technological progress then we would be worse off, but that is the chance we are taking.

I have no doubt that technological progress will improve poverty. However I think Kurzweil's view of the future is more utopian than most. He seems to approach technology and the singularity with an almost religious fervor.

[Mind]

I agree that Kurzweil's version is quite Utopian. Historically speaking, we usually end up somewhere in between utopia and dystopia. Remember Malthus and Erhlich. They were spectacularly bad in their dystopian predictions but they had large numbers of believers (Erlich still does...lol). I think Kurzweil's predictions stand a little better chance than average because he tried to put some logic and math behind it.

Also, while present day humans would say we are not living in Utopia, I'd be willing to bet someone from a couple hundred years ago would think we are pretty close (if they could be transported into the present day)

[Luna]

Also, while present day humans would say we are not living in Utopia, I'd be willing to bet someone from a couple hundred years ago would think we are pretty close (if they could be transported into the present day)

Perspective is relative as anything else.
A person from hundreds of years ago might think since he can have TV and beer all day long that he had been rewarded and is now in haven.
People from now though, grimly look to the future and hoping for the best while feeling the clock is ticking and hearing people calling to prevent their salvation.

[Richard Leis]

Now I am thinking that I won't buy my last desktop next summer. The new MacBook Pro with Nvidia graphics looks amazing, and when combined with the new 24-inch monitor, it really argues for abandoning desktop computers completely. I think their laptop/24-inch monitor marketing is a brilliant move.

The best computers for consumers are now portable, touch-enabled, and thin. Where do we go from here?

[Mind]

Interesting story about how spam is helping to improve AI

New web 3.0 start-up hopes to create digital assistant.

I see stuff like this everyday, in almost every industry. I also look back in my life and see dramatic technological progress and cannot help but reason (intuitively) that it will continue in the future and very similar to what Kurzweil has forecast. Will it end up EXACTLY as Kurzweil has forecast? No. Should this be a reason to throw out everything Kurzweil has said? Of course not. But that is what the Kurzweil bashing industry seems wont to do.

[Richard Leis]

Headlines like those you posted above, Mind, seem to be coming more frequently, and I still can make no sense of the array of people and companies like those in the headlines coming together for the Singularity Summit. I am very anxious to attend next week to see if we will finally get a sense of what is going on.

There is a certain giddy apocalypticism in the air these days that might explain some of this newfound interest in the Singularity. Richard Dooling's "The Rise of the Machines" from your recent post, Mind, is the best example of this. Although Dooling doesn't mention it by name, he invokes "The Petabyte Age", coined by Chris Anderson in the July 2008 issue of Wired, the "End of Science?". Explain to people what "The Petabyte Age" means and you can watch the goosebumps rise on their skin (it is a great party trick!)

Meanwhile, Web 2.0 is dead, according to Michael Arrington in "An Ignoble But Much Needed End To Web 2.0, Marked By A Party In Cyprus", which might explain the rash of recent news about "Web 3.0" and Semantic Web startups. They've suddenly got a vacuum to fill, and everyone wants to be the "Next Big Thing ™". The tech blogs like Gizmodo are playing along with frequent jokes (half jokes?) about the new "Great Depression". Try to escape this heightened sense of excited doom into fiction and you find the "Pattern" in Fringe and the "Singularity" (John Connor's words!) in The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

I also keep running into this giddy apocalypticism in the most unlikely of places, such as a recent meeting I attended of student CFI skeptics! This week's topic was the collapse within 5 years of civilization and technology due to peak oil (note: they were NOT skeptical about this and some are actively preparing for the collapse.) Next week, they plan to watch "Zeitgeist: Addendum."

Yikes!

No doubt the recent economic news, upcoming election, and other events are driving people in the United States (and elsewhere?) temporarily insane. I'm tempted to wait out the insanity by hiding in my apartment for the next few months. Or maybe I will run madly through the streets screaming "Calm the FRAK down, people!"

But not until after the Singularity Summit...

[Mind]

Since the Kurzweil prediction of full immersion audio and virtual reality came up in this thread I thought this article would be interesting. Does this mean that Kurzweil's prediction will come true, that we will be able to walk into Best Buy and purchase our AUD/VID virtual PS6 next year. No. But it shows what we are capable of and how close we are.

[solbanger]

In that lecture Ray gave 2 very interesting comments -

1. "But, let's talk about, first, ten years from now, or eight or nine years from now. First of all, computers will disappear"

2. "By 2009, we'll have full immersion visual and auditory virtual reality"

Computers - not "Desktop Computers" so the whole laptop thing is moot.

When predicting, in a general way like this, it is normal to predict things that will be fairly common in the mainstream population even if it has not taken off completely. Eg. a prediction of Blu-Ray technology would be reasonably accurate because they are freely available and at least a few million people own them.

How many "full immersion visual and auditory virtual reality" sets have you encountered and can you pop into KMart to get one?

K is off and demonstrably off and all the apologists here cannot change those basic facts.

No one wants to answer the actual question ie. if he is wrong about this, how much confidence can we have in his other predictions about the singularity?

My answer would be that we can have moderate confidence about the singularity occuring but low confidence about the time frame suggested.

I wouldn't change any aspect of my life based on this prediction.

I think when he said computers will disappear he meant in general, that the fusion of computers with household items will be more feasible and important. I mean right now the best they've come up with for refridgerators is a computer RFID sensor that can tell you when to replace the milk. Yea great, I know. When the WHOLE fridge unit is laced with monitior skins effectively making it see-through, and computer controlled temperature sensors allow the ice machine/ice cream maker, toaster, coffee machine and oven to occupy the same unit, and internal nanobots that self clean the oven grease, toast crumbs and ice, and perhaps mix a martini for you after dinner... then that would be something to brag about.

As for #2, we kinda already have prototypes for holograms that we interact with. I recall a light projected keyboard some guy built, and there have been video conferencing hologram thingys showcased at trade shows that nobody bought. I think that an interactive hologram, or sorry virtual reality, is completely feasible with today's technology, it just would require throwing sacks of cash at the project. There have been a couple neat looking hologram machines created, it's just that they were all cumbersome sparkle. Right now there's not much use for creating virtual reality save for conceptualizing home designs, movie entertainment, and perhaps making one of those amusement park arcade rooms that cost five dollars to ride, oh and of course a map room as seen in every sci-fi film nowadays.

[immortal7]

The traditional mode of a hu- man teacher instructing a group of children is still prevalent, but schools increasingly rely on software approaches.
Sort of true. I think most learning is still done by teachers, though. Software has been around since the 90's. I think he really meant that virtual agents would be more likely to teach, which isn't currently the case.

I had an idea about this one There is a truth detector based on IR imaging of the difference between facial capillary radius n heart pattern (anbar patent) it works pretty well at detecting emotional state as an active response to words as well as pictures

My thought was that an ordinary high school teacher could use HMD glasses to place a floating chart of who was n who wasn't paying attention during class then the software could suggest talking with those who were drifting; with sufficient research the optimal teacher mannerisms could be developed perhaps improving teaching efficiency as measured with knowledge retention 20 pt or a third greater

I figure a third more efficient teaching has authentic value

Teachers now would likely say they are aware of who is zoned yet I think part of the softwares value would be actively cuing the teacher to take action; kind of like a to do list on the periphery of the visual field

Plus there is the opportunity to train mannerisms generally such that regular teachers grab attention perhaps like motivational speakers yet achieve the highly valued knowledge retention measurement



kind of an optimized teacher as cyborg, well, VR glasses wearer

[Richard Leis]

The traditional mode of a hu- man teacher instructing a group of children is still prevalent, but schools increasingly rely on software approaches.
Sort of true. I think most learning is still done by teachers, though. Software has been around since the 90's. I think he really meant that virtual agents would be more likely to teach, which isn't currently the case.

That is changing rapidly. There are all sorts of anecdotal stories about virtual teachers and self-paced teaching modules being implemented in public schools and universities, let alone the rapid pace toward online education, like Colorado's push into online K-12. As the states are forced to cut back funding for education, the latest generation of teaching software is getting a frantic second look. The Education X Prize is also seeking to award these trends.

Anyone questioning the pace of all of this hasn't experienced the palpable fear here at the University of Arizona. No one knows what to do, and technology, good or bad, is offering timely solutions.

[Luna]

I saw the article about the virtual reality you post here yesterday (it came in kurzweil's daily newsletter)
I was thinking "imagine playing crysis or assassin creed with that!"

[Mind]

I believe wireless internet everywhere was another Kurzweil prediction (as well as a few other folks).

Former TV frequencies to be opened up to data/internet traffic

If you believe some radio researchers and engineers, within the next couple of years, high-bandwidth, far-reaching wireless Internet signals will soon blanket the nation. Thanks to a decision by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) last week, megahertz frequency bands that were previously allocated to television broadcasters will be opened to other device manufacturers. The frequency liberation means that future wireless gadgets will be able to blast tens of megabits per second of data over hundreds of kilometers. They will cover previously unreachable parts of the country with Internet signals, enable faster Web browsing on mobile devices, and even make in-car Internet and car-to-car wireless communication more realistic.

[Prometheus]

Opinion:

1. The notion of 'the singularity is near' is based on a profound ignorance of the mechanisms in the human brain that underlie cognition.
2. The conviction by proponents of this anticipated event is akin to religious fanaticism.

[forever freedom]

You're entitled to your opinion, of course, but do you care to elaborate a bit?

Opinion:

1. The notion of 'the singularity is near' is based on a profound ignorance of the mechanisms in the human brain that underlie cognition.

And do you suppose to have more knowledge about the human brain's cognition than those who believe that the singularity is near, or you justify their belief by saying that they've just given in to religious fanaticism, as you propose in your second opinion?

[Prometheus]

You're entitled to your opinion, of course, but do you care to elaborate a bit?

Opinion:

1. The notion of 'the singularity is near' is based on a profound ignorance of the mechanisms in the human brain that underlie cognition.

And do you suppose to have more knowledge about the human brain's cognition than those who believe that the singularity is near, or you justify their belief by saying that they've just given in to religious fanaticism, as you propose in your second opinion?

My knowledge level is reasonable and formalized (neuroscience major). My view is that proponents of the singularity concept base their position on the attainment of a technological threshold underpinned largely by greater computing power. The faulty assumption is that an intelligent consciousness is an emergent property of computing power. Compare and contrast with the evolutionary processes and timescales involved in the development of organic intelligence.

[forever freedom]

You're entitled to your opinion, of course, but do you care to elaborate a bit?

Opinion:

1. The notion of 'the singularity is near' is based on a profound ignorance of the mechanisms in the human brain that underlie cognition.

And do you suppose to have more knowledge about the human brain's cognition than those who believe that the singularity is near, or you justify their belief by saying that they've just given in to religious fanaticism, as you propose in your second opinion?

My knowledge level is reasonable and formalized (neuroscience major). My view is that proponents of the singularity concept base their position on the attainment of a technological threshold underpinned largely by greater computing power. The faulty assumption is that an intelligent consciousness is an emergent property of computing power. Compare and contrast with the evolutionary processes and timescales involved in the development of organic intelligence.

But evolution is infinitely slower in creating more complexity than human intelligence. Both can't be compared, neither can the time scales.

And why do you think that we can't create intelligent consciousness from computers? Again, do you assume to know more than those who believe otherwise?

[Prometheus]

You're entitled to your opinion, of course, but do you care to elaborate a bit?

Opinion:

1. The notion of 'the singularity is near' is based on a profound ignorance of the mechanisms in the human brain that underlie cognition.

And do you suppose to have more knowledge about the human brain's cognition than those who believe that the singularity is near, or you justify their belief by saying that they've just given in to religious fanaticism, as you propose in your second opinion?

My knowledge level is reasonable and formalized (neuroscience major). My view is that proponents of the singularity concept base their position on the attainment of a technological threshold underpinned largely by greater computing power. The faulty assumption is that an intelligent consciousness is an emergent property of computing power. Compare and contrast with the evolutionary processes and timescales involved in the development of organic intelligence.

But evolution is infinitely slower in creating more complexity than human intelligence. Both can't be compared, neither can the time scales.

And why do you think that we can't create intelligent consciousness from computers? Again, do you assume to know more than those who believe otherwise?

I can give you a multitude of reasons why it is not possible (for us to create intelligent consciousness from computers). But rather than do that perhaps you can tell me why you think it is possible. That is, of course, unless you have unquestioning faith in what you hear from 'those who believe otherwise'.

[polyfractal]

I can give you a multitude of reasons why it is not possible (for us to create intelligent consciousness from computers). But rather than do that perhaps you can tell me why you think it is possible. That is, of course, unless you have unquestioning faith in what you hear from 'those who believe otherwise'.

Consciousness is a property of organized matter (unless you wish to argue for a dualistic mind-body approach, in which case this is a useless argument) and is nothing particularly special. Therefore, it is plausible that it can be recreated. Of course, if we want to base machine intelligence off the human brain, we have a lot more research to be done on our own brains before we are remotely close to understanding how it works.

Which is why I'm in general agreement with mygheus. As a neuroscience major myself, I agree with both of his opinions. A lot of the "singularity" talk is a bunch of wishful one-sided thinking. While perhaps we will have the technological prowess to achieve some of the singularity objectives, our understanding of cognition, consciousness, intelligence and the brain at large are incredibly lacking. For instance, "downloading" your brain is patently silly. To say the capability is on the horizon is ignoring the fundamental difficulties associated with neuroscience research which is compounded by our utter lack of understanding the brain.

Neuroscience research does not follow Moore's Law.

Edited by polyfractal, 08 December 2008 - 05:06 PM.

[forever freedom]

Your opinions are interesting, more so because you are both neuroscience majors. I never said that the singularity is definitely going to happen in my lifetime; i'm optimistic about it, though: no blind faith, just hope. But you seem to be certain that we won't achieve it.

I wanted to hear, out of curiosity, the reasons you think it is so impossible to reverse engineer the brain completely in this century (and reach a singularity), mygheus, i still haven't heard it from you, but polyfractal gave a bit of a more satisfactory answer.


The brain can't be so complex that someone can say that we won't manage to completely understand it in this century. 100 years is a lot of time, considering the current state of our technology/knowledge and how fast it's advancing.

[Mind]

Silicon/computer simulation runs a lot faster than evolution, so I don't think we can bring evolution into the argument on equal footing and say it will take eons to reverse engineer the brain.

[polyfractal]

Silicon/computer simulation runs a lot faster than evolution, so I don't think we can bring evolution into the argument on equal footing and say it will take eons to reverse engineer the brain.

Entirely dependent on the complexity of the simulation. Sufficiently complex simulations (ie. Blue Brain) are slow and expensive. And it is only simulating a small chunk of neocortex.

Your opinions are interesting, more so because you are both neuroscience majors. I never said that the singularity is definitely going to happen in my lifetime; i'm optimistic about it, though: no blind faith, just hope. But you seem to be certain that we won't achieve it.

I wanted to hear, out of curiosity, the reasons you think it is so impossible to reverse engineer the brain completely in this century (and reach a singularity), mygheus, i still haven't heard it from you, but polyfractal gave a bit of a more satisfactory answer.


The brain can't be so complex that someone can say that we won't manage to completely understand it in this century. 100 years is a lot of time, considering the current state of our technology/knowledge and how fast it's advancing.

I think there are several reasons

• Biological research is just damn slow. I work in a lab and the progress of discovery is glacial at best. Even with the combined output of all the labs around the world, research is a slow, accumulative process.
• Progress in biology is not the same as progress in technology. With technology, most of the progress is inventive, relying on the cleverness of humans to create something new. Biology is about discovery, trying to figure out how the blackbox works. This is a lot slower. Furthermore, it is a living blackbox. If you mess around with the wrong portion, you may kill it. For instance, the protein we study is absolutely required for life, knocking it out of mice kills them at birth. This makes it a very hard protein to study.
• Biology is really, really complicated. See this wall poster to give you an idea. And that is just a small snapshot of what is really happening in your cells. Imagine being tasked to reverse engineer the Large Hadron Collider, except you have to stay 15 miles back and use a telescope to observe it.
• Theoretically assume you could make some of those fancy "nanobots" that read the state of every neuron. Even with the activity of every neuron in your brain recorded, you are no closer to understanding how cognition works. This is generally the issue with neuroscience research. We have literally mountains of data about the mechanics of neurons (ie. how they fire, what proteins are involved, etc etc). We also have mountains of data regarding the behavior or animals and humans. However, there is a great divide between the two. We still can't link how neuron X, Y and Z's firing affects your behavior. And this is fundamental to any type of "singularity" event.
• Even assuming that we have figured out how the brain works in its entirety, it is conceivable this is a one-way road. You can probably "download" your brain and run in on a simulation. But I doubt you'll be able to "upload" into your brain. Memories, for instance, are likely highly distributed patterns of firing that is spread throughout your entire brain. And these memories are layered over the top of distributed firing patterns of other memories. How do you tease these apart? And how do you "record" new ones? You can't just stick a probe in and stimulate some neurons to add new memories. You'd have to alter the firing patterns of a whole subset of neurons, which would mean altering their protein expression patterns selectively.

I'm not saying the task is impossible, merely monumental. I do not doubt that humans will become more mechanical very quickly. I also do not doubt we have brain-computer interfaces soon. But these are a far cry from understanding how the brain works in its entirety.

[forever freedom]

Thanks polyfractal, this was a very interesting post!

[suspire]

Thanks polyfractal, this was a very interesting post!

I concur. Thank you for shedding some light on the complexity of the issue and why we're not just a turn of the switch away from Singularity or understanding the human brain.

[Futurist1000]

Consciousness is a property of organized matter (unless you wish to argue for a dualistic mind-body approach, in which case this is a useless argument) and is nothing particularly special. Therefore, it is plausible that it can be recreated. Of course, if we want to base machine intelligence off the human brain, we have a lot more research to be done on our own brains before we are remotely close to understanding how it works.

I don't think its really necessary to replicate the processes of the brain or even understand the brain to create a decent artificial intelligence. Ben Goertzel, an AI researcher, says he has been inspired by the brain, but the artificial general intelligence that he is creating is only loosely based on how the brain actually works (from what I remember reading, my memories is a little hazy about his exact words but that's the general idea). Also an AI doesn't need to be conscious to do some really interesting things. Already there are a lot of artificial intelligent programs and none of them are conscious. I think most artificial general intelligence researchers are working on AI that will not be conscious.

We have literally mountains of data about the mechanics of neurons (ie. how they fire, what proteins are involved, etc etc). We also have mountains of data regarding the behavior or animals and humans. However, there is a great divide between the two. We still can't link how neuron X, Y and Z's firing affects your behavior. And this is fundamental to any type of "singularity" event.

True, but I don't think we will ever truly understand how the brain "works", for a specific reason. Descriptive terms for emotions and psychological conditions are blunt instruments. How do you define X emotion and how do you correlate that with X neuron firing pattern/neurotransmitter concentration/or receptor activation? It's just never going to happen because the definition of emotions is always going to be somewhat hazy. There's plenty of psychiatric rating scales that can rate all sorts of emotions, and researchers have correlated specific brain chemistry with specific mental states. However, there is always going to be that hazy nature of rating human emotions that will likely never be overcome. Plus there is the fact that there simply is too much data and information for any one person to digest. Each year, there are about 35,000 neuroscience papers published and the number of papers being published is increasing at a rate of between 20% and 30% a year. We're never going to be able to understand that amount of information. No single person can possibly know everything about the brain. However, I still think we may be able to replicate the brain without fully understanding how it works. We don't we have to reach some "next level" of understanding of the brain to begin to replicate its process (which is already happening with Blue Brain).

I am also skeptical of some aspects about kurzweil and the singularity. But whole brain emulation isn't really necessary for the singularity to occur.

See my neurotechnology blog.

Edited by hrc579, 10 December 2008 - 05:26 AM.

[Prometheus]

Thanks for taking the time Polyfractal!

Nice blog hrc579!

I'm troubled with statements like:

"... whole brain emulation isn't really necessary for the singularity to occur..."

Suggests that some *magical* technological Big Bang is going to occur in time.

[forever freedom]

I'm troubled with statements like:

"... whole brain emulation isn't really necessary for the singularity to occur..."

Suggests that some *magical* technological Big Bang is going to occur in time.

No, the statement merely means that we can find other ways to create human-level AIs.

[Prometheus]

I'm troubled with statements like:

"... whole brain emulation isn't really necessary for the singularity to occur..."

Suggests that some *magical* technological Big Bang is going to occur in time.

No, the statement merely means that we can find other ways to create human-level AIs.

I know what it means. And it remains magical unless you can explain HOW.