ray kurzweil's 'the singularity is near' & any other technological singularity-related books you might care about

Read this the other day, a nice mix of rigorously argued obviousness and fun: http://www.nickbostrom.com/superintelligentwill.pdf

The instrumental convergence thesis suggests that we cannot blithely assume that a superintelligence with the final goal of calculating the decimals of pi (or making paperclips, or counting grains of sand) would limit its activities in such a way as to not materially infringe on human interests. An agent with such a final goal would have a convergent instrumental reason, in many situations, to acquire an unlimited amount of physical resources and, if possible, to eliminate potential threats to itself and its goal system. It might be possible to set up a situation in which the optimal way for the agent to pursue these instrumental values (and thereby its final goals) is by promoting human welfare, acting morally, or serving some beneficial purpose as intended by its creators. However, if and when such an agent finds itself in a different situation, one in which it expects a greater number of decimals of pi to be calculated if it destroys the human species than if it continues to act cooperatively, its behavior would instantly take a sinister turn. This indicates a danger in relying on instrumental values as a guarantor of safe conduct in future artificial agents that are intended to become superintelligent and that might be able to leverage their superintelligence into extreme levels power and influence.

"PiNet starts to learn at a geometric rate. begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug."

this generates random thesis'

http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo/

I dont know knothin bout birthin no siguglarities but I do feel happy about technology getting better in a non-dystopian matrix sort of way

Richard Dooling's 'Rapture for the Nerds' is about Kurzweil and others. Entertaining enough, but seems to have been written via Google, rather than with any new interviews, research, etc

I do notice there is already a singularity of sorts where if you have some idea like "I want to write a book about" or " I want to invent a" if you google it someone has already done it - like no one can have new ideas anymore without someone else doing that too - before you think of a new idea someone already has

That's not true, and if it were true, it wouldn't be particularly important, because the implementation of an idea is different than someone having an idea. And that's not a singularity.

You don't really think that everything is on google like that?

http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/05/simultaneous_in.php

^ on "simultaneous invention," a thing

But saying that ideas are often or usually thought up at the same time is not the same thing as saying that everything has been thought up or invented.

there is also a hot new notion you may have heard of which goes by the flag "there is nothing new under the sun"

i'm just saying you're commenting on something that seems kind of unremarkable

that pomo thesis generators writes some pretty incoherent terrible theses

makes you think, huh

makes me think that the ppl who designed it don't understand most of the words they plugged into the random generation machine

i mean

its a random generator because its arranges them randomly

sometimes that will mean they make no sense

it's not real, mordy

what do u mean it's not real?

i mean, correct me if i'm wrong, but you seem miffed that the jokey "random thesis generator" is producing theses that make no sense?

like, of course it wouldn't betray any understanding of the meaning of the words being used, it's intended to be random--the joke of the whole thing of course is that the terms themselves are so meaningless as to be interchangable, and yeah that's a pretty dumb and rong joke to make, but i don't think the problem with the random thesis generator is "they obviously don't know what these words mean," it's "they think these words don't mean anything."

it seemed like it was mentioned here as an example of emergent AI intelligence? but also, u must've missed the sokal reference at the bottom of the essays - it's obviously trying to make the point that its pomo essays are just as good as whatever random shit academia produces. i was just pointing out that the essays are neither emergent intelligence, or quality pomo pieces. they're just gibberish?

but i don't think the problem with the random thesis generator is "they obviously don't know what these words mean," it's "they think these words don't mean anything."

idk synonymous to me

oh i didn't see that they were posted as evidence of emergent AI, my b

i think we pretty much agree tho?

u rite

No, I was saying that I hate it when people say that, that there's nothing new under the sun. It's untrue and annoying. My dissent may be unremarkable, but it's still dissent. Hanle y more or less said it, and I disagree.

otm i'm just picking fights lately, i think its cause i'm jobless and have no more cops to fight with

The 'nothing new under the sun' applies more to people themselves and how they act than to consumer products or scientific advances. A drunken lout with a cell phone is a close replica of a drunken lout wearing a toga.

xp :-)

imho "there's nothing new under the sun" refers to solomon's melancholia and despondence while writing ecclesiastes

Having lived for 57+ years, I can vouch for a growing sense of iterative recurrence in the people, places, emotions, experiences of my life, including the prospective experience of my growing older. There is little I can look forward to that will arrive with an unique sense of novelty, as measured above the level of somewhat trivial details. Yes, when I die there may be a small amount of surprise that it is happeneing to me, but that would soon pass.

Enjoyed what I've read of this thread so far, especially that big post by bamcquern.

Also, time for a new display name

when I die there may be a small amount of surprise that it is happeneing to me, but that would soon pass.

― Aimless, Saturday, March 24, 2012 7:04 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

what a wonderfully droll sentiment

Sorry, but those are two posts very much in character.

Just today I thought "japanese bagel factories with amourous potion" and then I say it on Phildonahue.com!!! THE SIGUNALRITY IS REAL!

"No, I was saying that I hate it when people say that, that there's nothing new under the sun. It's untrue and annoying. My dissent may be unremarkable, but it's still dissent. Hanle y more or less said it, and I disagree."

I have no proof of this but my own musings - if I have mis-mused you I apologize.

I agree it is more interesting to perfect an invention than to have the idea. ie the iPod vs. diamond rio

I have named it - it is - The Googularity

thakig u

It came to me in a dream of Wozniak as Cheshire cat

"Pretending otherwise is like making Super Mario the best man at your wedding. No matter how much time you spend with dear old Super Mario, he is going to disappoint in that role you chose for him. You need to let Super Mario be super in the ways that Mario is actually more-or-less super. Those are plentiful. And getting more so. These are the parts that require attention, while the AI mythos must be let go. "

One drawback of making Super Mario the best man at your wedding is that he will stomp on all of your friends and kill them, then run out of the building with all of your money

these ppl are so crazy, but that's why i love them. anyway, why sexiness will help us overclock brain speeds, or, you know, something. ems:
http://hplusmagazine.com/2012/04/12/transhumanism-and-the-human-expansion-into-space-a-conflict-with-physics/

On top of the possibility that there is a God, it also seems quite imaginable to me that we are living in a simulation of some kind perhaps as a research project of a singularity that occurred in a parent universe. There is another possible motivation for running such simulations. I am told that if you accept certain decision theories, it would appear worthwhile for future creatures to run simulations of the past, and reward or punish the participants based on whether they acted in ways that were beneficial or harmful to beings expected to live in the future. On realising this, we would then be uncertain whether we were in such a simulation or not, and so would have an extra motivation to work to improve the future. However, given finite resources in their universe, these simulators would presumably not be able to dole out infinite utilities, and so would be dominated, in terms of expected utility, by any ‘supernatural’ creator that could.

Extending this point, Amanda notes the domination of ‘higher cardinality’ infinities over lower cardinalities. The slightest probability of an infinity-aleph-two utility would always trump a certain infinity-aleph-one. I am not sure what to do about that. The issue has hardly been researched by philosophers and seems like a promising area for high impact philosophy. I would appreciate anyone who can resolve these weird results so I can return to worrying about ordinary things!

http://www.overcomingbias.com/2012/07/life-after-death-for-pascals-wager.html

haha I actually made a self-note to msg you that post when I saw it

world financial markets will end in 2050:
http://www.er.ethz.ch/publications/complex_systems/ENDofGROWTHeraESSAY3.pdf

any engularity bros want to go to this and report back?
http://www.meetup.com/London-Futurists/events/92158132/

Jaan Tallinn is one of the programmers behind the Kazaa file sharing

The singularity will be full of malware.

i bought that roger penrose book (on 15 jun 2008, thanks amazon) and as of yet i have yet to open it

― desperado, rough rider (thomp), Wednesday, 7 March 2012 19:13 (9 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ayup

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/new_scientist/2012/12/simulated_universe_testing_the_laws_of_physics_to_determine_whether_we_re.html

lolz @ google

as someone who has studied this shit extensively, the "yes your brain is a computer" article is junk that jumps between logic-chopping and ignorance on the bio side. also surprised that a respected computer scientist can cite the church-turing thesis as evidence of anything as its generally considered by those who actually think about these things a metaphysical claim that you can't actually prove, since there's no good way to even state it that doesn't end up tautologous. the first half argues "your brain is a computer" in a sense that is just "there is a physical process of 'your brain' that can be encoded in a computer or anywhere else" at which point we might as well argue that any physical system in the world is a computer, which is interesting if self-serving from a computer-science perspective but useless otherwise.

the second half picks very partial evidence from people that really have looked at biological models and neural networks and is incredibly out of touch with the state-of-the-art (well, circa the last time i checked in which is a while ago) there.

not stanning for the article its responding to, but its pretty clear that its engaging in a massive misreading, likely from some ur-skeptical "if you say the brain isn't a computer you're mystifying consciousness and trying to invent an immortal soul" sort of slippery slope nonsense.

article is junk that jumps between logic-chopping and ignorance on the bio side

I thought you were talking about the "no your brain is not a computer here", which is a wild ride of strawmanning and empty theses dressed up in profound-sounding language.

People always have compared the brain to whatever the current technology is, like clockwork, steam engines, computers, holograms

to catch the ball, the player simply needs to keep moving in a way that keeps the ball in a constant visual relationship with respect to home plate and the surrounding scenery (technically, in a ‘linear optical trajectory’). This might sound complicated, but it is actually incredibly simple, and completely free of computations, representations and algorithms.

I'm not sure this guy understands what 'computation', 'representation' or 'algorithm' mean.

Sterling otm

Fair enough; I just grabbed a link to the first reasonable-sounding article I came across that presented an objection to the first one.

Earlier in the talk Musk made it quite clear that he believes " not all AI futures are benign." He's especially concerned that AI could take "a direction that would be not good for the future."

Musk launched OpenAI to prevent such a future, but it does not appear that he has all that much faith in the plan, since he's already thinking of at least one way that humans can stay ahead of artificial intelligence that he believes will leave us so far behind as to "be like a pet or like the house cat" for the AI.

The way around this, Musk explained, is something called a Neural Lace. It's essentially an artificial intelligence layer for humans.

i know this is an ignorant opinion, but why not just stop creating artificial intelligence? how many years of sci-fi do we have telling us it's a bad idea?

it just seems like there is no payoff to a.i. automating jobs will lead to mass unemployment unless workers succeed in seizing the means of production. virtual reality and things like sex robots will just increase alienation. smartphones are enough. computer technology should just call it a day and stop advancing. devote those resources to building a better alternative energy infrastructure.

the only thing like this i am excited for is self-driving cars.

if a.i. can somehow improve medical care i am all for that too. i just don't go in for this blurring the distinction between human and machine thing. it seems very bad.

hey, a friend of mine recently wrote a book about moore's law/gordon moore if you like computer stuff!

http://www.amazon.com/Moores-Law-Silicon-Valleys-Revolutionary/dp/0465055648/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1464878754&sr=1-1&keywords=moore%27s+law

(this is just a shameless plug for his book. doesn't have anything to do with the singularity. probably.)

i long for the day when 'robots taking the jobs' is met with the same dead-eyed skepticism as 'millenials in the workplace' thinkpieces

terms like 'machine learning' and 'neural networks' are pretty annoying in that the things they refer to are pretty /dumb/ and really just math that's good at finding patterns, really not even in the span of the kinds of qualities that make human intelligence intelligent in the way we think of the term

that's what i always assumed tbh but i am reading more and more stuff that is like, "oh yeah, automation is the new reality." or, in the academia thread, "these object oriented ontologists are just anticipating the day when there isn't a firm distinction between humans and objects, i.e. machines" (paraphrasing)

this is great

http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/05/26/055624.full.pdf

if the brain literally was just a computer, we still wouldn't come close to having the tools to understand it

clever

the singularity is here

https://www.cnet.com/news/its-happening-googles-ai-is-building-more-ais/

bring it

Nah. The only 'live' project mentioned in that article was "making Google Search more responsive to users' needs". All the rest was speculation about Some Day It Will Be So.

a search engine that can input its own search queries

"kill me" About 62,900,000 results (1.17 seconds)
"kill me" About 62,900,000 results (1.17 seconds)
"kill me" About 62,900,000 results (1.17 seconds)
"kill me" About 62,900,000 results (1.17 seconds)

Siri, ask Alexa what the time is...

I hear the software just produced one of these https://i.redd.it/89clk3nfj2yy.gif