Would brain emulation work as a potential shortcut to the singularity? Upload a mind, speed up its subjective time, let it work on the problem? What could EY do with a thousand years to work on FAI? Could he come back in a few days of our time with the answer?
Does an AI have to have a utility function? Can we just make it good at giving answers, instead of asking it to act on them?
Going over the Yudkowsky/Hanson AI-Foom debate, it seems like the basic issue is how much of a difference an insight or two can make in an AI.
An AI with chimp-level intelligent software will run ten million times faster than a chimp mind, but give a chimp ten million years to think about science, and it still can't match a normal human (is that true, by the way? That's one question).
But if you can bridge the gap between chimp and human level intelligent software, a human mind thinking ten million times faster can quickly improve itself and go FOOM.
So the question is, how big of a gap is there between chimp and human software? EY argues that since evolution achieved it in only five million years, it can't be much of a difference.
So the whole world could get to chimp level software (which AI can't do much), and then one little research group might do the work of five million years of dumb, blind evolution in a few days or weeks, cross the line from chimp to human level software, and go FOOM.
This is new to me, so the question about that is, are there any glaring bits I've got wrong? And, am I right in thinking that EY's right, five million years of evolution can't produce that much of a difference? Is there some reason why we think Hanson is wrong (or right), and the difference between humans and chimps isn't mostly in the brain, it's the brain learning to talk and socialize, and then most of the difference is in the cultural content which came from using that talking and socializing for five million years?
And lastly, is an FAI possible for every possible kind of mind? Are there some kinds of minds for which you can't have a superpowerful, superintelligent FAI? If there are, how do we know we're not one of them?
The sequence on reviewing "Why Everyone (Else) Is a Hypocrite" talks about our mind having different modules. We hold different beliefs and different utility functions simultaneously, and act according to which module is activated. If that's the case, is it necessarily possible to have an FAI that can serve us, if "us" simultaneously wants different contradictory things?
An AI with chimp-level intelligent software will run ten million times faster than a chimp mind, but give a chimp ten million years to think about science, and it still can't match a normal human (is that true, by the way? That's one question).
But if you can bridge the gap between chimp and human level intelligent software, a human mind thinking ten million times faster can quickly improve itself and go FOOM.
I think there's a moderate chance of this working out. One note about emulating a chimp mind is that you don't have to let the chimp do its own opt...
The most recent post in December's Stupid Questions article is from the 11th.
I suppose as the article's been pushed further down the list of new articles, it's had less exposure, so here's another one for the rest of December.
Plus I have a few questions, so I'll get it kicked off.
It was said in the last one, and it's good advice, I think:
This thread is for asking any questions that might seem obvious, tangential, silly or what-have-you. Don't be shy, everyone has holes in their knowledge, though the fewer and the smaller we can make them, the better.
Please be respectful of other people's admitting ignorance and don't mock them for it, as they're doing a noble thing.