You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

Squark comments on Humans can drive cars - Less Wrong Discussion

33 Post author: Apprentice 30 January 2014 11:55AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (86)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Squark 31 January 2014 09:15:44AM 1 point [-]

What do you mean by "from scratch"? Without "cheating" (uploading)? If so, why do you think it is within human capabilities?

Comment author: solipsist 01 February 2014 12:09:16AM 4 points [-]

When a man and a woman love each other very much...

Comment author: Squark 01 February 2014 08:52:09AM 2 points [-]

This is a degenerate case of uploading :-) Using human DNA is not considered "from scratch"

Comment author: solipsist 01 February 2014 03:59:26PM *  1 point [-]

Remind me never to ask you to make an apple pie from scratch.

Comment author: Decius 02 February 2014 07:46:10PM 0 points [-]

Would an AI using it's own source code to write a better AI also not qualify?

Comment author: Squark 03 February 2014 07:52:56AM 0 points [-]

Qualify for what? I'm saying that we don't know whether any of the following are within human ability: - Creating a human-level AI without "stealing" the design of h. sapiens - Creating a far-superhuman AI by any method The process of "creating" is allowed to involve writing an AI which writes a better AI and so on

Comment author: Decius 06 February 2014 12:11:23AM 0 points [-]

Is there some kind of timescale assumption you are making? Atomic vapor has proven that it can form human-level intelligence, and human intelligence has shown that it can create smarter human intelligence. Creating an intelligence that runs on radically different hardware on a short timeframe is the only possibility that hasn't already been proven.

Comment author: Squark 06 February 2014 08:06:56AM 0 points [-]

Yes, I am making a timescale assumption. The thing is, the required timescale might be huge, much bigger than the age of universe as far as I know. Atomic vapor might have cheated. Imagine that evolution had an a priori miniscule probability of creating human-level intelligence. Of course the probability cannot be literally 0: even apes will type Shakespeare with some probability. Now, assuming the universe is infinite (e.g. eternal inflation scenario), human-level intelligence still appears in an infinite number of places with probability 1. We happen to be in one of these places courtesy of anthropic principle. In other words, there might be a complexity-theoretic barrier to creating human-level intelligence. That is, theoretically it is possible, but it's impossible to do with a realistic amount of computing resources in a "short" time span, similarly to solving the traveling salesman problem for some random graph with 10^14 vertices.

Comment author: ChristianKl 01 February 2014 12:49:11AM 0 points [-]

The greatest feats can by done through the power of love... ;)

Comment author: Nornagest 01 February 2014 12:54:18AM 1 point [-]

Or in some cases the power of lust, boredom, pity, and/or tequila.

Comment author: [deleted] 01 February 2014 09:41:24AM 0 points [-]

Or money.