[ExI] From Arms Race to Joint Venture

[Zero Powers]

On Wed, Oct 17, 2018 at 11:46 AM William Flynn Wallace <foozler83 at gmail.com>
wrote:

>
> To Zero:  I am a social psychologist who occasionally throws a wrench into
> the tech discussions going on, and tries to get others to discuss the form
> the future humans will take, without much success.  Joined about 5, 6 years
> ago.  76 and not dead yet.  Hi!
>

Hi Bill. Nice to meet ya. Glad you're not dead yet. Hope you manage to stay
that way as long as you like!

To you and John C - AIs are idiots.  No, they outthink us by orders of
> magnitude.  Which is it?  How are you using the word 'thinking'?  Faster,
> is, of course, a given.
> bill w
>

"Thinking," particularly in this context, is simply information processing.
And depending on the context, AI's both out-think us and they are idiots.
In their narrow domains they do outstrip us by far. It is doubtful that any
human will ever again stand a chance against AI in chess, Go or Atari video
games.

But, for now, we have the machines beat by the breadth, or generality, of
our intelligence. I can play chess and poker and basketball. I can drive a
car, and write music and poetry. I can apply laws to a set of facts and
make a convincing legal argument. I can empathize with my wife when she's
had a bad day and make her feel a little better. Algorithms, perhaps, can
be written to do any one of these functions. But so far no algorithm, or
set of algorithms, can be written to do all of these functions. That level
of generality, for now, remains the exclusive domain of homo sapiens. But
the days of our reign atop the general intelligence hierarchy are almost
certainly numbered....

*0**0*

>
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