[Hplusroadmap] [SL4] Re: Paper: Artificial Intelligence will Kill our Grandchildren

[Bryan Bishop]

On Wednesday 25 June 2008, Dan Bolser wrote:
> 2008/6/25 Bryan Bishop <kanzure at gmail.com>:
> > On Friday 13 June 2008, Anthony Berglas wrote:
> >> http://berglas.org/Articles/AIKillGrandchildren/AIKillGrandchildre
> >>n.h
>
> [snip]
>
> >> As worms have evolved into apes, and apes to man, the evolution of
> >> man to an AI is just a natural process and something that could be
> >> celebrated rather than avoided.  Certainly it would probably only
> >> be a matter of a few centuries before modern man destroys the
> >> earth, whereas an artificial intelligence may be able to survive
> >> for millenia.
> >
> > Holy shit man, you don't understand evolution. Particularly the
> > part about programming and "man evolving into AI". What most people
> > consider AI to be is something about programming. I truly doubt
> > that a directed intelligent process, like programming, is a
> > naturally occuring evolutionary process.
>
> What? In that case please define what is naturally occurring and what
> is 'artificial'. Or at least outline how you make the distinction?

You talking to me, Dan? :) I just figure that saying that 'the evolution 
of man into ai' illustrates a lack of understanding of evolution. 

Please click here to evolve.

> In my opinion, all of human activity is a part of the ongoing
> biological process that was initiated on the planet approximately 4bn

No argument there, we're still ticking.

> years ago. The planet was the result of an ongoing biological process
> that was initiated about 10bn years ago. Saying something like
> 'evolution is what animals do' is reducing the scope of your
> imagination. Don't cars evolve? Hasn't wheat evolved during the

I'm not sure if it's valid to say that something evolves when it's not 
self-replicating. You're just talking about the selection of vehicles 
and the design elements that go into the engineering of the cars, 
rather than the cars mutating on their own (i.e., their own errors of 
polymerase, their own self-replicational mechanisms ...). 

> history of human existence? Isn't GM just the latest phase of that
> ongoing co-evolutionary process? Is it 'artificial' that dogs

Wheat/GM is bio.

> recognize human emotion better than chimps? Aren't radios self

Dogs are bio. I think a common argument is that domesticated animals are 
somewhat selected too, and it's the reason why your kitten will talk to 
you and usually not run away from home and such.

> reproducing concepts / entities in the context of human society?

That's memes, not radios. ;-) Neural selectionism won a Nobel Prize.

> This thread discusses Darwin and evolution as if they were the same
> thing - I don't think this is the case. Just as the movement of the
> planets in the sky was described by the ancients, then Euller, then
> Kepler, then Newton, then Einstein (and a lot of others that I have
> skipped over), the observable phenomenon of evolution can have more
> than one explaination / interpretation. Given these broader contexts
> within which to understand evolution (neo-darwinism for example),
> phenomenon like 'cultural evolution' are very easy to understand as
> an extension of the core idea of 'evolution' in general.

Certainly.

> Anyway, sorry for butting in on a couple of threads that I haven't
> been following - prolly you discussed all the points that I made
> above ad-nausiem elsewhere. I'll look forward to you pointing out all
> the 100s of documents I should have read before opening my mouth to
> type.

Opening my mouth to type would be awesome.

- Bryan
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