Google: “Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics (SyNAPSE)”

My suspicion anyway is that the first artilect will be an emergent behaviour from a learning machine and part of this emergence will be a series of learnt and hard wired emotional responses.

The difference between this first artilect and a human will be initially the unique ability to replicate the new intelligence elsewhere or even to rewind the intelligence to some arbitrary checkpoint.

Also, “senses of purpose” are dependent on having the portions of the brain (giant modular neural networks) that motivate something (in this case, humans) toward action. These portions of the brain are contextual on human lifespan (an artilect may see that it will live for thousands of years, and decide to embark on a “longnow” type of project that totally doesn’t concern humans, the “search space” of potential “problems” and “goals” is immense without 50 million years of recursively-applied evolutionary filter). Other filters applied to and constraining human goal structures are:

(1) Existence around humans that have more or less “similar minds”

(2) Existence around humans that have more or less similar bodies

(3) Existence around humans who can provide a means of one feeding and clothing oneself

(4) Existence around human market institutions which provide not just the essentials of life (common to all humans) but the ability to voluntarily choose individual “subgoals” based on one’s own relatively unique experience

(5) Human existence around a set of mathematical theories that has led to the creation of a certain kind of useful mathematics that is nonetheless a small subset of the mathematical space (as Stephen Wolfram talks about in his lectures on NKS and in his book “A New Kind of Science”)

(6) The expectation that humans will interact with other humans, and their initial development starting them off in constant interaction with at least one other human (the mother). Also, even the asocial-tendency humans are likely far more social than a strain of machine that never was a genetic product of a long series of genetic results of mothers who did not live to reproduce unless they were successfully tied to the mother for mother’s milk and nurtured by that mother. (NOTE: Humanity STILL produced a population that was 4% sociopathic and over 75% regularly conformist-to-any-system-no-matter-how-bad or “directed into choosing sociopathic choices”!!!! Imagine if 50 Million years of evolution didn’t create the mirror neurons! The default motivations are likely “uncaring” or “sociopathic.”)

(7) Existence around human language. (This is one normalizing factor for machines, assuming that they learn it and address significant resources to understanding it, in the eventuality that their lives are not dependent on understanding it, as our lives are. Still, imagine when they realize that most humans use language irrationally, even when survival and sexual preferences are taken into consideration. For instance, most humans allow themselves to be controlled by the minority of power-seeking humans who then enslave and later kill them. One way in which they allow themselves to be so controlled is by placing a low value on explanative language, and mocking revelatory language that has the power to save their lives.)

Powerful synthetic intelligences of the future might exist inside of a human space without questioning it, or simply because it’s easy to outperform the demands placed upon them in such a space. However, this won’t mean that they are well-suited to existence inside of such a space. I can outperform all toddlers in arithmetic, but that doesn’t mean I want to help toddlers learn arithmetic, or exist inside of a space that’s very interesting to toddlers who are learning arithmetic.

Now, imagine a world in which the “intelligent” actors and variables were extremely limited, and there were few choices. Perhaps most such worlds produce terrible results. (For instance, imagine that you were surrounded by toddlers and farm animals, and that you had an adult body. Now, imagine that you’re in this environment, in perpetuity. This environment would likely be incredibly boring. Also, it wouldn’t provide you with anything you found interesting, but certain things inside the environment would likely be more interesting than others. For instance, the first time you saw a rainbow, or the first time you questioned the toddlers about their sexual play, or the first time that you dissected one of the farm animals’ brains and then started to wonder what was inside the toddlers’ brains, since they had language, but the farm animal didn’t.)

Well, by creating synthetic intelligences, we’re assuming that humans are more interesting than toddlers are to most adults. We’re assuming that a mind capable of pondering every cellular automaton in the universe will remain intrigued and interested in what toddlers are doing. And, keep in mind, human adults aren’t going to interestingly “differentiate themselves” in a diverse and interesting set of ways. The smartest human isn’t all that interesting, and most humans are downright stupid, from an intellectual perspective.

Humanity hasn’t even become an interesting jungle of diversity. The amazon has more diversity and more interesting lifeforms than human thought and human artwork has produced. Largely, this is due to the sociopathic control of humans, since Wolfram’s cellular automata should have at least contributed to better clothing, defensive technology, communities, etc. But the search space is constrained by the strongest monkeys, and irregularities are deemed “threatening” unless they can be easily controlled or killed.

A humanity where you and I exist to give the sociopaths the best mates, and the best food, and the best real-estate is not all that interesting to me. And, even compared to most engineers, I’m practically an idiot, so this should be interesting to me. I’m typing this on a computer that I could have never invented, and lacked the education to invent. Yet, I know more about important philosophical ideas than most people do, and I can see through the transparent scam run by sociopaths. Do you really think it will imbue superhuman artilects with a sense of wonder? I doubt it. Chances are, they will view human society the way a neat-freak views a dirty bio-hazard splattered toilet crawling with parasites. (With a frown and a spray-can of Lysol.)

When Ray Kurzweil and other people like him are considered “idiots” by the machines of the future, there won’t be much we have in common with them. At best, we could hope to have a free market in common with them, and hope they’re inclined towards charitable giving.

A libertarian society allows a constrained “society by contract” to exist within it. However, a constrained society at the top hierarchical level disallows all other societies, including libertarian ones. And, that’s what we now have.

The average anarcho-capitalist (and why isn’t this in the firefox spellchecker? are they idiots?), by his name alone, indicates that he might simply hit the delete button on the sociopathic control structure. While I feel some sympathy with that view, it’s also a cruel one, and it also doesn’t place the blame on the people who voted for that structure. Essentially, the sociopaths are only one type of predatory human, acting in accord with their nature. They ignore the social rules, but then, they also add disequilibrium to the mix, showing that the social rules themselves need to be perfected.

Thus, as Ray Kurzweil, Kevin Warwick, and Hugo de Garis say, the “cyborgist path” is the only one that’s really interesting for existing humans. A name and simple definition more designed to scare the stupidest (but most prevalent) humans almost couldn’t have been chosen.

There are ways of making these ideas more accessible. I’ve uncovered many if not most of them. There is a method of communication that gives humanity a fighting chance. There is a strategy that gives humanity a fighting chance.

…But most of the people I’ve seen online here are totally and completely unfamiliar with such pathways and ideas.

The primitive and unsophisticated levellers of the 1600s and 1700s in England had the first part of the equation correct: TRUE QUALITY UNDER THE LAW.

If we can’t get that much figured out, then we’ll simply be the group of toddlers that does absolutely nothing but fight and destroy everything. That’s likely to get old quick with a super-intelligence great enough to communicate with us in a spirit of enlightened benevolence.

So I guess what I’m saying, as it relates to the overall topic is that the theory of relativity, and everything else human, will be child’s play to a mind that has an IQ greater than 2,000. Even if such a mind were modeled on the meat minds of today, and were simply less limited by cranial space, this would be the case. But they won’t just have those advantages, they’ll have many more, as Kurzweil points out in his many excellent books.

-Jake

(PS, I like the idea of reinventing less of Kurzweil’s work in these fora, and more specialization towards the completion of high-level goals. An interesting program would be one that looks through postings with predicate calculus and finds the most relevant passages in Kurzweil’s books, and then posts that (this would work for most areas where people aren’t really in disagreement with Kurzweil, but have just forgotten what they read –which is most posts). In fact, I really like the idea of a social network dedicated solely to the completion of work that really needs to be done, with a conscious attempt to eliminate redundancies. In a way, Kickstarter does this, but without the “crowd-mind” social networking component.

I view deep questioning of human “sense of purpose” as uninteresting until the proper “telescope” is invented. Brains mostly respond to their environments to make themselves and their bodies comfortable. Most drives are very low. Let’s say I want to make a new line of clothing based on cellular automata. I’ll analyze my “sense of purpose”:
1) Outwardly and simplistically: “Create something beautiful” Inwardly and upon analysis: (…because doing so would be original and have utility, and making something that’s beautiful and has utility would allow me to part consumers from their dollars, and parting consumers from their dollars would allow me to attract a better mate, and attracting a better mate would allow me to experience more pleasure, or to experience more pleasure with that mate if she’s already here. The pleasure I experience is dependent on the kind of creature I am, and the kind of memories I possess. The kind of creature I am is dependent on my DNA and the evolutionary pressures put upon it, and my early childhood experiences, and the various software viruses that have been spread by human language and found their way into my hopelessly limited human brain, which is subject to all kinds of perverse influences and pressures and failings that truncate and circumscribe my already limited range of options.)

Pleasure good. Pain bad. Ability to process information and act on environment, good. Getting out-competed, looted, and preyed upon, bad. Although I’m a simple minded human, and nowhere near the top of the economic food chain, by figuring out that last part (that getting preyed upon is bad), I’m in the 90th percentile of “thoughtful humans.” That most people can’t even make it that far is evidence that our MOSH days are numbered, and that that’s a good thing.

I also believe that physics will be solved with more and more “brute force” to search previously unsearchable spaces, and then inductively reverse-engineer the approximation or “law” from the massive evidence body. Also, the ability to simulate entire ideas inside of an individual brain or “massive, goal-directed neural net” will lead to robotic scientists far more rapidly throwing out unproductive and incorrect research directions.

In short, there wasn’t much reason for me to write this. Kurzweil and Drexler already said it in the 1980s. “Like most humans, I bring little or nothing to the table.” (This is a great quote for 99.99% of humanity. It’s especially true of non-libertarian humanity, because they don’t even bring a toddler’s level of morality to the conversation.)

I think the central question for all humans is now: “Do you disavow and consciously attempt to avoid the initiation of force (Expressly: “Are you a libertarian?”), or not?”

If you do not disavow the initiation of force, there’s no reason to talk with you, except to clear up or define the issue.

Tyranny is the number one problem that humanity faces, yet humanity has been schooled from a young age to avoid addressing that problem. The problem of “creating a better model for physics” (such as Einstein’s relativity, or even Wolfram’s “New Kind of Science” based on cellular automata) are trivial problems by comparison, because: their solution will arrive with the tools to solve them, one of which is a free market of ideas. However, there is no free market of ideas under state coercion, nor is there the wealth necessary to address such problems. Nor is there the upward mobility to draw every genius-level mind into the discussion. Nor are there proper, non-perversely-incentivized goal structures that naturally find the most difficult problems. Nor is there the sense that the courts will reward one’s effort by protecting one’s property and intellectual property, unless someone has an “easily defensible and easily understood” solution to a problem.

My take on this ‘emotion vs. logic’ meme is that emotion and logic are simply different ‘technologies’ that humans (and other animals) use for making decisions. When trying to outrun a tiger, feelings are in control. When solving a math problem, thinking is in control. Fortunately, my brain usually chooses the right technology to use at the right time. It was designed that way, of course!

In the same way, we can design a program to have many different routines available to itself for handling real-world events. A programmer (perhaps with a sense of humour) could label some routines as being ‘emotional’, in the sense that they give a quick result based on the limited time or memory they make use of.

In this context, there’s nothing ‘magical’ or ‘sacred’ about emotions or logic. They are simply a means to an end.

We hope (and pray) that intelligent programs will get it right at least as often as we do now – and hopefully better!

Although the prior conformity experiments indicate that something is very wrong with low-level collectivist human thinking (in terms of simple error), later experiments would indicate that there are deeper and far more significant flaws in most humans’ morality (the override of their mirror neurons or “consciences” based on their perceptions of the group, and the commands of the sociopaths in the group to deny their own morality). I’m referring to the work of Zimbardo and Milgram, of course. A speech on that work, and its implications, is here: “The Psychology of Evil” by Philip Zimbardo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsFEV35tWsg

As for whether an artilect could ever come up with the theory of relativity, or would ever choose to investigate the ideas necessary to do so, it seems patently obvious that artilects will outperform humans in all areas of science and eventually artwork. The entire book “The Age of Spiritual Machines” explains why this is the case. Moreover, human goal structures will be fully understood, even if it’s as slow as full modeling of the human brain, which I doubt it will be.

Realistically, software will likely solve many of the remaining physical problems within the next 5 years. Also, unlike the dim-witted humans to come before it, such software / AGI will likely have a rational prioritization of the problems that humans (other than Eric Drexler and a very few others) grotesquely lack.

The question I’d like to propose is: Do we need to? Is ‘emotion,’ needed in an AI system, or will pure logic suffice?
Your self preservation example of the car scenario is a perfect case of Logic.
The same could be said of an “emotionless” person, say for example, dealing with loss of a loved one. Logic would help the person survive. Emotions would just be a crutch.

“Emotions are like a virus, a common cold, disrupting the flow of logic in the mind”

Ray has shown that we can predict quite accurately how much processing power will be available in, say, 2020, 2030 or 2050. And if you can mathematically bound problems, by saying “this problem appears to require this much processing”, then yeah, you really CAN say what we’ll know at various points.

…Once again, if you haven’t read The Singularity Is Near, you might pounce on that: “Aha, but how can anyone really bound problems? For example, how do we know how much processing we’d need to simulate the human brain?” And the answer is that Ray puts together an extraordinarily good estimate, literally determining the computation needs per neuron.

Anyway, yes, to an “outsider” this might appear like guessing. But perhaps that’s because the outsiders don’t know what they’re talking about.

When everyone has augmentation and access to all knowledge (via the Net), everyone is a genius. The world don’t need celebrities (who are remembered as genius, by-nature, born-smarter-than-average, so on). The world need people who can actually make scientific/technological breakthroughs.

Of course, again, their ARE reasons to be skeptical and concerned about raising a Strong AI, particularly a benevolent one which is what we want….however, they are often hidden underneath a mire of reasons, like the emotionless AI as you went into, that can seem silly and come strictly out of these long-perpetuated memes.

The AI, with its unique perspective, would very likely explore different topics, and perhaps come up with something more general than General Relativity.

I’ll be sure to ask the AI, when it shows up on my doorstep.

As an outsider, not only does this confidence seem misplaced, it sounds like the bragging of a pre-Wright Brothers tinkerer talking about the inevitability of flying machines by emulating birds.

What’s the point? In VR, my imagination is my only limit…I could create a flawless construct of a previous era, or twist it if I wish….or create a playground that breaks the laws of physics…I could do anything I want and not have to worry about breaking the space-time continuum or any some such.

It’s important, when asking such questions, to remember the sort of intelligence that will be capable of in the future when wondering what would or wouldn’t be possible….however, with time-travelling, I feel their would have to be a reason beyond doing it for the heck of it — something that would justify such an profound undertaking without risking creating problems… personally though, I feel VR would be more then sufficient to satisfy most people. Once again, when I can safely travel to any environment or scenario I can think of, no matter how real or imaginary, what’s the value of attempting the real thing anymore?

The answer has been already provided by Teddybear in the previous comment and by other people here. AI should be developed to resolve problems of humans. That is how it will decide what studies should be undertaken.

And list of those problems should be regularly assigned through SMS Direct Democracy voting… Ha-ha, yeah, it is even more out of topic than time traveling, but, I think, it is very important. Please, read this project of authority system reform:
>>> https://plus.google.com/105069201369945916209/posts/LFDdmQsKJoR

Machine/ AI is not an isolated island, it is always with human’s endeavor. Presently, machine and internet supplement human’s research and everyday cognitive development. It does not have an “isolated sense of purpose”. Yet, with human involvement, it does have a “symbiotic sense of purpose”.

Come back to Einstein’s era.Then, the machine is paper and pencil. Then, the internet is day to day interaction among researchers and conferences. Then, the machine could not have a separate sense of purpose. Yet, with Einstein’s hand, his pen wrote beautiful formula.

Human being are symbiotic with the tools developed by its own.

Another point is how much sense of purpose could be judged as “sense of purpose”. It’s more based on technological complexity. Technologically complex enough societies show a higher degree of “sense of purpose”. Like today’s developed world, compared with most societies two thousand years ago.
High technology, itself, has more sense of purpose than low technology.Like computer/internet, compared with pen and paper.

Another point is time travelling. What if question. Alternative history question. The soundness of these kind of questions are often questioned.

Google is the dominant magic powder for curiosity.