Yep, that’s what I was saying before, Epistemological Knowledge Integration (from philosophy) and this is the capability that rationalization arises from, because you can’t be knowledgeable about the external world unless you have prior or pre-existing knowledge (acquired via learning) which you tie them together (in order to operate efficiently), which are non-contradictive. See, what Tom Hunter stated above. When rationalization is dynamic and adaptive via self-organising and emergent systems, then you have an independent entity that is autonomous (be it machine or biological). This is what makes us humans special.

We already had computer softwares that has outperformed human doctors in clinical diagnosis in existence today. One of the earliest clinical decision support system was MYCIN, which was developed at Stanford in the 1970s.

Autonomous experimental car such as ALVIN was successful when it was test-driven, which the car learnt from a human driver of how to drive in about 5 minutes before the human driver handed over the control to ALVIN, where ALVIN drove from one state to the next on its own on a highway in the presence of other vehicles. The test was smooth.

In a specific domain, such as medicine or driving a car, etc, … (one specific task only) and our current technology can do better than humans. What is lacking is knowledge integration and rationalization as you pointed out. We’re a far away from those capabilities. I have seen on the net a demonstration of a small robot where its designers, thought that the robot exhibited conscious behavior (ie, knowledge integration & rationalization), because the way it was moved around the room, where they were experimenting with it.

So, I say that we’re far away from having autonomous machines that can match that of a rational humans, BUT science writers and technology attention seekers, like to preempt their exaggerated visions way ahead of time.

The question to ask about this is, if machines computability can step up to it? To have a machine that is autonomous, rational, conscious, etc,… requires a huge amount of memory and fast execution. I am not sure when that is going to arrive, but it isn’t anytime sooner.

When the technology does arrive, it will propel our intelligence to levels beyond comprehension, in a very short period of time, can we agree on this?

If we are not so dumb as to have destroyed ourselves in the meantime this may be what leads to our downfall? The growth of the human race is unsustainable and I doubt we are capable of rectifying the problems we are causing. We may or may not make it to the age when the nanobots run riot.

However, i believe that it is atleast possible that it could be here in the next 25 – 50 years assuming that progress isn’t slowed down by politics

When the technology does arrive, it will propel our intelligence to levels beyond comprehension, in a very short period of time, can we agree on this?

And once again I’ve wasted my time looking at a Luc link.

The enduringamerica link is about exposing the story of a rape-before-execution sanction, supposedly issued by some key religious adviser in Iran – as having started as a piece of black comedy satire on an Iranian website.

The JPost story is a reporter talking by telephone to a member of the Iranian Basiji militia, who had just been released from jail for having set free two kids – a 13-year-old boy and a 15-year-old girl – who had been arrested during those protests against the rigged elections in June. He talks about the rapes he has performed.

Even though Ryan provided the link to the latter story I figure I have to tell you the gist because if you had actually read the article you would have realised that they’re about two completely different stories. I’ve bolded that last as an additional attention getter for you.

The real lack of intelligience is in the computers inability to independently rationilise and make decisions based on the circumstance

For example our computer would need to know that there is no groceries at home, and there is ample time to go to the supermarket, and it would consider the decision amongst variables much like a human would, eg . is the supermarket going to be busy at time, will it be hard to find a carpark, does our finance allow us to purchase groceries, would x family member already have purchased groceries by now etc

As for your hypothetical analogy, we can already make the car stop at the supermarket or the gas station through integeration of technologies, eg. gps + fuel capacity sensors

What we cannot do is make the intelligence think with a free mind and decide for itself that it needs to do something, rather than responding to a set of codes input by humans
Personally, i believe the problem is not as complex as you describe it, as it already can be achieved with mass integeration(albeit to a simplistic standard)

Yeah – the trick seems to be a belief that such nanobots and the like will become self-organising as a result of being networked. Perhaps “belief” is too strong a word, after all, there is a solid basis of theory in mathematics for self-organising and emergent systems. And of course there are real examples in physics, chemistry and biology.

But there’s still too much of a deus ex machina feel about for me to get caught up in the predictions of 2050 and the like. Interesting stuff all the same. Sometimes regret I never pushed forward on the whole AI thing.

The link is a little laymanish but still good reading.

I write & implement various AI (machine learning & computational intelligence) algorithms for software applications. AI is still domain specific, ie, it works well on one domain and those programs haven’t achieved knowledge integration, yet, which is the level where humans are. A human will understand how to drive, so one can hop into his car and drive (task 1) to the supermarket. He gets off and goes in to do his grocery shoppings (task 2). On his way home he stops by the next petrol station to fill-in his car (task 3), and so forth,… till he gets home, to continue on with more things to do, etc… Multi-tasking is knowledge integration, which computers with AI software of today can’t do. A car that can drive on its own for hundreds of miles on a public highway in the presence of other vehicles has been manufactured and successfully tested about a decade ago. But that car couldn’t stop by a supermarket to do grocery shoppings or any other tasks apart from just being good at one task and that is to drive on a public highway on its own in the presence of other vehicles, unguided. Knowledge integration for AI computers is still long way, perhaps in the next 100 years or so , roughly.

Luc, I see that you’re new here at DPF. Science is not about consensus. We (humans) don’t dictate to the laws of nature. We simply observe how nature works and see if it is consistent with itself (ie, knowledge integration). So, far the evidence of AGW hasn’t reached that level yet. Einstein once quoted, “It only takes one person to prove me wrong.“. He meant that science is not about consensus but about repetitive facts which are independent from our prejudices or what we think that nature should be. The debate is not whether we’re warming or not. The disputes is whether humans is responsible or not and the number of scientists who agree (consensus view) is irrelevant. Facts speak for themselves and not the consensus views of a thousands scientists that speak for the facts. Do you get that?

When Einstein completed his paper on Special Relativity, he tried to submit it to various publications at the time but was rejected. The reviewers for those publications that he submitted his paper to, were seeking others opinions in the field which all of them reached a conclusion (consensus) that the theory proposed by the young unknown scientist was so absurd, that it shouldn’t deserve a space in any of those journals. Einstein managed to get in touch with Max Planck at the time and the great physicist (Planck) managed to support Einstein’s new breakthru theory and convinced editors of Annalen Der Physik journal in Germany to publish Einstein’s paper on relativity. Years later, the facts, predicted by relativity proved Einstein was right and all of those who thought his theory was absurd were wrong (ie, the consensus group).

Singularity refers to a point where computer intelligence is either equal to or ahead of humans

I always say we need the mad bastards to reassure ourselves as to our own sanity, so keep up the good work.

Technological singularity is a term used with varying meanings related to self-improving artificial intelligence, superintelligence,[1] breakdowns in the predictability of the future and accelerating change.

In 1965, I. J. Good first wrote of an “intelligence explosion”, suggesting that if machines could even slightly surpass human intellect, they could improve their own designs in ways unforeseen by their designers, and thus recursively augment themselves into far greater intelligences. The first such improvements might be small, but as the machine became more intelligent it would become better at becoming more intelligent, which could lead to a cascade of self-improvements and a sudden surge to superintelligence (or a singularity).

Please correct me if i am mistaken, because i conceed that my knowledge of the UC is pretty limited.

Singularity refers to a point where computer intelligence is either equal to or far ahead of humans

Looks like he means it. It’s good to see a public figure adding Shakespeare quotes. Regardless of whether he wrote it himself, or used a speech writer, it’s a good speech.

cheers

David Prosser

You mean the John Von Neumann Universal Constructor?

Im pretty sure we are lightyears behind some other civilisations that exist outside of our planet