tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8137769.post114909206831183894..comments2023-06-28T07:11:26.910-07:00Comments on scripsit: Book review: The Age of Spiritual Machines by Ray KurzweilBrad Williamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09839532299808900672noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8137769.post-1149606849631401762006-06-06T08:14:00.000-07:002006-06-06T08:14:00.000-07:00I should add a disclaimer that the quote I took fr...I should add a disclaimer that the quote I took from Wikipedia was something that I put there in the first place. ;)<BR/><BR/>The concept that AI ranges from weak to strong is akin to a magician's show covering the same range. No matter how closely the strong magician approaches the appearance of magic, his show is still a simulation. It is an illusion that can look like magic only under controlled conditions. By the same token, strong AI will never be true intelligence because it lacks the millions of layers of corporeal and cerebral natural selection necessary to form the substrata of our thinking.<BR/><BR/>We can enable an environment where intelligence can form, but we can't create intelligence. Creation requires control, whereas intellect requires choice; the two are not compatible.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8137769.post-1149527050100522052006-06-05T10:04:00.000-07:002006-06-05T10:04:00.000-07:00Kurzweil's predictions from 1989 to 1999 were larg...Kurzweil's predictions from 1989 to 1999 were largely extensions of existing technology, whereas there is no evidence to predict when -- or, I would argue, if -- strong AI will be achieved.Brad Williamshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09839532299808900672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8137769.post-1149516926144529992006-06-05T07:15:00.000-07:002006-06-05T07:15:00.000-07:00According to Wikipedia, "The Singularity Is Near: ...According to Wikipedia, "The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology (Viking Books, ISBN 0670033847) is a 2005 update of Raymond Kurzweil's 1999 book, The Age of Spiritual Machines and his 1987 book The Age of Intelligent Machines." The newer book in the series makes a stronger case for transhumanism and even starts to deal with the quantum processing nature of the human brain, something many other notables arguing on kurzweilai.net readily accept. While the prophecies from Kurzweil's first book were largely on target, I agree that he may have overstepped his optimism in the second series book by predicting intelligent computers for roads and speech recognition by 2009. Human intelligence relies on several layers of information reduction, including natural selection at the quantum level, not just the single layer of neural Darwinism that Kurzweil presumes.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com