From: wetelephant@netzero.net
Date: Sun Feb 02 2003 - 11:35:09 MST
Greetings.... I've been lurking on this list for some time now and
Cosmodelia's recent posts (and their summary dismissal by most on the
list) stir me to post....
What Cosmodelia brings up--about AGI's relating to music and having
feelings (like Jane)--points out what, to me, is a very important
piece of the AGI puzzle, as well as a huge gap in most approaches to
AI: spirit.
Most AGI researchers/activists tend to base their approaches to AGI on
formal/mathematical/logical methods. Whether using methods famous in
the academic literature or fundamentally new and original ones, most
of these methods are rooted deeply in reason. In fact, I don't recall
a single approach to AI which isn't. What I wish to communicate these
logicocentric (term meant endearingly) researchers and activists is
that they're missing the BIG picture. The BIG picture is much larger
than reason--it is spirit--and it's missing in all but a few posts by
Cosmodelia, Ben, Samantha, and a book by Kurzweil.
cosmodelia <pata-negra@wanadoo.es> wrote:
> It is great to know a person working in one of the few projects of AGI love=
> s music, and I guess art.=20
>
> It is something I miss in the transhumanist community at large.=20
But, while the fact that the AI tradition has tended to frame "reason
as everything" is likely to be largely accepted, my next proposition
is not nearly as easy to swallow:
I propose that *any* successful AGI design will be a design, instead
of in reason, *in the technology of spirit*.
Now, by "spirit", I don't mean the "Let's go pray to lunar crystals"
snake oil-kind. I mean a real, all-encompasing, perspective on what it
means to be.
No doubt many AI'ers will claim spirit is irrelevant. No doubt some
will claim that spirit is an emergent property of general
intelligence. But I'm inclined (largely for rational reasons and
partly for intuition) to disagree. Regarding the first point, I don't
believe that spirit is irrelevant. Rather, I believe it is essential
to intelligence. You can't have AGI without human-GI's ability to
percieve spirit. Regarding the second point, I really doubt that
spirit could be an emergent property of AGI. How can the whole emerge
from the part unless the part already contains it?
I'd love to see some serious treatment of this issue.
Hasta que hay corazon en IA,
Damien Diamond
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