re: Foundations of Singularity on display in Tokyo

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How do the robots feel about ISIS?

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I have said we need to make robot suicide bombers to fight ISIS. We get drones that drop little robots who then find their target and explode.

Fight fire with fire.

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Mind if I bump this thread tomorrow?

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NP I like discussing this stuff.

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The ignorance in the assumption that you've never seen one better at basic cognition than a cockroach so it must be impossible is astounding.

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I'm not assuming anything is impossible. I'm just saying that until I see some tangible progress in that direction, I'm going to continue to withhold believing in a 'singularity'.

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The resources required to work on something as complex and abstract as AI have only been available for about 10 years since the major tech companies have established themselves as such an economic power.

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Strong AI has been a stated goal for decades. From Wikipedia:

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The field of AI research was founded at a conference on the campus of Dartmouth College in the summer of 1956.[21] The attendees, including John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky, Allen Newell, Arthur Samuel, and Herbert Simon, became the leaders of AI research for many decades.[22] They and their students wrote programs that were, to most people, simply astonishing:[23] computers were winning at checkers, solving word problems in algebra, proving logical theorems and speaking English.[24] By the middle of the 1960s, research in the U.S. was heavily funded by the Department of Defense[25] and laboratories had been established around the world.[26] AI's founders were profoundly optimistic about the future of the new field: Herbert Simon predicted that "machines will be capable, within twenty years, of doing any work a man can do" and Marvin Minsky agreed, writing that "within a generation ... the problem of creating 'artificial intelligence' will substantially be solved".[27]

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we are trying to perfect general ASI

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No, we are trying to create a first pass attempt at general "strong" AI. And have been trying since the 50's.

I can't speak to the Google DoE because I'm not familiar with him, but as far as Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking, and Mark Zuckerberg go: they are very intelligent men, but two of them basically wrote mundane code for the dot com boom and had the business savvy to put their companies in position to gain millions (or billions, i dont know) of dollars. These guys are first and foremost businessmen. And Elon Musk may think he's Tony Stark but that doesn't mean he has a great grasp of strong AI. To me this is like Brad Pitt thinking he has a relevant viewpoint on architecture because he does it as a side hobby. I feel the same way about Hawking, and have a ton of respect for what he's accomplished. Brilliant? Yes. But an expert on artificial intelligence? Nope.

If they're making progress on general "strong" artificial intelligence, where the hell is it? Why hasn't anyone done a demo of anything that's not just a cleverly programmed set of rote instructions? I am more than willing to change my viewpoint but as of now I have seen nothing to indicate otherwise. Certainly nothing to point toward a singularity.

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The quotes also implies you think it impossible somehow which is exactly why the world's arguably smartest men (e.g. Musk, Hawking, some former director of engineering for google I think Kurtz maybe) worry about this issue more than anything and across the board believe it will happen within our lifetimes, right?

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This is just an appeal to authority.

Concerned that it's a possibility is valid, but it's more a "thought experiment" than a viable scientific hypothesis based on evidence.

In other words, the concerns of some intelligent individuals does not somehow make it more valid, especially with a lack of evidence to support it.