[ExI] Some new angle about AI

[Stefano Vaj]

2009/12/30 The Avantguardian <avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com>:
> Well some hints are more obvious than others. ;-)
> http://www.hplusmagazine.com/articles/bio/spooky-world-quantum-biology
> http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/quantum_biology/

It is not that I do not know the sources, Penrose in the first place.
Car engines are also made of molecules, which are made of atoms, and
ultimately are the expression of an underlying quantum reality.  What
I find unpersuasive is the theory that life, however defined, is
anything special amongst high-level chemical reactions.

>> But, there again, quantum computing fully remains in the field of
>> computability, does it not? And the existence of "organic computers"
>> implementing such principles would be proof that such computers can be
>> built. In fact, I would suspect that "quantum computation", in a
>> Wolframian sense", would be all around us, also in other, non-organic,
>> systems.
>
> I have no proof but I suspect that many biological processes are indeed quantum computations. Quantum tunneling of information backwards through time could, for example, explain life's remarkable ability to anticipate things.

It may very well be the case that quantum computation is in a sense
pervasive, but again I do not see why life, however defined, would be
a special case in this respect, since I  do not see organic brains
exhibiting quantum computation features any more than, say, PCs, and I
suspect that "biological anticipations", etc., are more in the nature
of "optical artifacts" like the Intelligent Design of organisms.

>> There again, the theoretical issue would be simply that of executing a
>> program emulating what we execute ourselves closely enough to qualify
>> as "human-like" for arbitrary purposes, and find ways to implement it
>> in manner not making us await its responses for multiples of the
>> duration of the Universe... ;-)
>
> In order to do so, it would have to consider a superposition of every possible response and collapse the ouput "wavefunction" on the most appropriate response.

*If* organic brains actually do some quantum computing. Now, I still
have to see any human being solving a typical quantum computing
problem with a pencil and a piece of paper... ;-)

-- 
Stefano Vaj