This is the other case where I think Kurzweil is just in error.
The number of bits that it takes to encode DNA given “the language of the human body” is small, but how many bits to encode the language of the human body, and the language of cells, and the language of chemistry, and the language of the biome?
I can encode wikipedia with one digital bit, if I allow Wikipedia as one of the units in which I am encoding, and keep that complexity off the books. That’s what Ray is doing here—keeping the complexity of atoms and molecules and cells and biomes “off the books”.
You can do that as long as you’re able to deal with the complexity of the final translation from your digitial world to your problem domain yourself. If your problem domain is entirely digital, and you just want a simulated brain to work in your simulated digital world, the information content of intelligence would be less than the information content of your virtual DNA given a digital world with the complexity to simulate atoms and molecules and cells..., but we aren’t given that digital world.
In the meat world, you could create intelligence by fabricating DNA a piece at time, inserting it into a human cell, implanting that in a woman, and waiting for 9 months. Or, you could go the old fashioned manual route of inserting dna into human eggs without any information complexity at all related to human dna. But either method relies on the information content in the world to provide the language that converts our information and intent into an intelligence, and I think the point of an AI is to get beyond the reliance on either of these methods of translation.
This is the other case where I think Kurzweil is just in error.
The number of bits that it takes to encode DNA given “the language of the human body” is small, but how many bits to encode the language of the human body, and the language of cells, and the language of chemistry, and the language of the biome?
I can encode wikipedia with one digital bit, if I allow Wikipedia as one of the units in which I am encoding, and keep that complexity off the books. That’s what Ray is doing here—keeping the complexity of atoms and molecules and cells and biomes “off the books”.
You can do that as long as you’re able to deal with the complexity of the final translation from your digitial world to your problem domain yourself. If your problem domain is entirely digital, and you just want a simulated brain to work in your simulated digital world, the information content of intelligence would be less than the information content of your virtual DNA given a digital world with the complexity to simulate atoms and molecules and cells..., but we aren’t given that digital world.
In the meat world, you could create intelligence by fabricating DNA a piece at time, inserting it into a human cell, implanting that in a woman, and waiting for 9 months. Or, you could go the old fashioned manual route of inserting dna into human eggs without any information complexity at all related to human dna. But either method relies on the information content in the world to provide the language that converts our information and intent into an intelligence, and I think the point of an AI is to get beyond the reliance on either of these methods of translation.
Like the link, I read you as agreeing the argument is true but not useful.