Ben,
You say "raw processing power isn't the crucial element." I said that speed "is irrelevant to displaying intelligent thought." We're actually saying pretty much the same thing! All I was really trying to argue was that phrases like "the speed of transistors" need to be replaced with phrases like "the accuracy, retention, and flexibility of transistors." I was -not- trying to argue against the principle that being able to turn the product of a process back on improving that process will result in an exponentia...
" . . .if you want to know why I might be reluctant to extend the graph of biological and economic growth over time, into the future and over the horizon of an AI that thinks at transistor speeds and invents self-replicating molecular nanofactories and improves its own source code . . ."
Machine intelligence has long been rated in raw speed of calculation. There is plenty of processing power available. If I handed AI researchers a computer an order of magnitude faster than what they were working on, their failures would certainly fail faster, wh...
Eliezer, you’re assuming a very specific type of AI here. There are at least three different types, each with its own challenges: 1.An AI created by clever programmers who grasp the fundamentals of intelligence. 2.An AI evolved in iterative simulations. 3.An AI based on modeling human intelligence, simulating our neural interactions based on future neuroscience.
Type 1 is dangerous because it will interpret whatever instructions literally and has as you say “no ghost.” Type 2 is possibly the most dangerous because we will have no idea how it actually work... (read more)