[HN Gopher] An argument for the impossibility of machine intelli...
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An argument for the impossibility of machine intelligence [pdf]
Author : imaurer
Score : 73 points
Date : 2021-11-20 16:24 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arxiv.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (arxiv.org)
| snek_case wrote:
| The most obvious counter-argument is that the amount of things we
| can do with AI keeps expanding. People were incredulous that
| computer chess programs could beat humans in the 1980s. Now they
| can beat us at basically any board game including Go, do image
| classification, and we have some early prototypes of self-driving
| cars.
|
| AI hasn't mastered common-sense reasoning yet. That's likely
| going to come last, but the amount of things AI can understand is
| set to only expand IMO.
| The_rationalist wrote:
| Well I am not defending the paper thesis but no it's time to
| realize that we are in a new AI winter where progress has
| stopped. Sure we can make accuracy progress on tasks that were
| underesearched before, moreover we do make extremely slow (and
| with increasingly diminishing returns) accuracy gains on core
| tasks. But the diminishing returns are diminishing fast to the
| point that progress in terms of applications has stopped for
| core AI tasks such as NLU.
|
| However there is still some hope as the vast majority of papers
| bring an innovation but almost never attempt to merge/synergize
| with other papers innovations. If human resources where
| allocated at merging the top 10 papers on a given task, I'm
| sure it would lead to a major accuracy improvement.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Define "understand."
|
| I think you may be confusing automated processing with
| communicable abstracted insight.
|
| If this isn't obvious consider the difference between producing
| an AI that can play chess, producing an AI that learns to play
| chess, and producing a research program that produces an AI
| that can play chess and summarises all the resulting
| developments and insights.
| naasking wrote:
| It's not clear whether there is a difference in kind between
| those behaviours rather than merely a difference in degree of
| complexity.
| ben_w wrote:
| One thing I've long noticed is that "common sense" is analogous
| to a stopped clock, in that it's its only correct when it
| happens to also be a different form of reasoning such as
| deductive, inductive, or abductive reasoning. Things called
| "common sense" but which are not also a different kind of
| knowledge are mere cultural shibboleths, and vary from wrong
| (fan death) to opinion (Shakespeare is good).
|
| The traditional examples of common sense knowledge given when
| introducing the topic of A.I. are sufficiently imprecise to
| only be true _given further common sense interpretation_. For
| example: "things fall when you let go of them" unless they're
| buoyant, or they fly, or they're already on the ground, or you
| were in free-fall when you let go -- these exceptions won't
| really surprise anyone, and yet it's both more compact and more
| accurate to say Sf=ma, f_g=G(m_1)(m_2) /r^2 etc.
| dsr_ wrote:
| This appears to be a series of arguments from incredulity.
|
| In particular, it is equally incredible that intelligent life
| should evolve from a single-cell organism. But we have that as a
| counter-argument.
|
| It is entirely reasonable to suspect that none of the current
| approaches will yield success, but claiming that no machine
| intelligences can possibly arise is... incredible.
| 9wzYQbTYsAIc wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| The main claim being made is that "since AI is a logic system,
| and living humans are complex systems, AI cannot replicate
| human intelligence".
|
| That claim rests on some unfounded, and implicit, assumptions.
| In particular, the author assumes that neural networks are not
| complex systems (and as an even deeper, implicit assumption,
| that no complex neural network could ever exist).
| hnaccount_rng wrote:
| No the assumption is that a logic system cannot be complex...
| well 2-SAT likes to have a word with the author I guess
| 9wzYQbTYsAIc wrote:
| Indeed, that does appear to be another of the many
| assumptions made in the article.
| abetusk wrote:
| I'm not sure if it was intentional or not but 2-SAT is
| polynomial solvable [0] whereas 3-SAT is NP-Complete [1].
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2-satisfiability#Algorithms
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boolean_satisfiability_pr
| oblem...
| qsort wrote:
| Agreed. I am also extremely skeptical of AI, but while the
| paper does a good job at highlighting the problems with AI, the
| eventual conclusion is not at all well-supported.
|
| There's an hidden assumption that complex systems cannot be
| modeled mathematically at all, but while that can be true right
| now, there is no fundamental reason why satisfactory models
| can't be produced at all.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Also, the assumption that mathematically modeling a system is
| necessary for AI.
| sgt101 wrote:
| There is a question as to are the systems of mathematics
| that human cognition can conceive adequate to represent the
| processes and mechanisms of human cognition or equivalent
| systems. Basically - can we write 'ourselves' down and if
| we can, can we read what we have written.
| simonh wrote:
| We've already made computer systems so complex we don't
| know precisely how they work. Alpha Zero or GPT-3 for
| example.
| NineStarPoint wrote:
| We don't know how they work exactly, but we do know the
| mathematics that create them.
|
| The question is if the systems that generate complex
| intelligence are too much for humans to create, not just
| the phenomenon that emerge from those systems.
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| Should we ever attain hardware, software and understanding of the
| human brain good enough to emulate a human brain, we have done
| it.
|
| There is absolutely no reason why this shouldn't be possible.
| Actually, we could already do it if we understood the brain
| enough and could model it good enough, even if the emulation
| might not be real time.
| Dr_Birdbrain wrote:
| I hope that it turns out that this paper was written by GPT-3 :)
| erdewit wrote:
| In the same vein that heavier-than-air flying machines are
| impossible.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| and this is why arxiv is not the same as peer review.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| I'd like to point the reader's attention to [1].
|
| [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.10987
| a-dub wrote:
| a breath of fresh air on the topic!
| visarga wrote:
| That was a good one.
| mcguire wrote:
| " _In recent years, a number of prominent computer scientists,
| along with academics in fields such as philosophy and physics,
| have lent credence to the notion that machines may one day
| become as large as humans. Many have further argued that
| machines could even come to exceed human size by a significant
| margin. However, there are at least seven distinct arguments
| that preclude this outcome. We show that it is not only
| implausible that machines will ever exceed human size, but in
| fact impossible._ "
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| Yet we are machines...?
|
| Speaking specifically of neural networks as they exist now the
| answer is no because there is no obvious way to learn.
| sgt101 wrote:
| Are machines all computation? Are all the processes of the
| physical universe computation?
| ChainOfFools wrote:
| all of these discussions eventually reveal themselves to be
| special framing of the old Parmenides question about
| determinism, whether we live in a block universe where choice
| and change are illusions, and thought and being are the same.
| I am increasingly convinced he is right, and that arguments
| such as the OP (and Searle-ism generally) present end up
| refuting not the existence of artificial intelligence, but
| intelligence itself. "Artificial" smuggles in naturalistic
| fallacy and privileges the dualism hypothesis.
| mcguire wrote:
| If you are a materialist, yes and yes. If not, all bets are
| off and there are no rules.
| NineStarPoint wrote:
| I don't think being a materialist implies that. It's
| entirely possible for matter/the fabric of the universe to
| have non-computable properties.
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| Computers exist inside the universe so the universe must
| be able to compute things. Likewise you can look for
| certain hallmarks of information manipulation that mean
| you are computing something.
|
| Usually philosophers talking about these things either
| haven't read or are just discovering complexity theory.
| go_elmo wrote:
| The Turing machine was designed by imagining a human-operator.
| Our Mind has also only a finite state, and no matter if quantum
| effects are involved, the information in it is always finite,
| describable in a finite state. Thus, all turing machines are
| capable do do exactly what we do with information. This argument
| is incredible.
| Isinlor wrote:
| This is Russell's teapot. You can not prove that infinite
| states do not exist. In fact, common models of physics assume
| possibility of infinite number of states by depending on
| formalism axiomatically assuming infinite sets (e.g. axiom of
| infinity in Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory).
| visarga wrote:
| What a funny a priori paper. Maybe the authors lost a bet and had
| to write it.
| natch wrote:
| "The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest."
|
| "Department of Philosophy"
|
| hmm
| doganulus wrote:
| Their premises about logical systems are wrong so their
| conclusion is not valid. In short, of course, there are logical
| systems with potentially infinite state space. For example, a
| Turing machine. A digital circuit is no different. Turing
| completeness is abundant, it is everywhere.
| jmull wrote:
| The paper is full-on nonsense. I'm surprised someone wasted their
| time writing it and you probably shouldn't waste your time
| reading it.
|
| In the part I read it claims we can't develop AI because we can't
| accurately model full reality. There's no argument about what the
| connection there is, it's just stated.
|
| Kind of obviously, if we assume engaging with reality is
| necessary to develop intelligence, an artificial intelligence
| could do so in a similar way we non-artificial ones do, right?
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| You are getting it backwards.
|
| There are two flimsy arguments for machine intelligence from
| Hunter and Brooks. The paper is poking holes in that.
| mcguire wrote:
| It's not doing a very good job.
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| It is doing a job as good as the original arguments.
| User23 wrote:
| It's not obvious at all. The following isn't a proof and if I
| had one I'd be publishing elsewhere. However, I believe it
| suffices to show the lack of obviousness.
|
| All of our models of reality are restricted to computable
| functions. However, we know that uncomputable functions not
| only exist, but that nearly all functions are in fact
| uncomputable. Therefore, it's well within the realm of
| plausibility that the actual behavior of the universe is
| governed by uncomputable functions, and we are forever stuck
| modeling those behaviors with computable approximations.
|
| To claim that reality is entirely computable, one has to show
| how uncomputable functions can exist therein. I wouldn't call
| this proof, but it strongly suggests to me that the behavior of
| the system we call reality is uncomputable, and that subsystems
| thereof also may not be. If what we call human intelligence is
| one of those uncomputable subsystems, then it's true that
| computational AI will never achieve it. Nonetheless, we've
| gotten pretty far with computable approximations, so machine
| "intelligence" that's close enough for practical purposes
| doesn't strike me as impossible even if we inhabit an
| uncomputable reality.
| jmull wrote:
| You're making the contradictory claims that human
| intelligence is incomputable and AI is limited something
| computable (all by a certain definition of computable).
|
| You need to at least try to propose something that explains
| the premise and the contradiction.
|
| Does human intelligence arise out of processes within the
| human brain? If not, then how else? If yes, then why are
| those processes somehow out of reach of human science to
| investigate and manipulate?
|
| How can intentional human actions be limited to a certain
| definition of computability while human intelligence is not?
| simonh wrote:
| I don't see why we have to compute all of reality to create
| an AI anyway. I'm intelligent, to a point, and I'm pretty
| sure I don't compute all reality. My neurological processes
| simply model enough of reality for me to function more or
| less effectively, that's all.
|
| The article works from the absurd premise that an AI would
| have to perfectly model its environment, but no living
| creatures do this. It also decides that we can't create
| general AI because we don't know how to do it. Therefore it's
| impossible. Seriously, it's right there in the conclusion.
| ffwd wrote:
| One thing I think is interesting about the paper is how
| complex systems (like the brain) change over _time_ rather
| than at fixed points, and if those changes are computable
| in any meaningful way.
|
| Like if we created an AI 100 years ago, could the AI 100
| years later learn how to use an ipad or understand what
| twitter is or what a meme is? What if brain changes from
| cultural (environmental) change are both complex and thus
| creating mathematical models that would change the
| intelligence of the AI in the way the brain changes is
| impossible. Like physical changes in the circuits in the
| brain that are so distributed, interconnected and
| complicated and subtle yet very specifically "tailored" to
| the complex system so as to make them virtually impossible
| to abstract or model in any way, and thus changes the
| "mathematical model" of the brain that is sort of
| "virtualized" at a fixed point in time.
|
| Edit: Well to put it a little more explicitly: What if the
| real reason brains are intelligent is not because of the
| brain alone, but also because of the underlying physical
| systems like molecules, maybe even going all the way down
| to quantum mechanics and that those lower levels cause
| changes over time that fundamentally alters the function of
| the brain but still has the evolutionary potential of the
| lower level physical stuff.
|
| If you have 2 levels: 1) the brain 2) the underlying
| physical stuff below neurons
|
| 1 is a virtualized fixed point in time that we can model
| and 2 is part of a complex system that alters 1 but
| importantly in a way that cannot be computed without
| simulating that stuff at the lower level. I feel like this
| is sort of implied in the article because either
| intelligence can be abstracted completely accurately or
| there will (as the paper claims) always be lower level
| physical changes that alters the intelligence in a way that
| cannot be computed at the brain/intelligence level. I don't
| know if this is true though tbh
| checkyoursudo wrote:
| ^ This is really the point. Human intelligence is based on
| limited and filtered input, rough analog approximations in
| processing, and incomplete and interpolated mental
| representations and internal simulations, and yet nobody
| seriously denies that we possess some degree of
| intelligence. I am skeptical that current methods will get
| us to AGI, but the idea that machines must achieve some
| level of computational perfection far above and beyond
| humans is not reasonable.
| mcguire wrote:
| " _Therefore, it 's well within the realm of plausibility
| that the actual behavior of the universe is governed by
| uncomputable functions..._"
|
| It's also well within the realm of plausibility that the
| behavior of the universe is governed by invisible, intangible
| unicorns. :-)
|
| _If_ you can provide an example of something in the universe
| actually computing an theoretically uncomputable function,
| then there is a gigantic problem somewhere and everyone is
| going to have to do some re-thinking. _If._
| User23 wrote:
| By definition nothing will ever compute an uncomputable
| function. You're only stating a trivial truth that by
| itself fails to refute the conjecture that we live in a
| reality that has behaviors that cannot be accurately
| described by computable functions and that we are forever
| stuck with merely approximate computable models.
|
| In fact, so far we're not able to completely
| computationally predict any behavior of reality. Even the
| marvelous theory of quantum electrodynamics is only shown
| to be accurate to, last I knew, about a dozen places.
|
| Due to an unfortunately widespread misunderstanding of the
| Church-Turing thesis, far too many otherwise intelligent
| persons with some CS knowledge are completely blinkered to
| the possibility that the universe could have behaviors that
| are real, but not describable with computable functions
| beyond approximately. The practicing laboratory scientists
| I've spoken with don't generally share that defect since
| they're used to everything being approximate.
| ericjang wrote:
| Whether certain behaviors in the universe are uncomputable or
| not is irrelevant. If we classify "humans" as intelligent and
| assume no spooky immaterial aspects of consciousness, you
| already have an existence proof that intelligence is
| computable.
| naasking wrote:
| > Therefore, it's well within the realm of plausibility that
| the actual behavior of the universe is governed by
| uncomputable functions, and we are forever stuck modeling
| those behaviors with computable approximations.
|
| Even if the set of uncomputable functions outnumbers the set
| of of computable functions, I still don't see how your
| conclusion follows. The rules that govern a coherent universe
| are not randomly sampled from the set of all functions.
| Tzt wrote:
| why not make AI on the same platform as the human brain? what
| is so exceptional about it, and even if it is an exceptional
| material, why not just use it?
| amelius wrote:
| Is it though? A creature living in a 4 dimensional world might
| argue that an AI that was brought up in a 3d world would never
| truly grasp 4 dimensions. This could be true. So why wouldn't
| it hold for other aspects where the model is incomplete?
| dane-pgp wrote:
| I agree that it is nonsense. To save people the click, here,
| for example, is how the paper argues that a software system
| couldn't gain intelligence by simulating an evolutionary
| process:
|
| "But we neither know how to engineer the drive that is built
| into all animate complex systems, nor do we know how to mimic
| evolutionary pressure, which we do not understand and cannot
| model (outside highly artificial conditions such as a Petri
| dish). In fact, if we already knew how to emulate evolution, we
| would in any case not need to do this in order to create
| intelligent life, because the complexity level of intelligent
| life is lower than that of evolution."
| simonh wrote:
| They wrote another paper on this topic, the summary of which
| is that an AI capable of human level conversations is
| impossible because:
|
| "This is (1) because there are no traditional explicitly
| designed mathematical models that could be used as a starting
| point for creating such programs; and (2) because even the
| sorts of automated models generated by using machine
| learning, which have been used successfully in areas such as
| machine translation, cannot be extended to cope with human
| dialogue. If this is so, then we can conclude that a Turing
| machine also cannot possess AGI, because it fails to fulfil a
| necessary condition thereof."
|
| https://arxiv.org/abs/1906.05833
|
| In other words it can't ever be done because we haven't done
| it yet. QED. How stuff like this gets to come out of U
| Buffalo is beyond me. At first I suspected it might have come
| out of a religious think tank, but no.
| The_rationalist wrote:
| What is the mathematical model used for designing linux or
| chromium or any kind of hyper-complex software? None, there
| is no need for a specific mathematical models in general
| and it's very cringe to claim otherwise. Sure mathematical
| models can help in the specific and in the general but
| there is no set of open problems in mathematics that lead
| to an impossibility of making AGI. Sure p!= np but it would
| be ridiculous to think that brains can bypass algorithmic
| complexity. The real problem is that we haven't found the
| winning lottery ticket software and this software spoiler
| alert is not at all only made of neural networks
| Stupulous wrote:
| >If this is so, then we can conclude that a Turing machine
| also cannot possess AGI, because it fails to fulfil a
| necessary condition thereof.
|
| If your conclusion implies the existence of computation
| beyond Turing machines, you should probably find an example
| or check your assumptions.
| simonh wrote:
| My conclusion or theirs? I'm not sure what you mean.
| User23 wrote:
| By definition the computable functions are those that can
| be computed by a Turing machine or equivalent apparatus,
| so talking about "computation beyond Turing machines" is
| incoherent.
|
| However, uncomputable functions not only exist, but are
| the overwhelming majority of functions. This suggests
| that at least some aspects of reality might only be
| accurately described by uncomputable functions. How could
| uncomputable functions exist in an entirely computable
| reality?
| CrazyStat wrote:
| Do uncomputable functions actually "exist" in reality in
| any meaningful sense, or are they just mathematical
| abstractions?
| Isinlor wrote:
| You are asking a question that does not have an answer,
| because "exist" is not well-defined. But if you want to
| know whether an arbitrary JavaScript in your browser will
| stop or not, well you can not know that for all scripts
| people can throw at you. In this sense uncomputable
| functions do exist.
|
| BTW - The field trying to deal with defining what exist
| means is called ontology:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology
| doganulus wrote:
| You need to start with the assumption that an infinite
| set exists (Axiom of Infinity) for uncomputable functions
| (and other weird mathematical things).
|
| Such concepts cannot appear in a finite universe.
| mcguire wrote:
| Turing designed his machines to capture "computation" as
| it is intuitionally understood: as something a
| mathematician, equipped with an unlimited supply of
| scratch paper and pencils, could do. (The other
| equivalent apparatuses are provably equivalent, but it is
| harder to argue that they capture the correct intuition.)
|
| If you can show something a mathematician can do to
| compute a function, that cannot be emulated by a Turing
| machine, then you have demonstrated that Turing's
| definition does not capture the intuition and we get to
| start over with the theory of computation. So far, no one
| has been able to do that.
|
| The existence of uncomputable functions is not itself a
| problem. It only becomes so if you can show that
| something computes them.
| User23 wrote:
| > It only becomes so if you can show that something
| computes them.
|
| By definition nothing will ever compute an uncomputable
| function. That's completely irrelevant to what I wrote.
| Isinlor wrote:
| Not if the definition of computing and uncomputable are
| from two different models of computation. For example,
| there are functions uncomputable by finite state machine,
| but that can be computed by a Turing machine.
|
| One can imagine that someone will find a model of
| computation that allows to compute more functions than a
| Turing machine. It's extremely unlikely, but nobody has
| proven that it is not possible. It may be that our
| universe is one such model.
| jmull wrote:
| I'm still thinking there may be a religious angle to this
| somewhere. It's so full of unquestioned unstated
| assumptions and pseudo-analysis.
| MetricExpansion wrote:
| I think any argument against the possibility of
| developing AGI is going to have it. The argument has to
| be either:
|
| 1) there's something non-material about human
| intelligence (basically, there's a soul), or 2) something
| about the processes that created a completely material
| human intelligence is impossible _in principle_ to
| reproduce, either implicitly or explicitly.
|
| (1) has the obvious religious angle, but (2) tends to be
| what's trotted out when (1) is too overly religious.
|
| With (2), the usual supporting reason is that the
| conditions are too complex. The problem is that the
| fundamental rules are just those of physics, which are
| "simple". And we have to remember that the initial
| conditions of the universe were also "simple" and not
| intelligently set up in a way that could be predicted to
| create intelligence. It was just a bunch of initially
| formless matter evolving over time.
|
| By closing the door on even implicit use of physics
| (which created our own intelligence), which we don't know
| enough to rule out completely, there's the feeling that
| there's some kind of magic dust that has to be part of
| the process or the initial conditions. That would
| disagree with our current understanding of the laws of
| physics and early development of the universe.
|
| Ultimately, the real motivation is the desire to maintain
| the feeling that humans are somehow "special" in the
| universe.
| mcguire wrote:
| " _Though the infinitesimal definition of utility in (1) and the
| penalisation of complexity in the definition of U provide a
| statistically robust measure of the kind of surrogate
| intelligence those working in the general artificial intelligence
| (AGI) field have decided to focus on, the definition is too weak
| to describe or specify the behaviour even of an arthropod. This
| is not only obvious from the issues already mentioned above, but
| also from the fact that algorithms which realise the reward-
| schemes proposed in (1) and (2) (for example, neural networks
| optimised with reinforcement learning) fail to display the type
| of generalisable adaptive behaviour to natural environments that
| arthropods are capable of, for example when ants or termites
| colonise a house._ "
|
| Ok, I don't like the mathematical definitions of intelligence
| either (although I might be convincable and they do have some
| advantages over other definitions I've seen), but this refutation
| seems to be a prime example of proof-by-assertion.
|
| " _Brooks defines an AI agent, again, as an artefact that is able
| 'to move around in dynamic environments, sensing the surroundings
| to a degree sufficient to achieve the necessary maintenance of
| life and reproduction '._"
|
| And this definition implies many things we know to be intelligent
| (i.e. people) are not. So there's that.
|
| " _There are three additional properties of logic systems of
| importance for our argument here: 1. Their phase space is fixed.
| 2. Their behaviour is ergodic with regard to their main
| functional properties. 3. Their behavior is to a large extent
| context-independent._ "
|
| Aaaaand here we go...
|
| " _As we learn from we standard mathematical theory of complex
| systems [23], all such systems, including the systems of complex
| systems resulting from their interaction, 1. have a variable
| phase space, 2. are non-ergodic, and 3. are context-dependent._ "
|
| Ok, to the extent that the first statement is true about "logic
| systems", it is also true about any physically realizable,
| material system. On the other hand, the "complex system", to that
| same extent, is _not_ physically realizable. (Consider "a
| variable phase space means that the variables which define the
| elements of a complex system can change over time" or "a non-
| ergodic system produces erratic distributions of its elements. No
| matter how long the system is observed, no laws can be deduced
| from observing its elements." and question _how much information_
| is required for this in the authors ' sense.)
|
| And there we have the intrusion of the immortal soul into the
| argument that artificial intelligence is impossible.
| tehchromic wrote:
| It's not likely to be a popular opinion with technologists as
| AI's potential has lit the technopopular imagination, however
| this question has bothered me for a long time. I think strong
| emergent AI suffers philosophical problem that won't go away, and
| to the extent that the conversation revolves around evolution and
| consciousness rather than logic and intelligence, then we are
| having the right conversation.
|
| I'll put my argument out there and let the flames come as they
| will.
|
| Strong AI is about as likely to emerge from our current state of
| the art AI machinery as it is to emerge suddenly out of moon
| rocks. That's to say the fear of machines becoming self-conscious
| and posing an existential threat to us, especially replacing us
| in the evolutionarily sense, is completely unfounded.
|
| This isn't to say that building machines capable of doing exactly
| that isn't possible - we and all living things are proof that
| it's possible - it's to say that achieving this level of
| engineering is on par with intergalactic mass transit or Dyson
| spheres - way out of our league for the foreseeable. And, even if
| we had the technology, it would be so entirely foolish to
| undertake that no sentient species would do it.
|
| That said, there's a substantial argument to make that we will
| augment ourselves with our own machinery so throughoughly that we
| will become unrecognizable and in effect, accomplish the same
| task through merging with the machine. This is likely, but not at
| all to be like the experience of the singularity in that all of
| humanity is suddenly arrested and deposed by autonomous AI.
|
| An interesting scenario in this vein is if a few powerful
| individuals can wield autonomous systems, modify themselves and
| simply wipe out all the competition, then in effect the rest of
| us wouldn't know the difference. This outcome is actually I think
| on the more likely side, albeit a good ways away in the future.
|
| Less likely but still totally legitimate as a concern is the idea
| that AI could be very easily weaponized. This is a real problem
| and is I think behind the more substantive warnings by good
| thinkers on the topic. Like bioweapons, we might be wiped out by
| an machine that's been intentionally programmed and mechanically
| empowered to cause real harm. This kind of danger could also be
| emergent, in that a machine might be capable of deciding that it
| ought to take certain actions as well as have the capacity to
| take them, and then, voila, mass murder.
|
| However it seems unlikely that such a mistake would be made, or
| that a bad actor would be capable to commit such an intentional
| crime. I think this is on par with nuclear MAD: even total madmen
| dictators hit the pause on the push-the-button instinct. And an
| AI MAD or similar would surely take as much resource to produce
| as a nuke arsenal. In other words, the resources required to
| build such a machinery are on the order of a nation-state, and
| perhaps more complicated to achieve than a nuclear arsenal, so
| probably more likely to be stopped or fail in-process rather than
| succeed.
|
| So there are dangers from AI but I would say they are lesser than
| the accumulated danger of industrial society rendering they
| planet uninhabitable, which should of course occupy our primary
| concern these days.
|
| The idea that the biological evolutionary 'machine' whose motive
| for existence is accumulated over billions of years of entropic
| adaptation can be out engineered, or accidently replicated by
| modern computational AI is silly - the two aren't in the same
| league and it's hubris to suppose otherwise. There's more
| intelligence in the toe of a lady bug than in an the computing
| power ever made.
|
| In sum the danger from emergent AI is overstated, however the
| concern is most welcome to the extent that it informs wisdom and
| care in consideration for our techno-industrial impact on the
| biosphere.
| a-dub wrote:
| > But we neither know how to engineer the drive that is built
| into all animate complex systems, nor do we know how to mimic
| evolutionary pressure, which we do not under- stand and cannot
| model (outside highly artificial conditions such as a Petri
| dish). In fact, if we already knew how to emulate evolution, we
| would in any case not need to do this in order to create
| intelligent life, because the complexity level of intelligent
| life is lower than that of evolution. This means that emulating
| intelligence would be much easier than emulating evolution en
| bloc. Chalmers is, therefore, wrong. We cannot engineer the
| conditions for a spontaneous evolution of intelligence.
|
| this is the thing i've always sort of loved about philosophy.
| they just kinda make shit up, provide their own definitions that
| are rooted in a bamboozling by use of flowery language, and then
| once they've stated all their definitions with their conclusions
| baked in, they hop, skip and jump down the path which now
| obviously leads to the conclusion they started with.
|
| it's kind of like a form of mathematics where they define their
| own first principles in each argument with the express purpose of
| trying to build the most beautiful path to their conclusions. it
| really is a beautiful form of art, like architecture for ideas.
| Rd6n6 wrote:
| You can't pick your favourite bad argument and ridicule an
| entire field. You are incidentally using ideas from several
| different old, influential philosophies to even formulate
| Luther comment
|
| Philosophy includes questions like "how do we decide whether
| something is true or trustworthy," or "what constitutes a good
| or a bad way to make a case for something." If you're going to
| throw philosophy out, you can't question anything any more
| imbnwa wrote:
| Science used to be called 'natural philosophy'
| threatofrain wrote:
| Philosophy may refer to the specific branch in academia and
| its current practice, as opposed to _any_ philosophical
| inquiry. Every field already pursues their own philosophical
| inquiry, and yet philosophers and mathematicians are in
| separate departments. Such is the current practice and
| organization of academics.
|
| If we were to consider mathematics and computer science as
| part of philosophy, then we might say that as a mode of
| inquiry, philosophy has had great success in achieving
| multidisciplinary consensus and international impact. But if
| we were to consider philosophy as a specific branch of
| academic organization, then we might be disappointed at the
| fruits emerging from that field.
| a-dub wrote:
| to bring it full circle and tear apart the original
| argument above, one could argue that the relatively simple
| laws of logic from philosophy give rise to all of digital
| computing (like... what is directly expressed in digital
| logic design). yet the emergent complexity of all
| computerdom is far beyond the complexity of the basic rules
| of logic coming from philosophy.
|
| more to the point here, computer science and mathematics
| are very similar to philosophy in that authors invent a set
| of abstractions and then construct rules for how they
| interact in a self-consistent manner.
| threatofrain wrote:
| Relating computer science and mathematics to philosophy
| is already a fair and understandable argument. Yet, as
| _separate divisions_ of academic professional labor, why
| do the fruits they bear look so different in terms of
| their ability to generate frameworks for multi-
| disciplinary consensus and international impact?
| a-dub wrote:
| fair, it's the first step towards trying to construct
| formalism around reasoning... but then it often jumps off
| into the abstract based on synthetic premises... that's when
| it makes the leap to art.
|
| and who said anything about ridicule? art is important!
| perceptive exercises and exploration of ideas strengthen our
| skills for reasoning.
| [deleted]
| Atreiden wrote:
| Funny, that's the exact reason I hate philosophy. And I say
| this as someone with a BA in it.
|
| I thought of it initially as a useful way to model the
| abstract, the hypothetical, and the integrity our own ideas and
| perceptions.
|
| But so many philosophers tried to use their arguments to prove
| things about the world. Like a less powerful form of economics,
| which itself is based on the "if we model X this way, Y"
| mindset.
|
| I like your conceptualization of philosophy as art. I'll
| probably to refer to it that way hereon.
| mistermann wrote:
| I think of it a bit like science vs _scientific thinking_
| (that isn 't constrained to actual science and logic) that
| one encounters on the internet. The problem is not with
| philosophy, it is with humans.
| dandotway wrote:
| The excerpt you quoted is perfectly meaningful. They are saying
| an evolutionary process that produces intelligent life is more
| complicated ("has more moving parts") than the intelligent life
| forms thus produced. How could this not be true? An intelligent
| life form may have hundreds of billions of neurons and
| trillions of cells, but the evolution that produced said life
| form involved untold zillions of complex life forms over
| billions of years. There are over 10-to-the-power-of-30
| microbes on planet earth right now, evolving in ways currently
| beyond the understanding of any computational biologist.
|
| Although computer scientists can use genetic algorithms
| inspired by evolution to "breed" better backgammon algorithms,
| this is quite a few orders of magnitude simpler than emulating
| a true evolution of intelligent biological life.
|
| The point is intelligent biological life forms are less
| complicated than the "factory" that produced them.
| MathYouF wrote:
| The main thesis of the life's work of Stephen Wolfram is the
| idea that simple processes can produce greater complexity
| than the process itself.
|
| https://www.wolframalpha.com/examples/science-and-
| technology...
| anthk wrote:
| That thesis has been critisized as being "non scientific".
|
| It maybe looks as an advertisement for Mathematica.
| minihat wrote:
| It seems problematic to disentangle the complexity of an
| entity from the complexity of the process which produced
| it. If we define complexity as the Kolmogorov complexity,
| the two are equivalent (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmo
| gorov_complexity?wprov=sf...)
|
| Rather, I interpret Wolfram's idea as:
|
| Surprisingly complex patterns can be produced by
| simple/concise rules.
|
| In my interpretation, the ultimate example of this would be
| the unfolding of everything that has ever happened as the
| consequence of the laws of physics, and some initial
| condition of the universe.
| a-dub wrote:
| > They are saying an evolutionary process that produces
| intelligent life is more complicated ("has more moving
| parts") than the intelligent life forms thus produced. How
| could this not be true?
|
| because we don't know enough about evolutionary processes nor
| intelligent life to make statements like that, and "more
| complicated" is completely ill-defined.
|
| how do we know that evolution isn't simply a few basic rules,
| a lot of randomness and a lot of time?
| _vertigo wrote:
| Yup, you nailed it. We have a lot of examples of complexity
| arising from a very simple set of initial conditions and
| rules. Why should evolution be any different?
| a-dub wrote:
| i suppose, giving the authors the benefit of the doubt,
| one could make a statement like:
|
| if one were to parameterize an entire line of evolution
| over time, and one were to parameterize a single
| intelligent being over time, then it is likely that the
| number of bits required to describe that evolutionary
| line (and the space of all evolutionary lines) is greater
| than the number of bits required to completely describe a
| single intelligent life form over time.
|
| this still tells us nothing about the rules behind
| evolution, how an intelligence actually works, how
| evolution actually works and what would be necessary to
| manifest an intelligence.
| dnautics wrote:
| It begs the question though. The argument is: Assume you
| can't make artificial intelligence without the stimuli of the
| real world's processes. Since a single human is less
| complicated than the real world, therefore you can't make
| artificial intelligence.
| TrainedMonkey wrote:
| I think the devil is in one important detail, namely - how do
| we define complexity?
|
| Let's define the problem as Evolution(inputs) = Intelligence.
| The claim is that complexity(function) + complexity(inputs) >
| complexity(outputs). Now to show that the parent claim is not
| necessarily true (which is not the same as proving that it is
| false), we just need to show that there exists a combination
| of complexity function and a system that does not satisfy the
| above constraints.
|
| 1. Let's examine information compressibility as a complexity
| function. There are a few examples of where a simple set of
| rules and inputs could produce basically an infinite stream
| of incompressible information. Examples include Conway game
| of life, double pendulum, fractals, all irrational numbers,
| etc...
|
| 2. Now to tie that back to Evolution, the authors avoid
| defining evolution or its inputs, which means they could be
| quite simple yet produce mind boggling complexity. Therefore
| the argument that the evolution must be more complex than
| intelligent life is backwards (if you buy my complexity
| definition anyhow :P).
|
| 3. Of course this kind breaks down if we discretize evolution
| because at that point all of the existing life is an input
| into the evolution. So complexity(evolution) +
| complexity(life[t] + environment[t]) > complexity(life[t+1])
| is obviously true for some t and t + 1. For example if t is
| right before a mass extinction event and t+1 is right after.
|
| This is somewhat unrelated, but I am quite partial of theory
| that life in general and intelligence in particular is driven
| by entropy. Or maybe less confusingly (because who the hell
| knows what entropy is) is driven by macro tendency of
| everything towards lowest energy states. Life in this case is
| smart matter that bridges activation energy gap to extract
| available energy gradients as fast as possible. Here is the
| concept explained by people who put a lot more thought into
| it: https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-new-thermodynamics-
| theory-o...
| mistermann wrote:
| Would the notion of fractals not seem like a plausible
| component of smart matter?
| alanbernstein wrote:
| > They are saying an evolutionary process that produces
| intelligent life is more complicated ("has more moving
| parts") than the intelligent life forms thus produced. How
| could this not be true?
|
| The whole field of emergent complexity exists to answer
| questions about this. Questions which only exist because
| there are many situations where "this" is evidently not true.
| mannykannot wrote:
| You are right that the quoted passage is not without meaning;
| what is missing here (and by "here", I mean the whole paper)
| is any remotely good argument from the relatively trivial
| factual claim in this passage, to the conclusion that true
| artificial intelligence is impossible.
|
| The factual claim is about the _history_ of evolution: if we
| take that history to include everything produced during that
| history, then it is trivially true that the whole is greater
| than any subset of the things it produced - but so what? It
| is true for the creation of a microprocessor as well. There
| is no argument here that rules out the creation of artificial
| intelligence that does not also apply to the creation of
| microprocessors.
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