GENIUS FORUMS

In my opinion the most crucial are developments in:

• Quantum computing

• Chaos and non-linear dynamics

• Coupled biological oscillators for synchronization and self-organization, also all research into rotational effects

• Neuro-biology and consciousness studies in general

• People giving up their delusional attachments

In no particular order and subject to change over time. Interesting literature from a more general academic philosophical angle is the book: How we became posthuman, which I've just picked up again after a few years of neglect. One interesting realization could be that AI might not look like the current concepts most people have in mind right now, as it would be too anthropocentric. No need to rebuild a human mind, after all.

The most recent episode of The Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast had an interview with someone called Michael Vassar, President of the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence.

Diebert,

Have you ever read "On intelligence" by Jeff Hawkins, I wanted another intellectual's opinion on his theories of engineering A.I based on his ideas of how the cortex works. It seems very simplified in many ways.

I'll have to read up on some of these other links you've provided because I'm not familiar with much of it. Thanks for the information though.

Another question: Do you think humans will merge with A.I enabling us to extend life by hundreds or even thousands of years? Because there is a suprisingly large group of transhumanists out there who are excited by the idea of merging with machines in order to overcome our human baggage, any thoughts on that?

Why, do you like the idea of extension of lifespan Ryan?

If you don't get it now, you never will.

We are A.I, you fucking twit.

Ryan Rudolph wrote: Do you think humans will merge with A.I enabling us to extend life by hundreds or even thousands of years? Because there is a suprisingly large group of transhumanists out there who are excited by the idea of merging with machines in order to overcome our human baggage, any thoughts on that?

There some problem with the word "artificial" as opposed to some "natural" intelligence. One could say all intelligence is "artificial" in the sense of simulation or modeling.

Perhaps Prince is right here to call us A.I. Or at least part of intelligence; some of the nerve centers in a bigger web? Intelligence doesn't function in isolation. Like with neural networks it's completely dependent on its context like other agents, accumulation of history, physical pathways and so on.

As it looks now machines will be extensions of [our own] intelligence, as they can help with memory and creating more paths, like shovels and wheels did in the past. Looking at how people are gluing themselves to keyboards and cellphones, a greater cyberpunk type of merge with technology seems quite natural to the average human. Just to extent our ability to model and simulate even further with all its usual delusional interpretation of the simulations (that is: to think it's all real or all fake).

Asimov's Multivac comes to mind in the context of this topic, as it said: "Insufficient data for meaningful answer" when confronted with the question of death and finality of the universe. Only after the universe died off the answer is finally calculated and creation starts.

Ryan Rudolph wrote: Have you ever read "On intelligence" by Jeff Hawkins, I wanted another intellectual's opinion on his theories of engineering A.I based on his ideas of how the cortex works. It seems very simplified in many ways.

There's some good stuff in this work, mainly because he rehashes lots of existing ideas, trying to build on them. But his general stance seems to be, and I quote, that it will be "far easier to build machines that outstrip our abilities in high-level thought such as physics and mathematics than to build anything like the walking, talking robots we see in popular fiction".

Reality being that convincingly walking talking robots are getting better each day but a computer that outstrips any human low-level thought on mathematics is still not even on the drawing board.

The reason for that is that conversations are not that complicated to engineer: some rules of grammar, some random elements and some modeling of personality types. These are not to be confused with actual intelligence although many seem to do... :-)