Superintelligence Software

Brent Allsop (allsop@swttools.fc.hp.com)
Fri, 7 Aug 1998 12:13:31 -0600

boogie <extrogod@hotmail.com> asked:

> Computing power reaches brain level computing Nanotechnology matures
> to allow for the above computing power to work AND THEN A MIRACLE
> OCCURS and we have the software and VOILA! superintelligence!

> I'm uncomtable with the MIRACLE thing. Anyone able to replace it?

Very good point! I agree with you and don't think the mirricle is in the number of abstract mathematical calculations we can perform or abstract data we can store. Also, I don't think the mirracle is software. I believe the miricle is all in the phenomenal (not just abstract) nature of our representations of information.

I can look at a green thing. I represent this with a green qualia in my brain or mind. I then look at something that reflects 700 nm light and represent this with a very different red quale. I can tell you what color it is. There is not a lot of computation going on in such a trivial process and knowledge representation. No complex software of any kind is required. Indeed, simple color detecting machines at local paint stores do a much better job than we do at this. But, the key to our inteligence, is the powerful and phenomenal nature of the red quale or sensation we use to represent 700 nm light as apposed to the absract, near meaningless way the color detecting machine represents it.

Once we discover the miricle of what red and it's fundamental physical nature is, once we finally admit that it is something very different and more than a mere abstract number representation (for which the fundamental or physical nature of the representation is irrelevent) and once we know, objectively, why green is different than red... Once we discover these kinds of phenomenal and intelligently powerful things, and can create entities who's knowledge is represented with the same kind of phenomenal stuff, in the same kind of unified conscious world of knowledge, then we will finally understand and be able to create true intelligence or machines that really know and feel like the machine that is our brain does.

I don't want a mega teraflop machine runing some infinitely complex abstract software, I just want a simple color detecting device that can realize that that red stuff it finally feels is much better than the abstract, unconscious number representation it once used to represent it's knowledge. When we can finally do and recognize that simple thing, I think that will be the mirricle that takes us to the leap.

Brent Allsop