Category Archives: Artificial Intelligence

The Mind of the Machine … is you?

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I think I like Kurzweil’s optimistic AI scenarios more than this version of reality
that posits we are all computer simulations run by a more advanced intellect which itself may be a computer simulation.

This sounds fanciful, but I’d suggest that this type of philosophical speculation is a lot more pragmatic and reasonable than the Jean Paul Sartre silliness I studied in Philosophy classes back in the 1980’s.

Kurzweil’s very reasonable suggestion is that we’ll soon have conscious, very intelligent computers. He also suggests that these machines will quickly lead to a sort of cosmic explosion of intellect that would easily be capable of massive “simulations” of intelligent life. What if this already has happened? One thing that bugs me about Kurzweil’s ideas is that it seems totally unreasonable to suggest that our feeble earth / human technologies will be the first to make this jump to massive cosmic intelligence. The idea that we’d be the first to do this seems very unreasonable to me given the age of the universe. Our universe has been around for about 15 billion years and we are not all that amazing. I’d think many intelligent creatures would have come around by now. If Kurzweil is right it seems at least a few of these would have made the leap to the singularity-style intellects.

How to reconcile these things? My gut feeling is that we really are physical, evolutionarily designed, meat and potato biological beings who have a capacity to think and reflect that is a product of the massive processing power of the bunches of neocortical columns and synaptic firing that goes on in our brains. Kurzweil is right about the rise of intelligent machines – coming soon to a virtual theater near all of us – but he’s wrong about the exploding cosmic intellect. There will be limitations – probably based on physical laws of our universe relating to speed of light and other constraints – that will prevent us from becoming “too big”. This explains why we’ve (probably) had no contact with other intelligent beings – we are just too far away and unfortunately we live at the edge of our galaxy where presumably a lot fewer intelligences exist than nearer the center.

Take two Resveratrols and call me in the morning ?

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Noting the number of scams and bogus claims in the nutritional supplement biz I’m always reluctant to accept claims of new “wonder supplements”. However Resveratrol as a “life extension” really looks promising and seems to hold up to scrutiny the more it is tested. 2006 tests on mice prolonged their life significantly, and although human and mice biology differ it’s reasonable to assume we fellow vertebrates have a lot in common. The resveratrol appears to offer benefits related to caloric restriction which is well documented as a way to extend the life of mice. Unfortunately we humans, especially meat and potato guys like me, don’t like caloric restriction.

I’m going to break my normal rule of thinking supplements are not worth the cost and trouble and start taking this supplement.     I’m also going to hope Ray Kurzweil is right that if you can make it to 2040 ….. you’ve made it to eternity due to the coming explosion of AI merging with our biological selves.

Got AI?

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If you are not familiar with the ideas of futurist Ray Kurzweil you should read some of his rather remarkable but reasonable notions of how artificial intelligence will pan out over the next few decades.   In short Kurzweil sees an explosion of artificial intellectual capability changing our culture in ways we can’t even imagine yet.

We were pondering the intersection of humans and technology during our 5 days of camping with friends on the Oregon Coast at Honeyman State Park.    It’s a simply beautiful park with huge dunes, 2 pretty lakes, and nice campsites.

Transhumans of the world … unite!

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The Transhumanist Association gathered last month in Chicago to discuss issues relating to the idea that humans are in the process of evolving from organic beings to a sort of machine/organic hybridized animal that will have spectacular mental abilities and will effectively attain immortality when Artificial Intelligence routines are sufficiently developed.

Sound a bit crazy to you? In my opinion this techno-hybridization of our species is already happening, and the process of integrating biology and technology has been going on pretty much since the beginning of tool use by primates. Corneal transplants and lasik surgery, for example, are fairly significant modifications and enhancements to our “natural”capabilities. Artificial organs even more so. Use a computer lately? This is just another of many ways we use technology as an interface between our human intellect and non-human helping devices.

Sure it’s another step forward to have our brains getting downloaded or to have neurons integrated with chips (lots of neat experiments are going on with this organic / silicon stuff now), but it’s not to be feared. Rather we should embrace the potential here to solve many of the most pressing problems of the world – problems like global poverty, warfare, and health that we often fail to adequately address, let alone solve.

Here’s a nice article about the Transhumanist conference

Kurzweil’s newsletter noted that one of the provocative notions at the conference, from Sirius Satellite founder Martine Rothblatt

… The idea is that people should be creating digital mindfiles throughout their
lives that could be used to revive them by means of mindware when
sufficiently strong artificial intelligence is developed …

Wow, how’s THAT for an Attention based economy? More like an Attention based Jean Paul Sartre “Being and Nothingness” philosophizing extravaganza. Cool. Count me in.

Robot Rats … acting smarter every day

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This set of experiments in the UK is helping robotic scientists create robot rats that behave a lot like real ones. It’s neat to think that this will eventually be able to use IBM’s rat brain research and make AI rat intelligences (and eventually people intelligences) that think just like the real thing. I just hope I live to see (and chat with) the human AI computers/robots.   No offense to the rat version though: “Wow, look at that freaking piece of old CHEESE!”

As AI research evolves I think it will become very clear that there is no “secret magic sauce” to animal intellect in general or to our human intellects in particular. Much of what people think makes us very special is simply due to confusing our innate human intellectual abilities (which are only modestly impressive) with the benefits of technologies that we have developed over years of learning and hundreds of years of societal evolution. Yes these technologies are a product of our collective human effort and intelligence, but it is not reasonable to assert that these are an indication of some vast level of intellectual superiority over dogs, cats, or fleas.

Rather it seems more likely that most human societies, over the past few thousand years, reached a technological tipping point where the technologies have allowed spectacular improvements in how effectively we can process information, food, shelter, transportation, etc.

Black Holes = Worm Holes = Dimensional portals to new universe? Maybe….

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You’ve got to love it when highly respectable, real science collides with science fiction as in this recent study suggesting that black holes may actually be worm holes that connect our universe to others.

This appears to be consistent with the provocative ideas in string cosmology that suggest the possibility of many parallel universes existing together without much interaction between them. Some string theorists think that gravity – a very weak force in terms of the universe – may represent a force that exists simultaneously in several universes and thus could possibly be used to communicate between them.

It’s very hard to wrap your head around ideas relating to dimensions in space that are not what we commonly experience as the three physical dimensions plus time, but these extra dimensions are becoming a key part of the way physicists describe the underpinnings of the universe. Perhams more importantly, they are … fun and educational!

Of Mice and Men … and mouses brains

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IBM has just simulated half of a mouse brain on a supercomputer. The significance of this research cannot be overestimated, as projects like this are very likely to lead to the next state in human evolution itself – human-like artificial intelligence. This does not appear to be directly part of the similar IBM Blue Brain Project, an incredible and ambitious attempt to reverse engineer a human brain.

I think there is less popular interest in these projects than one would expect because for many it’s painful or difficult to accept that all the things we hold very dear – most notable our consciousnesses and our intelligence, will soon be duplicated electronically and probably surpass us in many respects. I’m very optimistic about this state of affairs because I think we do a fairly lousy job of managing resources and providing for our individual and collective welfare. Computers already play a role in managing stuff and as they become conscious it’s very likely they’ll be able to allocate resources far more effectively. Hopefully this will usher in a new era of prosperity for all, though my guess is that it will take humans at least a few generations to start “trusting” the excellent advice we’ll get from the electronic intellectual sector.

Also frustrating to some is to come to grips with the rather insignificant, but interesting, role we play in the cosmic scheme of things. Merging with machines offers a lot of potential to transcend our feeble human intellects and physical limitations, but I suspect this will also cause some consternation, especially with those who prefer 12th century sensibilities.

But technology will prevail and hopefully we humans will have the insight and fortitude to let computers rise to the thing they’ll be able to do much better than we ever will:

Think.

Microsoft LIVEs!

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Paul Graham is ridiculously suggesting that “Microsoft is Dead“.

I remember back in the 90’s when many where suggesting how IBM was dead, and how obvious it was that the Apples and Microsofts and clever upstarts would make IBM obsolete.

As this chart shows IBM has thrived since that time, and though they hardly make the news much anymore it’s very important to note that IBM is a bigger company (measured by capitalization) than the following “big winners”: Google, Apple, Yahoo.

Also notable is the fact that what is probably the best search algorithm in the world belongs to … IBM. It’s called “WebFountain”. It’s not scalable and therefore not an alternative to Google at this time, but one can’t even count IBM out of the *search wars*, let alone Microsoft.

Microsoft isn’t dead. Not even close. Of course it is suffering from the inertia that naturally springs from huge success and dominance, but like IBM it will find new markets, new niches, and will benefit (eventually) from the innovations of it’s competitors as they were able to benefit – hugely – from Microsoft innovations (e.g. free internet browser software on all PCs).

Don Dodge corrects the foolishness, and Tony is right to suggest that MS has plenty of life left.

It’s even possible that Microsoft will win the big game. With the LIVE project, Microsoft’s neural network approach to search may be more advanced than Google’s and although search result quality continues to lag Google’s by a notch it’s simply not clear how search will evolve over the next few years.

Travel, 21st Century Style

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A German Artificial Intelligence lab is working on a travel information network that will use on board navigation to alert drivers to  trouble down the road.     Working in real time the system would alert drivers just a few minutes down the road to dangers ahead.   As autos get smarter and transportation info networks evolve we should see a lot of benefits.  Traffic congestion could be reduced substantially in metro areas simply by providing “early warning” to commuters via websites and alternative routing using on board navigation systems.    Rural problems tend to arise from weather problems and this type of information is already flowing online, though it’ll really be useful when drivers can easily access this information from their cars.     An example is Oregon’s TripCheck website which displays road cams and conditions information and Yahoo’s integration of mapping and traffic information for some metro areas.

BBC Report

SmartKom Website (warning – this odd site is NOT the way to write for a non-technical audience, or even for a technical one?)