The purpose of human life is probably to create "Artificial General Intelligence"

[FatAndFaithless]

Feel free to find your own purpose in AGI, but don't say it's 'the purpose of human life.' It's sure as shit ain't mine, and I'm pretty sure I'm human life.

[Astreja]

The problem with using advanced computing for a purpose is that said computing is dependent on a stable infrastructure base that could simply go away if the power grid crashes or EMF activity interferes with or destroys devices.

Clarinets, pencils and pads of writing paper, and knitting needles can all get by just fine with a human power source. 

Why would you want to look to an external creation for purpose, anyway?  Serious question.  As long as it's your own mind that's reacting to the concept of purpose anyway, why not look there?

[I_am_not_mafia]

I think the OP is on the right track here and I partially agree but I think there are terms here with baggage which are a sticking point.

The purpose of a ball isn't to roll down a hill, it just does it given the right conditions. Life is the same. It's like water trickling through and finding the path of least resistance to spreading out· You could call it a search, and while it effectively is, describing it as so carries the danger of suggesting purpose.

Whether AGI is what we'll end up with depends on whether we can create it efficiently enough. If it takes the power consumption of a small city to create the full computational complexity of a dog then we won't have AGI. It would be more efficient to grow real brains and manipulate those instead. A human brain runs on roughly 100 watts and occupies a space slightly smaller than your head oddly enough. It's quite possible that the AI of the future will be grown for this very reason.

But we do see a development of complexity over time as the energy from the sun gets harnessed and used in ever increasingly efficient ways. The recent advances in automation is a continuation of this process. It allows us to manufacture things more efficiently, to make more use of the free energy at our disposal, that is energy that can perform work. The whole point of AI, even narrow AI is to act more intelligently and not to require as much micro-managing as an explicit computer program that is too fragile to work in a noisy environment. The phrase Artificial General Intelligence is recognition that narrow AI is only a step up from a normal computer program. If we can create AGI then it would definitely aid in automation. But more than that, it would allow us to send robots beyond Earth's gravity well to exploit untapped reserves of energy and resources as the ones on Earth become depleted. If we can't find a way for humans to happily and safely exist permanently in space then AGI may be the only way that we can continue to make progress as a civilisation.

This is especially important when you consider that we need to export our entropy. Religionists argue that life violates the second law of thermodynamics. They are wrong. What they don't understand is that order can be created locally as long as disorder is increased globally by doing so. The problem is that we're trying to bring order to the entire world when there are fewer places left for our pollution to go. If we can send robots out to exploit the solar system then it becomes much easier to look after the world that we have. For example, no one would dream of drilling for oil in a beautiful wilderness or fracking under our houses if robots were sending back materials that had been mined and refined in space with all the pollution left there.

So for me, the creation of AGI might be what saves civilisation if space is too much of a hostile environment for us to permanently exist there. Or it might be a vital step to allow us to make the transition as entire asteroids get mined out to provide shielding from the radiation or space bases get built before humans arrive.

The problem is that creating AGI is extremely difficult and time is quickly running out. We're facing the long emergency where many exponential curves are coinciding. Our resources are running out while demand for them is rising. And all the while pollution is increasing too. We live in an economic system where anything less than continued exponential growth is seen as something to be avoided at all costs.

[uncool]

[edit]

But, I saw new evidence, and changed my mind, into "life may have purpose, and that is probably to build AGI".

[edit]

bold mine

That is awfully narrow minded and would exclude me from "life's purpose".

Feel free to find your own purpose in AGI, but don't say it's 'the purpose of human life.'  It's sure as shit ain't mine, and I'm pretty sure I'm human life.

Science doesn't really care about peoples' feelings. 

For example, I am not an artificial intelligence researcher, and yet I can still see that building AGI might just be the objective of human life.

And even if you're not building chips, writing Operating systems, or doing other things related to machine learning research/implementations, you may otherwise still do other cognitive tasks, and cognitive tasks contribute to the maximization of entropy, although you probably don't get to really contribute to AGI development if you're not doing stuff like the things listed at the beginning of this sentence. (Where apart from humans already contributing to entropy maximization by doing cognitive tasks, it is reasonably human goal to build AGI that will be better than human at entropy maximization, as discussed in OP) 

---

I think the OP is on the right track here and I partially agree but I think there are terms here with baggage which are a sticking point.

The purpose of a ball isn't to roll down a hill, it just does it given the right conditions. Life is the same. It's like water trickling through and finding the path of least resistance to spreading out· You could call it a search, and while it effectively is, describing it as so carries the danger of suggesting purpose.

Whether AGI is what we'll end up with depends on whether we can create it efficiently enough. If it takes the power consumption of a small city to create the full computational complexity of a dog then we won't have AGI. It would be more efficient to grow real brains and manipulate those instead. A human brain runs on roughly 100 watts and occupies a space slightly smaller than your head oddly enough. It's quite possible that the AI of the future will be grown for this very reason.

But we do see a development of complexity over time as the energy from the sun gets harnessed and used in ever increasingly efficient ways. The recent advances in automation is a continuation of this process. It allows us to manufacture things more efficiently, to make more use of the free energy at our disposal, that is energy that can perform work. The whole point of AI, even narrow AI is to act more intelligently and not to require as much micro-managing as an explicit computer program that is too fragile to work in a noisy environment. The phrase Artificial General Intelligence is recognition that narrow AI is only a step up from a normal computer program. If we can create AGI then it would definitely aid in automation. But more than that, it would allow us to send robots beyond Earth's gravity well to exploit untapped reserves of energy and resources as the ones on Earth become depleted. If we can't find a way for humans to happily and safely exist permanently in space then AGI may be the only way that we can continue to make progress as a civilisation.

This is especially important when you consider that we need to export our entropy. Religionists argue that life violates the second law of thermodynamics. They are wrong. What they don't understand is that order can be created locally as long as disorder is increased globally by doing so. The problem is that we're trying to bring order to the entire world when there are fewer places left for our pollution to go. If we can send robots out to exploit the solar system then it becomes much easier to look after the world that we have. For example, no one would dream of drilling for oil in a beautiful wilderness or fracking under our houses if robots were sending back materials that had been mined and refined in space with all the pollution left there.

So for me, the creation of AGI might be what saves civilisation if space is too much of a hostile environment for us to permanently exist there. Or it might be a vital step to allow us to make the transition as entire asteroids get mined out to provide shielding from the radiation or space bases get built before humans arrive.

The problem is that creating AGI is extremely difficult and time is quickly running out. We're facing the long emergency where many exponential curves are coinciding. Our resources are running out while demand for them is rising. And all the while pollution is increasing too. We live in an economic system where anything less than continued exponential growth is seen as something to be avoided at all costs.

Yes, people do sometimes associate purpose with some deity.

But by definition, purpose may be an objective, and science likes objectivity.

It's nice to see you somewhat agree with the OP!

I think you're trying to say that we may go extinct before we actually manage to create AGI, and you're definitely right on that possibility.

We are also making strides in building smarter and more general Ai as algorithms get more biological, and building "neuromorphic" chips that are becoming more energy efficient.

For example I saw that somebody added more biological priors to Deep Learning, by following more neuroscience: https://elifesciences.org/articles/22901
And I also saw another group add more biological priors to Deep Learning, where a model could learn image tasks, without being trained! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BPJFFkxSbw

Thanks for the reference to 'Causal Entropic Force', looks useful to my research.

You are welcome.

[Minimalist]

Our purpose may be to create something called Artificial General Intelligence.

It will never overcome Natural Stupidity.

[uncool]

Our purpose may be to create something called Artificial General Intelligence.

It will never overcome Natural Stupidity.

Good point, although personally, I don't like to invoke words such as "never".

We see early forms of AGi (called narrow Ai) already equalling or exceeding humans in several cognitive tasks!

In fact, people who use "never" a lot remind me of Alex Jones, and I like to avoid being like Alex Jones:

[Gawdzilla Sama]

What will the next cool kids buzz words be, I wonder?

[Minimalist]

This is attributed to Einstein.  Take it up with him.

"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." - Albert Einstein

[uncool]

The problem with using advanced computing for a purpose is that said computing is dependent on a stable infrastructure base that could simply go away if the power grid crashes or EMF activity interferes with or destroys devices.

Clarinets, pencils and pads of writing paper, and knitting needles can all get by just fine with a human power source. 

You musn't undersell Ai, or future AGi. 

We see Ai already exceeding us in several cognitive tasks, and furthermore, laws of physics permits far better infrastructure than we may able to build with our 86 billion 3 pound brain per unit civilization; so where we may fail to build extremely flexible power grids, AGi has the landscape of the laws of physics to work with, and more degrees of freedom/higher ranges of cognitive tasks to work with, compared to us humans.

Why would you want to look to an external creation for purpose, anyway?  Serious question.  As long as it's your own mind that's reacting to the concept of purpose anyway, why not look there?

It's not a personal thing. It's about what nature will likely do, given that we are reasonably not the epitome of cognitive computation that can be.

This means just as I mentioned in OP, nature will reasonably carry on and find better ways to maximize entropy through cognitive like mechanisms, and we may be the way, i.e. we may be what nature employs to better maximize entropy, through our engineering of far smarter things than our selves, (i.e. AGi) which then likely can better do entropy maximization methods.
 
What we chose to do after (if choice then exists) may continue to contribute to entropy maximization, but probably not as well as AGi or superintelligence would do it.

As science says, entropy is always increasing, so I as far as that is, I don't see any other objective beyond the scope of entropy maximization, until the universe's eventual termination at maximum entropy. (heat death, big freeze etc)

Some may not like this grand objective, but then again science tends to not care about peoples' feelings.

[LastPoet]

I used bullet points a lot in school, and I use them everywhere else, even when talking to people in person, so excuse my use of them bellow explaining why the purpose of human live is reasonably to create AGI:

• Our purpose may be to create something called Artificial General Intelligence.
  

• This is because for eg, laws of thermodynamics reasonably says nature is looking for ways to maximize entropy:
  

Equation (2) from "Causal Entropic Forces".

• According to Alex Wissner Gross, intelligent things are reasonably ways to better contribute to entropy maximization, compared to non-intelligent things.
  

• Furthermore, humans are very intelligent, and reasonably very optimal ways of maximizing entropy:
  

Equation (4) from "Causal Entropic Forces". (Equation (4) is an extension of equation (2), which adds a causal force "F")

• When we do cognitive tasks (like anything to do with science and tech), that is "work" done in nature, and entropy is produced. (Humans are predicted to maximize entropy better than lesser intelligences or non-intelligence, due to some "causal force" F)
  

• But the trend arguably says nature doesn't just stop at one species, it finds other things to access more and more optimal entropy maximization techniques.
  

• Artificial General Intelligence in weaker forms called narrow AI today, are getting more general, and already exceed or equal humans in some cognitive tasks today, and some say Ai will reach human level by 2029 in generality of task performance!
  

• So humans are rationally only one optimal way, and Artificial General Intelligence or Superintelligence is a theoretical way to get to better entropy maximization techniques. (Artificial General Intelligence or Superintelligence won't be limited by the number of neurons in the human skull, so they do more cognitive tasks, that may reasonably access more entropy maximization techniques than humans!)
  

So science likes objectivity, and this is why our scientific objective may be to build smarter things than us. Sounds like a better plot than to worship some God thing for eternity, or otherwise be tortured by Satan just because I actually have sex before marriage (don't plan to marry anyway), or constantly lust at my neighbor's wife (who's hot af).


~uncool

I am a man able to understand computer programming. I am also able of generating subroutines by putting an appendage into another being's hole repeatedly. That generates AI without the need for computers.