Just Finished
Charting the early development of Machine Intelligence this quite fascinating and well written book was my bedside reading for most of the summer. Dyson surprising traces back the philosophical origins of Artificial Intelligence to the 17th Century with the publication of Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes. I must admit that when I read a few bits of Hobbes last year I was rather taken aback by the mention of thinking machines – and had actually assumed Hobbes was using metaphor to describe something quite different. Following on from Hobbes, Dyson intrigued me further by discussing the 19th Century publication of Erewhon by Samuel Butler which talked of the dangers inherent in AI. The bulk of the book however concentrated on the post World War Two drive to produce computer systems for defence in a Nuclear Age and had the figure of John Von Neumann striding through that period like the Colossus that he was. As you can imagine from the prominent mention of the great biologist Charles Darwin in the title the evolution of both the hardware and software of present and future machines is the central focus of this work. The author draws on biological examples of increasing complexity and increasing intelligence as a way to understand technological progress with the production of both Artificial Life and Artificial Intelligence.
Of course AI has been promised as ‘just around the corner’ for sometime now yet we seem to be as far away from its realisation as ever. Machines are certainly ‘smarter’ today than ever before but I doubt if most people would regard them as exhibiting even the most basic intelligent behaviour. I think that this is because we have yet to understand the nature of intelligence itself. Without that basic understanding I think it will be very difficult indeed to create an artificial facsimile of it. Of course once we do understand how intelligent minds actually work I believe that the leap to fully functioning AI will be very rapid indeed. Whether that would be a good or a bad thing I’m still not sure. AI holds a great deal of promise but I also think that it holds some seriously dangerous threats too. Inevitably the military across the globe see AI as a future weapon – a force multiplier that needs no food, no sleep and no psychological counselling after combat. Designed in the right way AI’s could be the perfect killing machines. What is less clear is whether or not we would be able to understand our own creations and whether we could stop them if they decided that we posed a threat to them. You could easily accuse me of being paranoid and of reading far too much SF for my own good but I think that the threat is a real one and should not be underestimated. Handled in the right way AI will be a boon to future generations. Handled badly, those future generations (if there are any) will rightly curse our names.
8 comments:
Is the invocation of Charles Darwin relevant to the theme of the book or was it chosen as the title purely for marketing reasons? In other words, does the author propose that AI is in any sense Darwinian?
I think that the invocation of Darwin works on at least two levels - firstly is it clear that in machine evolution the fittest survive and 'reproduce' and second that evolutionary techniques are being used to 'breed' better software rather than design it from the ground up. Certainly in the field of AI and AL research Darwinian understanding is being used as a tool to enhance the progress of any development.
" ... could easily accuse me of being paranoid and of reading far too much SF for my own good" - maybe, maybe not. The thing is ... if we have these concerns after the fact, it will be too late. It's important that we ask these questions before AI is achieved.
When I first saw the subject of this book and the author's name, I couldn't help thinking of Terminator for obvious reasons and because of the character's name, Miles Dyson, who unwittingly helps usher in the age of AI.
dbackdad said: The thing is ... if we have these concerns after the fact, it will be too late. It's important that we ask these questions before AI is achieved.
Most definitely.....
dbackdad said: When I first saw the subject of this book and the author's name, I couldn't help thinking of Terminator for obvious reasons and because of the character's name, Miles Dyson, who unwittingly helps usher in the age of AI.
[laughs] It did cross my mind too. The author is actually the son of the great scientist Freeman J Dyson. Though I did would if Miles Bennett Dyson was named after *him*...
In my mind there is a distinction to be made between evolutionary thought in general and Darwinian thought specifically. Darwin proposed a specific way evolution could have occurred, i.e. natural selection acting on random mutation. We can all agree that there is evolution in the mechanical and biological worlds, but is it Darwinian? That's my question. Does the author propose that AI development is Darwinian or merely evolutionary in the general sense?
LB said: In my mind there is a distinction to be made between evolutionary thought in general and Darwinian thought specifically.
Indeed there is. Darwinism is a way of explaining Evolution and isn't the only theory that has attempted to do so - its 'just' the most sucessful.
LB said: Darwin proposed a specific way evolution could have occurred, i.e. natural selection acting on random mutation.
Well.. Darwin proposed that Evolution was the result of Natural Selection - by the environment - acting on a muliplicity of organisms that varied because of often subtle genetic differences caused by random mutations and other factors - yes.
LB said: We can all agree that there is evolution in the mechanical and biological worlds, but is it Darwinian? That's my question. Does the author propose that AI development is Darwinian or merely evolutionary in the general sense?
AI Evolution is Darwinian in the sense that the environment (us basically) acts upon a variation of mechanical 'lifeforms' selecting the fittest who pass on their attributes to the next generation - which are selected again... So yes, the process is Darwinian in that sense - although unlike biological evolution we are both creator *and* environment of course. You could say that AI is Evolution by UN-Natural Selection [grin].
AI scares me because too much that was once Science Fiction eventually is created, and those Terminators were scary as hell! ;-)
V V said: AI scares me because too much that was once Science Fiction eventually is created, and those Terminators were scary as hell! ;-)
The Terminators are an awesome invention - scary as hell indeed. Un-killable, un-stoppable killing machines.... It doesn't get much better than that!
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