Artificial Intuition
Convergence08 was a great conference with many interesting people and ideas. Thankfully the number of crackpots was very low, and even the “new age” mysticism stuff was at a minimum. Instead I found hundreds of authors, doctors, biologists, programmers, engineers, physicists, and more clear thinking folks all interested in how the new technologies will shape our world in ways more profound than we have ever experienced before.
My favorite insights came from Monica Anderson’s presentation on her approach to AI programming, which she called “Artificial Intuition“. Unlike all other approaches to AI I’m familiar with Anderson uses biological evolution as her main analogs for conceptualizing human intelligence. I see this approach as almost a *given* if you have a good understanding of human thought, but it’s actually not a popular conceptual framework at all.
It has always surprised me how poorly many computer programmers understand even rudimentary biological concepts such as the underlying simplicity of the human neocortex and the basic principles of evolution which I’d argue emphatically have defined *every single aspect* of our human intelligence over a slow and clumsy, hit and miss process operating over millions of years. I think programmers tend to focus on mathematics and rule systems which are great modelling systems but probably a very poor analog for intelligence. This focus has in many ways poisoned the well of understanding about what humans and other animals do when they … think… which I continue to maintain is “not all that special”.
….. more on this later over at Technology Report …..
Mashup Camp and Convergence08
Looking forward to two upcoming conferences - Mashup Camp and the very first Convergence 08 conference.
Mashup Camps have been coming to Mountain View for over two years, bringing great startups for their product launches as well as lively discussions about innovations and new products to help the mashup community. There also will be mashup experts from Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Amazon, and many more key players. Programmable Web has the best coverage of the Mashup topic.
Convergence will have even more provocative content as the first conference to address the intersection of four technologies likely to shape the world in extraordinary ways: Nanotechnology, Biological technologies (gene splicing, stem cells, DNS mapping, life extension) , Information technologies (internet and computing) and Cognitive technologies. This last would, I think, broadly include everything from brain enhancing drugs and devices to artificial intelligence. AI is the most exciting category for me, and I remain convinced that we’ll see conscious computers within about 20 years - hopefully and very possibly less. Conscious computing is likely to change the entire planetary game to such a degree it’s nearly impossible to predict what will happen *after that*, which is one of the issues that will be discussed at the conference.
My main concern is that proponents and predictions keep things real and this does not become a sort of brainstorming session for half-baked ideas and ideologies.
After millions of years of very slow biological evolution we’ve now entered a new age where technology is likely to eclipse most and probably all of our human abilities. Even that fairly obvious idea - which simply is an extension of current developments - leaves many people skeptical, cold to the idea, or even antagonistic about the changes that are coming. Like it or not … we are all in this together and it’s best to keep it that way as much as possible.
Intel: Computers Win by 2050
Intel’s Chief recently explored some of the innovations that are shaping technology, and suggested that computers will surpass humans in intelligence by 2050. Although I think that is a pessimistic time frame, it is encouraging to see the notion of very intelligent and/or conscious computers discussed in the mainstream company news:
http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/20080821comp.htm?iid=pr1_releasepri_20080821m
Rat Brained Robot
This amazing project is using rat brain neurons to control robots. Like other projects of its kind, they are finding that the neurons almost immediately seek interconnection - in some ways they appear to be pre-programmed (aka evolutionarily designed) to assemble into more advanced forms.
Unfortunately for misguided and shortsighted ethical reasons reasearches are not using human neurons, but as they note here that’s not a huge problem because our human brain cells have a lot in common with rats cells - or other vertebrates for that matter.
As Kevin Warwick, the project architect who one might call something of an “Dr A.I. Frankenstein”, notes:
…. rats brain cells are not a bad stand-in: much of the difference between rodent and human intelligence, speculates Warwick, could be attributed to quantity not quality.
Thanks to Glenn for the tip!
Google: A Trillion URLs and counting
The Google blog notes how huge the web is now, with Google indexing over a trillion unique URLs. As they note in the article the actual number of indexable URLs is, in one sense, infinite. For example calendar pages will automatically appear as you scroll through many applications, continuing through the years until..the singularity and beyond. Of course Google does not index many of these “empty” URLs or even a lot of junk or redundant content, so the true number of real, unique URLs is actually well above a Trillion.
I think a fun question is this: What will the information landscape look like in, say, 20 years when we should have the ability to pour *everything* from the past and the present online? Questions might take a different form if we had access to every reference on a topic that has ever been produced. Algorithms will be used to sort through the oceans of content much as Google does now, but with far more precision and better comprehension of the whole mess.
The aliens are out there, but they have not landed
Robert Roswell III
Uncle Bob?
You’ve lost some weight!
Given the prevalence of planets, water, and our own observations in our solar system, I think there is a near certainty (99%+ likelihood) that there is plenty of intelligent life in the universe.
In fact I’d guess the universe is *teeming* with life - at least billions of planets with intelligent life and probably hundreds of billions.
If you simply assume there is a *single planet with intelligent life* in each of the 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe it suggests we have a *lot* of company. Although we only have a single data point (= ourselves), it seems we should also assume that we are about in the median range of the intelligent life spectrum, meaning that about half of the life in the universe is smarter than us and half is …. dumber.
But I would assert that Aliens probably wouldn’t bother to visit earth because we are at the edge of the galaxy and we are probably not very interesting once you have advanced technologies that can simulate almost all aspects of reality. What would they come here looking for?
Also, they would likely not visit un organic “bodies”, rather as automated devices. The idea that Aliens visit earth, interact with people and thus appear not to have a “no interference” policy, and then leave without saying official “hello” or making their presence broadly known is very questionable.
If they have a no interference policy we’d never detect them. On the other hand if they allow some interaction why would they probe a few lonely lumberjacks deep in the woods and then leave? In the case of the Roswell incident you seriously think they have technology that allows an organic being to travel *quadrillions of miles* over a likely period of *millions of years* only to run out of gas and crash?
Whoops, ET didn’t have a quarter to phone home for a tow - BAM !
I think there’s a tiny possibility we’ve been visited, but a much higher one that people imagine things and use silly, obvious hoax stuff to spur interest.
Visits and Alien existence are totally different issues. Of course Aliens are very, very, very likely to exist but there is pretty much zero credible evidence they ever come here.
The technology to travel here by organic beings would be incredibly advanced. If they wanted to “hide” they would have no trouble hiding and erasing all evidence we have of their visits. If they wanted us to know they were out there they could take over the network and simply announce their presence. Niether of those happen. Instead, we have thousands of obviously bogus reports and a handful of seemingly credible people who have odd experiences they think come from Aliens. Whenever I look into these they are incredibly weak. No quality photos, no souvenirs, no Alien DNA or probes left in bodies. You have to believe the Aliens do an incredible cleanup job but then leave sloppy, inconclusive pieces of evidence around in a haphazard way. Sure, it’s possible those little items are evidence of alien visits but reason suggests that instead we are seeing yet another example of … mistaken impressions.
You can think the tiny number of credible people misinterpreted things as we humans are prone to do, or you can believe the Aliens allowed those guys to interact with them and only them.
But hey, maybe distinguished astronaut Edgar Mitchell, who believes the Government is covering up the Alien visits, is right: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Mitchell
Computer Reads Minds, World Yawns
One of the fun parts of hanging out in the technology world is getting a good sense of the next big thing before folks really tune into how significant the next big thing will be. I remember about 12 years back - in the early days of the commercial internet - when it became clear to me that a huge shift was happening that would send virtually everybody online. No amount of explaining or describing or showing people cool stuff could get most people to understand the massive transition they were about to experience. As with so many technological innovations, the commercial internet had to be experienced by people at their own pace - often a painfully slow pace if you were watching this happen. Few who loudly proclaimed their luddite pride ten years ago would admit this today - most are using email and internet, often with the same enthusiasm as the relatively small number of super early adopters in the tech and commercial communities who helped make it all happen.
I did want to note why I’m talking about “commercial” internet vs “internet”. Contrary to what is often claimed the internet is a pretty old structure, begun by the military after WWII and then adopted by academia where it pretty munch languished for about 30 years. I would argue that cheap computing and ISP and online services (thank you Prodigy, Compuserve, AOL, more) then combined with graphical browsing (thank you Marc Andreessen and Mosaic friends) to create the backbone of the current “commercial internet” that has exploded onto the global scene as the key communication medium of all time.
So, what is the *next* big thing? Why, conscious computing of course! And it’s not just *big* like the internet. It’s super duper gigantic and earth shaking, and it’s coming soon to a planet very near us all. Experts disagree about *when* conscious computing will happen, though I think very few who are paying much attention would suggest we won’t have it within 50 years. However many experts, and I think the body of current projects such as Blue Brain, suggest that we will have conscious computers that exceed human intelligence within 20 years and perhaps even 10. What happens *after* a machine becomes conscious is quite a new thought ballgame and it is very hard to speculate about how that machine will evolve and perhaps more importantly how they will view other machines and …. us. Will the conscious machines get smarter slowly or almost explosively fast, surpassing all of humanity within months or even minutes of first attaining consciousness?
A simple way of understanding what many AI researchers are talking about in this respect is to simply recognize that the conscious machine is likely to be “recursively self improving” which means it will be able to build and/or program better versions of itself soon after consciousness, probably in something analogous to the way we humans improve our intellects and skills but much, much faster. Humans pull this off as well. I’m proud to say my wife and I have managed to create and program two impressive organic intellects who are now able to program themselves and we love them dearly. However we were constrained by human organic evolution, so took us many years to do this. Artificial intellects will likely be able to reproduce quite a bit faster and more effectively (no offense to any of you expectant parents intended).
Ironically for me, several of my favorite programming experts do not seem to conscious computing as something we can expect to happen anytime soon. I’ve puzzled over this because they certainly know the mechanics better than I, but I remain convinced that they are putting too much faith - sometimes literally - into the idea that humans are somehow … fundamentally different …. from other physical manifestations of the world. I’m confident we are not all that different, and in that light consciousness is probably best viewed more as a sort of tangential aspect of our lives than a key component.
And speaking of tangents, this whole post was going to be about this Carnagie Mellon AI project where the computer was reading people’s minds. Simple words, yes, but still a rudimentary form of mind reading based on EEG output: http://www.cmu.edu/news/archive/2008/May/may29_brainmeaning.shtml
IEEE Magazine on the Singularity
Get ready for a *lot* more talk about the technological singularity. IEEE Magazine has several articles this month about what many believe will be the most profound change in the history of humans:
Technology mimics Telepathy in new device
A new device that allows communication without speech is …. remarkable!
http://news.tigerdirect.com/2008/03/13/voiceless-phone-call-uses-nerve-signals-to-mimic-telepathy/
Ramona and Jenn
At least her grammer stays intact, and she’s pretty too!
You Asked: hello jenn
User: Joe
User: how old are you?
Ramona: Do you want me to tell you about it? I don’t want to ruin the ending for you.
Ramona: I thought it was great. It is about this computer that helps the colonists on the moon win their freedom from the authority on earth.
Ramona: You should read it.
Ramona: To you Joe?
User: yes
User: Yes
Ramona: I understand it very well.
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