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Physicists, philosophers, professors, authors, cognitive scientists, and many others have weighed in on edge.org's annual question 2015: What do you think about machines that think? See all 186 responses here
Also, what do you think?
My 2ยข: There's been a lot of focus on potential disasters that are almost certainly not going to happen. E.g. a robot uprising, or mass poverty through unemployment. Most manufacturers of artificial intelligence won't program their machines to seek self preservation at the expense of their human masters. It wouldn't sell. Secondly, if robots can one day produce almost everything we need, including more robots, with almost no human labour required, then robot-powered factories will become like libraries: relatively cheap to maintain, plentiful, and a public one will be set up in every town or suburb, for public use. If you think the big corporations wouldn't allow it, why do they allow public libraries?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday January 23 2015, @08:24PM
The leap from weakAI to strongAI (or "general" ai ) is the main problem in this scheme. Nobody can get a grasp on it. Mainly because noone (out of ai-scientists) can't even define what intelligence is, and they're far to pretentious to admit that they don't really know what they're looking for. (as the article states, computers as very good at doing calculations, and really bad at doing simple "human" things, like walking or drawing your mom with crayons or irony; this is the level leap)
Intelligence is not a semantics problem. We became intelligent long before someone came up with a word for it (intelligence being a precondition for language in the first place).
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday January 23 2015, @08:56PM
Actually, there's some doubt that language came second. Language may be a precondition for general intelligence. (I feel this is related to the use another level of abstraction [pointers] process for handling flexible memory allocation in a static computer language.) But good arguments can be made in either direction, and I really suspect co-evolution.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday January 24 2015, @06:39PM
Actually, there's some doubt that language came second.
So what? There's doubt that the Moon isn't made of green cheese.
Language like intelligence is not a bit flag to set. Rudimentary languages like the various calls of a wolf or raven, don't require as much intelligence to understand as complex languages like English does (complete with multiple senses aspects to the language, such as written and symbolic forms, braille, etc). So yes, it is possible that once language has been established in a life form subject to evolution, that it creates a selection pressure for more intelligence.
But language has to be at a pretty advanced state and thus, require some significant intelligence, in order to have a term for intelligence.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday January 24 2015, @10:35PM
OK. By the time human languages had a term for intelligent, people were intelligent. But when I think of language I think of that thing enabled by the modified FOXP2 gene that when mutated, as in that family in England, means that you can't speak sentences.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.