I got to re-watch Blade Runner last night, and seeing the ‘replicants’ in the movie made me think about how far we really are from intelligent machines, no less machines more intelligent than us.
It is true computers are doubling in computing power every 18 months, but I think programs are only doubling in ability every 10 years. Is your computer experience now twice as good as it was 10 years ago? Sure, it was probably Windows 95, Mac OS 8.2, or RedHat 2, but is it really that much better now? You could surf the web. You could write e-mail and use already mature word processors, spread sheets, etc. Heck, you could even watch some videos, if you had a really advanced system. Today, the software does the same thing, just faster, NOT DIFFERENT.
The people who have been working on AI have discovered it is MUCH MUCH harder than they originally thought. You may be able to create a computer with the linear computational speed of a human brain, but the software just isn’t there. I think it will take a long time for the software to catch up to the hardware.
I think there still stands some important issues:
1) Lack of parallel processing. You may see a dual or quad core processor in a modern pc. The world’s fastest supercomputer has over 64,000 cores! But, they are still pocket calculators compared to a human brain. The brain may only work at a few Hz, but it is supremely parallel. While I am typing this blog, my brain is controlling every volentary muscle in my body, it is monitoring the position of every joint, it is monitoring temperature, air speed past hairs, pain receptors, sound vibrations, and over 20,000,000 bytes of information every second from my eyes. The information from my eyes has to be processed, and memories, some which may be decades old, are accessed to understand writing on the page. All of this is done in real time, all the time. All of this is done on about 40 watts of power. If computers don’t become massively parallel, they will just be glorified calculators.
2) Lack of creativity. The problem with computers is they only really do what you tell them to do. There are some neural networks and learning machines, but creating something from nothing is what a computer can’t do.
3) No body. I think a fundamental part of being a human, is being a physical thing. Arms, legs, eyes, ears, penis/vagina, nose, toes it all makes us what we are. Without the sensory inputs of a person, a computer can never think like a person. There are deaf and blind people out there, but the amount of information they process is still much more than what a computer can handle. If a person was just a brain in a jar, I don’t think they would think much like us. That is what a computer is, just a brain in a jar, with very limited inputs.
This gets me back to Blade Runner. The problem of making a thinking machine was circumvented by the fact Replicants were just genetically engineered people who were made into slaves. Their brains were biological, and their bodies were our bodies. I don’t think we will follow this route. Whether born of woman or a test tube, a human is still a human, and a slave is still a slave.
In the end, we may make intelligent machines, but I just don’t know. We are making computers very different from what Evolution has created. Evolution has a heck of a head start on us, and I don’t know if we are ready to meet our replacements yet.
Artificial Intellegence
I got to re-watch Blade Runner last night, and seeing the ‘replicants’ in the movie made me think about how far we really are from intelligent machines, no less machines more intelligent than us.
It is true computers are doubling in computing power every 18 months, but I think programs are only doubling in ability every 10 years. Is your computer experience now twice as good as it was 10 years ago? Sure, it was probably Windows 95, Mac OS 8.2, or RedHat 2, but is it really that much better now? You could surf the web. You could write e-mail and use already mature word processors, spread sheets, etc. Heck, you could even watch some videos, if you had a really advanced system. Today, the software does the same thing, just faster, NOT DIFFERENT.
The people who have been working on AI have discovered it is MUCH MUCH harder than they originally thought. You may be able to create a computer with the linear computational speed of a human brain, but the software just isn’t there. I think it will take a long time for the software to catch up to the hardware.
I think there still stands some important issues:
1) Lack of parallel processing. You may see a dual or quad core processor in a modern pc. The world’s fastest supercomputer has over 64,000 cores! But, they are still pocket calculators compared to a human brain. The brain may only work at a few Hz, but it is supremely parallel. While I am typing this blog, my brain is controlling every volentary muscle in my body, it is monitoring the position of every joint, it is monitoring temperature, air speed past hairs, pain receptors, sound vibrations, and over 20,000,000 bytes of information every second from my eyes. The information from my eyes has to be processed, and memories, some which may be decades old, are accessed to understand writing on the page. All of this is done in real time, all the time. All of this is done on about 40 watts of power. If computers don’t become massively parallel, they will just be glorified calculators.
2) Lack of creativity. The problem with computers is they only really do what you tell them to do. There are some neural networks and learning machines, but creating something from nothing is what a computer can’t do.
3) No body. I think a fundamental part of being a human, is being a physical thing. Arms, legs, eyes, ears, penis/vagina, nose, toes it all makes us what we are. Without the sensory inputs of a person, a computer can never think like a person. There are deaf and blind people out there, but the amount of information they process is still much more than what a computer can handle. If a person was just a brain in a jar, I don’t think they would think much like us. That is what a computer is, just a brain in a jar, with very limited inputs.
This gets me back to Blade Runner. The problem of making a thinking machine was circumvented by the fact Replicants were just genetically engineered people who were made into slaves. Their brains were biological, and their bodies were our bodies. I don’t think we will follow this route. Whether born of woman or a test tube, a human is still a human, and a slave is still a slave.
In the end, we may make intelligent machines, but I just don’t know. We are making computers very different from what Evolution has created. Evolution has a heck of a head start on us, and I don’t know if we are ready to meet our replacements yet.
Posted by admin on September 4, 2007 in General Comments
1 Comment