When I first heard about the whole Singularity thing it made sense. I thought it was cool. I wanted to be there.
But as I've learned more about the limitations of our understanding, our biology, and computers I've realized that this isn't something that will be happening any time soon without some amazing breakthroughs. I don't expect the Singularity to happen my lifetime, and I'm still in my 20s.
We really understand very little about the brain. We don't know exactly how neurons work and the most information we can get from the brain is on the order of 1-7 BITS per second when sampling from implanted electrodes. It's also not a lack of data. We don't even know how to fully decode the data we already have.
Our understanding of AI really is pretty poor. Knowledge representation and machine learning has become a hard enough task that many researchers are back to developing algorithms for specific tasks, which embeds the knowledge of the researcher in the algorithm, precluding the system from learning anything truly novel.
They say we can't see past the Singularity because things will change too much and too fast. Right now we can't even see the Singularity because too many things would have to change too much and quite fast.
There are thousands of people working furiously on all of those problems, though. I was working at Janelia Farm until last year. You should see what those guys are planning for neuroscience. It's going to be huge. It's a mistake to assume that our capacity to query neural circuitry is going to remain stuck at such a low rate.
And they have been working furiously for a good while now. The romantic in me hopes that they can make it happen, but I'm not holding my breath. Mainly because a lot of people confuse speed of processing with intelligence, but that's not really the spark of life we need. There's nothing out there so far that can mimic human thought even at hundreds of times slower than human responses. We still don't have something quite right with the basic principles yet.
What Kurzweil is saying is that you can't just linearly extrapolate the progress of these projects. Even if we only know a fraction of a percentage of what's going on in the brain after 20 years doesn't mean we'll know only twice as much in another 20 years. Rather we're likely to see the pace accelerate. Going from 50% to 100% might take less time than going from 1% to 2% knowledge.
Keep in mind that he's been making predictions like these for decades and he's got a pretty good track record.
I guess that I am saying is that I'm not convinced that the direction we have been heading is the direction that will ultimately produce the end result we want. The model T and the present day automobile share the same basic concepts. I'm wondering if human-level AI will bear any real resemblance to today's solutions on the concept level. I'm not convinced it will.
I think the argument is that we can already simulate a single neuron fairly accurately today, and so some decades from now we'll likely be able to simulate them all, plus their interconnects, and thus by pure brute force we'll get a human-level AI.
We're not gonna get there using purely modeled AI or purely modeled machine learning.
It's too much work to do it that way. We need a biologically inspired computer architecture... one that's non von Neumann; where the stored data and computation aren't separate.
"as I've learned more about the limitations of our understanding, our biology, and computers"
What specifically did you learn that stands against the singularity theory?
One thing that makes me confident that there can be machines that are as smart as the human brain is that there is already a proof of concept: the human brain.
Of course that does not prove that there can be machines that could be smarter than the human brain, but it does not seem too much of a leap to imagine it.
I think biggest issue for now is whether medical science can extend your 'ordinary' life. If they can get you to 120 in relatively good condition then there is nearly 100 years to work out the rest.
>But as I've learned more about the limitations of our understanding, our biology, and computers I've realized that this isn't something that will be happening any time soon without some amazing breakthroughs. I don't expect the Singularity to happen my lifetime, and I'm still in my 20s.
Did you miss the whole accelerating change thing? Assuming the models are correct, it's going to look like we won't make it until just before we do.
Did you see the development of the MRI data interpreter that was one ordinary PC stuffed full of ordinary video cards and used their GPUs?
Did you see the burst in development of comms and personal devices in the past 20 years?
Do you see that someone (a westerner, anyway) who died 50 years ago and someone who was born 50 years ago would have very different lives?
Do you see that we don't need AI, we could go with human-computer hybrids (and I mean very good personal assistants acting as external memory and computers, not even brain implants) or effective collaboration instead.
We already have one form of effective collaboration - the company. Groups of people working together to do more than any individual. View that from the perspective of two thousand years ago. See how fast change seems.
hey 20-somethings, stop complaining it might not happen in your lifetime and just pitch in. You could live another 70 years. Think about 1906 vs 1976. I'm almost 50 and I'm doing what I can. I almost definitely won't make it, but you guys have a 30 year extra chance. And if you don't, well fuck, your kids or grandkids will.
If you've had someone you love get old and sick and die, you know what I'm talking about. Get to work. It's not just about you.
Kurzweil usually makes predictions about things that have strong trends over time. His favorites are the trends that increase exponentially, because most people extrapolate the early, slow growth linearly and come to a completely wrong conclusion. If you watch his TED talk, he explains his technique. http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/ray_kurzweil_on_how_techno...
But as I've learned more about the limitations of our understanding, our biology, and computers I've realized that this isn't something that will be happening any time soon without some amazing breakthroughs. I don't expect the Singularity to happen my lifetime, and I'm still in my 20s.
We really understand very little about the brain. We don't know exactly how neurons work and the most information we can get from the brain is on the order of 1-7 BITS per second when sampling from implanted electrodes. It's also not a lack of data. We don't even know how to fully decode the data we already have.
Our understanding of AI really is pretty poor. Knowledge representation and machine learning has become a hard enough task that many researchers are back to developing algorithms for specific tasks, which embeds the knowledge of the researcher in the algorithm, precluding the system from learning anything truly novel.
They say we can't see past the Singularity because things will change too much and too fast. Right now we can't even see the Singularity because too many things would have to change too much and quite fast.