Re: Gattaca on TV this weekend

From: Harvey Newstrom (mail@HarveyNewstrom.com)
Date: Mon Jun 17 2002 - 21:25:09 MDT


On Monday, June 17, 2002, at 08:06 pm, Brian Atkins wrote:

> However, I think what you're saying there doesn't make complete sense.
> It's
> the part about the "super-smart" AI that bugs me. If an AI has grown
> into
> superintelligence then quite likely it is capable of constructing enough
> computronium to let it fully /emulate/ the whole planet if necessary to
> test
> out its new tech ideas much more quickly than realtime.

That only tests the ideas in VR. Testing in reality takes longer. It
is easy to restart VR if it crashes. Reality is harder to recover. No
matter how fast the VR goes, reality will always lag behind. VR will
keep getting faster and faster, while reality continues to lag farther
and farther behind. This is why I predict that realtime testing and
implementation will increasingly become the bottleneck of future
technology.

> I also don't see any real basis to your claim that "everything will take
> 10 times longer than the claims on this list" comment. Ray Kurzweil's
> estimate of 2029-2049 for a "slow Singularity" is rather conservative I
> think. If you see things taking significantly longer than that I'm
> curious
> why?

I wasn't discounting Ray Kurzweil's estimates, which are pretty close to
my own. (In fact, I don't remember seeing Ray on the list recently.) I
was discounting claims of 5-10 years that are sometimes presented on the
list. I am encouraged to hear you quoting the more reasonable
estimations.

--
Harvey Newstrom, CISSP <www.HarveyNewstrom.com>
Principal Security Consultant <www.Newstaff.com>


This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:14:52 MST