Good observation in this film trailer about computer chess If all that computers can do is calculate, then what is artificial intelligence?
The reality is that computer chess moved on after the days of Deep Blue vs Kasparov. They no longer concentrate on processing as much possible moves in the available time, but try to sort out the good from the bad in an early stage so even a phone's simple processor can now beat most professional players (Pocket Fritz, elo 2900+)
The message however holds: if artificial intelligence is beating humans on some tasks, they surely are still dedicated number crunchers. Deep Blue is retired to a museum as an out-dated piece of machinery, while Kasparov is now a writer and political activist. We humans are a flexible species…
Even better, Kasparov, while playing Deep Blue could sneeze his nose, comment on his position and if he had the mood for it, contemplate his future in chess.
The computing world seems to have moved from extremely fast computers to vast databases. If all chess games ever played could be instantly consulted, a chess program would win by a simple lookup. Big Data is the current buzz while Deep Thought is officially retired.
The reality however is different. Computers are still becoming faster and at an amazing rate. The modern day equivalent of the ' super computer' we used in the late seventies for artificial intelligence research is 50 million times as fast (or more…).
What's new is that just recently big data became feasible with the googolplexes of storage, the amount of data available in electronic form and the extremely fast connects to access these.
So we now have unbelievably fast computers with access to unprecedented amounts of data. The real innovation here is that there really is something to crunch these numbers on. However will it bring us closer to artificial intelligence?
Or to put it the right way: will artificial intelligence ever approach human intelligence or are it two species separated at birth?
Just some random thoughts as an introduction to this film trailer which looks tempting if you happen to be a nerd with an interest in the history of computer chess and a sense of humor. Or maybe if you are just fascinated by people, their relation with machines and the birth of the singularity movement…
Maybe the central AI question should be: will a computer ever be capable of making a good joke or fun movie? #singularity #Tech
"Big Data is the current buzz while Deep Thought is officially retired" — +Max Huijgen
With quantum computing perhaps. Otherwise no
I guess you liked that sentence for the metaphor it intended to be +Leland LeCuyer Running commentary on modern times ….
I think the more pressing question, +Max Huijgen , is how we'll coexist with the machine intelligences we're sure to create.
With machine intelligence the 0.1% will secede from humanity completely
Normally people become better with time. Shyamalan is acting out the Benjamin Button movie
Of course given enough time and resources (astronomical amounts of time if no better way is found by humans) AGI will be smarter than all humans (… combined); it doesn't matter that it's “just computation”.
However, it will take a couple of substrate changes (e.g. the aforementioned quantum computing) for the required computational power not to require astronomical amounts of power.
LMAO "You mean computers are going to start dating each other"
+Matthew Graybosch I have no doubts about the machine intelligence. I just wanted to stress the difference with human intelligence. Different species and if we survive?
Humans will survive and AI will be smarter than humans by 2045 at the latest. Humans will also become very diverse, there will be radical self-directed evolution. By 2045 the majority of beings will live in Space beyond Earth. Due to Space colonisation, which will open up access to essentially limitless resources, all war-conflict will cease because war-conflict depends wholly on scarcity, thus there will be no hostile competitiveness where one group of people must be defeated for the other to survive.
That's the management summary of Singularity as short as you can get +Singularity Utopia 😉
+Singularity Utopia While reading your comment, my brain behaved strangely and it 'sounded' like the machine voice of Stephen Hawking!
+Max Huijgen Today most semiskilled or unskilled workers are dispensable and will AI, even knowledge workers can be pink slipped. Then we will enter the next stage of social evolution when those who control the means of production will attempt control of society initially by thought control, and slow whittling down of personal rights and eventual dissolution of democracy. Subsequent tyranny will convert most of humanity to opium (metaphor for all useless passive addictive past times) consuming under class with an elite *masters of the universe * controlling stuff and fighting among each other for supremacy with periods of stability interspersed with cataclysmic power transitions like ancient Rome.
+Able Lawrence I understand your fears regarding tyranny because it is difficult, due to only ever having known scarcity of resources, to see how all conflict-oppression arises due to resource scarcity, it is difficult to envisage a world without scarcity. A world without scarcity runs counter to the entire history of evolution, so we encounter difficulty imagining how all resources will essentially be limitless, which means all hostility will be utterly obsolete, this is perhaps a key reason why the Singularity is singular, it is very strange, mind-blowing, indeed.
There could be a sight increase in tyranny before the efficiency of advanced technology really starts to kick-in but those temporary aspects of tyranny, occurring due to heavy technological investment before the profits are reaped, will soon be reverted, in fact with insightful awareness any possible temporary increases in tyranny can be avoided, if we can increase awareness so that it is very abundant, if we can decrease the scarcity of awareness.
+Singularity Utopia However there will be one resources which will have limit and that would be power over people there will be no dearth of people with limitless resources seeking power. Can we manage create a constitution that can withstand this.
While the elite would try to accumulate power as always, their increasing success can create a backlash that might force the elite to secede and leave the rest of humanity in offshore communities either in oceans or space. There is an upcoming movie about that,)
+Able Lawrence to say "power over people" is a resource is akin to saying "scarcity is a resource" or "stupidity is a resource," thus you might say Post-Scarcity is impossible because if everything ceases to be scarce we will then suffer from a scarcity of scarcity.
Now let's consider what this means. I do recognise it is difficult to grasp, it took me a while to grasp the ramifications, so first try what imagine what power over people actually means. Domination of other people is a power somewhat synonymous with the power to kill people, it is only a resource when intelligence is very limited. Looking into the future we can see how the ability to kill people doesn't constitute a resource, killing people is a symptom of limited resources, or to express it another way consider how rape is relatively scarce but rape is generally not considered a resource in need of amplification.
The bad aspects of humans are not actually resources, if we look into the future we see how they are symptoms of insufficient resources, thus people only need to be dominated when there is insufficient material wealth, people need to be dominated because dominance of others allows the dominator to acquire a greater portion of limited wealth, but there are more efficient ways to obtain greater wealth with zero harm. Dominance is also a symptom of insufficient personal intelligence, or insufficient emotional intelligence. Emotional sensitivity (empathy, morality, virtue, sympathy, humanity) and intellectual capacity within humans are valuable resources because they enrich our existence thus dominance is obsolete when our minds have sufficiently expanded in combination with our scarcity of material wealth being sufficiently transcended.
Limited technological proficiency (scarce machine intelligence) and limited personal intelligence means currently humans are resources (wage slavery), similar to how war is a resource, or the arms trade is a profitable resource, but when machines can be vastly more efficient than farmers there will be absolutely no profit, no incentive, to dominate farmers, there will be no profit in war or the arms trade when the endless resources of Space can easily be acquired without conflict instead of fighting over minuscule Earth resources. In the future there will be no profit in pollution-producing or otherwise harmful tools or harmful modes of existence.
Toxic aspects of existence are only deemed resources in situations of limited resources, thus vegetables grown in toxic soil, heavily coated in harmful pesticides, can have value in scarcity situations but when technology progresses sufficiently our primitive ways of life will be discarded, thus toxic cures for cancer via chemotherapy will will cease to be resources when utter harmless nanobots can painlessly and instantly cure any disease. The progress of technology therefore means a heart transplant is only a valuable resource in a situation of limited resources similar how in bygone years the amputation of a limb regarding bacterial infection could have been deemed an utterly essential resource but now we often have sufficient technological intelligence to apply a better antibiotic resource thus the value of amputation is diminishing to the inevitable point, in the not too distant future, where amputation will be a wholly worthless medical resource, amputation will not actually be a resources, it will be utterly obsolete and barbaric, similar to how costly population-producing cars will be replaced by totally Green and inexpensive solar-powered transportation.
Power over people is comparable to wasting a large amount of food to feed slaves who farm the land. It is vastly more profitable for machines to do the work of humans, human resources are ceasing to be valuable, power over people is becoming obsolete because non-sentient machines consume less energy. Domination of machines is more profitable than domination of humans because non-sentient machines don't need meal or sleep breaks, they have no desires. Via sophisticated automation, machines can even work in the dark or cold without any complaint thus lighting an heating costs can be bypassed and wages don't need to be paid. http://www.economist.com/node/21552897 http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-57549450-92/foxconn-reportedly-installing-robots-to-replace-workers/ http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/12/ff-robots-will-take-our-jobs/all/
As you said 'humans will cease to be valuable '. Shall I add dispensable as well. There is nothing actually that is unlimited except mathematical abstract infinities. Compared to the cave man we have incomparably more resources. Our pursuits will expand to accommodate whatever resources we might have. In fact we are entering the age scarcity for things that matter such as food and water. (At least they will become expensive). Virtual resources might be limitless. For some one from a computer science background it is easy to talk of post scarcity and infinite resources. But that is just a thought experiment and we will destroy ourselves long before that
We will cease to be valuable in the commodity sense, BUT we will be priceless, of immense value, in the sense that the smile of a loved one costs nothing financially whereas emotionally the smile of someone you love is perhaps the most precious thing in the world. Merely because something is free this does not mean it is worthless or dispensable.
Yes there are concerns about food and water shortages but there are also very competent plans to increase water and food availability.
Yeah we all will be paid in smiles
People will not need to be paid in anything because everything will be free.
Are you talking of a communist Utopia here where a few oligarchy will control means of production where the masses will eat drink sleep and smoke pot. Is that workable. If human nature is any guide such dreams are futile and will pave the road to hell as always. Even the Holocaust was planned to create a perfect Utopia (for the master race)
No, if anything it is anarchy. All governments will be obsolete because governments only exist to regulate scarcity. It is total decentralization of power, total empowerment of each individual, thus each person can 3D-print anything they want, for example a super-intelligence-spaceship enabling them to travel anywhere in the universe.
Can I then 3D print an army to take control of the world then
Yes you can print an army to control the world, you can print 2,000 trillion super-high yield nuclear bombs to destroy all the planets in our solar system, although I am sure you will be able to think of more intelligent ways to occupy your total freedom when these things are possible.
+Able Lawrence Your dystopian view in your comment at 05:16 seems to describe the present instead of the future…
With PRISM turning world into a Panopticon, instruments of control
and ideological subversion are falling in place. Best diversion for reaching the objective is to sell the idea of an Orwellian Utopia. All utopian ideas bear within them the seeds of tyranny and is conjoint twin of a dystopic underbelly.
So you really are +Alexander Becker posting under u different name +Able Lawrence 😉
+Max Huijgen I lost faith in utopian dreams when I left school. They are nice ideas and thought experiment and are really nightmares in the making. I scoured +Alexander Becker profile to get the connection???
Personally every day is a celebration for me. My wife says I am drunk on air. I usually get depressed on festivals and holidays.
It was just a admittedly uncommon way to introduce the two of you to each other.
+Max Huijgen 😉
Nice one, on Big Data replacing Deep Thought!
Can't help myself +Alexander Becker Slipping in these little wisecracks hidden in posts.
I already had Alexander in my priority circle but had not had a tetete
One of the most interesting youtube comments I've read! The film 'Her' was quite compelling and believable for me
Ah, if you found my post as a youtube comment I can imagine some surprise 😉
+LionelWitchieWardrob
Originally this was just a G+ post.
A blast from the past. Somehow I missed your response to my opening comment. Commentary on modern times indeed, +Max Huijgen.
To continue the game (in homage to Carse) perhaps the real battle isn't so much between Big Data and Deep Thought as betwixt Intelligence (in the form of algorithms) and Consciousness (in the form of hapless human beings). Decisions increasingly are being rendered by machines — machines that lack the slightest scintilla of consciousness whatsoever. They do what they do, following their own inexorable, implacable logic. "Exterminate. Exterminate."
Gives new meaning to +John Ralston Saul's classic book The Unconscious Civilization.
Big data, foreseeably, can only get you so far. Chess is considered to be far too large a game to viably store all the legal positions in a look-up table. Because of this fundamental space constraint, ultra fast processing is still going to be the most important factor in solving the game. If you can analyse 10^30 positions per second using large arrays of ultra fast processors, why on earth bother storing every position? It would be incredibly inefficient and impractical to do so, and it isn't a requirement for a computer to be able to play a perfect game.