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Could a computer paint? Write best selling novels?
Why not? Both could be "brute forced." You could have a giant database of paintings/novels rated by popular and professional opinion, and then you randomly plot colors/words on canvass/paper until it incorporates enough of the most highly rated concepts in said paintings/novels to be considered good.
And there are more advanced problem solving techniques than "brute force."
Copies, sure. Scan the image and print it out. But originals?
You could have a giant database of paintings/novels rated by popular and professional opinion, and then you randomly plot colors/words on canvass/paper until it incorporates enough of the most highly rated concepts in said paintings/novels to be considered good.
It would probably do for modern art which says everything you need to know about it.
And there are more advanced problem solving techniques than "brute force."
Oh, I understand that, I'm just questioning what would be the algorithm to paint? We can't even do good word recognition or translations let alone something altogether new.
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Could a computer paint? Write best selling novels?
My point earlier is it probably wouldn't read novels or admire paintings spontaneously. The machine would not regard these as "complex activities" from the measure of time priority. (All computers have a clock and almost all programs use it for rhythm.) Activities could be seen as "trivial on a "survival scale."
OTOH, I have seen pretty good smart programs (a form of AI) to assist with writing young adult mystery stories, so it may be possible that machines would write or paint. REMEMBER, post singularity the really smart machines are ignoring humans, we hope*. So the novel or painting would have to appeal to a machine/program that will live forever, as far as it knows. Might not have any use to us.
*If we, as humans, identified another creature on this planet as a risk to human survival, we would quickly exterminate it. Therefore, being very anthropic creatures, we think that the very smart machines -- in a few hundred years -- might see us the same way. This is a function of human sorting orientations. Maybe the machines will see us as all the same race, humans as idiot cousins. Who knows? No one has ever talked to a real self-aware machine.
No matter where you go, there you are. - Buckaroo Banzai
"I played it [Civilization] for three months and then realised I hadn't done any work. In the end, I had to delete all the saved files and smash the CD." Iain Banks, author
It would probably do for modern art which says everything you need to know about it.
And if you only filled the database with pictures of fruit and tables? Would it still produce "modern art?" Or would it manage to replicate an approximation of an elementary school kid's first assignment? And if it could do that, could it not be programmed to do more?
Oh, I understand that, I'm just questioning what would be the algorithm to paint? We can't even do good word recognition or translations let alone something altogether new.
What would be the algorithm to paint? Why don't you ask a computer scientist?
He did, but I only know you can teach one to paint by numbers. Translations are complicated even for humans. (The author picked one of 7 words in French that mean the same thing, now the translator must pick one of 5 in English that mean the same thing.) Writing with a thesaurus at the front of the brain probably wouldn't help. That is exactly how the smart program I mentioned does in fact work. Add the complication that self-aware machines would be unfathomabe to humans as to interest and attention.
No matter where you go, there you are. - Buckaroo Banzai
"I played it [Civilization] for three months and then realised I hadn't done any work. In the end, I had to delete all the saved files and smash the CD." Iain Banks, author
I think the reason you believe that is that we've not yet figured out how to write intelligence into a computer. Your picture of hardware development is of an autistic savant getting faster and faster at multiplying two numbers in his head. If a regular person was magically granted the ability to keep twice as many facts in his head, manipulate twice as many pieces of information at once, and do this all twice as fast, would you not say that he had gotten more intelligent?
Didn't PCs bypass human beings in that respect sometime in, oh, the forties? Certainly they're well ahead of us now, and we don't call them "smarter than us." They're just more useful, but perfectly stupid, tools.
No matter where you go, there you are. - Buckaroo Banzai
"I played it [Civilization] for three months and then realised I hadn't done any work. In the end, I had to delete all the saved files and smash the CD." Iain Banks, author
Didn't PCs bypass human beings in that respect sometime in, oh, the forties? Certainly they're well ahead of us now, and we don't call them "smarter than us." They're just more useful, but perfectly stupid, tools.
Do you mean elsewhere than the bit I responded to? I'm sorry, I must not be getting you here. That part seems to be quite unambiguously asserting that greater processing power (and larger RAM, etc.) does, in fact, equal greater intelligence. I disagree. In the context of the singularity discussion, "artificial intelligence" is inextricably bound up with self-awareness. At least, it seems so to me. And self-awareness will not be achieved by just making smaller and stronger processors the way we've been doing.
Possibly Hera is talking about a superfast computer that can crunch an obscene number of variables and design a perfect configuration out of a billion possibilities--something comparable to the way Deep Blue chooses the "best" move. But if so, there's no reason to speak of motivating the computer, since such a device is incapable of "thinking" about anything but its given task.
That part seems to be quite unambiguously asserting that greater processing power (and larger RAM, etc.) does, in fact, equal greater intelligence.
No, it doesn't. What it says is that IF we've managed to write some sort of general purpose AI THEN it becomes much more reasonable to assert that better hardware -> higher intelligence. The whole point of a general purpose AI is that it is NOT the sort of super-fast abacus you have in mind when you think of a computer.
I ask you again, Elok: if you doubled a normal person's thinking speed, "RAM" and "hard drive" would you not consider this person's intelligence to have increased? If not, why not?
No, it's a bit more elusive than that. Intelligence is not just processing speeds or we would in fact consider Rain Men to be the smartest men on the planet. True intelligence involves, among other things:
-ability to approach problems from different angles
-ability to learn new concepts and integrate them with existing knowledge
-ability to imagine unusual possibilities, and question one's own assumptions
-ability to act and learn independently
None of which computers have. IIUC, computers have a very fixed set of ideas to work with, and they don't think so much as plug input into an equation and give you the output. The equation may be very complicated, but it has to be written beforehand, and the computer can't choose to modify it. It can't "think" about the problem at all.
Now, if I'm getting you right (tell me if I'm not), you're saying we just need to find a way to have computers think, "IF this ain't making sense THEN step back and examine the problem in a new light." But how does the computer know what new light to look at it under? You'd have to program in all possible ways of looking at a problem, which is impossible--unless you already have the problem solved, no? In which case, there's no need for the computer in the first place, it's just acting out a role you wrote for it. You need to teach a computer to imagine, to think for itself. Which is fundamentally different from what computers do. Again, IIUC. I'm definitely not a comp sci person.
No, it's a bit more elusive than that. Intelligence is not just processing speeds or we would in fact consider Rain Men to be the smartest men on the planet.
THIS IS ABOUT CHANGING THE HARDWARE ON A NORMAL PERSON.
I specifically explained that making assertions based on current computers (WHICH I EVEN DESCRIBED AS "AUTISTIC") was NOT meaningful.
Now, if I'm getting you right (tell me if I'm not), you're saying we just need to find a way to have computers think, "IF this ain't making sense THEN step back and examine the problem in a new light." But how does the computer know what new light to look at it under? You'd have to program in all possible ways of looking at a problem, which is impossible--unless you already have the problem solved, no? In which case, there's no need for the computer in the first place, it's just acting out a role you wrote for it. You need to teach a computer to imagine, to think for itself. Which is fundamentally different from what computers do. Again, IIUC. I'm definitely not a comp sci person.
OMFG.
What the **** do you think this:
IF we've managed to write some sort of general purpose AI THEN it becomes much more reasonable to assert that better hardware -> higher intelligence
means?
This is the WHOLE POINT: that at some future time we'll have managed to create a sort of general purpose AI; one that's at least as flexible in its capabilities as human beings. Once you get there, even pure hardware evolution is a plausible mechanism to take us toward a singularity (more properly, to take us far along a path of more-than-exponential growth in capabilities). On the other hand, there is no reason to suppose that hardware evolution is the ONLY method the AI would use to improve on its own design, unless it turns out that human beings are so universal in their intelligence that we're close to ideal in that respect.
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However, not relevant. 
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