>>I don't really think that the emotional motivations are
>>relevant to the technological question

> they are relevant to people's appraisal of technological
> possibilities; the will to believe is a powerful force.

Again, that's not something that particular concerns me. If you want my own appraisal, a singularity, if it is to happen, will most likely happen well outside of my lifetime.

>Hence, as Charlie pointed out, the deranged over-optimism
>of AI types, something that has been with us for 50 years
>and more now.

I don't think that it's deranged as much as an example of betting on simplistic models of the mind. The AI folks were universally hopeful that the simpler models of cognition -- the sort that could be modeled top-down without much effort -- would be the right ones because, frankly, it would have made their jobs much easier.

I will agree that trying to make *predictions* at this point is thoroughly daft. As I stated ealier, we don't even have a basic model of what cognition *is* at this point. As I've also said, I think that the most important function that AI research has provided is to offer empirical demonstrations of what intelligence *isn't*.

>The question of indefinite life extension is, I think, another empirical question.

> it _could be_ an empirical question.

It absolutely is an empirical question regardless of how many soft-headed optimists there are out there who are approaching it with all the intellectual rigor of alchemists searching for the philosophers stone.

>In fact, take a look at all the geeks who firmly believe
>they're going to bre "uploaded" to immortality, which is
>about as likely as the Second Coming. Or the ones having
>themselves or their heads frozen.

/shrug

I'm not in that crowd, nor am I particularly interested in their wishful thoughts. Never the less, I see nothing in our current knowledge of physical law that would, a priori, preclude technologies that allow for such to *eventually* arise. Again, I would be very seriously surprised if such arrived on the scene during my lifetime.

>You would not believe the hostility that results when you >debunk 'em.

Sure I'd believe it. I would guess that you would have found similar hostility from those persuing demonstrably idiotic ideas concerning powered flight in the run-up to Kitty Hawk.

>Do the laws of nature forbid us from using technology to
>become something more than merely human?

>-- no; but then, they don't forbid us from terraforming
>Mars, or building a Dyson Sphere, either.

I rather suspect that they do forbid the latter, but I won't quibble.

>I'm not holding my breath.

I apologize if I gave the impression that I was.

>The madness of the Singularity types is that they expect
>all this stuff to happen in time to rescue _them_ from the
>common ills of humanity.

Sure. I agree that there's a lot of unmerited optimism. If that's your complaint, then I have no disagreement. My impression was that you felt that the entire topic was concerned with a technological impossibility and that you felt that the emotive reactions of some towards the question disproved the technical aspect of the question.

>Come now. "Marooned in Realtime" was a fiction.

>-- true, but my impression is that it's very much what
>Vinge expects and strongly desires. He pulls back from it,
>not being a fool, but the magnetic attraction always pulls
>him around again.

Unless Vinge does us the service of dropping into the discussion to englighten us, I don't think that there's much use in speculating on his true beliefs. Suffice it to say that what I've read and heard in various interviews doesn't lead me to agree with your assessment. We will have to agree to disagree on this point.

>Meanwhile, something that's actually likely to happen, and to
>be tranformative: lie detectors that really work.

I can't decide which I find more frightening: that governments are currently using pseudo-scientific equipment to "detect" lies or the prospect that they may get a lie detector that actually works as advertised.

>On the other hand, by 2050 I'd expect some sort of virtual
>reality with direct neural input to be common, and used for
>both work and entertainment, and to be a serious social
>problem.
>
>Interactive "feelies", in other words.

You know, Mr. Stirling, it's interesting for me to compare what you find plausible and implausible with my own estimations.

I would bet that this sort of VR technology will be one of the 50-years-from-now technologies for a very long time yet to come.

Of course, there are two primary sins that all futurists commit: over-estimating the rate of change and under-estimating the rate of change, the classic example being everyone predicting moon-bases by the year 2000 without anyone predicting that computers would become small, cheap and ubiquitous by the mid-80s.

Ultimately, futurism is just mental masturbation (not that there's anything wrong with a bit of harmless self-stimulation). Invariably, the actual future will confound and frustrate our expectations of it.

"I would bet that this sort of VR technology will be one of the 50-years-from-now technologies for a very long time yet to come."

-- why? We've already got proof-of-concept examples of artificial sensory inputs; the synthetic retinas, for example. And there's a very strong incentive to develop this stuff; it'll be unbelievably profitable, for starters.

"Invariably, the actual future will confound and frustrate our expectations of it."

-- "a lot of the time" rather than "invariably".

Eg., I can predict how many 20-year-old people will be around in 2025 with some accuracy (barring catastrophe) because they've already been born.

From there, predictions diminish. Eg., Germans or Japanese might suddenly start having lots of babies, and screw up longer-term demographic predictions, but thats very unlikely and in any case would take a generation or two to have a big impact.

>I can't decide which I find more frightening: that governments are currently using pseudo-scientific equipment to "detect" lies or the prospect that they may get a lie detector that actually works as advertised.

-- well, it would certainly change the world.

Can you imagine a political debate with a "verdicator" light over the candidates' heads?

Or during speeches?

>I will agree that trying to make *predictions* at this point is thoroughly daft. As I stated ealier, we don't even have a basic model of what cognition *is* at this point. As I've also said, I think that the most important function that AI research has provided is to offer empirical demonstrations of what intelligence *isn't*.

-- 100% agreement there.

Andrew: on perceptrons, see this discussion of the controversy.

Steve: I'd be surprised if surgically-implanted computer interfaces that you plug yourself into ever take off. (On the other hand, one that's inserted via keyhole surgery, implants itself in the right place, communicates via ultrawideband radio, and has a built-in firewall is another animal. Dunno about you, but for me any lack of a firewall would be a deal-breaker :)

Incidentally, I'm pretty certain that I can guaran-damn-tee you that I can hoax any lie detector there is, or ever will be: all I need to do is to convince myself that everything I say is a lie, and it'll be delivering so many false positives the data stream is junk.

>Incidentally, I'm pretty certain that I can guaran-damn-tee you that I can hoax any lie detector there is, or ever will be: all I need to do is to convince myself that everything I say is a lie, and it'll be delivering so many false positives the data stream is junk.

-- I don't think so. The activity in question is pre-conscious; it's a product of your intention to deceive. There are a number of brain functions which flag a decision before you're conscious of making it, IIRC.

Charlie: I'd be surprised if surgically-implanted computer interfaces that you plug yourself into ever take off. (On the other hand, one that's inserted via keyhole surgery, implants itself in the right place, communicates via ultrawideband radio, and has a built-in firewall is another animal. Dunno about you, but for me any lack of a firewall would be a deal-breaker :)

-- what I had in mind was artificial sensory input -- replicating what goes into your brain through the various sensory nerves. Initially they'd be surgically implanted but eventually some other form of contact.

Essentially, you switch it on and instead of the 'real' input, you're getting either input from another location, or simulated, 'fictional' data.

It could be used for very intense teleoperation scenarios (artificial 'bodies' for soldiers, engineers in hazardous environments) and also of course for entertainment. You get to _be_ Aragorn or a Lensman or whatever.

Think of the porn potentialities, just for starters... 8-).

Edited by author 07-11-2005 04:47 PM
"The activity in question is pre-conscious; it's a product of your intention to deceive." Exactly. You make everything you say a deceptive lie, adding double meanings to it in your own mind before you let a word out. A lie detector that gives nothing but positives is useless; if you don't actually ever tell the truth then they've got nothing to calibrate it against.

(And yes, I'm pretty sure I can tell you "my name is Charlie Stross" and convince myself I'm lying to you at the same time. Now, doing it the other way round would be a neat trick ...)

Edited by author 07-11-2005 05:38 PM
Actually, since we're poking around in our brains anyway, why bother simulating the sensory input of experiences we find pleasurable, when we could bypass all that and go for stimulating the pleasure centers of our brains directly?

I'm reminded of an experiment in which a rat had electrodes implanted in the pleasure centers of its brains. In its cage two paddles were installed - on dispensing food, the other a jolt to the electrodes. The rat starved to death (or was about to anyway, before the lab techs intervened) tapping on that second paddle; Why eat, when eating is just a means to pleasure, if you can invoke pleasure directly?

Could this be an impediment to the singularity? Perhaps any sentient being that can modify its own brain/programming will just be hopelessly hedonistic..

As our host has pointed out, the AI community has spent about 50 years being fairly bogus, and grossly underestimating the processing power required to solve interesting problems.

Many introductory AI courses still focus on A* and formal reasoning, which basically have nothing to do with intelligence. But there's a lot of good work being done, too--computer vision is slowly becoming useful; statistical databases of common sense can support modest inference engines, and Kurzweil just demoed another vision device.

Give me another 1,000-fold increase in computing power (beyond current stream processors), and make it portable, and I'll give you some pretty mind-blowing wearable computers. And the accompanying advances in robotics would basically transform the economy--a few hundred cheap teraflops dedicated to vision and physics would make manual labor almost obsolete.

...Stirling, the technology required to support a direct neural interface would presumably involve: (1) serious processing power, (2) a rough understanding of a few major brain subsystems, and (3) mixed electric/biological engineering bordering on primitive nanotech. I could see it happening (late) in my lifetime, sure, but it would be an awfully exciting lifetime--more like 1900-to-2000 than the future you described.

And what's up with Bill Joy? Has he fallen off the techno-rejectionist wagon or something?