RE: Augmenting humans is a better way

From: James Higgins (jameshiggins@earthlink.net)
Date: Sun Jul 29 2001 - 07:19:45 MDT


At 08:13 AM 7/29/2001 -0400, you wrote:

> > > So I'd be tempted to say that, at the moment,
> > > research
> > > into neural interfaces seems further along than research into AI.
> >
> > I guess this is a silly debate. Both fields are at a relatively primitive
> > stage, far from achieving their end goals. Is super-low-res vision closer
> > to real brain-enhancement than Deep Blue and EURISKO are to real AI? Who
> > was the greater President, Lincoln or Washington or FDR? Who's a cuter
> > French actress, Julie Delpy or Juliette Binoche?
>
>A related observation is: in AI we have mavericks like myself who believe
>they are pretty close to getting a real AI built.
>
>Who are the associated mavericks in neural enhancement? Who believes that
>superhumanly-intelligent modified brains are a few years off if all goes
>well? I don't know any such people, but perhaps I just move in the wrong
>circles...
>
>Of course, just because there are more optimistic AI mavericks than
>neuro-enhancement analogues doesn't prove anything... it could be that for
>some psychological reason, AI attracts more optimistic individualistic
>zealots.

Right.

The ONLY point that I've been trying to make (and I'm getting tired of
trying) is that to be completely realistic, no one can truly estimate when
the first general AI will be completed because we don't know exactly what
that is. It would be like saying we're going to have flight within 20
years pre Wright brothers. The 2010-2030 time frame is based on predicting
computer hardware because we don't have enough information about the
software to make a prediction.



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