DETERMINISM IN FLUX

Before sailing out too far into a general acceptance of what we mean by artificial intelligence we first need to remind ourselves we never really did come to an agreement about what intelligence itself may actually be, so it goes without saying that if we were to venture further into exploring the realm of our consciousness, that at the very least we might agree to agree that our lack of conception as to how they're designated may indicate that these subjects--intelligence and consciousness--should not necessarily be taken for granted, and neither must they be accepted as being perfectly defined, either.


Intelligence is loosely defined as 'the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills'.   The definition of knowledge may be understood as 'facts, information, and skills acquired through experience or education'. The key toward better understanding their significance, of course, lies with necessarily having to eliminate one's self--the proverbial personhood--from the equation, to see that everything continues with or without our individual selves along for the ride.  Only then may we be led to understand how the world continues to remain whole without us.

from a Dec 14, 2016 NY Times article:

In the 1980s, a robotics researcher at Carnegie Mellon pointed out that it was easy to get computers to do adult things but nearly impossible to get them to do things a 1-year-old could do, like hold a ball or identify a cat.


Humans don’t learn to understand language by memorizing dictionaries and grammar books, so why should we possibly expect our computers to do so?



“The portion of evolution in which animals developed eyes was a big development,” Dean told me one day, with customary understatement. We were sitting, as usual, in a whiteboarded meeting room, on which he had drawn a crowded, snaking timeline of Google Brain and its relation to inflection points in the recent history of neural networks. “Now computers have eyes. We can build them around the capabilities that now exist to understand photos. Robots will be drastically transformed. They’ll be able to operate in an unknown environment, on much different problems.” 


An average brain has something on the order of 100 billion neurons. Each neuron is connected to up to 10,000 other neurons, which means that the number of synapses is between 100 trillion and 1,000 trillion. For a simple artificial neural network of the sort proposed in the 1940s, the attempt to even try to replicate this was unimaginable. We’re still far from the construction of a network of that size, but Google Brain’s investment allowed for the creation of artificial neural networks comparable to the brains of mice.


Everyone with an interest in sharpening their minds should really take the time to read this excellent article by Gideon Lewis-Kraus. The mere effort of assimilating the information he writes so clearly about should suffice to upgrade our own brains, even while the AI Google interface evolves at a pace which will soon outstrip our own.  This is the real nature of the oncoming technological 'Singularity,' the term coined by Ray Kurzweil which references the rapid advancement of technology in shorter increments of time. The idea being, artificial 'intelligence' will soon surpass the average human IQ--which according to our current understanding, has its limit--and in the near future, its multifaceted and various applications (which we are already beginning to experience right now) will begin impacting our lives in new and unexpected ways.

Remember, as we sail on into the developing future, to distinguish between the meaning and implications of the following terms:

Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Discrimination
Artificial Perception
Artificial Aptitude
Artificial Sensibility
Artificial Recognition
Artificial Judgment
Artificial Circumspection
Artificial Consciousness
Artificial Wisdom
Simulated Intelligence
Simulated Discrimination
Simulated Perception
Simulated Aptitude
Simulated Sensibility
Simulated Recognition
Simulated Judgment
Simulated Circumspection
Simulated Consciousness
Simulated Wisdom


All of which is to remind us that we are dealing here with a sort of manufactured apperception when it comes to our rapidly developing technology in the fields of robotics and artificial intelligence. We must retain a sense of humility and in my opinion, a sense of non-discrimination when dealing with having to necessarily process this technological development we're all caught up in the midst of. Age old fears instilled by thousands of  years of human religious, spiritual, and political culture have shaped us into zealous beings largely controlled by our various dogmas. The additional influence of literature and the arts have also shaped our understandings of the roles we play on the natural stage of evolution, and in many instances, have exacerbated our deeply instilled fears of the unknown. This is how we get reactionary apprehensions of "SkyNet" scenarios engendered by popular movies and novels. I've jotted this all down here in my [scratchYpost] blog merely as a bookmark for my own purposes--to remind me that this ongoing adventure of existence we're all in together continues to surprise and amaze us with many unexpected and wondrous developments--and for reasons I can only hope readers of this blog will infer on their own, may require each one of us to have successfully developed an optimistic and courageous attitude in order to get through the advanced augmentations of our ripening progress here on this Earth.  In my view, it will require not only a certain suspension of disbelief, but also a savvy accumulation of a particular degree of faith that things have a way of working themselves out.

Considering advancements in our comprehension of quantum dynamics in the field of physics, the ability for each one of us as individuals to develop even the slightest amount of counter-intuition will become extremely helpful as we rush collectively toward the gradually establishing 'Singularity' currently in the process of assimilating us all into its gathering assembly.