The future of AI...

I don't believe we will use machines in the future. I don't see how it would be possible to come anything close to the processing power, memory skills, data compression, and ability to learn and make judgements as the human brain. Why aren't we machines then if this method is more efficient? For one, I don't see a way for machines to repair themselves unless they had helper bots. They would need to be self-sufficient. They could never survive without us. You would have to design "creator" bots, nursing bots, "cullinary" bots for producing oil/energy, lol, and a whole ecosystem, so to speak. I don't see in a million years AI bots being intelligent enough to take over the human race. I believe what would be more efficient is bio-bots. Produced from cloned humans, which is a scary thought, which couldn't happen for many reasons due to ethical concerns, and a human naturally has free thought and to take that away, you take away all of his judgement skills. I think the future of AI is a dead end road, unfortunately. It kills me to say it since I'm so intrigued by it. Also I forgot to mention the turing problem. But can a being create another just as complex as itself? Well, other than the normal means of reproduction. That's the question, and I don't believe so.

 

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I pretty much agree because the creation of A.I seems a near impossibility. Creating a machine that has free-will is tough: the closest must be a machine that generates random numbers.

 

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There is no relation between randomness from out of a fixed set and the creativity of the human mind. Maybe the best way is to enhance what our own brains have by restarting a vigorous eugenics program to direct and accelerate positive evolution or by the crude fast food method of cybernetic implants.

 

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Mimic of Intelligent - Yes.
Mimic of Creativity - No.

 

Perhaps in the future the line between machines and biology will disappear. I believe we are already biological machines. You say that AI is a dead end, but then go one to describe another form of AI, ie, machines that are grown. The evolution that took millions of years of trial and error could be replaced by virtual evolution in a computer.

 

What do you suppose is the difference between mimicking intelligence and displaying true intelligence?

 

How can you say that AI will never exist? Honestly, I sort of hope your right. But with computers getting more powerful at an exponential rate, how long will it take until one is complex enough to achieve sentience?

There is no difference. What you're aluding to is called the Turing Test

 

Mimicking human intelligence is only one possibility; I am fairly sure that an artificial analogue of human intelligence and selfawareness will be achieved at some time in the next hundred years. But there are probably many other kinds of artificially intelligent entities which will be around before that time, and quite possibly an infinite number of different types of artificially intellgent minds that will emerge in the far future.
Intelligent search engines, intelligent traffic controllers, intelligent stock market operators, intelligent aircraft pilots; artificial intellgence in games and other entertainment media, user-friendly customer interface systems, education expert systems, medical AI, search-and rescue robots, military strategic and combat systems.
Each one of these possible applications could benefit from a specialised mental design, and they could end up quite different to the human mind (which is after all a general purpose thinking machine).
Rather than simply mimicking the human mind I believe that AI systems will develop in completely novel directions, some of which might be much more complex than our own mind and brain.

 

No, I was simply asking daktaklakpak what distinction he made between them. I don't think there's any.

 

What is intelligence? If you can't define it, then you can't debate whether or not machines can possess it. I'm sorry, but I think the whole argument is meaningless. No matter what definition you give, not everyone will accept it. No matter what definition you come up with, you will never single out human beings as special because there is always something else that displays the same behavior or quality. That's really all I have to say.

 

The future is: artificial intellegence of nanotechnological robots.

 

We Are Becoming Cyborgs
by Ray Kurzweil

The union of human and machine is well on its way. Almost every part of the body can already be enhanced or replaced, even some of our brain functions. Subminiature drug delivery systems can now precisely target tumors or individual cells. Within two to three decades, our brains will have been "reverse-engineered": nanobots will give us full-immersion virtual reality and direct brain connection with the Internet. Soon after, we will vastly expand our intellect as we merge our biological brains with non-biological intelligence.


Published March 15, 2002

We are growing more intimate with our technology. Computers started out as large remote machines in air-conditioned rooms tended by white coated technicians. Subsequently they moved onto our desks, then under our arms, and now in our pockets. Soon, we'll routinely put them inside our bodies and brains. Ultimately we will become more nonbiological than biological.

We already have devices to replace our hips, knees, shoulders, elbows, wrists, jaws, teeth, skin, arteries, veins, heart valves, arms, legs, feet, fingers, and toes. Systems to replace more complex organs (e.g., our hearts) are starting to work.

The age of neural implants is well under way. We have brain implants based on "neuromorphic" modeling (i.e., reverse engineering of the human brain and nervous system) for a rapidly growing list of brain regions. A friend of mine who became deaf while an adult can now engage in telephone conversations again because of his cochlear implant, a device which interfaces directly with his auditory cortex. He plans to replace it with a new model with a thousand levels of frequency discrimination, which will enable him to hear music once again. He has had the same melodies playing in his head for the past fifteen years, he laments, and is looking forward to hearing some new tunes. A future generation of cochlear implants now on the drawing board will provide levels of frequency discrimination that go significantly beyond that of "normal" hearing.

Researchers at MIT and Harvard are developing neural implants to replace damaged retinas. There are brain implants for Parkinson's patients that communicate directly with the ventral posterior nucleus and subthalmic nucleus regions of the brain to reverse the most devastating symptoms of this disease. An implant for people with cerebral palsy and multiple sclerosis communicates with the ventral lateral thalamus and has been effective in controlling tremors. "Rather than treat the brain like soup, adding chemicals that enhance or suppress certain neurotransmitters," says Rick Trosch, an American physician helping to pioneer these therapies, "we're now treating it like circuitry."

A variety of techniques are being developed to provide the communications bridge between the wet analog world of biological information processing and digital electronics. Researchers at Germany's Max Planck Institute have developed noninvasive devices that can communicate with neurons in both directions. They demonstrated their "neuron transistor" by controlling the movements of a living leech from a personal computer. Similar technology has been used to reconnect leech neurons and to coax them to perform simple logical and arithmetic problems. Scientists are now experimenting with a new design called "quantum dots," which uses tiny crystals of semiconductor material to connect electronic devices with neurons.

These developments provide the promise of reconnecting broken neural pathways for people with nerve damage and spinal cord injuries. It has long been thought that recreating these pathways would only be feasible for recently injured patients because nerves gradually deteriorate when unused. A recent discovery, however, shows the feasibility of a neuroprosthetic system for patients with long-standing spinal cord injuries. Researchers at the University of Utah asked a group of long-term quadriplegic patients to move their limbs in a variety of ways and then observed the response of their brains using magnetic resonance imaging. Although the neural pathways to their limbs had been inactive for many years, the pattern of their brain activity when attempting to move their limbs was very close to that observed in non-disabled persons. We will, therefore, be able to place sensors in the brain of a paralyzed person (e.g., Christopher Reeve), which will be programmed to recognize the brain patterns associated with intended movements, and then stimulate the appropriate sequence of muscle movements. For those patients whose muscles no longer function, there are already designs for "nanoelectromechanical" systems (NEMS) that can expand and contract to replace damaged muscles and that can be activated by either real or artificial nerves.

Intelligent machines are already making their way into our blood stream. There are dozens of projects underway to create blood stream-based "biological microelectromechanical systems" (bioMEMS) to intelligently scout out pathogens and deliver medications in very precise ways. For example, a researcher at the University of Illinois at Chicago has created a tiny capsule with pores measuring only 7 nanometers. The pores let insulin out in a controlled manner but prevent antibodies from invading the capsule. These capsules have cured rats with type I Diabetes. Similar systems could precisely deliver dopamine to the brain for Parkinson's patients, provide blood-clotting factors for patients with hemophilia, and deliver cancer drugs directly to tumor sites. A new design provides up to 20 substance-containing reservoirs that can release their cargo at programmed times and locations in the body.

Kensall Wise, an electrical engineer at the University of Michigan has developed a tiny neural probe that can provide precise monitoring of the electrical activity of patients with neural diseases. Future designs are expected to also deliver drugs to precise locations in the brain. Kazushi Ishiyama at Tohoku University in Japan has developed micromachines that use microscopic sized spinning screws to deliver drugs to small cancer tumors. A particularly innovative micromachine developed by Sandia National Labs has actual microteeth with a jaw that opens and closes to trap individual cells and then implant them with substances such as DNA, proteins or drugs. There are already at least four major scientific conferences on bioMEMS and other approaches to developing micro and nano scale machines to go into the body and blood stream.

One of the leading proponents of "nanomedicine," and author of a book with the same name is Robert Freitas, Research Scientist at nanotechnology firm Zyvex Corp. Freitas' ambitious manuscript is a comprehensive road map to rearchitecting our biological heritage. One of Freitas' designs is to replace (or augment) our red blood cells with artificial "respirocytes," that would enable us to hold our breath for four hours, or to do a top-speed sprint for 15 minutes without taking a breath (another formidable challenge for athletic contest drug tests). He envisions micron-size artificial platelets which could achieve hemostatis (bleeding control) up to 1,000 times faster than biological platelets. Freitas describes nanorobotic microbivores that will download software to destroy specific infections hundreds of times faster than antibiotics, and that will be effective against all bacterial, viral and fungal infections with no limitations of drug resistance.

The coming merger of human and machine. The compelling benefits in overcoming profound diseases and disabilities will keep these technologies on a rapid course, but medical applications represent only the early adoption phase. As the technologies become established, there will be no barriers to using them for the expansion of human potential. Moreover, all of the underlying technologies are accelerating. The power of computation has grown at a double exponential rate for all of the past century, and will continue to do so well into this century through the power of three-dimensional computing. Communication bandwidths and the pace of brain reverse engineering are also quickening. Meanwhile, according to my models, the size of technology is shrinking at a rate of 5.6 per linear dimension per decade, which will make nanotechnology ubiquitous during the 2020s.

By the end of this decade, computing will disappear as a discrete technology that we need to carry with us. We'll routinely have high-resolution images encompassing the entire visual field written directly to our retinas from our eyeglasses and contact lenses (DoD is already using technology along these lines from Microvision, a company based in Bothell, Washington). We'll have very high-speed wireless connection to the Internet at all times. The electronics for all of this will be embedded in our clothing. These very personal computers circa 2010 will enable us to meet with each other in full immersion, visual-auditory, virtual reality environments as well as augment our vision with location and time specific information at all times.

By 2030, electronics will utilize molecule-sized circuits, the reverse engineering of the human brain will have been completed, and bioMEMS will have evolved into bioNEMS (biological nanoelectromechanical systems). It will be routine to have billions of nanobots (i.e., nano-scale robots) coursing through the capillaries of our brains, communicating with each other (over a wireless local area network), as well as with our biological neurons and with the Internet. One application will be to provide full immersion virtual reality that encompasses all of our senses. When we want to enter a virtual reality environment, the nanobots replace the signals from our real senses with the signals that our brain would receive if we were actually in the virtual environment.

We will have a panoply of virtual environments to choose from, including Earthly worlds that we are familiar with, as well as those with no Earthly counterpart. We will be able to go to these virtual places, and have any kind of interaction with other real (as well as simulated) people, ranging from business negotiations to sensual encounters. In virtual reality, we won't be restricted to a single personality as we will be able to change our appearance and become other people.

"Experience beamers" will beam their entire flow of sensory experiences as well as the neurological correlates of their emotional reactions out on the web just as people today beam their bedroom images from their web cams. A popular pastime will be to plug in to someone else's sensory-emotional beam and experience what it's like to be someone else, à la the plot concept of the movie "Being John Malkovich." There will also be a vast selection of archived experiences to choose from. The design of virtual environments, and the creation of archived full-immersion experiences will become new art forms.

The most important application of circa 2030 nanobots will be to literally expand our minds. We're limited today to a mere hundred trillion interneuronal connections, which we will be able to augment by adding virtual connections via nanobot communication. This will provide us with the opportunity to vastly expand our pattern recognition abilities, memories, and overall thinking capacity as well as to directly interface with powerful forms of nonbiological intelligence.

It's important to note that once nonbiological intelligence gets a foothold in our brains (a threshold we've already passed), it will grow exponentially, as is the accelerating nature of information-based technologies. Note that a one inch cube of nanotube circuitry (which is already working at small scales in laboratories) will be at least a million times more powerful than the human brain. By 2040, the nonbiological portion of our intelligence will be far more powerful than the biological portion. It will, however, still be part of the human-machine civilization, having been derived from human intelligence, i.e., created by humans (or machines created by humans) and based at least in part on the reverse engineering of the human nervous system.

Stephen Hawking recently commented in the German magazine Focus that computer intelligence will surpass that of humans within a few decades. He advocated that we "develop as quickly as possible technologies that make possible a direct connection between brain and computer, so that artificial brains contribute to human intelligence rather than opposing it." Hawking can take comfort that the development program he is recommending is well under way.

 

I don't think it's about "taking over the human race", but "enhancing" it, even if that means it will become less human.

 

Even if technology is capable of creating an AI device as intelligent as a human being, it would not be cost effective.

Humasns will always be cheaper to create than an equivalent AI device.

Furthermore, I suspect that many of a human's capabilities are closely associated with characteristics one would not want in a machine. Suppose your AI device decided that doing accounting was boring and wanted to spend some time day dreaming?

 

dude you so cant predict cost efficency of future technology. Moreover the need for such machines is so great and will be widespread, this has a potential to offset the price of the whole technology. Humans are already much expensive to maintain and create then any devices.

As far as the AI device going amock and not doing its function, this will be a problem I am sure. Therefore system of AI needs other devices to control it, a government so to speak.

 

You're talking about creating little people.

 

Most people agree that there is a difference between having intelligence and convincingly mimicking intelligence. A common way to illustrate the difference is what's referred to as the "Chinese room problem".

Imagine that I am sitting alone in a room with a computer and a huge book of Chinese phrases and responses. When a Chinese-speaking person types something to me over the computer I look up what they typed and find the appropriate response in my huge Chinese phrase book. If my book is thorough enough, I will be able to perfectly simulate understanding Chinese; but most people would agree that I definitely don't actually understand Chinese. I have no idea what the other person is saying or what I am saying back.

 

True, but in this scenario, you are only a part of a more elaborate system displaying intelligence.

On the same token, I could point to a cluster of neurons in my brain, and state that these neurons have no idea about the signals they transmit and are, as such, not intelligent. Yet, we would agree, to some extend, that my brain on a whole displays at least a hint of intelligence.

 

Have any of the optimists here done any actual AI programming or research?

As far as I know we are not even close to an AI device. Some chess playing programs have been successful. There are some so called expert systems capable of doing some very specialized jobs well. Such systems are not even close to AI.

I see no hope for true AI using current computer architecture. Faster processors, parallel processors, lots of memory, et cetera are not going to do the job. Neural network systems, quantum computers, and DNA-like processors are in their infancy with no evidence that they are capable of AI. None of those systems can come close to doing what Deep Blue can do, and Deep blue is no closer to AI than my PC.

Good grief: After about 20 years the Quantum computer people wrote about factoring 15. Big deal!! That technology has a long way to go and might be a dead end. I put my faith in neural network systems. I have not heard any claims about what some neural network can do now as opposed to what is expected in the future. DNA-like systems will probably always be special purpose devices.

I do not expect to see a true AI device in the next 20-30 years. It is possible that nobody alive today will see an AI device as with the general purpose capabilities of a not very bright human being.