
Snails use 'two brain cells' to make decisions, Sussex University discovers - xufi
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-sussex-36443264
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YeGoblynQueenne
Another (s)nail in the coffin of the superstition that more powerful computers
will somehow magically result in strong AI. Our current AI is nowhere near the
level of autonomy of animals like snails. If it was just a matter of more
computing power, or more data, we'd have snail-level intelligence down pat by
now.

Edit: Er, btw, the bbc article misleadingly talks of "brain" calls. Moluscs
don't have brains. The Nature paper (linked from the parent) clarifies that
it's about "two neuron types".

~~~
internaut
I agree, but doesn't that then lend support to the idea of a FOOM?

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
Hmm, dunno. It took millions of years for life to make crits with more than
two ganglia to rub together. Again, why would it be any different with
artificial intelligence?

Like, I don't want to be controversial and all (OK, I do) but it seems to me
the folks who claim that strong AI is Just Around the Corner™ and it's just a
matter of more data and bigger computers, have too much testosterone sloshing
around in their system and just wanna show the world ... something. There's a
real fixation with _big_ data, _powerful_ and _fast_ computers and _strong_
AI, stuff like that. The whole FOOM thing is just another one of those things-
like somebody didn't hear what Alan Moore had to say about comics and growing
up already.

I mean, I went through nerd-puberty myself, so maybe if people kept asking me
what the ideal AI would be I'd start saying things like "obviously, it will be
_elegant_ and it will make use of _pretty_ data" or something equally
stereotypical.

But, it's all just fantasies. If there was going to be some sort of takeoff,
why didn't it happen in a few billions of years of life on the earth? If we
think we have the resources now for computers to take off (instead of
imploding in some sort of paperclipocalypse) there certainly were more than
enough resources for a couple of takeoffs of biological entities in the time
since the dawn of life. Instead, what we got is one -count them- one species
with the intelligence to start a technological civilisation and many, many
that are almost there but not quite. All the data we have hints to the fact
that singularities are extremely unlikely, and even the one we know occured
-ours- took a lot of time to set up properly and had to evolve over millions
of years. So it wasn't a singularity at all, more like a slow, steady process
that eventually surpassed some sort of limit.

tl;dr FOOM my foot.

~~~
internaut
I'll bite. Biting is a fun animal activity. I think you make reasonable
points. FOOMs are sexy, and sexiness is intrinsically suspicious because
people want to believe in them. Still we do know of extraordinary change in
the past.

My suspicion is that FOOM is both real and not real depending on your scope.
Here I am defining a FOOM as a change in the rate of a variable speed.

If I were against FOOM I would point out that, as you say, you have millions
of years of statis in the biological record. To quote Wikipedia on one element
of this: "once species appear in the fossil record they will become stable,
showing little net evolutionary change for most of their geological history."
Makes sense. If you have adapted to your niche then you have little to do but
occupy it.

If I were for FOOM I would argue that the human brain has not changed that
fundamentally in hundreds of thousands of years. Yet the only way to attribute
the explosion of complexity of our society in the last several thousand seems
to point to changes in our brains. Perhaps change in our brains mostly in
relation to artifacts in a feedback loop i.e. the brains move out of their
shell casing and into books, cogs & wheels. The change to agriculture is one
FOOM. The change to the Industrial Revolution is another FOOM. The invention
of electricity, Internet are even more rapid FOOMs than what went before. The
tempo is itself interesting.

Against the FOOM I would then say as you have.

> If there was going to be some sort of takeoff, why didn't it happen in a few
> billions of years of life on the earth? If we think we have the resources
> now for computers to take off (instead of imploding in some sort of
> paperclipocalypse) there certainly were more than enough resources for a
> couple of takeoffs of biological entities in the time since the dawn of
> life.

I have two ideas on this.

The first is that you're right. We are just a splendidly unusual animal with a
terrific amount of good luck. We are talking about this and are able to do so
because of a kind of anthropic principal.

The second is that you're right, but not for the reason of rarity but
something more sinister. There 'were' other FOOMs but we've been deleting
them. One FOOM to rule them all. We are extraordinarily good at killing.
Getting away from the probable fact we genocided our closest competitors back
in the day. Think of civilizations. Any civilization that refused to FOOM
(think Chinese) got ultimately accosted by a different civilization that did.
Then (usually) we destroyed anybody who couldn't keep up by absorbing their
raw materials to build our faster growing civilization.

I find the second hypothesis more interesting but not sure how to weigh
evidence for these cases.

The second hypothesis is not directly interesting but one of the interesting
consequences of it being true is that collapse, of species and civilizations
is very much more likely than we currently anticipate.

My overarching theory now becomes that both ideas are the same idea, just two
sides of the same coin. FOOMing and extinction events are very much
interrelated. The expansion of humanity (a FOOM) vs the disappearance of most
wild animals. It is notable that species reproduce exponentially if they can.
Suppose we discover for example a easy way to alter our DNA to make a superior
human. Then it is likely the other humans are ultimately destroyed by being
outcompeted and using up their available resources.

Basically FOOMs are not rare but they make other FOOMs rare. There is no
control. I can't think of a less awkward way of putting this, I hope you
understand my point.

Elon Musk thinks if you made the technology egalitarian the problem would be
solved. I think this is not so because some of the technology's users are much
smarter or are in better initial starting environments and would outcompete
the others even if they had the same tools.

This means that only by a FOOM transcending i.e. using resources and concepts
that are non-rival-goods, would there not be trouble.

Consider that when we meet a non-contacted tribe in the Amazon, we don't steal
their tools and wives and murder the males. Today we don't need/want to. But
our ancestors would have done that without a qualm. Even in recent history
with the Spanish conquistadors you can see a shadow of how we can gobble
things up. To the un-contacted tribes and Cargo Cult Islanders, our Western
Civilization is a FOOM. Barely explicable and vast.

tldr; Don't get outcompeted.

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
Oh dear. Should have kept my mouth shut :)

~~~
internaut
I'm afraid it FOOMed.

