From: Brian Phillips (deepbluehalo@earthlink.net)
Date: Thu Apr 12 2001 - 20:17:19 MDT
From: jpp22 <JPP22@student.canterbury.ac.nz>
> Has there been any thoughts to a biological entity
> as the singularity? And I do mean something more
> than just a bunch of cultured neurons.
>
Yes. Actually not so much a pure biological entity as
something with a (once)human at it's focus that augments
into something truly awesome. Then again we may
have a series of Singularities...pure transhuman AI
might be Singularity 2.0 or even 3.0!
> I guess the problem would be that biotech research
> has been kind of lagging behind expectations. So
> that by the time a being of sufficient intelligence
> could be engineered, we would already have a electrical
> system capable and problably already there.
>
This assumes that you are gengineering a transhuman entity
and waiting for it to mature maybe?
It is quite possible that in order to duplicate and trancend human
intelligence (even assuming we don't "mirror" a brain on silicon)
we may need near-complete comprehension of the human brain.
IF this true...why wouldn't a augmented human precede an AI?
I think it's certainly a possiblility. If near-total knowledge of
an biological intelligence's "hardware/software" is a neccessary
prerequisite to duplicate and go beyond that intelligence's capabilities
(especially on a vastly different sort of infrastructure) it seems quite
reasonable that "improving an existing system" might be easier and
quicker (if ultimately more limited) than duplicating and improving
upon that system in totally different materials and methods.
On the other hand it may be that the standard human neural
structure has too much evolutionary "baggage" to be quickly
Augmented into transhuman intelligence. So we work,learn,wait and
see no?
Eli any thoughts?
Brian
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