From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Mon May 28 2001 - 13:42:08 MDT
Spike Jones wrote:
>
> Suppose instead of aliens landing on a ruined earth, we
> send the map to them. This map is of a structure that any
> apparatus we would call intellingent would recognize. The
> simplest one I know of that fits this description is Sagan's
> list of primes as described in Contact.
>
> Now suppose one wishes to beam some kind of message
> analogous to a list of primes, except we want to demonstrate
> that the sender is *really* intelligent, not just a simple list of
> primes. What do we send? spike
Send them the most impressive computer program humanity has been able to
write so far. Programming is the purest expression of intelligence.
Send them a generally intelligent AI, if you have one; this demonstrates
self-awareness and self-understanding as well. Progress in the cognitive
sciences is the purest expression of technological enlightenment. (But
don't send a *seed* AI, because then they don't know how much of the AI
*you* wrote and how much the *AI* wrote.)
-- -- -- -- --
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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