MM – Sorry to take so long to respond to your post. Your description of what is required for intelligence to occur makes so much sense, and gives me much to think about in relation to the creation of true A.I., rather than just sophisticated robotics.

Thank you, once again, for taking the time to write such a great reply.

O_B, once again, far too slow with my response to you. So enjoyed your interesting, knowledgeable comment.

I love your explanation about artificial consciousness, and am particularly nodding my head at your final paragraph. Completely agree that Musk (along with those other Silicon Valley billionaires, as well) could better be spending some of those dollars on relieving present-day concerns instead of looking only to the future. Wiping out hunger in the world, for example . . . wouldn’t that be something?

As far as your not being that clever, I say to you: au contraire mon frere! Am constantly amazed at your scope of knowledge and depth of understanding of such a variety of topics, and it’s always such a pleasure to read your posts.

https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d43a0dc29361cb1b7d855948ce3179f0afe0cb63025af501738a6be832283eac.jpg

Duh. LOL.

yea but it would be a lot easier to just have scn’s infiltrate Google and work there.

Workers in the area refer to ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ AI.

Soft AI is mindless – a very clever and complex program which produces results (like playing chess, or suggesting things you might be interested in buying on the basis of earlier purchases). That’s based on statistical tricks, a big database and number-crunching.

There’s been great progress in this. The only danger is that we give over our expertise to machines which don’t understand what they doing any more than a light bulb ‘decides’ to light up a room when someone throws a switch. They can’t deal with new situations.

Hard AI is a machine with a real mind – and maybe consciousness. That’s the kind of entity that might develop its own agenda, and come into conflict with their creators (like Dr Frankenstein’s creature).

However, we have no idea how our own consciousness works let alone how to create an artificial one – which would likely need to be embodied (so that it could learn about the world for itself) something else that we are long, long way away from doing well enough.

I think the error of transhumanists is to look for ‘salvation’ (e.g. don’t die – upload your mind to an android body) &/or ‘damnation’ (the robot apocalype) in technology and get a bit carried away with possibilities that won’tbe realised for many generations, of ever.

PS “Steady on” is a UK idiom which, in this context was meant to convey, ‘You are very kind, but I’m not that clever’ 🙂

I wouldn’t t worry about the singularity – and think prominent people like Musk are self-dramatising. The supposed threat of AI is worth thinking about – but maybe his money would be better spent on relieving things like disease, war and hunger.

You made me smile and it is lovely to find You Here. Hugs and Love from me to you. Will look for your comments.💞❤️

“I sort of thought he was comparing the two events in a favorable light”

Oh :/ Come to think about it, you might very well be right. I don’t know the context in which Mr Thiel made his remark; it is possible that instead of the likelihood he was in fact comparing the importance of the two events: that if we were to achieve Full A.I., it wouldn’t be just another everyday scientific discovery, but an event so extraordinarily important as to be “right up there” (roughly comparable) with an alien visit.

The problem (or at least one of them) with ‘achieving Full A.I.’ is that it is by no means self-evident that it can be achieved at all, ever.

Depends on the definition of terms I guess, but what current and foreseeable so-called ‘intelligent’ systems actually are is fast – not intelligent. They are incredibly fast and sophisticated idiots de métier, whereas intelligence is a generalized problem-solving mechanism across all domains of knowledge which requires the ability to abstract, and arguably also physical embodiment for the very act of perception (which has to precede abstraction) to be even possible.

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