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I believe such capabilities are fundamental to our future work toward an AGI because they might have been the foundation for the emergence, through an evolutionary process, of higher levels of intelligence in human beings.
But even if we solve these four problems using computers, I can't help wondering: What if there are some essential aspects of intelligence that we still do not understand and that do not lend themselves to computation? To a large extent we have all become computational bigots, believers that any problem can be solved with enough computing power. Although I do firmly believe that the brain is a machine, whether this machine is a computer is another question.
I recall that in centuries past the brain was considered a hydrodynamic machine. In the 17th century, René Descartes could not believe that flowing liquids could produce thought, so he came up with the concept of a mind-body dualism, insisting that mental phenomena were non-physical. When I was a child, the prevailing view was that the brain was some kind of telephone-switching network.
Then, when I was a teenager, the brain was considered to be similar to an electronic computer and later, a massively parallel digital computer. A few years ago someone asked me at a talk I was giving: "Isn't the brain just like the World Wide Web?"
We use these metaphors as the basis for our philosophical thinking and even let them pervade our understanding of what the brain truly does. None of our past metaphors for the brain has stood the test of time, and there is no reason to expect that the equivalence of current digital computing and the brain will survive. What we might need is a new conceptual framework: new ways of sorting out and piecing together the bits of knowledge we have about the brain.
Creating a machine capable of effectively performing basic capabilities may take 10 years or it may take 100. I really don't know. In 1966, some AI pioneers at MIT thought it would take three months – basically an undergraduate student working during the summer – to completely solve the problem of object recognition. The student failed. So did I, in my PhD project 15 years later. Maybe the field of AI will need several Einsteins to bring us closer to ultra-intelligent machines.
I grew up in a town in South Australia without much technology. In the 1960s, as a teenager, I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey and it was a revelation. Like millions of others, I was enthralled by the soft-spoken computer HAL 9000 and wondered if we could get to that level of artificial intelligence. Today I believe the answer is yes. In hindsight, though, I believe that HAL was missing a fundamental component: a body.
My early work on robotic insects showed me the importance of coupling AI systems to bodies. I spent a lot of time observing how those creatures crawled their way through complex obstacle courses, their gaits emerging from the interaction of their simple leg-control programs and the environment itself. After a decade building such insectoids, I decided to skip robotic lizards and cats and monkeys and jump straight to humanoids, to see what I could do there.
My students and I have learned a lot simply by putting people in front of a robot and asking them to talk to the machine. One of the most surprising things we've observed is that if a robot has a humanlike body, people will interact with it in a humanlike way. That's one of the reasons I came to believe that to build an AGI — and its predecessors — we'll need to give them a physical constitution.
At this point, I can guess what you're wondering. What will AGIs look like and when will they be here? What will it be like to interact with them? Will they be sociable, fun to be around?
I believe robots will have myriad sizes and shapes. Many will simply be boxes on wheels. But I don't see why, by the middle of this century, we shouldn't have humanoid robots with agile legs and dexterous arms and hands. You won't have to read a manual or enter commands in C++ to operate them. You'll just speak to them, tell them what to do.
They will wander around our homes, offices, and factories, performing tasks as if they were people. Our environments were designed and built for our bodies, so it will be natural to have these human-shaped robots around to perform chores like taking out the rubbish, cleaning the bathtub, and carrying groceries.
Will they have complex emotions, personalities, desires and dreams? Some will, but some won't. Complex emotions would not be much of an asset for a bathtub-cleaning robot. But if the robot is reminding me to take my medicine or helping me put the groceries away, I would want a little more personal interaction, with the sort of feedback that lets me know not just whether it's understanding me but how it's understanding me.
So I believe the AGIs of the future will not only be able to act intelligently but also convey emotions, intentions and free will.
The singularity.
While I agree with Robin Brooks starting point,that we are essentially machines we have escaped being predictable machines via the unpredictable emergent properties of our highly complex brains.
It is from this source that conscious thought and personality arise.
Thus that while the deterministic model is self evidently true, the enhancing effects of emergent properties transmutes us into an indeterminable condition of open ended possibility.
The proposition that humans are predetermined is a logical brain twister in the same class as that old chestnut
"I always tell lies"
So if we can do this with a machine then by definition the result will be unpredictable.
Question, please Sir is this a GOOD idea?
Answer, maybe not
Q When?
A Not soon
Q will it like us/ be like us?
A which do you prefer?
Q are you?
A guess
Ron Horgan.
Be careful what we instill
Rodneys comments on what we instil into AI raise the key issue on AI - you instill what you are. That is the problem. we will instill human nature its strengths and frailties. Someone, somewhere will instill the capacity for war in their intention to protect themselves from other humans. Then we let the "children" protect us. Well we know how that goes down.
ok
It all sounds very nice, creating ourselves in our own image stepping back and patting each other on the shoulders. Just like the boys down at the Manhattan project did 50 years ago. But let me get this straight mankind currently is drowning in our own apathy, watching species after species disappear, "talking" about global warming and twiddling our thumbs, not really giving a shit about the world now nor since the dawn of the first singularity, when we started clubbing animals with bones. And you expect AI to clean up our mistakes live in some sort of quasi-utopia with Nano bots that clean up our toxic waste, plug ourselves into the matrix, blah blah blah. Get over this ridicules god complex that all these futurists cling too. It’s now, not maybe, grow up and take stock of the current world and its problems not some AI 40 years from now. i mean Jesus thinking and talking about this stuff is cool, but actually giving funding to these pipe dreams only divides the reasonable from the absurd. The best part of life is that we die, who wants to be uploaded into a computer, life isn’t a cyberpunk game there are certain responsibilities humans have, and one of them is to die, not continually consume for eternity. Get a grip.
Super-human intelligence
I believe there is a fundamental blocking to what we can know about
a super-human intelligence. Simply, we can't know what such an entity will
think or do, because per definition we can't think like superhumans.
So no matter what precautions we take, we can't predict the actions of these creatures. We can't even say "low probability of killing us" or something like that.
Exceeding our design
It is easy to believe that the creation of AGI will happen soon, or happen at all for that matter. From reading countless science fiction books, it would be a fantastic concept to visualise, humans and robots co-existing peacefully.
I would like to point out however, that it is a rather selfish act to design AGI in our own image. Given that we would be recreating our own mistakes, in efforts to conceal or solve our current problems. We would be re-developing the laws that govern us, and programming these traits according to our functions and needs. There will still remain many characteristics and faults at large which we wouldn't be able to predict.
I'm offering that human control does not offer greater possibilities.
I gather that this production would be a slow process to the 'ideal' final design. But what this fantasy result (of an AGI) consists of exceeds our human abilities to fathom. So it is only realistic to be able to replicate ourselves in the form of synthetic matter, if we ever do get there. However unrealistic to think mankind (primitive as it still is in its development) can create something beyond comprehension, and beyond the human "ideal".
In light of this discussion I would love the idea of a self emergent AGI from the depths of a network such as the world wide web.
( This reminds me of the same idea sparked in a novel by Orson Scott Card, called "speaker for the dead". Embedded in this text, an immaterial super intelligence emerges as a "network of ansibles" capable of awareness, sentience and a million performances at light speed.)
-19, female, aus
Would this cause the intelligent design camp to win?
By recursive logic?