
Will AI Surpass Human Intelligence By 2020? - DarrenMills
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2009/09/a-singular-something-in-sixty-years.html
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patio11
In 2009, yes, it looks like a sure bet that AI will pass human intelligence by
2020.

In 2019, yes, it will look to be a sure bet that AI will pass human
intelligence by 2030.

Meanwhile computers will continue doing more and more important things by the
boring expedient of taking lots of data and crunching on it. See: credit
scores, which nobody considers "artificial intelligence" despite the fact that
it essentially involves having a sophisticated algorithm make evidence-based
predictions of the future based on what could easily be confused with a
character judgment.

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DanielStraight
For some definition of human intelligence, yes. For some, no. Same answer as
every other year since the invention of the computer. This is not an
interesting question (or article) without providing some reason for why your
particular definition of human intelligence (the article doesn't give any
definition at all) is the right one to consider.

~~~
human_v2
Human intelligence can't exist outside of humans. We have a unique brain
structure, allowing us to do what we do. But if we put our brain in a robot,
it wouldn't work unless you built the robot in such a way that it believes it
is human. Only then can you have an artificial human intelligence. The robot
needs to be able to connect with humans on a meaningful level. This would be
difficult if everyone just stared at the funny looking robot trying to act
human.

I think rather than creating Skynet, we're going to start upgrading our own
hardware; adding robots to ourselves until there is no human left. I think
with this practice, the new AI would be compassionate towards humans.

Then again I also think about how teenagers hate their parents. Would a super-
intelligent being come to loathe their parents (us)? I like to think that a
super intelligence would understand that violence doesn't solve anything. But
then again, that's why we have Sci-fi -- as a kind of list of things to make
sure they don't happen.

Humans are no longer king of the hill. Evolve or perish.

~~~
DanielStraight
This is a contradiction: "adding robots to ourselves until there is _no human
left_ ", "the new AI would be compassionate _towards humans_."

If we use people as the foundation for building AI which eventually abandons
all human foundation, then the result would not be human. It's as if you had a
car and every day replaced a single part with the part for a different car. In
the end, the original car would no longer exist, even though there was, as it
were, a continuous camera shot of the transformation.

This is a tangent, I admit, but the contradiction needs resolved.

~~~
human_v2
Not every human would become a robot. Not every robot would have started as a
human. This is where homo sapiens branches in the phylogeny of life. Some
become robots, some stay human. Those that stay human may eventually evolve
into dwarves and night-elves and maybe tauren. Those that turn into robots may
want to explore reality like the wanderer in TNG, season 1, episode 7. (that's
what i want to do anyway)

Basically, what you're telling me, is that an ape that evolved into a human is
no longer an ape. True, but not true. It just so happens that historically, in
evolution, changes were subtle. Humans are neat because it will be the first
time that a species evolved into something that barely resembles, if at all,
the generation of life that spawned them.

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fjabre
It doesn't need to be that intelligent - it only has to fool us into thinking
it is. Remember the Turing test..?

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dejb
To pass the Turing test AI would most likely need to be a lot more intelligent
than humans. Being able to convincingly emulate something is harder than
merely running your own 'native operating system'.

~~~
fnid
Actually, studies have shown that it's not that difficult to fool most humans.
One study I remember simply repeated phrases back to the human in the form of
a question.

Human: I ate pizza today. AI: You ate pizza today? Human: Yes it was
delicious. AI: How delicious was it?

One participant actually guarded her screen from the researchers because she
was having such an intimate conversation with what she thought was another
person.

~~~
dejb
The Turing tester would need to be deliberately testing to see if the other
party was a bot for the test to be convincing. This is the 'standard
interpretation' of the Turing test

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test#The_standard_interp...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test#The_standard_interpretation)

~~~
roundsquare
Additionally, you can fool people with some simple tricks like what was
mentioned.

In the Loebner Prize the programmer and/or person being "tested" was allowed
to pick the topic. One of the programs that won did so by picking the topic
"silly conversations" and having the machine output gibberish. The judge
thought this was a person being silly (how could a computer be silly?) and
rated it a human. Someone who knows anything about AI/NLP won't fall for this
though.

[http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~shieber/Biblio/Papers/loebner-r...](http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~shieber/Biblio/Papers/loebner-
rev-html/loebner-rev-html.html)

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diiq
I would feel more comfortable with such predictions if research were clearly
walking the wooded path to AI. Moore's law works because

    
    
      1. We already have processors
      2. We have a metric to measure processor speed
    

Then the path we're hiking is one _mostly_ of incremental improvments, with
occasional boulder of innovation.

Whereas the 'intelligent' agents we currently have do not seem particularly
similar in _quality_ to intelligence we already know; the path from
contemporary AI to strong AI is hardly a trail at all --- it's all boulders;
innovation all the way up.

[The claim I make about 'quality' is vague; in part necessarily so. If I could
pinpoint my discomfort with current methods, I could propose a new course of
action based on a new metric. Nevertheless I feel that the high-mathematical
bent of current machine learning techniques (proto-value RL, statistical
relational methods, etc) will lead to excellent answers, but does not point
towards the flexibility of general intelligence. Yrom the other camp, low-
level connectionist methods have not to my mind offered significant results in
problem solving.]

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jeffcoat
This one's easy: anyone making a clear, testable predication about what's
going to happen 10 years from now is going to be Wrong.

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joe_the_user
I think it's worth separating two statements that seem similar: "Computer will
surpass human intelligence" and "Artificial Intelligence will surpass human
intelligence".

The two statements aren't necessarily equivalent if we say AI involves an
explicit understanding of what constitutes intelligence. AI doesn't seem to be
making great progress on the understanding intelligence front. However raw
computers might exceed human intelligence if we are able to, say, just
directly simulate a brain but, say, increase the clock speed and maybe the
number of neurons. But if it turns out that we create something highly
intelligent _that way_ , we will be creating something potentially dangerous
since we really will have no understanding of how benevolent it will or won't
be.

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russell
No. Real AI is like fusion power. It will arrive in 40 years, for any
definition of now. We are barely scratching the surface of our knowledge of
the brain. We are orders of magnitude away from its processing power. We dont
even have an agreed upon definition of consciousness. Will ever get there?
Sure. But first we will see prostheses like vision and augmentation mind
computer interfaces.

~~~
fnid
Do you believe that Real AI must be modeled on the brain? I'm not sure that is
a requirement. I think we can produce AI without fully understanding the
brain.

I expect AI to be something greater than the brain. If we use the brain as a
guide or the summit of achievement, then at most we'll get only as smart as a
human, or group of humans considering the massive amount of information
storage and retrieval possible.

I don't know... I wonder.

~~~
russell
Actually, I dont think real AI will be modeled on the brain, but I do think
understanding the brain will be key. There are 100 billion parallel processing
components with some significant fraction of a quadrillion interconnections. I
think that there is a lot to learn there.

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jimfl
Certainly not.

A natural intelligence could eventually coalesce from emergent properties of
H. Sapiens networked information processing systems, but not within 10 years.

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parse_tree
There is no way in hell AI will "surpass human intelligence" by 2020, using
any reasonable interpretation of the sentence. I guess it makes a good
headline though.

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kunqiana
perhaps in certain domains of knowledge such as chess.

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tphyahoo
If AI surpassed even lobster intelligence by that date it would be quite an
achievent.

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Tichy
What do Lobsters do that is so complicated?

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wlievens
Basic sight, locomotion, independent operation for years without human
supervision. And they taste great.

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Devilboy
Kurzweil on 2029: Although computers routinely pass the Turing Test,
controversy still persists over whether machines are as intelligent as humans
in all areas.

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drcode
no.

~~~
hendler
yes.

Intelligence in any one measure. We'll create an intellegence that can out-do
a human. Because if we can define an intelligence and understand it - coding
it up might be the easier part.

As an integrated whole? - mimicking humans? not so sure.

