Re: Gattaca on TV this weekend

From: CurtAdams@aol.com
Date: Mon Jun 17 2002 - 18:18:18 MDT


In a message dated 6/17/02 17:08:15, brian@posthuman.com writes:

>However, I think what you're saying there doesn't make complete sense.
>It's
>the part about the "super-smart" AI that bugs me. If an AI has grown into
>superintelligence then quite likely it is capable of constructing enough
>computronium to let it fully /emulate/ the whole planet if necessary to
>test
>out its new tech ideas much more quickly than realtime.

Trivially, if the AI or its computronium have any impact on the world,
it can't fully emulate the planet due to Godelization issues. In any case,
the best computer on the planet can't yet even fold a large protein by
emulation. Emulation of just one human being to that level (which actually
isn't good enough for emulating catalysis) is thus over 50 years away.
By Kurzweil's estimates (hardly gospel, of course) it would be about as smart
as every human being on the planet combined - clearly a superintelligence -
and yet still Vastly short of being able to emulate the biosphere.



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