Next we'll be cloning conscious computers...
bluesnag
1,285 Posts
Is the new playstation really 1% as powerful as a fucking human brain? that's insane.Check it outhttp://edition.cnn.com/2005/TECH/05/23/brain.download/index.htmlBrain downloads 'possible by 2050'Monday, May 23, 2005 Posted: 1406 GMT (2206 HKT) London, England -- By the middle of the 21st century it will be possible to download your brain to a supercomputer, according to a leading thinker on the future.Ian Pearson, head of British Telecom's futurology unit, told the UK's Observer newspaper that the rapid advances in computing power would make cyber-immortality a reality within 50 years.Pearson said the launch last week of Sony's PlayStation 3, a machine 35 times more powerful than the model it replaced, was a sign of things to come."The new PlayStation is one percent as powerful as the human brain," Pearson told the Observer. "It is into supercomputer status compared to 10 years ago. PlayStation 5 will probably be as powerful as the human brain."Pearson said that brain-downloading technology would initially be the preserve of the rich, but would become more available over subsequent decades."If you're rich enough then by 2050 it's feasible. If you're poor you'll probably have to wait until 2075 or 2080 when it's routine," he said."We are very serious about it. That's how fast this technology is moving: 45 years is a hell of a long time in IT."Pearson also predicted that it would be possible to build a fully conscious computer with superhuman levels of intelligence as early as 2020.IBM's BlueGene computer can already perform 70.72 trillion calculations a second and Pearson said the next computing goal was to replicate consciousness."We're already looking at how you might structure a computer that could become conscious. Consciousness is just another sense, effectively, and that's what we're trying to design in computer."Pearson said that computer consciousness would make feasible a whole new sphere of emotional machines, such as airplanes that are afraid of crashing.By 2020 Pearson also predicted the creation of a "virtual world" of immersive computer-generated environments in which we will spend increasing amounts of time, socializing and doing business.He said: "When technology gives you a life-size 3D image and the links to your nervous system allow you to shake hands, it's like being in the other person's office. It's impossible to believe that won't be the normal way of communicating."But Pearson admitted that the consequences of advancing technologies needed to be considered carefully."You need a complete global debate," he said. "Whether we should be building machines as smart as people is a really big one."
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This is one of the longest running debates in computer science. We have yet to figure out a way to "download" counsciousness. Even if we could, say, "scan" and replicate an entire brain, with its neural structure, how could we give that pile of mush that spark that is what we all identify with free-thinking, conscious individuals?
Much of what this Pearson character is saying is and will still be science fiction in 50 years. What else would you expect from "head of British Telecom's futurology unit"??
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yeah, but i thought that futurology meant he could SEE THE FUTURE!
so how exactly are they quantizing the power of the human brain when they say that the new playstation has 1% of it?
Ha ha. And of course he's always been known for his down-to-earth, realistic and objective theories.
Computers now are based on algorithms -- which is basically a one to one model. The brain however functions by having an intricate set of connections amongst neurons. Furthermore, there is talk now that the brain functions as it does due to quantum wave functions. That is, the individual ganglia cells which help to store proteins and such are small enough so that they are influenced by quantum theory. this creates a wave function whcih gives humans a time based perception of consciousness.
Also, computers are logic based systems. Logic, as Godel has showed, is not logical at all but highly intuitive. (I am referring to Penrose's rebuttle against AI.) We cannot jump down a level in consciousness and see the framework for it, ie the 1s and 0s. Consciousness is based on instincts and muscle memories and is most likely an emergent phenomenon.
Now I'm not saying that consciousness cannot be created ina laboratory, just that we are very far away from it. It will not be done by using logic based algorithms as godel has proved those incomplete. And the circuitry will most likely have to be very very small -- around the size of those nanobots they say are coming as well.
All of his historical fiction, for starters. I'm not dissing the guy, I enjoyed his writing in high school. But I will take with a grain of salt any predictions of the future coming from someone who has made a career of writing about conspiricy theories and fringe-culture.
I get the feeling this dude son fortune is really fucking smart. thats rad.
Regardless, playstation 3 is fucking badass!
True, but how hard would it be to imitate a concious being? I mean, conciousness seems to be kind of subjective - all I really count it as is being marginally illogical - with a computer fast enough and written to take "advantage" of having illogical desires, well, there you go. I read that within the next decade are two they predict to increase the computational power of computers by some ridiculous amount. They've just hit upon a way to make use of a way to organically (???) make calculations - it was something like electrically polarizing molecules to represent either 0 or 1, the basis of the binary system, and by doing this they could change back and forth almost instantaneously.
I think if one detaches themselves from the religious aspect of it, you can look at humans' brains as a computer with a finite lifespan. By making computers fast enough and with enough "random" code I think they could be just as real as you or I - personality-wise.
Higher level functions, what we call "intuition", are really very complex algorithms. We're getting there with the advent of fuzzy logic and neural nets, but nowhere near the complexity of the brain. Plus we're still defining consciousness as just the decision-making component. There's that "other"ness that has yet to be addressed by any technological advances. Saying a playstation has 1% of the power of the human brain just isn't fair. This guy is a fluffy pop scientist.
I think you've got an interesting idea, and I guess you're a pragmatist. Have you read Turing's Imitation game? What you're saying is along his lines -- that if something seems intelligent then it probably is. What you're talking about with the organic particles is the basis for how nanobots would probably work. the key though to real information, is to take advantage of the particle's immense store of information when it is in between 0 and 1, know what I'm saying. Infinity is inside there.
What you're saying about logic and consciousness -- I have a few semantic problems with it. Sure consciousness is subjective, but I would not define consiousness as being "margianlly illogical." Our logic system is a formal model for the way our brains work on a symbolic level. Logic is a highly intuitive process that is I belive unique to our earthly brains. the basic premise of logic is that 1=1 -- a statement that is neither correct or self-evident. (One can even use to logic to show that 1=1 is false.) Our whole scientific method and system of logic is based on that principle -- and that principle is merely a shortcut for the way our brains model things symbolically. Our system of logic is not random or logical -- it is natural. That is why it is so hard to program a computer to make the most simple logical inferences in the real world. What I am basically argueing is Kant's idea -- that our intelligence and knowledge is based on predetermined categories that are built into our brains. Our minds cannot know what they cannot know. Until we understand the innate categories of our own minds, I think it will be a long time before we can program something that will grasp logic the same way that we as humans do. We must also master the way particles operate on the quantum level, as our neurons and nerve cells are influenced by quantum fluctuations.
i didn't know about the quantum theory influence on neuron activity. although the one thing that keeps technology from reaching that is quantum computers. it seems like that is quite a ways off, more than 50 years. i think the largest quantum computer that has been made stable for more than a few seconds has been only a few atoms. that's even smaller than those palmtop computers.
as far as godel's theorem, it says that there exist statements which can be proven neither true nor false within an axiom system. so a computer would have to make a decision without any "logical" reason i guess. so the question is can a computer be programmed to make a decision without programming it how to make a decision (like no random algorithms allowed). i don't know much about comp sci or programming so i have no idea how feasible it is. i guess the point that you're making is that it's hard.
your statement about "1=1" being neither correct nor self-evident i have issues with, especially when you say that logic can be used to prove it false. When you say "logic", i think of standard axiomatic logic (i'm a mathematician after all). this logic is based on the definition of the symbol "=" to mean exactly that "1=1". of course, there are plenty of alternate types of logic which are just as valid, in which defitions and axioms differ from "standard" logic. in those systems, one can simply define "=" to mean something else so that the statement "1=1" is false. so from this point of view your statement doesn't really carry much water, unless i'm completely missing what you mean.
Good points:
Its true that = really means 1=1, which means that very basic statements, that we place our whole system of thought on, are undefined. That of course is what an axiom is, so I guess I was taking a more meta-logic approach. Of course standard axiomatic logic is derived from those undefineable statements and terms, but that goes to show that logic in general is based on statements that are not logical at all but natural. the rules and terms that we use are merely symbols and symbols are empty until endowed with meaning. Or one could say that symbols are representations of the categories of our minds. One could make the argument that we earthly humans can discern the statement 1=1 as being true and intelligent because we have categories in our minds for things like value, symbol interpretation, if, then, and, and chunking etc. I'm not saying that from standard axiomatic logic, 1 does not equal 1, but from a more symbolic metaphorical point of view.
Also there is a proof that a friend showed me that shows how 1 can equal infinity. I dont remember it, but its not one of those meta proofs.
it may have been one of those where he divided by zero in a super tricky magician type way.
ok, as far as the meta-logic then standard mathematics can be torn apart, i'm with you on that. i took a philosophy of mathematics course that bugged me the fuck out until i read an essay called "mathematics without foundations" by putnam (i think). it basically said, sure, we can do all of this deep set theory and find that things are really not founded on solid ground, but who gives a shit? the human mind started at some point with mathematics and went from there, and since it serves as a great model for all science then doing mathematics without foundation is ok and justified. that made me feel all better.
"godel escher bach" is one of my all-time stoner reads by the way. great book.
Cool man, GEB is one mine as well. I recomend it to everybody and nobody wants to read it. Oh well. I agree with you about Putnam, I think that our current system of mathematics is very good just as the well-tempered scale is very good. They are by no means accurate models of the universe, but I think they accurately reflect the human mind. But, I think our system of mathematics is only equiped to deal with big every day earth people probems. And to solve some more fundamental problems, some new shit will have to be invented. I.E. prime numbers.
"The new PlayStation is one percent as powerful as the human brain,"
HOLY SHIT. YOU MEAN IM 100 TIMES SMARTER THAN THE NEW PLAYSTATION??!!??!
Proof: .99 to infinity = 1
1. X= .99999999999 to infinity
2. 10(x) = 10(.99999999etc.)
3. 10x-x = 9.99999etc. - x
4. 9x = 9
5. 9x/9 = 9/9
6. x = 1
7. Hence: If x=.9999etc and x= 1 then .9999etc = 1
this i am down with.
speaking of prime numbers, here's one of my favorite unsolved problems in number theory: can every even number bigger than 2 be written as the sum of two primes?
like 4 = 2 + 2, 10 = 7 + 3, 100 = 53 + 47, etc.
all evidence known is evidence for it being true, but nobody has proven it. it's been suggested that this could be an example of godel's theorem in action (i.e. in our axiom system of number theory this can not be proven true nor false), since its 350 years old (conjectured by goldbach) and still seems ridiculously hard to prove with the current state of mathematics.
edit: p.s. if you prove this conjecture you win a million bucks, no shit. that's a lot of records.
that nerd test is crap cause it only gave me a 45.
i need to brush-up on my subject titling skills too i guess.