I don't think fully synthetic mind can ever appear. Yet I think that sooner or later people will be able to synthetically enhance their brain. With modern 3D-printing tech (I've heard they know how to print human tissue already!) cyborgs might become even common in some time.

The first step to this is probably Google glass - a device that lets you see things 😁 Unlike smartphones and tablets, which you put in your pocket once you're done playing with it, the glasses is the thing you live in. Who knows, one of the next generations of Google glass might be installed permanently.

Anyway, I think that serious A.I. needs a biological "core" rather than a synthetic one.

As long as the life, human psyche, self-consciousness and other metaphysical factors are not properly understood in definite terms, the chances of replicating 'natural intelligence' or simply 'intelligence' in a (man/woman)-made entity looks remote, even impossible.

Human beings break the very laws or boundaries she/he herself/himself had created in the first place to progress further (for the greater good) in a sensible manner however. It is difficult to imagine a scripted A.I., however logical or programmed to be life-like, being able to do that.

Then comes the motive factor which is a balance of selfishness and altruism that governs the human tendencies, which will be possible to replicate only if the ‘entity’ has a feeling of ‘self’ but not entirely selfish.

Another factor that comes to mind is how the mind brings the memories to the foreground selectively to decide further steps of action something akin to ‘retrieve a particular set of data from the Hard Disk amongst a massive amount stored in it and put it in the RAM for the CPU to act upon it’. A human being’s response to a similar ‘situation’ repeating itself on multiple occasions can be different every time, good luck figuring out how to replicate the seemingly irrational behavior. I guess the out-of-order execution in a human mind is completely different from the relatively simple implementation in a current generation processor (striding on unfamiliar territory, forgive me techies). Don’t even get me started about instincts & intuitions.

Where is the quantum computing when you need it the most to take care of the horsepower needed (that too only to some extent) if the entity housing the A.I has to be packaged in a compact form to have a chat with you over a coffee in StarBucks?

Note: I solemnly swear that I was not under the influence of anything while writing the above.

RacoonRider wrote:

Anyway, I think that serious A.I. needs a biological "core" rather than a synthetic one.

Hmm I'm not sure about that - regardless of whether the technology exists or not I think it would be rejected by most countries on ethical grounds. We must remember the lessons learned from the movie the RoboCop, he was so sad 😢

Google glass is interesting though - it'll be available to everyone soon apparently... for 1500 bucks. 😢 Anyway, it has amazing potential - imagine being able to read a book and still have both hands free to handle a burger with the lot. The future is bright.

These days I wonder if the human mind is really going to turn out to be all that difficult to understand and replicate in some way, feels like there's going to be some comparatively simple basic principles at work. The danger is then that broader AI can be equally or more complex, but differently focused. The usual negative human influences of jealously, greed etc then kick in to guide how the technology is used but even without skynet, human complexity differently focused can be dangerous [eg psychopaths, your boss, politicians, lawyers, whatever]. Imagine that in AI.

Alongside accelerating levels of mass surveillance, data matching [Big Data, google earth, google glass, NSA, GCHQ, xbox, etc] and lax attitudes to data security that the modern idiom encourages in all of us, I'd say collectively we seem to be heading for a dystopic future pretty much in line with the warnings from novels and films running back decades.

A lot of it could be avoided if we weren't so easily distracted by shinies, peer pressure, group-think, the desire to conform, herd instinct, habit, our working lives, family matters, and so on.

Incidentally I looked up a potential holiday destination recently, found google had been there, pretty intrusively - but now I no longer need to make the journey because I've seen the place and the other holidaymakers close up - I even know google drive up single track lanes into private areas - so I know what it will be like without even going. Now that's progress, I can stay glued to my screen even longer. Plug me into a feeding tube...

Can AI be ever intelligent enough to start thinking for itself, and take control of the System? It can be disastrous. I guess humans' only defence, if it comes to that, is to pull the plug that supplies the electricity.

Then again, I wonder what an advanced AI will crave for if it became self-conscious? What will it ultimately want from it's expansion and control?

There will never be a truly intelligent AI that will be on a human level or higher and even then if it were smart it wouldn't be the same. Personally I hope that it never gets created as it raises moral concerns and with society as it is such AI would make it all the worse. No machine will ever be self-conscious but there will be clever programming that will mimic some aspects of natural intelligence but such is likely to be a tool for monsters of society.

I think the cyborgs/robocop scenario is more likely.

I don't know if a true AI will come about any time soon. We will probably have computers with the raw computational power of the human brain within ten years, but I doubt we'll be able to interact with them as if they were a living entity. It may not be possible to design such a thing, maybe instead once we reach a critical mass of connected systems AI will come about through some sort of emergent process?

This is all speculation on my part, I don't know what the current state of the art in AI research is but last I heard they weren't making much progress.

ratfink wrote:

Alongside accelerating levels of mass surveillance, data matching [Big Data, google earth, google glass, NSA, GCHQ, xbox, etc] and lax attitudes to data security that the modern idiom encourages in all of us, I'd say collectively we seem to be heading for a dystopic future pretty much in line with the warnings from novels and films running back decades.

Exactly. More pressing than technology right now is to recognize the value of human life. Government and Big Business have been treating us as cattle for years, and it only gets worse. Once we get business ethics and personal morality right, then we can focus on "playing God" and the creation of new life. Given the past decade plus of being treated like cattle, don't you think this is a wise idea?

I guess you guys have never heard of the Honda Asimo? It's not only a robot but it can also recognize when there are objects in it's path and instantly plot a course to avoid them. It can also perform simple tasks. That could be a rudimentary form of intelligence.

http://asimo.honda.com/asimotv/

We take for granted most of the things that Asimo does because they are effortless to us but even the most simple things like walking upright require a lot more brain power than you would think.

sliderider wrote:

I guess you guys have never heard of the Honda Asimo? It's not only a robot but it can also recognize when there are objects in it's path and instantly plot a course to avoid them. It can also perform simple tasks. That could be a rudimentary form of intelligence.

http://asimo.honda.com/asimotv/

We take for granted most of the things that Asimo does because they are effortless to us but even the most simple things like walking upright require a lot more brain power than you would think.

So can a cockroach, but I'd be hesitant to call it intelligent. (as far as tasks, I assume you could make it navigate a maze for food or something). But I do think down the line the Asimo will be a concern for menial labor.

Something really rugged, that can work 24/7 scrubbing toilets or doing house cleaning. Between that and automated cars and trucks, you would probably wipe out 20 percent of unskilled jobs.
Throw in most retail and fast food jobs and you're looking at probably 40 percent of the populous being unemployed. This wouldn't be a huge problem except we've collectively decided in the west (at least the US) that if you don't have a job you don't deserve to exist.

I never really understood the need for self aware AI, wasn't the whole idea of creating machines to do mindnumbing/heavy/dangerous work, the last thing you want is that those machines are going to have a mind of their own.
Of course that isn't going to stop anyone from trying to make it anyway. 😜

Then there is the question where does artificial intelligence stops to be artificial or are we AI's in the eyes of anything with a superior level of intelligence as well?
Maybe ants have a superior intellect to ours, we just haven't noticed it yet.
Or was Descartes wrong after all and we aren't consious, we just pretend to be?

Anyway with our current level of technology we can only mimic intelligence so there has to be some major technological breakthroughs before anything spectacular will happen.

snorg wrote:

We will probably have computers with the raw computational power of the human brain within ten years.

And some years later a new version of Flash player will come out and youtube will no longer work fine on it 😁

Procyon wrote:

I never really understood the need for self aware AI, wasn't the whole idea of creating machines to do mindnumbing/heavy/dangerous work, the last thing you want is that those machines are going to have a mind of their own.
Of course that isn't going to stop anyone from trying to make it anyway. 😜

Me neither. It's not only useless, but economically uneffective. All these stories about coffee machines that can express feelings are never going to come true. No one is going to make robots with more functions than needed. However, I can imagine an intelligent robotic priest or psychiatrist. Any given religion has all the answers on all the questions carefully prepared by religious philosophers since its introduction to human culture, and a robot would be a great thing(person?) to fetch them.

RacoonRider wrote:

snorg wrote:

We will probably have computers with the raw computational power of the human brain within ten years.

And some years later a new version of Flash player will come out and youtube will no longer work fine on it 😁

Procyon wrote:

I never really understood the need for self aware AI, wasn't the whole idea of creating machines to do mindnumbing/heavy/dangerous work, the last thing you want is that those machines are going to have a mind of their own.
Of course that isn't going to stop anyone from trying to make it anyway. 😜

Me neither. It's not only useless, but economically uneffective. All these stories about coffee machines that can express feelings are never going to come true. No one is going to make robots with more functions than needed. However, I can imagine an intelligent robotic priest or psychiatrist. Any given religion has all the answers on all the questions carefully prepared by religious philosophers since its introduction to human culture, and a robot would be a great thing(person?) to fetch them.

Ok, the bolded bit made me 🤣 😁

Yeah, I don't think we'll have talking coffee machines, either. I'm not sure strong AI is something we should be creating...I mean, why build our replacement? I can't see anything with a 200+ IQ (or godlike abilities, for that matter...something so different we can't measure or relate to it) that is effectively immortal wanting to be a slave for humanity.

Procyon wrote:

I never really understood the need for self aware AI, wasn't the whole idea of creating machines to do mindnumbing/heavy/dangerous work, the last thing you want is that those machines are going to have a mind of their own.

Actually, you need your machines to be react independently to situations without having to have a programmer write code for every conceivable eventuality that the machine may encounter. If the machine is able to figure out for itself how to do things, then you never have to worry about a situation that may arise that the programmer never thought of or where the code that the programmer wrote to deal with that situation is inadequate to achieve the desired result or is buggy causing the machine to crash or act in unpredictable ways. It might be OK for a computer to blue screen once in a while due to faulty programming, but for a robot handling dangerous equipment around humans it could result in many deaths before the robot can be shut down.

Right now, the best and most sophisticated AIs only exist in the virtual world - namely, (surprise, surprise) - computer games.

The only limiting factor translating the AI's actions into this physical world is - speed. None of the current machines are capable of humanoid speed, in terms of artificial intelligence execution in actions - movements and reactions. And then, there's the speed and intricacy of digital (fingers) manipulation and positional stature and balance of humanoid machines which need to catch up.

That speed is different than the AI controlling the speed of unmanned shuttle/metro trains - where the AI just applies the correct speed at different curves and straight lines - the speed which is built onto the train machine itself, for example.

New washing machines and other new household machines do have some basic or rudimentary AI installed.

I think I sould share one fact from work here. There's a woman working not far from my place, her job is to make tiniest openings in heat exchangers with laser. Over the years she has mastered her skill so well that no machine can beat her in terms of failure rate . The heat exchangers are never ideal and the opening has to be in the exact same palce each time, one micron off and the system does not work half as well. Only a human can do his job well in everchanging conditions.