belief as scientific attire, like wearing a lab coat.
Science (unlike religion) has proved its myths—by putting men on the moon, mobile phones in people’s pockets, and curing diseases. It’s payed its dues to reliability. So unless I am willing to look into it myself, I should, as a default, believe most things scientists claim. And, unless I’m willing to study the press extensively, I should defer to uncontradicted press stories about scientific claims, especially if they’re repeated. This makes science into a litterary genre, but it’s the only real option for non-jounalist non-scientists.
The press has reports with things like “scientists attack creationist teachings”, but I’ve never seen “scientists attack common misconceptions about evolutionary theory”. Ergo, bashing creationists is sensible, but worrying about my own poor understanding is not.
As for the issue you identified—attitude towards AI’s—there are some other aspects reinforcing people’s attitudes (this may be why you found this response so prevalent). There is no theoretical barrier to constructing human level AI’s, since humans’s exist. We can improve human intelligence in various ways (slightly), so we can improve these AI’s too (so slightly better than human is possible too).
For super-AIs, on the other hand, nothing exists in the world to show that they are possible. And if someone had created them, or were confident of creating them, this would have been reported in the press. So the man on the street, even without apocalyptic litterature, should conclude that super-AI’s are far from today’s technology (of course, the apocalyptic litterature doesn’t help).
Some people I know then make the same mistake you mentioned—super-AI’s aren’t science (no repeatable experiment). They are, however, talked about in a scientific language. Hence they must be pseudo-science.
Jonvon, there is only one human superpower. It makes us what we are. It is our ability to think.
I’d add speach, empathy, opposable thumb, quite a long lifespan, and superior social skills to the list. All of them have just as much claim to “making us who we are” (though thinking and social skills have the best claim to “making us who we will be”).
“There is no theoretical barrier to constructing human level AI’s, since humans’s exist. We can improve human intelligence in various ways (slightly), so we can improve these AI’s too (so slightly better than human is possible too). For super-AIs, on the other hand, nothing exists in the world to show that they are possible.”
If the “man on the street” has sufficient familiarity with The Wonders of Science to accept human-level AIs as genuinely possible, it seems to me that the sheer boost in simple processing power available to an artificial construct is probably enough to support at least a theoretical acceptance of the possibility of super-AI. If somebody understands technology well enough to allow for near-human AI, I would expect to find that they assume super-AI is not just possible, but trivial … witness people attributing all sorts of mysterious and nefarious intelligent behavior to Google’s on-the-fly search predictions, for example...
belief as scientific attire, like wearing a lab coat. Science (unlike religion) has proved its myths—by putting men on the moon, mobile phones in people’s pockets, and curing diseases. It’s payed its dues to reliability. So unless I am willing to look into it myself, I should, as a default, believe most things scientists claim. And, unless I’m willing to study the press extensively, I should defer to uncontradicted press stories about scientific claims, especially if they’re repeated. This makes science into a litterary genre, but it’s the only real option for non-jounalist non-scientists.
The press has reports with things like “scientists attack creationist teachings”, but I’ve never seen “scientists attack common misconceptions about evolutionary theory”. Ergo, bashing creationists is sensible, but worrying about my own poor understanding is not.
As for the issue you identified—attitude towards AI’s—there are some other aspects reinforcing people’s attitudes (this may be why you found this response so prevalent). There is no theoretical barrier to constructing human level AI’s, since humans’s exist. We can improve human intelligence in various ways (slightly), so we can improve these AI’s too (so slightly better than human is possible too). For super-AIs, on the other hand, nothing exists in the world to show that they are possible. And if someone had created them, or were confident of creating them, this would have been reported in the press. So the man on the street, even without apocalyptic litterature, should conclude that super-AI’s are far from today’s technology (of course, the apocalyptic litterature doesn’t help).
Some people I know then make the same mistake you mentioned—super-AI’s aren’t science (no repeatable experiment). They are, however, talked about in a scientific language. Hence they must be pseudo-science.
Jonvon, there is only one human superpower. It makes us what we are. It is our ability to think. I’d add speach, empathy, opposable thumb, quite a long lifespan, and superior social skills to the list. All of them have just as much claim to “making us who we are” (though thinking and social skills have the best claim to “making us who we will be”).
“There is no theoretical barrier to constructing human level AI’s, since humans’s exist. We can improve human intelligence in various ways (slightly), so we can improve these AI’s too (so slightly better than human is possible too). For super-AIs, on the other hand, nothing exists in the world to show that they are possible.”
If the “man on the street” has sufficient familiarity with The Wonders of Science to accept human-level AIs as genuinely possible, it seems to me that the sheer boost in simple processing power available to an artificial construct is probably enough to support at least a theoretical acceptance of the possibility of super-AI. If somebody understands technology well enough to allow for near-human AI, I would expect to find that they assume super-AI is not just possible, but trivial … witness people attributing all sorts of mysterious and nefarious intelligent behavior to Google’s on-the-fly search predictions, for example...