As I have pointed out elsewhere, those of the transhumanist cult seem unable to break away from the tired old SF paradigm of “robot revolutions”, while overlooking the emergence of a new life-form that is occurring right under our noses.
Very real evidence indicates the rather imminent implementation of the next, (non-biological) phase of the on-going evolutionary “life” process from what we at present call the Internet.
It can already be observed as a a work-in-progress. And effectively evolving by a process of self-assembly.
You may have noticed that we are increasingly, in a sense, “enslaved” by our PCs, mobile phones, their apps and many other trappings of the net. We are already largely dependent upon it for our commerce and industry and there is no turning back.
Consider this:
There are at present an estimated 2 Billion internet users.
There are an estimated 13 Billion neurons in the human brain.
On this basis for approximation the internet is even now only one order of magnitude below the human brain and its growth is exponential.
That is a simplification, of course. For example:
Not all users have their own computer. So perhaps we could reduce that, say, tenfold.
The number of switching units, transistors, if you wish, contained by all the computers connecting to the internet and which are more analogous to individual neurons is many orders of magnitude greater than 2 Billion.
Then again, this is compensated for to some extent by the fact that neurons do not appear to be binary switching devices but can adopt multiple states.
Without even crunching the numbers, we see that we must take seriously the possibility that even the present internet may well be comparable to a human brain in processing power. And, of course, the degree of interconnection and cross-linking of networks within networks is also growing rapidly.
The culmination of this exponential growth corresponds to the event that transhumanists inappropriately call “The Singularity” but is more properly regarded as a phase transition of the “life” process.
The broad evolutionary model that supports this contention is outlined very informally in “The Goldilocks Effect: What Has Serendipity Ever Done For Us?” , a free download in e-book formats from the “Unusual Perspectives” website
There are at present an estimated 2 Billion internet users. There are an estimated 13 Billion neurons in the human brain. On this basis for approximation the internet is even now only one order of magnitude below the human brain and its growth is exponential.
There are only 7 billion people on the planet, even if all of them gained internet access that would still be fewer than 13 billion. In this case, instead of looking at the exponential graph, consider where it needs to level off. It also isn’t at all clear to me why this analogy matters in any useful way- humans aren’t acting as neurons- there’s no selection pressure or other effect to cause people on the internet to self-organize into some sort of large brain. Maybe if everyone played a special game where you had to pretend to be a neuron and pass signals accordingly you could maybe get something like that.
Without even crunching the numbers, we see that we must take seriously the possibility that even the present internet may well be comparable to a human brain in processing power.
That something has a lot of processing power doesn’t make it do the same thing. Currently even with supercomputers we can’t do a decent simulation of where the individual molecules in a cup of tea will go over a course of a second. That doesn’t mean that a large container of hot water automatically functions as a sentient or sapient entity.
Most of the people here who are concerned about a Singularity are not concerned about a “robot revolution” but rather an intelligence explosion. The similarities between these ideas are superficial. It may help for you to lurk a bit and read some of what people have wrote here. This would be an obvious bit to start with.
There are only 7 billion people on the planet, even if all of them gained internet access that would still be fewer than 13 billion. In this case, instead of looking at the exponential graph, consider where it needs to level off.
People are a lot more complicated than neurons, and it’s not just people that are connected to the internet—there are many devices acting autonomously with varying levels of sophistication, and both the number of people and the number of internet connected devices are increasing.
If the question is “are there points in superhuman mind-space that could be implemented on the infrastructure of the internet roughly as it exists” my guess would be, yes.
[T]here’s no selection pressure or other effect to cause people on the internet to self-organize into some sort of large brain.
This, I think, is key, and devastating. The chances that we’ve found any such point in mind-space without any means of searching are (I would guess) infinitesimal.
Maybe if everyone played a special game where you had to pretend to be a neuron and pass signals accordingly you could maybe get something like that.
Unless the game were carefully designed to simulate an existing brain (or one designed by other means) I don’t see why restricting the scope of interaction between nodes is likely to help.
People are a lot more complicated than neurons, and it’s not just people that are connected to the internet—there are many devices acting autonomously with varying levels of sophistication, and both the number of people and the number of internet connected devices are increasing.
FYI …A recent study by Cysco (I think) says something like:
The internet is currently around 5 million terabytes with 75 million servers world wide. On average, one billion people use the internet per week. Internet use consumes enough information per hour to fill 7 million DVDs and growing, so an internet AI would need the capabilities of handling 966 exabytes of information by 2015.
An Exabyte is 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes. Every word ever spoken by human beings could be stored in 5 exabytes.
Counting smart phones, robotic arms, cameras, GPS systems, clocks, home security systems, personal computers, satellites, cars, parking meters, ATMs, and everything else, there are more things connected to the internet than there are human beings on the planet. In a few years there will be over 50 billion with enough possible internet connections for 100 connections for each atom comprising the surface of the earth.
Unless the game were carefully designed to simulate an existing brain (or one designed by other means) I don’t see why restricting the scope of interaction between nodes is likely to help.
That was essentially what I had in mind. Of course, getting that detailed a map of a brain would by itself already be way beyond what we have today.
As I have pointed out elsewhere, those of the transhumanist cult seem unable to break away from the tired old SF paradigm of “robot revolutions”, while overlooking the emergence of a new life-form that is occurring right under our noses. Very real evidence indicates the rather imminent implementation of the next, (non-biological) phase of the on-going evolutionary “life” process from what we at present call the Internet.
It can already be observed as a a work-in-progress. And effectively evolving by a process of self-assembly. You may have noticed that we are increasingly, in a sense, “enslaved” by our PCs, mobile phones, their apps and many other trappings of the net. We are already largely dependent upon it for our commerce and industry and there is no turning back.
Consider this:
There are at present an estimated 2 Billion internet users. There are an estimated 13 Billion neurons in the human brain. On this basis for approximation the internet is even now only one order of magnitude below the human brain and its growth is exponential.
That is a simplification, of course. For example: Not all users have their own computer. So perhaps we could reduce that, say, tenfold. The number of switching units, transistors, if you wish, contained by all the computers connecting to the internet and which are more analogous to individual neurons is many orders of magnitude greater than 2 Billion. Then again, this is compensated for to some extent by the fact that neurons do not appear to be binary switching devices but can adopt multiple states.
Without even crunching the numbers, we see that we must take seriously the possibility that even the present internet may well be comparable to a human brain in processing power. And, of course, the degree of interconnection and cross-linking of networks within networks is also growing rapidly.
The culmination of this exponential growth corresponds to the event that transhumanists inappropriately call “The Singularity” but is more properly regarded as a phase transition of the “life” process.
The broad evolutionary model that supports this contention is outlined very informally in “The Goldilocks Effect: What Has Serendipity Ever Done For Us?” , a free download in e-book formats from the “Unusual Perspectives” website
There are only 7 billion people on the planet, even if all of them gained internet access that would still be fewer than 13 billion. In this case, instead of looking at the exponential graph, consider where it needs to level off. It also isn’t at all clear to me why this analogy matters in any useful way- humans aren’t acting as neurons- there’s no selection pressure or other effect to cause people on the internet to self-organize into some sort of large brain. Maybe if everyone played a special game where you had to pretend to be a neuron and pass signals accordingly you could maybe get something like that.
That something has a lot of processing power doesn’t make it do the same thing. Currently even with supercomputers we can’t do a decent simulation of where the individual molecules in a cup of tea will go over a course of a second. That doesn’t mean that a large container of hot water automatically functions as a sentient or sapient entity.
Most of the people here who are concerned about a Singularity are not concerned about a “robot revolution” but rather an intelligence explosion. The similarities between these ideas are superficial. It may help for you to lurk a bit and read some of what people have wrote here. This would be an obvious bit to start with.
People are a lot more complicated than neurons, and it’s not just people that are connected to the internet—there are many devices acting autonomously with varying levels of sophistication, and both the number of people and the number of internet connected devices are increasing.
If the question is “are there points in superhuman mind-space that could be implemented on the infrastructure of the internet roughly as it exists” my guess would be, yes.
This, I think, is key, and devastating. The chances that we’ve found any such point in mind-space without any means of searching are (I would guess) infinitesimal.
Unless the game were carefully designed to simulate an existing brain (or one designed by other means) I don’t see why restricting the scope of interaction between nodes is likely to help.
FYI …A recent study by Cysco (I think) says something like:
The internet is currently around 5 million terabytes with 75 million servers world wide. On average, one billion people use the internet per week. Internet use consumes enough information per hour to fill 7 million DVDs and growing, so an internet AI would need the capabilities of handling 966 exabytes of information by 2015.
An Exabyte is 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes. Every word ever spoken by human beings could be stored in 5 exabytes.
Counting smart phones, robotic arms, cameras, GPS systems, clocks, home security systems, personal computers, satellites, cars, parking meters, ATMs, and everything else, there are more things connected to the internet than there are human beings on the planet. In a few years there will be over 50 billion with enough possible internet connections for 100 connections for each atom comprising the surface of the earth.
That was essentially what I had in mind. Of course, getting that detailed a map of a brain would by itself already be way beyond what we have today.