[Hplusroadmap] Fwd: [ExI] Bootstrapping a singularity (not-essay) (was Re: MAX MORE in Second Life yesterday)

[Jim Hardy]

Bryan,

I am amazed and impressed to hear you talking about "manufacturing
processes".   Having observed and worked to improve these relics over the
past 20 years, there are a few processes that are pretty good (most of them
focused around principles established as a part of the Toyota Production
system in the 1940's by Americans working to rebuild a nation utterly
destroyed by WWII), but most are flawed.  Flawed not to an extent that would
cause financial ruin:  flawed to the extent that they are convenient for
making a few lucky ones wealthy, but never aspiring to perfection.

Old silly systems indeed dominate.  The FDA is the epitome of this notion.
Having lead engineering groups at a major Solar Panel producer (all to make
others wealthy), silica scrap from chip production can be converted to a
product which yields energy (in the form of a flow of electrons collected in
a diode and then directed to produce current) could indeed be directed to be
to be self sustaining and ultimately self perpetuating in whatever form.

But I do need to point out that this assumption is inaccurate: "The human
brain is instantiated with a species-typical upper limit on computing power
and loses neurons as it ages."

The humans brain is not losing computing power between the ages of
approximately birth until at least the mid 50's.  Consider how this changes
your conclusions.

Jim H

-----Original Message-----
From: hplusroadmap-bounces at heybryan.org
[mailto:hplusroadmap-bounces at heybryan.org] On Behalf Of Bryan Bishop
Sent: Friday, June 13, 2008 6:30 PM
To: hplusroadmap at heybryan.org
Subject: [Hplusroadmap] Fwd: [ExI] Bootstrapping a singularity (not-essay)
(was Re: MAX MORE in Second Life yesterday)


----------  Forwarded Message  ----------

Subject: [ExI] Bootstrapping a singularity (not-essay) (was Re: MAX MORE 
in Second Life yesterday)
Date: Friday 13 June 2008
From: Bryan Bishop <kanzure at gmail.com>
To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>

On Friday 13 June 2008, Michael Anissimov wrote:
> Natasha, the possibility of a hard-takeoff AI operating largely
> independent of humans is a real possibility, not single-track
> thinking.

Grounding problem. 

Instrumentation is still largely grounded in human society.

> If someone created a smarter-than-human AI, it might be easier for
> the AI to initially improve upon itself recursively, rather than
> enhance the intelligence of other humans.  This would be for various
> reasons: it would have complete access to its own source code, its
> cognitive elements would be operating much faster, it could extend
> itself onto adjacent hardware, etc.

What adjacent hardware? That's only if the seed hardware, in the first 
place, was wired up to it. So far you just said superintelligence, not 
anything about implementation like hardware and so on. Let's say we 
have a self-recursive seedai implemented; then, if it's going to be 
accelerating, it has to have accelerating computational capacity, which 
necessistates physical implementation.

> Are you familiar with the general arguments for hard takeoff AI?
>  Quite a few are found here:
> http://www.singinst.org/upload/LOGI//seedAI.html.  If you assign a
> hard takeoff a very low probability, then I would at least figure
> that you've read the arguments in favor of the possibility and have
> refutations of them.

Read it again, Michael:
> The ability to add and absorb new hardware.  The human brain is
> instantiated with a species-typical upper limit on computing power
> and loses neurons as it ages.  In the computer industry, computing
> power continually becomes exponentially cheaper, and serial speeds
> exponentially faster, with sufficient regularity that "Moore's Law"
> [Moore97] is said to govern its progress.  Nor is an AI project
> limited to waiting for Moore's Law; an AI project that displays an
> important result may conceivably receive new funding which enables
> the project to buy a much larger clustered system (or rent a larger
> computing grid), perhaps allowing the AI to absorb hundreds of times
> as much computing power.  By comparison, the 5-million-year
> transition from Australopithecus to Homo sapiens sapiens involved a
> tripling of cranial capacity relative to body size, and a further
> doubling of prefrontal volume relative to the expected prefrontal
> volume for a primate with a brain our size, for a total sixfold
> increase in prefrontal capacity relative to primates [Deacon90].  At
> 18 months per doubling, it requires 3.9 years for Moore's Law to
> cover this much ground.  Even granted that intelligence is more
> software than hardware, this is still impressive.

*cough* It's funding-limited, instead of self-manufacturing and truly 
self-replicating and so on. Although the virtual bitspace of the 
internet may seem to be expanding effortlessly, it's based on the 
physical implementation of the transistors, which build up the flip 
flops in our RAM modules, which makes up the memory that we have so 
much of (well, it never really seems enough, but 2003 estimates had it 
at 161 exabytes or so, and by now that's a very, very low estimate).

So, let's think about the hardware manufacturing behind the ai 
machinery. Let's consider the si fab. That's a linear production 
facility. You could build a fab that builds si fabs, I guess, but 
that's still linear. You need an si fab that builds the silicon 
componentry *plus* si fabs, i.e. a self-replicating machine, otherwise 
you're still going to be limited by the output of the si fab, and in 
the case of scarcity-centricism and money (getting donations to add 
hardware), that's limited by the amount of money and all sorts of weird 
economics going on, which I'm just about ready to refuse to touch at 
all (simply because it's ridiculous). The goal is acceleration, not 
limitation due to old, silly systems. ;-) That's why the manufacturing 
processes are needed, that's why the grounding problem is important. 
Not just symbolic grounding problem nonsense, I'm talking about 
cybernetic interfaces I guess. Feedback, etc.

Sorry for the hijack.

- Bryan
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