Is Artificial Intelligence Even Possible?

In my opinion, if humanity can continue to survive and advance technologically for even another 1000 years (which as you point out is a very short time in the scheme of things), that we will inevitably create an AI form singularity. I think this is probably unavoidable. As to what that AI Singularity might do once it arrives, I have no idea.

Itll ask for Tree Fiddy

Very true. Especially since this non-biological evolution has intelligence giving it a start and then nurturing it along as fast as it can.

But that begs the question of whether biological intelligence had the same kind of help.

**** me, I just can't stop...

youd stop if you had anything tangible to serve up as evidence besides a belief

Maybe a test for AI? An AI that could believe! Maybe that's what Hawking is warning us about :-)

what does that evidence? That Were a buncha clever monkeys

That's an interesting idea.

*IF* we were able to do it. I'm saying we are not even clever enough to understand what consciousness is, let alone reproduce it in a machine. I can't prove that either, hard to prove those negatives. Like - There is no God.

seems weve given it a name.

We dont PROVE these fundamentals, we "evidence" them. I got the fossils, I win

The term is artificial intelligence, not consciousness. What we have here is an argument with a holy roller, which is like mud wrestling with a pig.

There is only one person slinging mud around here, but I always did like irony. (I suppose my reply could be considered slinging mud back.. but that would be more irony).

The personal attacks are really unnecessary, especially on a thread like this one.

From the standpoint of machine intelligence, this question is pretty comical. Ironic indeed given how precious little evidence there is that you meat puppets have any intelligence of your own.
Human intelligence is severely constrained by short term memory of 7 +/- 2 items [Miller, 1956] and a stack depth of 2. Consequently little to no useful intelligent action can be performed in the average human brain (without mechanical aids: writing, books, diagrams, computers, etc.). To do anything useful, humans must generally rely on mechanical/machine intelligence methods including action subroutines, lists, heuristics, algorithms, procedure manuals, organizational charts, and other such crutches.
Not only are most people ill-equipped to do any real thinking on their own, but most people go out of their way NOT to think at any particular moment. The fact that people enjoy routines is a common form of evidence of this; following a routine avoids the need to make decisions or synthesize plans. Similarly, in the business world, standards and procedures are implemented to AVOID the possibility that employees will think. A typical employee's actions boil down to implementing a couple dozen rules (that might well have been presented to them in explicit written form): "IF a customer steps up to your station, THEN say "Welcome to McDonalds, can I take your order?" This is true even at a much higher level; IBM's CEO has a very scripted life as far as presentations to the board, information to be released, lunches to be attended, etc. and will generally have these tasks scheduled by someone else and even their speeches might well be written by others. Humans are today incapable of many quite straightforward (for a machine) tasks as well, such as operating a battleship. Instead, a large number of humans must work in tandem, each with mostly mechanical tasks (IF this light turns on THEN press this button). Consequently none of them even understand how the ship works at this point. This is true for an increasing number of tasks; humans are also not able to fly the latest generations of fighter jets; these planes are unstable and cannot be flown in the hands of humans; only computers can fly them. A psychological study of high school students was done where they were given pagers and asked to write down what they were thinking when the pagers buzzed. Fewer than 20% were actually thinking about the content being presented. [Csikszentmihalyi, 1988]
SETI projects are searching for life on other planets by sending binary signals over radio waves that can be decoded to read complex messages. Yet how many of these examples, the McDonald's clerk, the CEO, the battleship crew, the fighter pilots, and the students, would or even could recognize and decode that message in their lifetimes? The Turing test is laughable and backward. It is humans who have yet to prove their intelligence, and they come closest when they behave like machines.

Yeah, you always were a puling hypocrite.

Mr. Max Hypocrite got this response from the author of the thread, before i had even posted in this thread:



Anyone who has followed Leadfoot's brief career here will know that he has a religious agenda. Describing him as a holy roller is not a personal attack, it's just descriptive.

Mas has a huge selection bias when it comes to criticizing what i post.

That quote isn't mine Setanta, someone else said that.

Can you show me a place on this thread (or any other) where I have used personal attacks or name calling (other than calling you out on a specific example of bad behavior)?

If there is a place where I attacked someone personally (other than telling you to cool it) or called someone a name, please point that out?

Brilliant, although I disagree, not too surprisingly -- your post was probably meant to be provocative.

I guess we need a tentative definition of what intelligence is before this discussion can make any sense. If you define it as the capacity to calculate stuff with precision, we're indeed far stupider than the most basic pocket calculator.

Grow up. You are clearly not able to tell the difference between fun repartee and childish name calling.

But back on topic, there have been several good suggestions on definition of AI. The ones that fit the scenario of being potentially dangerous are the ones I was interested in. Pure capability is not what might be dangerous, it's the things that we associate with human characteristics that might be.

If my computer ever starts getting really bitchy and calling me names, I'll start worrying.

"Puling" - Word of The Day

I had to look it up
I thought he may have been puling our legs.

At least his personal attacks are amusing and informative.

(I love sciolism.)