

Kurzweil’s Next Book: Creating An Artificial Mind - kkleiner
http://singularityhub.com/2010/05/26/kurzweils-next-book-creating-an-artificial-mind/

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iandanforth
I believe we're much closer than other commenters apparently. Here's why.

1\. The wetware is nifty but it's not what makes up intelligence.

The differences between sapient and non-sapient species are slight at the
level of genetic code. The changes enabling intelligence are also very recent.
The changes seem to be focused around the number and distribution of cortical
columns in the neo-cortex, which are all remarkably similar regardless of the
sensory input they are ultimately connected to. (This is why Hawkins' work is
so exciting)

2\. A huge portion of what we consider intelligence is a product of language
and culture.

Neglected and wild children are barely sapient in a way that we would
understand (though with care they can become so). Our minds are largely
constructs of a transmissible set of patterns external to our biology.

3\. The blue brain project is a ten year project

While I don't think we need molecular level or even synaptic level modeling to
understand the software embodied in our brains, we have a hard target to be
able to model, in large part, the human brain.

4\. The large numbers in the brain are no longer scary

100 billion neurons and 100 trillion synaptic connections used to seem like an
absurd scale for study. Now we regularly deal with billions of rows in
databases and petabytes of storage. Not only that, the transmission speeds in
the brain are _so_ slow, if we need to replicate anything like the
connectivity of the brain we can do it over a massive and distributed area.
There's simply no need to cram an intelligence into a single box or server
farm.

5\. AI research has narrowed a great deal.

Whereas we had 50 tangents twenty years ago research is beginning to focus on
two key aspects of learning. A. Large data sets for statistical analysis (e.g.
Google) and B. Hierarchical representations of input. (e.g. Hawkins)

6\. PR2 (Willow Garage)

I'll go out on a limb here and say that a shared open source robotics platform
is the best thing to happen to AI research in 50 years. People forget the
sheer number of hours experiencing the world it takes for the brain to acquire
sapience. By supplying a common framework for experiencing the world the PR2
will enable the kind of long term learning necessary for intelligence to
emerge.

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spot
can you provide references for #2?

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miked
_can you provide references for #2?_

I'm not the OP, but Matt Ridley's book _The Rational Optimist_ , just released
a few days ago, has much more on this. Selection here:

[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB2000142405274870369180457525...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748703691804575254533386933138.html)

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cageface
I'll take the time to read Kurzweil's book on building an artificial mind
_after_ he actually builds one.

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hugh3
I might skip that, but I'd definitely read "How I Was Built" by Kurzweil's
Artificial Mind.

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jimbokun
Do we want a "brain in a box?"

Note that this idea is distinct from computers that solve complex problems on
our behalf. Creating something with its own desires, ambitions, and emotions,
just like us, except vastly more powerful, is there any reason to think
something good will result from introducing such a thing into our environment?
Does it ever go well for a species when a more intelligent species enters its
niche and competes for resources?

As smart as Kurzweil is, I am always shocked that he takes for granted that
such a development will be good for humanity. He scarcely gives a thought to
the philosophical ramifications of a human being crossing over into a
completely digital reality.

I think the question of whether super human intelligence is good for humanity
is at least as important as the engineering questions about how to build one.

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DrSprout
Why is human supremacy a necessity? Why must a child be flesh and blood? If we
want our children to be smarter, more powerful, and happier than us, why
should we create children as feeble as us?

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jimbokun
Our machines are not our children.

I know that's a metaphor, but I feel the better metaphor is another species.
These machines are likely to be different from us in significant and important
ways, and they are likely to have interests we do not share, and the ability
to achieve those interests with or without our consent.

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spot
if we create them, then they are our children. oedipal perhaps, but children
nonetheless.

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chriskelley
I quite enjoyed _On_Intelligence_ from Jeff Hawkins, interested to find out
how the two books will relate.

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stratospark
I've skimmed through that book and looked at the API over at Numenta:
<http://www.numenta.com/>. They are focused on practical pattern recognition
applications. Kurzweil has always been about strong AI and almost sci-fi type
scenarios in his books. It's a way more ambitious goal, but he has predicted a
lot of things correctly before. I'd check out some of his earlier books
beforehand, just to get a better idea of his mindset.

~~~
Element_
That's not really true, Hawkins theory revolves around prediction as it
relates to intelligence. There is an entire section at the end of the book
that explains why intelligent machines based on the neocortical algorithm he
proposes won't resemble human intelligence/self awareness for a long time to
come (if ever).

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stratospark
I'll need to take another look at Hawkins book. In any case, Kurzweil is
promoting the idea we can have AI equivalent to human intelligence in a few
decades.

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deutronium
I'm just reading 'The Singularity Is Near' at the moment and am finding it
fascinating finding ideas, such as 'reversible computing' and interesting
information relating to cellular automaton.

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Jeema3000
The only way this can ever happen, I think, is if humans are able to model the
building blocks of the brain (i.e neurons) and the processes that created it
(i.e. evolution), because there's just no way we'll ever understand all of the
emergent behavior of a human brain, as I see it. After all, don't you need
something vastly more complex than the thing you're studying in order to
understand it?

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speek
I think the major problem to overcome is that current computers are based on a
von-neumann architecture while I would argue that the brain is not as
structured (at least not structured like in a von-neumann architecture).

tl;dr - I agree with Jeff Hawkins about the future of AI

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spot
not really. the supercomputers used for brain simulation are massively
parallel.

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hugh3
The Kurzweils and Drexlers of the world make a living by claiming that amazing
technological advances (immortality, molecular nanotechnology, thinking
machines) are far easier than they actually are. When these things fail to get
developed in the timescales they predicted, they blame the scientists who
failed to make it happen.

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cageface
His fundamental assumption that change will continue to follow an exponential
curve because that's what it's doing now seems highly suspect to me. The
problems you have to solve become exponentially more difficult as your tools
become exponentially more powerful.

The human mind is the product of _billions_ of years of parallel computation
and experimentation. Raw horsepower is probably the easy part.

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jodrellblank
But he's not saying "Because that's what it's doing now", he's saying "because
that's what it's always done".

Human / animal muscles are also the product of _billions_ of years of
experimentation, and a few decades of steam power research trounced them with
ease. Just because it's old doesn't mean it's inherently incredibly good and
hard to replicate.

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cageface
Simple biological systems like bones/muscles evolved long ago and have mostly
just been refined since then. Human-like intelligence is a much more recent
and much more difficult development.

A lot of people seem to think that if you build a machine of sufficient raw
horsepower that intelligence will magically emerge. Maybe, but I suspect it's
not nearly so easy.

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spot
Kurzweil is not one of these people.

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RyanMcGreal
ETA: Real Soon Now.

