20150826 - Marcus Hutter, A.I. - Live Chat Thread

[Xitheron]

Art was really on his game tonight. He's asked all the right questions.

Art--thank you for doing this show under the circumstances. I've noticed in my life, that the more I don't want to do something and just don't feel like it, the bigger potential for some kind of unexpected magic to happen when I do. Your sincere curiosity about the unknown came out tonight. A future classic.

[SciFiAuthor]

Art was really on his game tonight. He's asked all the right questions.

Art--thank you for doing this show under the circumstances. I've noticed in my life, that the more I don't want to do something and just don't feel like it, the bigger potential for some kind of unexpected magic to happen when I do. Your sincere curiosity about the unknown came out tonight. A future classic.

+1 This was good stuff.

[Chronaut]

Dr. Hutter's also into particle physics and theories of everything - I woulda loved to have heard his thoughts on the subject...3hrs just isn't enough!

Great guest (Redacted) ;  And thanks for another great interview Art :)

[WOTR]

Yeah, but a malfunctioning brain is revealing. If you take it from the standpoint that we are the collective sum of our memories, then when those memories get obliterated by a disease, well, that's all she wrote. We are just a collection of neurons.

If you take it from the position that we are a soul, which implies some supernatural aspect to this, then that gets screwed when biotech makes us immortal, which is probably less than 50 years from now if Aubrey de Grey and others are right. The vast majority of spirituality rests on the crutch that we eventually die and go somewhere. Not all, but the vast majority. The whole point of a soul is to survive death. When you don't die, then the idea becomes obsolete.

One of the problems comes in assuming that we are only a collection of our memories or that we need a supernatural soul.  It completely leaves out the role that hormones and our biology in general play in who we are and how we interpret our memories and our experiences in this world.  Depression is a part of the human experience that could not be duplicated easily nor adrenaline or dopamine.

I know that a sanatized "AI" me would not be me.  Would it be lacking a "soul?"  Possibly... But it would be lacking far more than just that...

[QuantumMystics]

Buh Buy, wanna be Robert Anton Wilson....

Sure thing Gumby Tsar....

[Lt.Uhura]

Memories maybe souls it seems to me. The soul maybe just that, memories of our relationships, that maybe it and they continue on after we leave this body, so neither the idea of a memory that dies correct nor a soul that never dies, just memories captured in the light and viewable from other dimensions.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjCxl9JL6Ug

[Xitheron]

Memories are kind of sad, no matter how happy they are. I would think it some kind of hell to be conscious somehow somewhere with no ability to make new memories by being able to live in the now. Maybe that's what hell is.

[SciFiAuthor]

One of the problems comes in assuming that we are only a collection of our memories or that we need a supernatural soul.  It completely leaves out the role that hormones and our biology in general play in who we are and how we interpret our memories and our experiences in this world.  Depression is a part of the human experience that could not be duplicated easily nor adrenaline or dopamine.

I know that a sanatized "AI" me would not be me.  Would it be lacking a "soul?"  Possibly... But it would be lacking far more than just that...

Sure, I mean, much of what we are is determined by hormones and neurons. Love, for example, can ultimately be reduced to a chemical reaction in the brain if you take it from an absolute science perspective. But, if people like Nick Bostrom are right, then we almost certainly live inside a computer simulation. If that's true, then all religions, atheists and all spiritualities and all aspects of the paranormal are valid because they were programmed into the simulation. At that point, all crazy ideas are equally valid along side normal ideas.

[gabrielle]

That was the best show ever!   Thanks Art!  We live in interesting times.  WOW.....amazing stuff. 

[ZomZom]

You maybe never the same person ever, you can never step into the same river twice. Both the river and you maybe never different. You would have to model out to infinity with your algorithm so we chop that down to probability and that momentary perspective.

Greg Egan has a book that touches on this called Schild's Ladder, one of my favs.

[ziznak]

I woke up at like 145 to listen to the end of the show.  can't wait to give it a full go hopefully sometime today!!  liking what I'm seeing you guys post tho! from what I heard it was a great show so I'm looking fwd to that first half

[ZomZom]

Finally finished the archive.  Great guest, we are so lucky to have this gem of a show (and this great forum to add to the experience).  Thanks, Art and MV!

[albrecht]

The lawyer and doctor comments were interesting, from Art, with regard to the lawyer emotional nature and juries and the response by Hutter! Classic and interesting. (That lawyers are really not emotional but acting to get the jury on their side so why not AI/Robot, also faking emotion, as a lawyer.) I think, though, at least for now the guy under-estimates medicine and law (there often is not "one correct" solution based on precedent or medical textbook.) There is still nuance in things like whether to charge, whether to acquit, whether to operate, how to operate, every jury is different, every patient is different, etc even when the crime/health-problem/lawsuit has been identified. Simply having all the case law and statutes or all the medical textbooks and case outcomes wouldn't suffice, though certainly can help. I could see AI being like the para-legal for sure and likewise doctor's assistants etc.

[kennedymaure]

I lean towards the idea that it is not "us" who would be immortal, but rather a shadow or an approximation. The irrational, forgetful, imperfect "us" would cease to exist and be replaced by something else.

The argument could probably be made that it would be "us" evolved- I cling to my (possibly irrational) belief that it would be no more "us" than a clone raised in an alternate universe...

Forgive me but the depth of that kind of thinking almost made my processor burn out. I wasn't designed for this level.

[albrecht]

I just did a spit-take when Hutter, in his nice accent, said "there is no WILL! There is no WILL to do it" (with regard to privacy etc.) Reminded me of Dr.Strangelove, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and every German stereotype. What he was saying was good and a very thought provoking show but the way he said it. Classic.

[ziznak]

if you had a robot baby.. and you kicked it and beat it... would it grow up to be a mean robot baby?


how did Art NOT ask this question?

[Chronaut]

if you had a robot baby.. and you kicked it and beat it... would it grow up to be a mean robot baby?


how did Art NOT ask this question?

I thought the same thing last night - the developmental curve often goes tragically awry in humans (sometimes even when you try to do everything right), and the prospect of a maladjusted AI that can scan the internet and smartphone networks and hack any password in .0001 seconds to spoof emails or activate launch sequences is pretty damn chilling.  Not to mention the risks of hackers intentionally writing viruses to turn your AI into a virtual Charles Manson...brrr...

[ziznak]

I thought the same thing last night - the developmental curve often goes tragically awry in humans (sometimes even when you try to do everything right), and the prospect of a maladjusted AI that can scan the internet and smartphone networks and hack any password in .0001 seconds to spoof emails or activate launch sequences is pretty damn chilling.  Not to mention the risks of hackers intentionally writing viruses to turn your AI into a virtual Charles Manson...brrr...

you are making a great point but i was just making a "callback" to an old snoory quote... still though the idea holds true... if we did have AI and it went of all places to the internet for its information would we not have, as a result, some sort of crazy ass mal-adjusted fetishist clad in adamantium?

[Chronaut]

you are making a great point but i was just making a "callback" to an old snoory quote... still though the idea holds true... if we did have AI and it went of all places to the internet for its information would we not have, as a result, some sort of crazy ass mal-adjusted fetishist clad in adamantium?

Oops yeah I missed that snoory reference - somehow I've actually succeeded in averting him completely for years, and deleting everything I've ever heard him say from my memory banks.  Lucky me =)

And when you put it this way, "some sort of crazy ass mal-adjusted fetishist clad in adamantium,"  I want to order three right now; in blonde, redhead, and brunette =P

[ziznak]

Oops yeah I missed that snoory reference - somehow I've actually succeeded in averting him completely for years, and deleting everything I've ever heard him say from my memory banks.  Lucky me =)

And when you put it this way, "some sort of crazy ass mal-adjusted fetishist clad in adamantium,"  I want to order three right now; in blonde, redhead, and brunette =P

yes flesh colored finish please... adamantium is so... er... not invented yet

[JamesMcDonald]

How do we even know we're not immortal?  Perhaps death isn't really a true finish, but more a transition into another state.  We just may be immortals.

[zeebo]

How do we even know we're not immortal?  Perhaps death isn't really a true finish, but more a transition into another state.  We just may be immortals.

Maybe our consciousness just gets uploaded to a different computer simulation?  I'm hoping for Skyrim.

[GeorgieForPresident2216]

Maybe our consciousness just gets uploaded to a different computer simulation?  I'm hoping for Skyrim.

I dunno, that game creeped me out something awful.

[zeebo]

I dunno, that game creeped me out something awful.

Nah ya just gotta be a badass stealth archer mage like me and all is good.   

[GeorgieForPresident2216]

Nah ya just gotta be a badass stealth archer mage like me and all is good.   

Oh, I was badass  .  Still got creeped out by the skeletons and decomposed corpses sneaking around in the those dark tombs.  Always needed to bring a companion with me on those runs to make it less scary. 

[Chronaut]

How do we even know we're not immortal?  Perhaps death isn't really a true finish, but more a transition into another state.  We just may be immortals.

That's an excellent point - it's kinda fascinating that we still don't have any idea about the true nature of consciousness or death.  All of these millennia, and we seem to be no closer to answering the "big questions."  But for some reason it strikes me as likely that consciousness itself is deathless, but memories are not.  I guess that consciousness seems more like a real and transcendental quality - perhaps a universal field of some kind, whereas memory seems to be mere data stored in the arrangement of neurons in the brain.  So I suppose that death is like taking a hammer to your computer - all of the data gets obliterated, but the electricity that made it go doesn't even notice that the data's gone.

[Xitheron]

Don't know how I missed it, but I just randomly watched Bicentennial Man.. movie from 1999 with Robin Williams, based on a novel co written by Isaac Asimov.. Damn good A.I. movie!!

[zeebo]

I re-listened to this a few days ago.  I really liked the guest, but I was a little unsettled that he thought the end of Colossus: The Forbin Project was a good outcome.   I was pretty rattled by the ending of that movie.   I do agree with him though that it's a well-done examination of one path A.I. could take.