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Evolution proves that algorithms can solve any problem: Difference between revisions
Evolution proves that algorithms can solve any problem (view source)
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===Not “can’t”. ''Aren’t''.=== | ===Not “can’t”. ''Aren’t''.=== | ||
It is not that algorithms ''cannot'' in principle generate general intelligence — though the “[[Darwin’s dangerous idea]]” arguments ''are'' a bit hand-wavy — but that the particular ones you find in [[artificial intelligence]] as it is currently developing — and, no, it isn’t “evolving”, which is kind of the point — ''won’t''. Not just ''any'' [[algorithm]] is capable of self-awareness — a good thing, or you would spend more time in meaningful communication with your carrot cake than is necessarily healthy. They are a special kind of algorithm. Some folks have some ideas about what their special qualities may be ({{author|Douglas Hofstadter}} thinks the key may be [[Reflexive proposition|recursivity]])<ref>{{br|I am a Strange Loop}}.</ref> | It is not that algorithms ''cannot'' in principle generate general intelligence — though the “[[Darwin’s dangerous idea]]” arguments ''are'' a bit hand-wavy — but that the particular ones you find in [[artificial intelligence]] as it is currently developing — and, no, it isn’t “evolving”, which is kind of the point — ''won’t''. Not just ''any'' [[algorithm]] is capable of self-awareness — a good thing, or you would spend more time in meaningful communication with your carrot cake than is necessarily healthy. They are a special kind of algorithm. Some folks have some ideas about what their special qualities may be ({{author|Douglas Hofstadter}} thinks the key may be [[Reflexive proposition|recursivity]]).<ref>{{br|I am a Strange Loop}}.</ref> | ||
Accepting for a moment that the [[evolution by natural selection]] algorithm ''can'' generate intelligence, consider how staggeringly ''slow'', ''destructive'' and ''wasteful'' it is. | Accepting for a moment that the [[evolution by natural selection]] algorithm ''can'' generate intelligence, consider how staggeringly ''slow'', ''destructive'' and ''wasteful'' it is. | ||
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It is hard to see a dematerialized computer, operating in a virtual space, having to solve that same problem, other than at the quantum level (it need hardly be said that quantum elements are not the same as machine consciousness: that would be a reductionism too far). | It is hard to see a dematerialized computer, operating in a virtual space, having to solve that same problem, other than at the quantum level (it need hardly be said that quantum elements are not the same as machine consciousness: that would be a reductionism too far). | ||
Machines are more like {{author|Arthur C. Clarke}}’s sentinels, watching dissociatively. They purport to describe the world as it is without affecting it: they monitor, measure, observe, process and give back but not to themselves, and not for themselves. To do that would be to colour their observations about human interaction, which would be to defeat their commercial purpose. Machines were developed to execute operations, quickly, without error. There is no room for error, judgment, variation or interpretation. Machines are designed not to narratise. They process symbols in mechanical operations. They do not read. | Machines are more like {{author|Arthur C. Clarke}}’s sentinels, watching dissociatively. They purport to describe the world as it is without affecting it: they monitor, measure, observe, process and give back but not to themselves, and not for themselves. To do that would be to colour their observations about human interaction, which would be to defeat their commercial purpose. Machines were developed to execute operations, quickly, without error. There is no room for error, judgment, variation or interpretation. Machines are designed ''not'' to narratise. They process symbols in mechanical operations. They do not read. | ||
{{Author|Kazuo Ishiguro}}’s {{br|Klara and the Sun}}, which I happened to read straight after {{br|The Wood Age}}, makes the same point through the android’s unusual segmented spatial perception. It prompts the question: to what extent is consciousness a function of our own peculiar evolved perceptive apparatus? It seems to me it must be. When we design artificial intelligence with a blank slate, and especially if we come at it from a Behaviourist [[machine learning]] angle, which cannot have been the route to consciousness of human evolution, deprecating as it does the notion of an inner consciousness altogether, we would make different design choices, arrive at functional intelligence different way and these might lead to profoundly shifted articulations of ”consciousness”, if indeed any kind of consciousness emerges at all. | {{Author|Kazuo Ishiguro}}’s {{br|Klara and the Sun}}, which I happened to read straight after {{br|The Wood Age}}, makes the same point through the android’s unusual segmented spatial perception. It prompts the question: to what extent is consciousness a function of our own peculiar evolved perceptive apparatus? It seems to me it must be. When we design artificial intelligence with a blank slate, and especially if we come at it from a Behaviourist [[machine learning]] angle, which cannot have been the route to consciousness of human evolution, deprecating as it does the notion of an inner consciousness altogether, we would make different design choices, arrive at functional intelligence different way and these might lead to profoundly shifted articulations of ”consciousness”, if indeed any kind of consciousness emerges at all. | ||