From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Thu Sep 02 1999 - 08:29:15 MDT
phoenix@ugcs.caltech.edu writes:
> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1999/09/990901080658.htm
> MRI is being used to map out the wiring between different parts of the brain.
> Notable quotation: "We were surprised and excited to find that the brain
> circuitry was wired in such an orderly fashion."
It is a beautiful article, and shows that MRI is extremely
versatile. I disagree with the quoted researcher about the surprise;
all anatomical data suggest that fiber tracts are neatly ordered, they
just look tangled under a microscope. It would be much more surprising
if the tracts were random.
> This led to a tangential thought: others have often said that a super-AI could
> convince any human guardians it wasn't malevolent and was safe out of its
> sandbox, even if it was wholly paranoid and malevolent.
>
> How is that supposed to work if the humans can read the AI's thoughts? If even
> the evolved brains of humans are relatively modular and well-wired, I think a
> well-built software program will be fairly transparent.
Unfortunately, this is not necessarily true. If I see a complex
pattern of activity in your brain, I cannot tell if it is you thinking
of strawberries or killing me, despite the orderliness of the
long-range connections. What individual neurons represent is likely
highly variable, and hence a pattern of activity that might in one
brain correspond to murder would in another be strawberries.
> Not that I subscribe to any belief that AIs will necessarily have any
> particular property, although I'd hope being able to examine their own source
> code would at least mess with any religion they pick up. (Not to mention the
> agelessness, backup, and duplication issues.)
It might be interesting to think of religions that AIs might believe
in. Maybe something like the Dust Theory of _Permutation City_?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension!
asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:05:00 MST