Robots are just tools, part 3.
First we had a big bang. There was no life, no signs of life, no memory or signs of memory, no written
language, no signs that there would ever be any written language. No intelligence, no consciousness
and no signs that there would ever be any intelligence or consciousness.
But that was not the end. Between then and now most of the time there was no earth. Since there was
an earth much time went by before there was any simple replicating molecules. I suppose you could
say that there was “no intelligence => zero intelligence”, but if you did, what would it mean? Would it
predict what was to come billions of years later?
Then there were multi-celled plants and animals, things got much more complex and interesting.
Animals had memory and they invented tools. They didn’t plan very much for tomorrow, they mostly
lived for today. After awhile they started noticing long term patterns and could predict when the
growing season was to begin. Hammers, screwdrivers and saws were invented but they were no threat
to humans. After all, they were only tools. The interesting thing about these tools is that they evolved
in much the same way that animals had evolved. After 99.9% of the time between the big bang and
now had transpired, an intelligent observer could say that it was all quite unimpressive because there
were no interesting animals with a decent memory, decent means of communicating facts to other
animals other than leaving pheromone trails on the ground, etc. One could go on to note that there
was no real planning for the future other than a hard-wired instinct to bury nuts and hibernate.
Then in a punctuated-evolution event we ended up in a relatively short period of time with creatures
which could track the stars, make calendars, estimate the best time to plant crops. In addition, these
bipeds started to plan family units, store away food in their root cellars, build houses from wood and
stones. They went on to outdo many of nature’s earlier inventions such as moving fast and flying fast.
Nature’s invention of single celled life took much longer than the invention of humans. Isn’t it
curious how every thing seems to speed up. The “big advance” from the missing link to humans
occurred almost all at once in the sense of it being less than one tenth of one percent of the time since
life formed.
Such it was with tools. The progress was exponential. One year a human invents a hammer using
stone and a stick with vines to tie them together. The hammer still is used but if one goes to a human
store, one can see that the hammer has evolved much like the animals evolved. Then magic occurs.
Humans invent the camera. A typical human can store 40 pictures on a 35-millimeter film in 1995
and a decade later the same human is storing 400 pictures of 5 mega-pixels each on her new digital
camera. Fast film used to mean that the film was very sensitive to light, but now fast film is a memory
card that can store the new picture rapidly in its memory chips. Why is it that all of the progress is
crammed into the end?
In 1900 humans knew that their tools posed no threat because they did not have any ability to
remember. Later, after computers with memory were common, the statements changed to computers
cannot plan. Today computers are used by planners to do everything from planning a project,
planning the design of a building, or planning the design an integrated circuit. So the objection to
“cannot remember” and “cannot plan” fell into the waste bin of history. But a new objection arose,
computers cannot think. If they could only beat a human at chess, then humans would change their
minds and agree that computers could think like humans. In 1997, Deep Blue became chess
champion by beating Garry Kasparov.
So humans had to change the rules. Now we hear that computers still do not cut it because they are
not ‘intelligent.’ We have had relatively small neural networks doing quality assurance on products in
factories for years. Newer neural nets are just now starting to recognize the faces of fugitives and
cameras are being installed in many locations to take advantage of this fact. Computers are also being
used to learn the patterns of money flow and tell the NSA where terrorist money is coming from.
Arrests are being made on the basis of these advanced intelligent systems.
So here we are with emerging computer intelligence. People who are unaware of these intelligent
computers still object on the basis of “no intelligence” means “zero intelligence.”
Once you convince a human that the intelligence is no longer “zero”, the game is not over. The next
argument waiting in the wings is that the computer is not “conscious.” This is the second to last
stronghold of human ego. Once we have a computer that is conscious, the problem will be that it has
no will. I advise you not to complain that the robot that cleans your house doesn’t have enough will.
Be careful what you wish for, lest it come true.
First we had a big bang. There was no life, no signs of life, no memory or signs of memory, no written
language, no signs that there would ever be any written language. No intelligence, no consciousness
and no signs that there would ever be any intelligence or consciousness.
But that was not the end. Between then and now most of the time there was no earth. Since there was
an earth much time went by before there was any simple replicating molecules. I suppose you could
say that there was “no intelligence => zero intelligence”, but if you did, what would it mean? Would it
predict what was to come billions of years later?
Then there were multi-celled plants and animals, things got much more complex and interesting.
Animals had memory and they invented tools. They didn’t plan very much for tomorrow, they mostly
lived for today. After awhile they started noticing long term patterns and could predict when the
growing season was to begin. Hammers, screwdrivers and saws were invented but they were no threat
to humans. After all, they were only tools. The interesting thing about these tools is that they evolved
in much the same way that animals had evolved. After 99.9% of the time between the big bang and
now had transpired, an intelligent observer could say that it was all quite unimpressive because there
were no interesting animals with a decent memory, decent means of communicating facts to other
animals other than leaving pheromone trails on the ground, etc. One could go on to note that there
was no real planning for the future other than a hard-wired instinct to bury nuts and hibernate.
Then in a punctuated-evolution event we ended up in a relatively short period of time with creatures
which could track the stars, make calendars, estimate the best time to plant crops. In addition, these
bipeds started to plan family units, store away food in their root cellars, build houses from wood and
stones. They went on to outdo many of nature’s earlier inventions such as moving fast and flying fast.
Nature’s invention of single celled life took much longer than the invention of humans. Isn’t it
curious how every thing seems to speed up. The “big advance” from the missing link to humans
occurred almost all at once in the sense of it being less than one tenth of one percent of the time since
life formed.
Such it was with tools. The progress was exponential. One year a human invents a hammer using
stone and a stick with vines to tie them together. The hammer still is used but if one goes to a human
store, one can see that the hammer has evolved much like the animals evolved. Then magic occurs.
Humans invent the camera. A typical human can store 40 pictures on a 35-millimeter film in 1995
and a decade later the same human is storing 400 pictures of 5 mega-pixels each on her new digital
camera. Fast film used to mean that the film was very sensitive to light, but now fast film is a memory
card that can store the new picture rapidly in its memory chips. Why is it that all of the progress is
crammed into the end?
In 1900 humans knew that their tools posed no threat because they did not have any ability to
remember. Later, after computers with memory were common, the statements changed to computers
cannot plan. Today computers are used by planners to do everything from planning a project,
planning the design of a building, or planning the design an integrated circuit. So the objection to
“cannot remember” and “cannot plan” fell into the waste bin of history. But a new objection arose,
computers cannot think. If they could only beat a human at chess, then humans would change their
minds and agree that computers could think like humans. In 1997, Deep Blue became chess
champion by beating Garry Kasparov.
So humans had to change the rules. Now we hear that computers still do not cut it because they are
not ‘intelligent.’ We have had relatively small neural networks doing quality assurance on products in
factories for years. Newer neural nets are just now starting to recognize the faces of fugitives and
cameras are being installed in many locations to take advantage of this fact. Computers are also being
used to learn the patterns of money flow and tell the NSA where terrorist money is coming from.
Arrests are being made on the basis of these advanced intelligent systems.
So here we are with emerging computer intelligence. People who are unaware of these intelligent
computers still object on the basis of “no intelligence” means “zero intelligence.”
Once you convince a human that the intelligence is no longer “zero”, the game is not over. The next
argument waiting in the wings is that the computer is not “conscious.” This is the second to last
stronghold of human ego. Once we have a computer that is conscious, the problem will be that it has
no will. I advise you not to complain that the robot that cleans your house doesn’t have enough will.
Be careful what you wish for, lest it come true.
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