AI megathread

[Laird]

I thought we had a general AI thread but I can't find it.

It's in the main Other Topics subforum:

AI Megathread

It's in the main Other Topics subforum:

AI Megathread

I did look in Other Topics but I didn't see the thread for some reason.  Maybe I had a mini-sleep.

Can they be merged?

[Laird]

Can they be merged?

Yep. Done.

[Laird]

Life in 2064

By Catherine Taylor for the ABC on 20 March, 2024

How wonderful it would be to chat to her mother now, Lisa thinks, as she opens an app and calls up the digital clone of her husband Dave, who died four years ago aged 101.

This digital twin sounds exactly like him and is programmed with hours of memories, ideas and opinions that can be used to generate conversations years after he has passed away.

As Dave’s holographic image sits before her, they talk through happy memories together and he counsels her to stay positive while she waits for her transport to arrive (solar powered, of course).

The differences of life in 2064 imagined in the article, mostly due to AI:

1. "We will no longer be the smartest thing on the planet"
   
2. "Humans will cease to exist (well, kind of)"
   
3. "Everything might be fake"
   
4. "We will all have a ‘zombie self’"
   
5. "Moral dilemmas will multiply"
   
6. "The work we value most will change"
   
7. "Homes and cities will swap roles"
   
8. "Climate change will reshape communities"
   
9. "Healthcare will transform"
   

Life in 2064

By Catherine Taylor for the ABC on 20 March, 2024


The differences of life in 2064 imagined in the article, mostly due to AI:

1. "We will no longer be the smartest thing on the planet"
   
2. "Humans will cease to exist (well, kind of)"
   
3. "Everything might be fake"
   
4. "We will all have a ‘zombie self’"
   
5. "Moral dilemmas will multiply"
   
6. "The work we value most will change"
   
7. "Homes and cities will swap roles"
   
8. "Climate change will reshape communities"
   
9. "Healthcare will transform"
   

A lot of assumptions about AI's value and ability.

Life in 2064

By Catherine Taylor for the ABC on 20 March, 2024


The differences of life in 2064 imagined in the article, mostly due to AI:

1. "We will no longer be the smartest thing on the planet"
   
2. "Humans will cease to exist (well, kind of)"
   
3. "Everything might be fake"
   
4. "We will all have a ‘zombie self’"
   
5. "Moral dilemmas will multiply"
   
6. "The work we value most will change"
   
7. "Homes and cities will swap roles"
   
8. "Climate change will reshape communities"
   
9. "Healthcare will transform"
   

Aren't several of the items in that list describing life in 2024?

[Laird]

Aren't several of the items in that list describing life in 2024?

Perhaps, although mostly to a lesser extent.

[Laird]

A lot of assumptions about AI's value and ability.

Yep. The author did at least qualify it at the end with a section headed "Predicting the future is difficult: Maybe none of this will happen".

Where the Rubber Hits the Road: ISA =/= Microarchitecture Gap

Craig Weinberg

This is a depiction of the inflection point between computer hardware (tangible microarchitecture objects) and software (intangible instruction set architecture concepts). While the image above joins objects to concepts, the reality is that there is an infinitely wide gap between the two, bridged only be the aesthetic-participatory/sensory-motor capacities of the conscious experience we call a computer engineer.

The connection and communication described by the text and image are not referring to a physical process but a figurative, metaphorical relation that exists in our conscious experience of understanding. The ISA isn’t physically ‘implemented’ by the hardware, it is the conscious sensory-motive capacity of the programmer/engineer that marries their own cognitive sense-making with their motive power to move their physical body that creates and implements the ISA. The ISA has no physical connection to hardware. We produce the ISA machine code in our imagination/understanding, and there it stays. Anything we do to a computer comes from brain > hand > device actions that carry no motive intent or encoding at all. It is purely motor events set into motion from outside of physics.

This is why I suggest that regardless of how sophisticated the software we write for Simulated Intelligence systems, genuine awareness and intelligence will not arise – only reflections and recombinations of the physical effects of our own intelligence-driven actions. AI is a useful mirage....

Where the Rubber Hits the Road: ISA =/= Microarchitecture Gap

Craig Weinberg

The latest development seems to be the theory that the lack of much progress toward awareness and consciousness is due to it being the case that in order for AI to become truly conscious it will need to have learned to be so through physically interacting with the world via a physical robotic "body" of some sort. The present high progress rate in designing such robot systems leads to predictions that truly conscious and aware AI is just around the corner, and we will find out by physically meeting them. There's a new article on this at https://bigthink.com/the-future/does-ai-...telligent/ .

We'll see, but I think along with the deductions in the OP article, that the fundamental chasm is unbridgeable between material systems of absolutely any kind and consciousness with all its immaterial properties, and this threshold will never be crossed.