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Real Intelligence Can Never Be Matched by the Artificial

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Scary predictions are a thriving business but that does not make them a road map to the future:

In Salvo 46, we looked at the artificial intelligence doomsdays prophesied by media magnates like Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) and Elon Musk (“more dangerous than nukes”).

Media do not, as a rule, examine such claims carefully. There is a market for them, after all; why damage the brand? Debunking thus falls to comparatively obscure sources.

But what a land of opportunity awaits! The AI industry faces major, open, unsolved problems with the dream of replicating human intelligence. Some insights from ID thinkers and sympathizers can help us unpack the breathless claims.

First, what is intelligence? Intelligence enables us to know things. But what does it mean to “know” something?

We know things in the sense that our “selves” are aware of them. When we talk about knowledge, we assume a “knower,” a self to which the information is apparent. Absent a self as the subject of the experience of knowing, knowledge—in the sense in which we usually use the word—does not exist. As neurosurgeon Michael Egnor says, “Your computer doesn’t know a binary string [of code] from a ham sandwich. . . . Your cell phone doesn’t know what you said to your girlfriend this morning.”Denyse O’Leary, “It comes naturally” at Salvo

See also: Stephen Hawking and the AI Apocalypse

Noted astronomer envisions cyborg on Mars

AI machines taking over the world? It’s a cool apocalypse but does that make it more likely?

Software pioneer says general superhuman artificial intelligence is very unlikely The concept, he argues, shows a lack of understanding of the nature of intelligence

and

Machines just don’t do meaning And that, says a computer science prof, is a key reason they won’t compete with humans

12 Replies to “Real Intelligence Can Never Be Matched by the Artificial”

  1. 1
    Ed George says:
    January 5, 2019 at 11:52 am

    Given the falsified claims that humans will never be able to (insert your favourite), I would not be willing to go out on a limb and claim that human like intelligence will never be created artificially.

  2. 2
    ET says:
    January 5, 2019 at 12:31 pm

    While it is true that in some cases the science fiction of yesterday became the science/ reality of today, that is not always the case.

    We don’t even know what makes us what we are. So until we figure that out, I don’t see how we can transfer what we don’t know to a machine such that it understands as we do. 😎

  3. 3
    kairosfocus says:
    January 5, 2019 at 12:48 pm

    EG, what is intelligence? What does it mean to reason (not merely to compute)? What is warrant that grounds knowledge? KF

  4. 4
    Ed George says:
    January 5, 2019 at 1:40 pm

    KF@3, those are the big questions. But if we can answer them, doesn’t that bring us closer to being able to create an AI that is truly intelligent?

  5. 5
    bornagain77 says:
    January 5, 2019 at 1:43 pm

    EG:

    “Get Your Own Dirt!”
    http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-svEu.....2Bdirt.JPG

    EG, before you make the grandiose claim that man will eventually make a machine with genuine human like intelligence, perhaps it is would be best for someone, anyone, to make a ‘simple’ self replicating cell from scratch?

    “We have no idea how the molecules that compose living systems could have been devised such that they would work in concert to fulfill biology’s functions. We have no idea how the basic set of molecules, carbohydrates, nucleic acids, lipids, and proteins, were made and how they could have coupled into the proper sequences, and then transformed into the ordered assemblies until there was the construction of a complex biological system, and eventually to that first cell.
    Nobody has any idea how this was done when using our commonly understood mechanisms of chemical science. Those that say they understand are generally wholly uninformed regarding chemical synthesis. Those that say “Oh, this is well worked out,” they know nothing, nothing about chemical synthesis – Nothing!
    Further cluelessness – From a synthetic chemical perspective, neither I nor any of my colleagues can fathom a prebiotic molecular route to construction of a complex system. We cannot figure out the prebiotic routes to the basic building blocks of life: carbohydrates, nucleic acids, lipids, and proteins. Chemists are collectively bewildered. Hence I say that no chemist understands prebiotic synthesis of the requisite building blocks let alone their assembly into a complex system.
    That’s how clueless we are. I’ve asked all of my colleagues – National Academy members, Nobel Prize winners -I sit with them in offices; nobody understands this. So if your professors say it’s all worked out, your teachers say it’s all worked out, they don’t know what they’re talking about. It is not worked out. You cannot just refer this to somebody else; they don’t know what they’re talking about.”
    James Tour – one of the top ten leading chemists in the world
    The Origin of Life: An Inside Story – March 2016 Lecture with James Tour
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zQXgJ-dXM4

    “All right, now let’s assemble the Dream Team. We’ve got good professors here, so let’s assemble the Dream Team. Let’s further assume that the world’s top 100 synthetic chemists, top 100 biochemists and top 100 evolutionary biologists combined forces into a limitlessly funded Dream Team. The Dream Team has all the carbohydrates, lipids, amino acids and nucleic acids stored in freezers in their laboratories… All of them are in 100% enantiomer purity. [Let’s] even give the team all the reagents they wish, the most advanced laboratories, and the analytical facilities, and complete scientific literature, and synthetic and natural non-living coupling agents. Mobilize the Dream Team to assemble the building blocks into a living system – nothing complex, just a single cell. The members scratch their heads and walk away, frustrated…
    So let’s help the Dream Team out by providing the polymerized forms: polypeptides, all the enzymes they desire, the polysaccharides, DNA and RNA in any sequence they desire, cleanly assembled. The level of sophistication in even the simplest of possible living cells is so chemically complex that we are even more clueless now than with anything discussed regarding prebiotic chemistry or macroevolution. The Dream Team will not know where to start. Moving all this off Earth does not solve the problem, because our physical laws are universal.
    You see the problem for the chemists? Welcome to my world. This is what I’m confronted with, every day.“
    James Tour – leading Chemist – Origin of Life: An Inside Story – 2016

    EG, don’t let your pride in man’s “made in the image of God” accomplishments here on earth blind you to just how infinite God is in his creative power over and above us.

    Can a Computer Think? – Michael Egnor – March 31, 2011
    Excerpt: The Turing test isn’t a test of a computer. Computers can’t take tests, because computers can’t think. The Turing test is a test of us. If a computer “passes” it, we fail it. We fail because of our hubris, a delusion that seems to be something original in us. The Turing test is a test of whether human beings have succumbed to the astonishingly naive hubris that we can create souls. It’s such irony that the first personal computer was an Apple.
    https://evolutionnews.org/2011/03/failing_the_turing_test/

    Quote and verse:

    “When I consider what marvelous things men have understood, what he has inquired into and contrived, I know only too clearly that the human mind is a work of God, and one of the most excellent.” Yet the potential of the human mind “… is separated from the Divine knowledge by an infinite interval.”
    (Poupard, Cardinal Paul. Galileo Galilei. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1983, p. 101.)

    John 1:1-4
    In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.

  6. 6
    Ed George says:
    January 5, 2019 at 2:01 pm

    BA77

    EG, before you make the grandiose claim that man will eventually make a machine with genuine human like intelligence,…

    Why would I make such a claim. All I said was that I would never make the claim that we will never do it.

    But I am willing to go out on a limb and make the claim that we would never “admit” that an AI had true human like intelligence. Our ego would never permit it.

  7. 7
    bornagain77 says:
    January 5, 2019 at 2:02 pm

    6 in one hand, half a dozen in the other.

    Job 38:1 Then the Lord spoke to Job out of the storm. He said:

    2 “Who is this that obscures my plans
    with words without knowledge?
    3 Brace yourself like a man;
    I will question you,
    and you shall answer me.

    4 “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?
    Tell me, if you understand.
    5 Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!
    Who stretched a measuring line across it?
    6 On what were its footings set,
    or who laid its cornerstone—
    7 while the morning stars sang together
    and all the angels shouted for joy?
    8 “Who shut up the sea behind doors
    when it burst forth from the womb,
    9 when I made the clouds its garment
    and wrapped it in thick darkness,
    10 when I fixed limits for it
    and set its doors and bars in place,
    11 when I said, ‘This far you may come and no farther;
    here is where your proud waves halt’?

    Of note to “when I made the clouds its garment
    and wrapped it in thick darkness,”

    How the Stars Were Born
    “our entire cosmos had swelled from a space smaller than an atom to something 100 billion miles across. It was then a seething maelstrom of matter so hot that subatomic particles trying to form into atoms would have been blasted apart instantly and so dense that light couldn’t have traveled more than a short distance before being absorbed. If you could somehow live long enough to look around in such conditions, you would see nothing but brilliant light in all directions.,,,
    At the start of the dark ages, there were no galaxies, no stars, no planets. Even if there had been, we wouldn’t be able to spot them. That’s because hydrogen-gas clouds are nearly opaque to visible light; no ordinary telescope will ever be able to see what happened afterward. Yet somehow the matter that started as a sea of individual atoms managed to transform itself into something more. …
    http://content.time.com/time/m.....-3,00.html

    History of the universe:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronology_of_the_universe#/media/File:CMB_Timeline300_no_WMAP.jpg

  8. 8
    ET says:
    January 5, 2019 at 2:11 pm

    OK, wait- “never say never” is not the same as “it’s going to happen”.

    I will never say that the Cleveland Browns (or whatever loser team) will never win a Super Bowl. And I will definitely never say they are going to win one.

    If there is one thing we are learning is that “Eureka” moments happen. We are an unpredictable lot.

  9. 9
    Ed George says:
    January 5, 2019 at 2:17 pm

    ET

    If there is one thing we are learning is that “Eureka” moments happen. We are an unpredictable lot.

    Agreed.

  10. 10
  11. 11
    Ed George says:
    January 5, 2019 at 2:31 pm

    BA77@10, nice concise response. Thank you. 🙂

  12. 12
    kairosfocus says:
    January 5, 2019 at 2:39 pm

    EG, we sometimes get carried away by the results of automated computation and cybernetic controls. We forget that they are programmed and organised, functioning in a GIGO-controlled mechanical fashion. They have in them the functionality built in and programmed in, modified by blind chance contingencies. They are blindly mechanical, processing digitally coded or analogue signals without insight, complex creativity, actual understanding. If badly set up, they will blindly do nonsense until something goes crash. Active, insightful, creative, innovative, intuitive, judging, conscious, conscience-guided intelligence is categorically different from that. KF

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