Superintelligence Possible?

As a mere dabbler in the concept, always interested, here a chat in The Edge.  Also, what is it, and should we delight at even the possibility of it, or be very, very afraid?

Is Superintelligence Impossible?

On Possible Minds: Philosophy and AI
David Chalmers, Daniel C. Dennett [4.10.19]

Somebody said that the philosopher is the one who says, "We know it’s possible in practice, we’re trying to figure out if it’s possible in principle." Unfortunately, philosophers sometimes spend too much time worrying about logical possibilities that are importantly negligible in every other regard. So, let me go on the record as saying, yes, I think that conscious AI is possible because, after all, what are we? We’re conscious. We’re robots made of robots made of robots. We’re actual. In principle, you could make us out of other materials. Some of your best friends in the future could be robots. Possible in principle, absolutely no secret ingredients, but we’re not going to see it. We’re not going to see it for various reasons. One is, if you want a conscious agent, we’ve got plenty of them around and they’re quite wonderful, whereas the ones that we would make would be not so wonderful. —Daniel C. Dennett

One of our questions here is, is superintelligence possible or impossible? I’m on the side of possible. I like the possible, which is one reason I like John’s theme, "Possible Minds." That’s a wonderful theme for thinking about intelligence, both natural and artificial, and consciousness, both natural and artificial. … The space of possible minds is absolutely vast—all the minds there ever have been, will be, or could be. Starting with the actual minds, I guess there have been a hundred billion or so humans with minds of their own. Some pretty amazing minds have been in there. Confucius, Isaac Newton, Jane Austen, Pablo Picasso, Martin Luther King, on it goes. But still, those hundred billion minds put together are just the tiniest corner of this space of possible minds. —David Chalmers .... " 

On the Limits of Computing

Read his books during the last AI summer.  Still worth looking at.

Hubert L. Dreyfus, Philosopher of the Limits of Computers, Dies at 87  By The New York Times 

" ... Hubert L. Dreyfus, a philosopher whose 1972 book "What Computers Can't Do" made him a scourge and eventually an inspiration to researchers in artificial intelligence, died on April 22 at his home in Berkeley, Calif. He was 87.  .... " 

Modern Innovation Leadership.

Modern Innovation Leadership
September 2, 2015 in Innovation Philosophy

Lord Kelvin’s Ampere Balance

There are two main typical approaches to leadership. Some people think that a leader is a person with strong convictions and an own vision that can convince people to accept his own ideas. Other ones think that a leader is a person who understands the needs of the group and has the capability to organize and coordinate it in order that the group can reach its own objectives. The main differences are related to the how the vision about the group is created, the former one proceed from a single person, and the latter one is gathered from all the people in the group ..... " 

Philosopher looks at AI

Will Artificial Intelligence Surpass Our Own?
In Sciam: A philosopher worries about computers’ ever accelerating abilities to outpace human skills Sums it up quite well.  via Spohrer.

Mapping Math onto the Real World

My entire career has been about applying math to real world problems.   This Quanta article in Wired tracks the dilemma.  It remains to be a hard thing to do.  Even worse, the majority of people, including some very smart decision makers, openly fear mathematics.  It is like being wary of people that continually use a language you do not know.What are they up to?  

Measurement and Models

Just now In the Edge:   Popper Versus Bacon
A Conversation With Peter Coveney  intro by John Brockman

People have to go around measuring things. There's no escape from that for most of that type of work. There's a deep relationship between the two. No one's going to come up with a model that works without going and comparing with experiment. But it is the intelligent use of experimental measurements that we're after there because that goes to this concept of Bayesian methods. I will perform the right number of experiments to make measurements of, say, the time series evolution of a given set of proteins. From those data, when things are varying in time, I can map that on to my deterministic Popperian model and infer what's the most likely value of all the parameters that would be Popperian ones that would fit into the model. It's an intelligent interaction between them that's necessary in many complicated situations.  ....  "

There’s a massive clash of philosophies at the heart of modern science.  One philosophy, called  Baconianism after Sir Francis Bacon, neglects theoretical underpinning and says just make observations, collect data, and interrogate them. This approach is widespread in modern biology and medicine, where it’s often called informatics.  But there’s a quite different philosophy, traditionally used in physics, formulated by another British Knight, Sir Karl Popper. In this approach, we make predictions from models and we test them, then iterate our theories.   .... " 

Brains and Computers, Singularities

Technical Philosophy In the Edge:

Death Is Optional
Yuval Noah Harari and Daniel Kahneman: A Video Conversation

"Once you really solve a problem like direct brain-computer interface ... when brains and computers can interact directly, that's it, that's the end of history, that's the end of biology as we know it. Nobody has a clue what will happen once you solve this. If life can break out of the organic realm into the vastness of the inorganic realm, you cannot even begin to imagine what the consequences will be, because your imagination at present is organic. So if there is a point of Singularity, by definition, we have no way of even starting to imagine what's happening beyond that." .... 

Sammy Haroon in The BusinessMakers

My longtime colleague at Procter & Gamble is featured on an interview in The BusinessMakers. He gives P&G good credit in molding him.   Nicely done Sammy!   He now works in a Baker Hughes innovation group in Palo Alto, CA   I agree, he has a true excitement for technology of many kinds ....

" ... What’s it like to LIVE on the bleeding edge? Specifically, Sammy Haroon tracks leading research and technology with an eye toward reapplication, incubates proofs of concept, and monitors analytics across multiple industries. And he gets paid to do it! As director of the Palo Alto Innovation Center at Baker Hughes, Haroon’s excitement for technology gives him a unique insight into our future. And a unique philosophy on life. What a great job! And a great guy to fill it. ... " 

Innovation Using Restless Dissatisfaction

I like the statement, you should always be dissatisfied.  And looking for solutions, or parts of solutions,  that can be fitted together to lead to better results ...   This blog is my statement of that search.  Join me.

Behind H-E-B's philosophy of "restless dissatisfaction" 
Part of H-E-B's success comes from the retailer's culture of "restless dissatisfaction," which keeps the company innovating, improving store formats and perfecting the customer experience, McMillanDoolittle Senior Partner Neil Stern writes. One of the chain's newest stores, a 91,000-square-foot location in Texas, illustrates H-E-B's philosophy with its expanded local and private-label offerings, a Cooking Connection kiosk to engage shoppers and its farm-to-table in-store restaurant Table 57 ....  " 

Radical New Teaching Method?

 Aspects of AI inspired learning theories.  Heavily technology driven.  Now further enabled by MOOC. A kind of self organizing approach that assumes that children will organize to teach themselves using either their peers or the Internet.  I am skeptical that these kinds of methods will work alone.  People still have to be in the loop.  Families and environments must be strongly cooperative.  Home Schooling and Montessori are old and successful models.  See the Kahn Academy.  But different people learn in different ways.   You still have to work with accreditation/measurement of the results.    These approaches have been tested, and should be, but failures are rarely reported, since they are not in the rosy script.

In Wired:    (Read the whole article, a compelling story)

" ... an emerging educational philosophy, one that applies the logic of the digital age to the classroom. That logic is inexorable: Access to a world of infinite information has changed how we communicate, process information, and think. Decentralized systems have proven to be more productive and agile than rigid, top-down ones. Innovation, creativity, and independent thinking are increasingly crucial to the global economy.... " 

" ... In 2009, scientists from the University of Louisville and MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences conducted a study of 48 children between the ages of 3 and 6. The kids were presented with a toy that could squeak, play notes, and reflect images, among other things. For one set of children, a researcher demonstrated a single attribute and then let them play with the toy. Another set of students was given no information about the toy. This group played longer and discovered an average of six attributes of the toy; the group that was told what to do discovered only about four. A similar study at UC Berkeley demonstrated that kids given no instruction were much more likely to come up with novel solutions to a problem. “The science is brand-new, but it’s not as if people didn’t have this intuition before,” says coauthor Alison Gopnik, a professor of psychology at UC Berkeley.  ... "

The Best Interface is No Interface

Via Jeff Dyck.  He sends along a note from SXSW by Golden Krishna.  The video of the 'Best Interface is no Interface' is here.  A good overall philosophy.   Also his slides and background material.

On Native Advertising

In Techdirt, a good article about native advertising.  Though the definitions vary in detail, it is advertising that is embedded deeply in the content itself.   Not pop outs or pop overs, but ads that so seamlessly embed themselves into content so they are scarcely separable.    Good thoughts here about their philosophy and value.

Utilitarian Marketing

Mitch Joel in the HBR on utilitarian marketing, using the case of Meijer.   Once again about the issue of finding things in a complex retail retail space, and leveraging that knowledge in an App.   " ... Meijer, a regional market and grocery chain, has close to two hundred stores in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Kentucky. Through their seventy-five years, the family-owned business has seen dramatic changes in their retail experience. Their philosophy of "...take care of your customers, team members, and community... and all of those will take care of you, just like a family," sounds earnest enough, but in a world where supercenters and mass retailers are becoming grocers, and local farmer's markets are seeing a resurgence, the pressure to stay competitive and relevant at the local level is intense. While it may not be a silver bullet, the Meijer Find-it app is much more than a store map and couponing engine. Once you have put in your shopping list and chosen your store, the app will order your list to create the most efficient route through the store. If you go off course, the app will self-adjust as you go along. ...  '