Mind Is All That Matters (Eliezer Yudkowsky, Transvision 2007)

Mind Is All That Matters:Reasons to Focus on Cognitive

Technologies

Eliezer YudkowskySingularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence

singinst.org

Eliezer Yudkowsky Singularity Institute for AI


(Image from Oak Ridge National Laboratory)


Felleman, D.J. and Van Essen, D.C. (1991) Distributed hierarchical processing in primate visual cortex. Cerebral Cortex, 1: 1-47.


"Book smarts" vs. cognition:

"Book smarts" evokes images of:

• Calculus• Chess• Memorizing facts• Strict rules in well-

understood situations

Other stuff that happens in the brain:

• Persuasiveness• Enthusiasm• Empathy• Strategic thinking• Musical talent• Rationality

The scale of intelligent minds:a parochial view.

Village idiot Einstein


The scale of intelligent minds:a parochial view.

Village idiot Einstein

A more cosmopolitan view:

Village idiot

Chimp Einstein

Mouse


"Supermen are superthinkers;anything else is a side issue."

-- SF author Robert Heinlein


©Marlo Steed


One of these technologies is not like the others...

Artificial Intelligence

Cancer cure

Interplanetary travel

Nanomanufacturing

"The influence of animal or vegetable life on matter is infinitely beyond the range of any scientific inquiry hitherto entered on. Its power of directing the motions of moving particles, in the demonstrated daily miracle of our human free-will, and in the growth of generation after generation of plants from a single seed, are infinitely different from any possible result of the fortuitous concurrence of atoms... Modern biologists were coming once more to the acceptance of something and that was a vital principle."

-- Lord Kelvin


Village idiot

Chimp Einstein

Mouse


AI


In Every Known Human Culture:

• tool making

• weapons

• grammar

• tickling

• meal times

• mediation of conflicts

• dance, singing

• personal names

• promises

• mourning

(Donald E. Brown, 1991. Human universals. New York: McGraw-Hill.)

A complex adaptation must be universal within a species.


(John Tooby and Leda Cosmides, 1992. The Psychological Foundations of Culture. In The Adapted Mind, eds. Barkow, Cosmides, and Tooby.)

A complex adaptation must be universal within a species.

If: 6 necessary genes

Each at 10% frequency in population

Then: 1 in 1,000,000 have complete adaptation



Incremental evolution of complexity:

1. [A] A is advantageous by itself.

2. [A←B] B depends on A.

3. [A'↔B] A' replaces A, depends on B.

4. [A'B←C] C depends on A' and B

...



The Psychic Unity of Humankind

Complex adaptations

must be universal in a species –

including cognitive machinery

in Homo sapiens!



Must… not…

emote…


The Great Failureof Imagination:

Anthropomorphism

Mind Projection Fallacy:


If I am ignorant about a phenomenon,

this is a fact about my state of mind,

not a fact about the phenomenon.

(Jaynes, E.T. 2003. Probability Theory: The Logic of Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.)

Minds-in-general


Human minds

Minds-in-general


Human minds

Transhuman mindspace

Minds-in-general


Human minds

Posthuman mindspace


Minds-in-general


Human minds

Gloopy AIs

Posthuman mindspace

Freepy AIs

Bipping AIs


Minds-in-general


Human minds

Gloopy AIs

Posthuman mindspace

Freepy AIs

Bipping AIs


YOUARE

HERE

Fallacy of the Giant Cheesecake

• Major premise: A superintelligence could create a mile-high cheesecake.

• Minor premise: Someone will create a recursively self-improving AI.

• Conclusion: The future will be full of giant cheesecakes.

Power does not imply motive.


Minds-in-general


Human minds


Minds-in-general

YOUARE

HERE

Minds-in-general


YOUARE

HERE


Intelligence

Technology


IntelligenceIntelligenceTechnologyTechnology

Cognitive TechnologyCloses the Loop:


I. J. Good's"Intelligence Explosion":

AIAI

(Good, I. J. 1965. Speculations Concerning the First Ultraintelligent Machine.)

Village idiot

Chimp Einstein

Mouse


AI


Friendly AI

Summary:

• Intelligence supports all human abilities

• Technology comes from intelligence

• Whatever impacts intelligence lifts the tree by its roots

• >H equals >H mind• Cognitive technology

opens vast new regions of mind design space

• Technology improving intelligence closes the loop - positive feedback!


To grasp the future,focus on technologies

that impact upon the mind.

Mind Is All That Matters

Eliezer YudkowskySingularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence

singinst.org

Mind Is All That Matters (Eliezer Yudkowsky, Transvision 2007)

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