[ExI] To achieve AGI, we need new perspectives on intelligence

Dave Sill sparge at gmail.com
Tue Aug 17 18:21:39 UTC 2021


On Tue, Aug 17, 2021 at 1:41 PM Mike Dougherty via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 12:19 PM John Grigg via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>> “A human AGI without a body is bound to be, for all practical purposes, a
>> disembodied ‘zombie’ of sorts, lacking genuine understanding of the world
>> (with its myriad forms, natural phenomena, beauty, etc.) including its
>> human inhabitants, their motivations, habits, customs, behavior, etc. the
>> agent would need to fake all these,” Raghavachary
>>
> I don't think there's anything magical about a body that enables genuine
understanding of the world.


> So Hawking's body became a prison, limiting him from "normal" human stuff.
>
> Would we have had the benefit of his mind without that body or without
> that specific circumstance?
>

We'll never know.

I think it's important to ensure that our "new definition" of intelligence
> does not exclude actual humans.  Ex: we could inadvertently revoke human
> status from comatose patients.
>

Why do we need to redefine intelligence? Unconscious people, whether
comatose or sleeping or passed out drunk, aren't actively intelligent until
they regain consciousness. Doesn't mean they're not people.

It seems to me like much of the "AGI isn't real" blah blah is in defense of
> human superiority in the face of our losing that apex-thinker status.  (Or
> that somehow humans have an all-important soul that machines will always
> lack)
>

No doubt there are people who will consider actual humans superior to
AIs/robots that are demonstrably superior in every way. I'll happily admit
that AlphaGo is a better Go player than I am. But I don't think that means
it's smarter than I am.

We need to admit that we're still eating and abusing other animals that
> show signs of intelligence...
>

There's no excuse for animal abuse but eating animals is normal for humans
and arguably one of the reasons we're where we are today.
Veganism/vegetarianism is a recent development and we don't know how to
satisfy all of our nutritional requirements from purely plant-based
sources. Nor the environmental costs of trying to do that.

and we're starting to imagine AGI being the apex predator in the digital
> world.   We're becoming prey... for a hunter we're still building.
>

If we do that, we deserve what we get.

-Dave
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