summerstay comments on Reply to Holden on The Singularity Institute - Less Wrong

46 Post author: lukeprog 10 July 2012 11:20PM

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Comment author: summerstay 18 July 2012 02:06:22PM 1 point [-]

There are very few people who would have understood in the 18th century, but Leibniz would have understood in the 17th. He underestimated the difficulty in creating an AI, like everyone did before the 1970s, but he was explicitly trying to do it.

Comment author: [deleted] 18 July 2012 05:52:04PM *  0 points [-]

Your definition of "explicit" must be different from mine. Working on prototype arithmetic units and toying with the universal characteristic is AI research? He subscribed wholeheartedly to the ideographic myth; the most he would have been capable of is a machine that passes around LISP tokens.

In any case, based on the Monadology, I don't believe Leibniz would consider the creation of a godlike entity to be theologically possible.