Christopher Lord

there is no reason to suspect nurons can NOT be layed out in silicon. or that an extremely powerful serial processor can simply crunch the problem. And the brain probably is only parallel in some sections with fat links where needed. Otherwise we wouldnt see any devision of labor between the parts.

Yes, but I was talking about internode communication. Not intranode. Human-to-human communication is very bandwidth limited. Observe how long it takes to read a book.
Bandwidth-enhancers like a personal computer are not part of Human v1.0 spec., and are therefore out of the scope of this whitepaper.


And how much did all the humans in the world cost? at least 10 years of labor, and at least 1000 dollars per brain. The average in north america is more, at 20 years and 10,000 dollars. 100 dollars is nothing, especially factoring in the bandwidth.

That is to keep the heat down, in order to keep the fire hazzard down. A room full of top-of-the-line computers operating at the upper bound of spec make a lot of heat. This does not change the fact that the same main-frame will operate in -30 for months with very little preperation for this environment. The organic human would require several hundred thousand years of fur building in order to achieve this.


No, we are compairing brains to computers here. What the environmental control system can do is not relavent to information production capacity, just like if a 286 is powering a giant lizzard robot suit. Its still a shitty 286.

The protection of a cpu is trivial compared to a human brain. The brain is linked non-trivially to its host environment, which is designed to exchange a 20% oxygen atmosphere similar to earth. Thus a large bubble of earth must be carried around for the brain. A computer needs a thin radiation shield and protection from extreme heat, both of which can be purchased at radio shack.


These chips are simply at the cutting edge of technology and have not yet been optimized. There is no intrinsic need for a heat disipater placed on a chip. Most of todays palmtops run at room temprature, with more computing power than 1980's airconditioned mainframe computers.

This is the result of a collection of software from different eras all running together under one os, running on a collection of hardware from different eras. In short, current PC design requires max compatability, at the expense of stability.

Thank you for answering that question. If you had a personal terra-brain you would have understood.


Hopefully the slight amount of humor i am trying to convey is not being lost in the translation to text.

Corwin

I need to learn to start posting at night.

Ok.... 'computers do what they're programmed to do. Nothing more.' This is very true and is in fact a GOOD thing.

Let's look at it this way...

I want to get myself a domestic servant. Now... I'm not thrilled with the idea of holding a thinking, reasoning, rational sentient entity in enslavement. But do I really need to? Does a 'maid' program really need to be sentient? Nope. It just needs to be able to sweep the floors and make sure my laundry's done. For that, it just needs to be able to do a few performed tasks, have enough basic intelligence to adapt to several sorts of different situations, and be able to fake intelligence when it comes to things like conversation. COULD we program a 'person?' Given time, yes. But why? What would be the point? It's not like people are all that tough to make... (in fact, some of us go to some lengths to AVOID making other people... )

I'm fairly sure that someone will program a fully sentient AI... and I feel that any program/hardware/whatever that has the same capacity as a human should have the same rights. But for most things... it's like turning a five year old loose with an enterprise copy of AutoCad.... sure you can do it... but what's the point?

excreationist

Yeah, they're called neurocomputers.

That's true... for a neural net that has a billion neurons, that are each connected to 1000 neurons, that runs at 20 Hz, the computer would need to process 20 trillion connections per second. And it might take many operations to process a single connection (retrieve its state, sometimes sum the inputs to a neuron and update the neuron's state, etc).

Well image and sound recognition uses neurons that work in parallel. AI researchers are now using neural nets to do this (verify signatures, etc). Image processing also works in parallel. The neurons in our brain go at a clock speed of 40 Hz.... do you seriously think our visual processing compabilities are done using serial computation? (Even high GHz serial computers aren't capable of the image recognition feats that we are capable of - e.g. 3D and obscured image recognition, etc)

When we read a book, we are integrating it with all of the past patterns we've learnt. We don't just copy the data in its original form and store it in our brain like a computer. As an analogy, consider how long it takes a computer to scan its hard-drive to search for files or to check all of the contents of the disk.... that is what we are doing - we're recalling information from our past so that we can make sense of the book. Other activities don't require so much accessing of our long-term memory - e.g. doing skate-boarding stunts... and robots have trouble even walking slowly!

As far as solving the world's problems go - what about when people have disagreements? How can that problem be eliminated? By people being brainwashed into agreeing with the super-brain?

I hope that they one day bring out one that can do that but also do my housework and grant wishes.

Francois Tremblay

It's not a robot you want, it's a fairy godmother !

Corwin

Nah.... just a girl Friday that can do laundry... and doesn't carry the ethical problems of slavery. (If it's not sentient... what's the problem? It's a tool. Nothing more. Comparing such a tool to a fully sentient AI would be a bit like comparing a human being to a gorilla.)

Answerer

Hi everyone just a question, Can A.I have souls?

excreationist

What's a "soul"? The "you" that travels to the afterlife? <img src="confused.gif" border="0">

tronvillain

I'm not sure if Answerer was serious, but I'll answer seriously: No, artificial intelligences cannot have souls, putting them on par with natural intelligences.

excreationist

You said earlier that "If a scientist created a human intelligence, obviously it should have human rights."

Usually any kind of intelligence we create, even if it mimics natural intelligence is called "AI". So AI could be just like humans - which according to you, should have human rights. So then they would have "souls"... ?

tronvillain

Did you not read what I said? "Souls" do not appear to be something natural intelligences have, so artifical intelligences won't have them either.

Anyway, certain artificial intelligences would seem to merit "human rights" (whatever those are), or at least some approxmation of them.