Re: Fascinating article on how AI is driving change in SEO, categories of AI and the Law of Accelerating Returns

Posted by gepr on Jun 07, 2016; 4:35pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Fascinating-article-on-how-AI-is-driving-change-in-SEO-categories-of-AI-and-the-Law-of-Accelerating-s-tp7587533p7587554.html

On 06/05/2016 02:22 PM, Robert Wall wrote:
> This one, titled "Where do minds belong?
> <https://aeon.co/essays/intelligent-machines-might-want-to-become-biological-again>
> (Mar
> 2016)" discusses the technological roadblocks in an insightful, highly
> speculative, but entertaining manner.

"Those early intelligences could have long ago reached the point where they decided to transition back from machines to biology."

The gist of this essay is a perfect example of trying to answer an ill-formed question.  It's entirely based on an unjustified distinction between machine and biology.  I'm all for justifying such a distinction.  And invoking von Neumann, energetics, and "neuromorphic architectures" exhibits a bit of context most others don't manage.  But discussing a move to machine intelligence and then a potential move back to biological intelligence without giving even a hand-waving mention of the difference between the two is conflating cart and horse.  And to beat around the bush so much is maddening.

Maybe there's currently a dearth of click-bait value left in the "what is life" genre.  So, perhaps Scharf and Aeon are exhibiting their awareness of a buzzphilic audience.

It would have been responsible, as long as you're going to mention Church-Turing and von Neumann anyway, to point out that both von Neumann and Turing went quite a ways in demonstrating that biology and machines are not very different.  To me, the _problem_ isn't one of AI.  The problem is this unjustified dichotomy between machine and biology.  A correlate problem is the (again probably false) distinction between life and intelligence.

--
☣ glen

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com