From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Mon Apr 30 2001 - 22:45:59 MDT
Ben Goertzel wrote:
> It may well wind up that we want to build computers with a kind of
> "intelligence ceiling", computers that ~don't~ become vastly
> superintelligent precisely because they're more useful to us when their
> intelligence is at a level that our problems are still interesting to them.
>
I would rather remain interesting by increasing in my own intelligence
and understanding rather than keeping the AI dumb enough to wish to talk
to me. :-)
> This is reminiscent of the situation in "A Fire Upon the Deep", in which not
> all civilizations choose to transcend and become vastly superintelligent...
>
There are possible reasons that I don't gainsay to choose that way.
Assuming that the pace of change toward Singularity is actually
controllable in the first place of course.
> Or one can imagine "bodhisattva AI's" that become superintelligent and then
> stupidify themselves so they can help us better.
>
I don't believe stupidity is required for the job. Perhaps limiting
one's focus for a time is.
> When I was younger and even more foolish, I used to have a theory that I was
> an all knowing all powerful God who had intentionally blotted out most of
> his mind and made himself into a mere mortal, just because he'd gotten tired
> of being so damn powerful ;>
I had the theory that I was a transplant from a much more advanced
civilization starting when I was about four. I used to call out
mentally for my true people to come and take me away from this madhouse
of a world. But, of course, they never did. Now and then I would dream
of this other world during my childhood. Sometimes I would wake up and
spend a long time searching my bed for one of my favorite things from
the other world that I had in my dreams but was gone when I awoke. Like
the magic small box (but not magic in the dream any more than a faucet
is magic). If I directed a thought at the box then out of it would come
whatever I pictured. That one was so achingly real that it really upset
me that I did not have it in this *real* world.
I remember when I first learned the word "omniscient". I thought that
was a reasonable goal to aim for. :-)
- samantha
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