[MD] Transhumanism

[Krimel]

[Krimel]
"Eventually AIs get to be smart enough to develop smarter AIs without
help or AI+."

[Ian]
I get that is his point, but we are simply now debating "smart" ...
intelligence, intellect, etc ... No one (nothing) gets smarter without
help - static patterns around them, and patterns that are
interconnected with many more things than sheer processing power. 

[Krimel]
It actually was refreshing to here as couple of the presenter talking about
AGI in terms of Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences and insisting
that that is what AGI is about not merely raw horsepower. What I find
fascinating about Floridi's account of the philosophy of information is the
idea the information is data plus meaning. Data can be any old kind of input
but meaning? Again we have an indefinably curious almost metaphysical term
place front and center were it is mostly likely to be overlooked. Kinda like
"reinforcement" was to Skinner.

[Ian]
A very smart human doesn't get smarter using only their brain in
isolation ... at whatever speed an AGI might get smarter it too is
unlikely to get smarter in isolation either. It needs to evolve, and
the speed of evolution is to do with genetic and memetic reproduction
rates over the generations, not processing power in the current
generation.

[Krimel]
Almost all AGI work involves some kind of neural networking and the whole
point of neural networking is that the networks have to be trained. They
even use terms like reward and reinforcement. 

My objection to your use of terms like social, replication and natural
evolution is so much that I disagree with them as that they just sound like
weasel wording. I know you like the middle way but to me at least straddling
fences make my nuts hurt. I would rather jump back and forth across the
fence as the occasion calls for it. Gestalt shifts and all that.

[Ian]
A smart AGI that fails to recognize the value of humans, is like a
smart human failing to value their eco-environment ... won't last
long. The limiting factors are far more than processing capabilities
... at the intellectual level.

[Krimel]
Not really just as human intelligence gives us the possibility of moving off
world AGI doesn't even need to take bulky life support systems with it. I
often think of our relationship to Gaia as that of embryo to egg. Earth is
loaded with just the nutrients we need to spread our wings and fly away.

[Ian]
There are interpretations of "the singularity" that involve human-AI
symbiosis, that seem much more credible to me. 

[Krimel]
Right these make much more sense to me as well. I was talking to one of the
AGI programmers at the conference and at one point he asked me what I
thought would be a good application for an AGI like around the house or in
everyday life. I know I must have gotta this blank look on my face and then
say that I really did see much use for it. I mean here is this AGI with real
people personality that act like a person. Isn't that just one more asshole
I have to contend with. I said what I really wanted was more direct access.
I want to be able to input process and output more data faster myself. So
what  if a machine can do it.

That too is not out of the question. I already outsource much of my memory
function to increasingly smaller laptops. If an interface allowed me to
outsource more and more input channels and processing power eventually my
brain would be kind of like the Apple II I have stored in the attic
somewhere.

[Ian]
Uploading or otherwise.
You seem to be living out your literary character Krimel :-)

[Krimel]
A point lost on many here. Also mentioned at various times during the
conference were the Neuromancer and Vinge's "True Names". Also Neil
Stephenson who I am embarrassed to say I have not read although I have read
Tad Williams who was not mentioned. This is a boring point to make but I
often hear even at this conference all this talk about the younger
generation "getting it" that they somehow are digital natives and understand
things in a way that older people can't or don't. To me that sounds like
bullshit. There are a lot of nerds like me that have watched their world
transform and get it very well. We haven't been sitting around watching
technology turn our world into magic. One of the first things I learned
about being online back in the days of BBS systems was that you don't use
your "True Name". A lot has changed of course and fewer people "get that."
But "I" am not Krimel and "Krimel" is not me. Krimel is potentially, at
least, immortal. I am dust on my way to returning to dust. I'd like to merge
but even at an exponential pace of change I don't think that's likely. 

For the time being Marx is still right, "Time wounds all heals."