Are We Spiritual Machines?

Ray Kurzweil vs. the Critics of Strong A.I.

Bill Joy

• Chief scientist, founder of Sun Microsystems.• April 2000, Wired, “Why the Future doesn’t

need us”• Moore’s Law - will meet or exceed for next

thirty years.• Computers will be a million times as fast,

sufficient to produce the dreams of Ray Kurzweil.

• About Ray– http://www.kurzweiltech.com/aboutray.html

• Creativity: The Mind, Machines, and Mathematics– http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/422/

• KurzweilAI.net– http://www.kurzweilai.net/

Ray Kurzweil

• Intelligence of machines will surpass humans in the early part of the next century.

• 2019 - $1,000 computer = power of human brain = 20 million billion calculations per second.

• 2029 - Will take 10 years to organize the “software of intelligence”

• Once computers reach human intelligence levels, they will necessarily surpass it.

Machine design

• “Software of intelligence” - copy the human brain.

• Bodies by nanotech• Will claim to be human• Have human feelings• Tell us that they are human, convincingly.• Are they real feelings? Or appearing to be

real?• Let’s move on, to singularity.

Neural implants today

• Help counteract Parkinson’s Disease, tremors from neurological disorders.

• Deaf - cochlear implant

• Blind - development on retinal implant.

• Emory University - brain chip allowing communication and control of environment.

Neural implants in the future

• Will not require surgery

• Improve sensory experiences, perception, memory, logical thinking.

• Web and virtual reality

• 2030 - any relationship, anywhere

Flaws of futurist predictions

• Only looking ahead one or two iterations.

• Only looking at one technology.

• Not understanding the exponential rate of technology.– “The Law of Accelerating Returns”

The Law of Accelerating Returns

• Use more powerful tools, to make more powerful tools.

• Can be quantified and predicted.

Moore’s Law

• Will die no later than 2019

• Moore’s Law - S curve

• Law of Accelerated Returns - exponential.– Current rate faster than two years– Example - Human genome scan project

Software of intelligence

• Massively neural nets and “other paradigms”

• Reverse engineering the brain– Destructive scanning– Noninvasive scanning– Scanning from inside

• Downloading the brain

Singularity

• Computer as brain

• Living forever

Critics of Strong A.I.

• John Searle - philosopher

• Michael Denton - biologist

• Tom Ray - zoologist and evolutionary algorithm theorist.

• William Dembski - philosopher and mathematician.

John Searle

• Deep Blue and the Chinese Room

• Simulation, a symbolic model of the process.

John Searle

• Observer-independent and observer-relative

• Observer-independent– Does not require thoughts of conscious

agents for their existence

• Observer-relative– Example - the dollar bill

John Searle

• Confusion between observer-independent and observer-relative intelligance.

• It’s not “Artificial Intelligence”, it’s “Simulated Cognition”

Bill Joy

• Dangers– GNR (genetics, nanotechnology, robotics) - widely

available– Self-replication– Nanotechnology - the “gray goo”

• Solution– Relinquishment of research in certain technologies– Federal oversight