Re: META: Killthread; (Re: Edge.org: Jaron Lanier)

From: Eugen Leitl (eugen@leitl.org)
Date: Sat Nov 29 2003 - 10:57:42 MST


On Sat, Nov 29, 2003 at 06:59:03AM -0800, Tommy McCabe wrote:

> Technology, at least under my definition, covers a
> very wide range of topics, and simply lumping

No one is talking about "technology". That's
a mild straw man you got there. We're talking
about computation, though.

Is computation irrelevant to intelligence, whether
natural or artificial? That'd be sure novel for sl4@.

> something in with "technology" doesn't make it
> relevant to SL4. IBM, Intel, AMD, etc., are doing a
> very nice job of making chips, and unless AI somehow

How do you know that? I happen to disagree vehemently.
The only kind of unquestionable progress there is affordable integration
density. That's the only straight line on the semi log
plot, with about a decade yet to go. It is not obvious what will
happen after that. That alone is a sufficiently interesting
result to not ignore the physical layer.

> requires either specialized types of hardware, or very

Absolutely.

> thorough knowledge of the hardware it is being

Absolutely.

> programmed on, there is no need to waste time

If both of your premises weren't wrong, I'd
be agreeing with your conclusion.

> discussing it. If it isn't broken, don't fix it, and
> don't spend valuable time discussing it. Quote from
> Staring into the Singularity- "Ever since the late
> 90's, the Singularity has been only a problem of

I'm completely immune to quotes. As long as you can
show me that hardware is not a problem, and more and
better hardware isn't a very powerful tool to circumvent
this software (the separation between software and
hardware is a yet another sterile meme of the complex
we started this discussion with) you could be as
well quoting from Mao's Little Red Book.

> software." The hardware companies can handle the
> problem of making fast chips- but we need the code to

No, they can't. That's the whole point of this discussion.
Johnny can't make fast chips, and if you want AI, you better
understand why.

> make the chips become a Friendly Seed AI. And that's
> where SIAI comes in.

I'm not feeling like joining the F issue before the
hardware and the software part isn't addressed.

Unless, of course, that's off-topic for this list.
It it is so, this list is about plucking virtual
lint from our nonexisting navels.

-- Eugen* Leitl leitl
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