From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Thu Jan 18 2001 - 16:14:24 MST
"Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" wrote:
>
> Why the shift? Well, mainly:
>
> 1) Instead of visualizing the Singularity as a far-off celebration on the
> day that the whole human race gets together and networks our computing
> power to build the seed AI that is the final culmination of all our
> accumulated programming expertise and augmented intelligence, I figured
> out how to build the darn thing myself on a Beowulf network.
>
> The other reasons, in no particular order:
Really? Where is this writeen up? Where are the project development
plans? Where is the funding and staffing plan? I don't mean to pick on
you but I am hearing extravangant (imho) claims for one of the grandest
projects of all time but I am not seeing or hearing about much real
substance. Where is the beef?
>
> 2) I figured out that human cognition actually uses all that parallelized
> power mainly for performing operations in one neural "step" that are
> intrinsically serial - in other words, the brain needs a massive amount of
> power because the transistors run at 200hz. You'd need a massive amount
> of parallel power to run a spreadsheet if it ran on a 200hz CPU. So my
> estimate of the real computing power required to get human-equivalent
> intelligence got stepped down by three or four orders of magnitude.
>
Well that's an interesting theory. Please point to a write-up and to
evidence and hopefully some peer-review.
> 3) Nanotechnology moved waay faster than I expected. So, to a lesser
> extent, did cognitive science, Singularity memetics, and even non-SingInst
> commercial AI.
>
> 4) I stopped thinking in terms of "What is the precise degree of
> ludicrousness involved in the thought of my ever getting a cent from
> Social Security?" and shifted to "When do I need to do something if I want
> to do it before the Singularity?"
>
So exactly what is being done to produce the SI beyond the papers and
such? How do people get involved if interested and possessing needed
talents or desiring to invest?
- samantha
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