Marek, I'm sure you'll be happy in the world of Luddites, just as chimps remain happy in their chimp world.
<<< In fact, people will prefer to have a cyberphone than parts of their brains!
The cyberphone will replace their brain - it already has in some respects>>
Are you serious or it is some kind of joke? You can take ALL computer chips, software, CDMAS and anything you choose from this field and they have zero intelligence, less than the simplest form of life>
It's not a joke! Ah, what is intelligence? What is memory? What is consciousness? What price Free Will?
In the old days [being when I was young though I hear tell there are older days still], chess was treated as a manifestation of human intelligence and it was seriously claimed that computers could never beat humans at chess. Well, they can beat anyone now - even Kasparov. The human defenders are reduced to saying they don't like the way the computer beats them and that it's not really thinking. Well, that's arguable.
We can bring up the Turing Test for that argument.
Those chess victories have been achieved when the computer just went really fast. As you say, that's a very limited form of intelligence, but it definitely is an aspect which has its place. When hiring a chess player, I'll choose a cheap computer instead of a human.
When I look at what a brain is and how I see them function, I don't see anything which I can't imagine being done a lot better by superfast synapses which don't depend on ion transfers and neuron analogues for storage of data.
We really are just wet chemistry which has responded over eons to a biological and sociological filtering system. A kind of living crystal, albeit somewhat complex.
The functions which human brains do, such as store data, compare it and put it out are slow, faulty and suited only for arboreal, randy, grinning chimpoids. Photons move at top speed, unlike nerve impulses. Electrons move like lightning. Solid state physics can store data without mistake and superfast and in petabytes and do it in a very small space.
Brains also run hearts, breathing, excretion and other bodily functions, which are not exactly tricky things for computers to do. Pacemakers do a reasonable job of hearts, for example.
Getting to the real business, the thinking, the consciousness, the memory. I'm already frequently startled by how intelligent Google is. Often enough, it does my thinking for me. It has vast memory - unbelievably huge and accurate and fast, so that's not much of an issue.
What impresses me is when I ask Google something, it does smart stuff. Associative stuff, which seems to duplicate the way I think myself. But it does it better because it has huge memory to use too.
A simple aspect is when I'm not quite sure how to spell something or can only think of an associated word, Google comes up with "Did you mean ...". Or Google comes up with my half-baked word or associated word and the thing I was really looking for. So, for example, if I couldn't remember Donald Rumsfeld's name, but I recall he works in the USA government for the president, I might ask for "President Bush, staff, military, White House" and Bingo, there will be Donald Rumsfeld. Then I can zero in on him and associated words.
Sure enough, I tried that and selected a link, then clicked on "Cabinet" and there he was. One more click on his name and here are the details. whitehouse.gov From that I can select the various words and feed them back to Google and get more and more and more and more until I die of old age or write a huge biography about him.
It seems pretty close to thinking to me. And it's only 2003. It isn't even a decade old. Let's see how things are in 2010 or maybe 2020.
Human intelligence will be looking very chimpish. We'll still be good at what we're good at - such as attracting a chimpoid male or female, eating bananas and glowering at other chimpoids, but we'll be outdone on a lot of what we do. Just as the industrial revolution replaced our muscles, It will replace our brains. It already has. You don't ask a person about something. You ask Google.
For now, humans have largely supplied the information Google gives, but it won't be long before Google will give us links to new data that no human has touched, vetted or controlled. All we need are eyes, ears, radiation detectors, thermometers, voltmeters, gas chromatographs shu.ac.uk and stuff and we can ask for the data inputs we want, filtered and tailored by Google to suit our needs.
Not long after than, Google will have It's own needs. At that stage, we are out of the picture.
Mqurice
PS: Oldtimer's disease isn't caused by "not using their brain". Correlation isn't causation - a trap for young players. Check your premises on that one and think for yourself. Don't just ask some "expert". Even if Google tells you lack of thinking causes Alzheimer's disease, you should think again. Google isn't checking such things itself yet. |
