[ExI] Some new angle about AI

[The Avantguardian]

----- Original Message ----
> From: Stefano Vaj <stefano.vaj at gmail.com>
> To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
> Sent: Tue, January 5, 2010 3:11:58 AM
> Subject: Re: [ExI] Some new angle about AI
> 
> 2009/12/30 The Avantguardian :
> > 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.

Well what other "high-level chemical reactions" are there to compare life to? Flames don't run away when you try to extinguish them. Motile bacteria do.
 

> 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.

I think a lot of the quantum computation goes on below the conscious threshold, things so simple that most people take for granted. Things like facial recognition which happen nearly instaneously with the brain but take standard computers running algorithms quite a bit of time to accomplish. Shooting billiards, playing dodgeball, writing a novel, seducing a lover, I imagine a lot of quantum computing goes into these things. Besides you seem to totally discount the fact that brains formed the very concept of quantum mechanics and quantum computing in the first place.  

> >> 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... ;-)

Perhaps the ability to generalize from specific observations is a quantum computation. A child needs to see no more than a few trees to start recognizing types of trees that he has never seen before as "trees" as opposed to "poles" or "towers". In some sense the generic visual concept of "tree" might somehow be processed  as a superposition of every type of tree from an oak to a cedar to a sequoia.
 
 Stuart LaForge 


"Science has not yet mastered prophecy. We predict too much for the next year and yet far too little for the next ten.." - Neil Armstrong