Artificial Intelligence

[The Grand Nudger]

I was truly trying to explain rather than debate but it seems that you have been mistakenly ascribing a position that I wasn't actually holding which is probably why what I said did not make sense to you.

-You're aiming for a number "x", a measure of processing power whereby you feel that strong AI would be possible.  

No I am not. I never said that.  I was trying to demonstrate that we don't have enough processing power and that the more generalisable the adaptive solution, the more complex it will be and the more processing power will be required. I don't know how much processing power is required but it's more than most people think that it is. Not only that but we will need to evolve our solutions (something I tried to demonstrate above). The more complex our adaptive solutions are more the more processing is required to configure it.

 
But you -cannot- know this, unless you have a range of "x" to begin with.  By stating that we don't have the processing power, you have explicitly made a statement regarding the processing power required, even if that wasn't your intention, and even if it wasn't implicit in your position, which it is.   You may think it's more than most people think, but you -cannot- know that either.  You can't even begin to establish what you hope to establish without, at least, a conceptual range for the variable "x". Which was, abbreviated, "we don't have it, moores law may not hold long enough to get it".

Both of us think that humans possess that number "x", but what portion of what we possess is enough to satisfy "x" is still an undefined variable.  You (we, the royal we) have failed to create strong ai, in your estimation...and you've decided that the processing power available is responsible for that at least in part- but you cannot demonstrate that this is cause rather than correlation, or even misattribution. Perhaps we are currently capable of building a machine with -many times- the processing power required, we have simply failed to leverage that processing power. It is impossible for you to know, or even hold an informed position, let alone provide compelling evidence or valid argument....without some idea of what would satisfy you as "x".

If it were a debate, perhaps I'd impeach your variable "x", I'm not looking to do that, I'm just looking to see what you would accept as "x" - so we can determine whether or not we have that ability assuming your framework entirely. I'm looking to -agree- with you and then give a more solid number for "x" based upon your assumptions, regardless of whether or not they are true. You won't be able to explain to me what it is you're trying to communicate until we can pin that variable down -conceptually, even if we can;t pin it down practically (build an ai) factually (have knowledge of the exact number required) or accurately (demonstrate -by- building an ai -to- that number required).

I do, btw, agree with you in that an entirely top down approach is unlikely to yield the effect - but like many, I think that top down and bottom up meet somewhere, and they certainly seem to do so in our case, as an example of strong intelligence. We are both evolved from the bottom, and programmed from the top. It takes both, seemingly, to yield human intelligence (or -any- intelligence, using those examples we have to work with). The structure has to be capable, but it also has to be able to accept (and act on) instruction from "the outside". No sensible definition of intelligence, of any kind, omits either avenue.

Not only that but we also need to understand what's going on, that might be the greatest limiting factor. That takes time, effort, the ability to measure at finer detail and no amount of processing power will do that for us.

I am not saying that strong AI requires a certain amount of processing power or that it needs to model what we see in the brain. I do personally believe that it needs to be wholly self organising though (I won't explain why). I was railing against a top down approach where people point at something that they have simulated and claim that they have reproduced something. It's like drawing a picture of a house and pretending that you have built shelter. The function of both is completely different.

You absolutely are and continue to say precisely that.  You've decided that it requires an amount "x", x being: greater than we can build with current architectures, but presumably equal to or less than what we, in ourselves, possess.   

This all started with us disagreeing that the brain was inefficient and slow and maybe this just comes down to semantics. My position all this time is that we don't actually know that for sure and it's a difficult statement to actually qualify. We may suspect that to be the case because of what we understand about evolution. We know that the brain is not optimal precisely because we are able to generalise and adapt, but that's not the same as it being inefficient and slow. Nor am I denying that there isn't some scope for some redundancy. This is getting into the realms of complexity theory though.

Perhaps it does, in the case of efficiency -as I suggested the very moment I made those comments, but in the case of processing power required it is most definitely not an issue of semantics (though the fact that only a small portion of what we have is required to present effect is the strongest evidence, to me, that our brains are inefficiently constructed). You brought our brains into consideration, you brought moores law into consideration. My objections, under the framework you supplied, -need- to be addressed before I can assign any truth value to that statement, before I can understand what it is you mean to say.