Singularity 101

[andrewducker]

Over here Vernor Vinge talks about The Singularity. His personal definition is:
Humans, using technology, will be able to create, or become, creatures of superhuman intelligence.
[Poll #1390606]

Comments

[andrewducker]

We don't know what human intelligence is.

I always thought that was a very strange way of putting it.

Either it means that we have a word/phrase that is ill-defined (quelle surprise) or it means that "human intelligence" is actually a cluster of different things together that we haven't separated out properly. The answer to both of these things seem pretty obvious to me.

Or possibly people mean "We don't know how human intelligence is generated/works" - in which case the obvious answer is "Of course we don't yet - but that doesn't mean it's impossible, it just means we're working on it."

It largely seems to be used to handwave a "Human Intelligence is Spoooooky - maybe it's beyond man's ability to meddle with!", which I assume isn't the kind of viewpoint you'd take.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

It largely seems to be used to handwave a "Human Intelligence is Spoooooky - maybe it's beyond man's ability to meddle with!", which I assume isn't the kind of viewpoint you'd take.

Indeed not.

(In fact, that was my throw-book-at-wall moment with Roger Penrose -- when he glibly announced, in effect, that there was no reason to define consciousness in order to prove that a machine couldn't do it.)

My point is, we're talking about emulating or exceeding the performance of a trait we don't understand, which may be a whole lot different from what we think it is -- an emergent consequence of a bunch of different things.

[andrewducker]

Was it Penrose that basically said "Brains are strange, Quantum Physics is strange, therefore Brains are Quantum"?

I totally take your point that we don't understand what makes intelligence work - not that I count intelligence as all that people do, by any means - our intelligence is only a fraction of what our brains are up to.