Hi! I’m Nathan Holmes, and I’ve bounced around a bit educationally (philosophy, music, communication disorders, neuroscience), and am now pursuing computer science with the intent of, ideally, working on AI/ML or something related to implants. (The latter may necessitate computer engineering rather than CS per se, but anyway.)
One of my lifelong interests has been understanding intelligence and how minds work.
Previously, in spite of having been an off-and-on follower of Less Wrong (and, earlier, Overcoming Bias, when EY published there), I hadn’t really treated unfriendly AI as worthy of much thought, but reading a few more recent MIRI essays convinced me I should take it seriously—especially if I’m interested in AI research myself. Hence the decision to read Superintelligence.
Nice to meet you all. I live in Berkeley, am a researcher at MIRI, and write a blog. I’m particularly interested in seeing whether AI is the highest priority thing to work on, and if so what should be done.
I stumbled across EY’s writings back before the start of Overcoming Bias, which eventually got me interested in transhumanism, the idea of an intelligence explosion, the Friendliness design problem—oh yes, and also rationality. I concluded back then that how we deal with upcoming supertechnologies (MNT, SI, possibly emulation) will be the deciding factor in what happens to our civilization (or the parts that aren’t in simulations with close termination conditions, in any case), and that hasn’t changed.
I’m Tom. I attended UC Berkeley a number of years ago, double-majored in math and philosophy, graduated magna cum laude, and wrote my Honors thesis on the “mind-body” problem, including issues that were motivated by my parallel interest in AI, which I have been passionately interested in all my life.
It has been my conviction since I was a teenager that consciousness is the most interesting mystery to study, and that, understanding how it is realized in the brain—or emerges therefrom, or whatever it turns out to be—will also almost certainly give us the insight to do the other main goal of my life, build a mind.
The converse is also true. If we learn how to do AI, not GOFAI wiht no awareness, but AI wilh full sentience, we will almost certainly know how the brain does it. Solving either one, will solve the other.
AI can be thought of as one way to “breadboard” our ideas about biological information processing.
But it is more than that to me. It is an end in itself, and opens up possibilities so exciting, so penultimate, that achieving sentient AI would be equal, or superior, to the experience (and possible consequences) of meeting an advanced extraterrestrial civilization.
Further, I think that solving the biological mind body problem, or doing AI, is something within reach. I think it is the concepts that are lacking, not better processors, or finer grained fMRIs, or better images of axon hillock reconformation during exocytosis.
If we think hard, really really hard, I think we solve these things with the puzzle pieces we have now (just maybe.) I often feel that everything we need is on the table, and we just need to learn how to see it with fresh eyes, order it, and put it together. I doubt a “new discovery”, either in physics, cognitive neurobiology, or philosophy of mind, comp-sci, etc, will make the design we seek pop-out for us.
I think it is up to us now, to think, conceptualize, integrate, and interdisciplinarily cross-pollinate. The answer is, I think, at lest major pieces of it, available and sitting there, waiting to be uncovered.
Other than that, since graduation I have worked as a software developer (wrote my obligatory 20 million lines of code, in a smattering of 6 or 7 languages, so I know what that is like), and many other things, but am currently unaffiliated, and spend 70 hours a week in freelance research. Oh yes, I have done some writing (been published, but nothing too flashy).
RIght now, I work as a freelance videographer and photographer and editor. Corporate documentaries and training videos, anything you can capture with a nice 1080 HDV camcorder or a Nikon still.
Which brings me to my youtube channel, that is under construction. I am going to put a couple “courses” …. organized, rigorous topic sequences of presentations, of the history of AI, but in particular, my best current ideas (I have some I think are quite promising) on how to move in the right direction to achieving sentience.
I got the idea for the video series from watching Leonard Susskind’s “theoretical minimum” internet lecture series on aspects of physics.
This will be what I consider to be the essential theoretical minimum (with lessons from history), plus the new insights I am in the process of trying to create, cross research, and critique, into some aspects of the approach to artificial sentience that I think I understand particularly well, and can help by promoting discussion of.
I will clearly delineate pure intellectual history, from my own ideas, throughout the videos, so it will be a fervent attempt to be honest. THen I will also just get some new ideas out there, explaining how they are the same, and how they are different, or extensions of, accepted and plausible principles and strategies, but with some new views… so others can critique them, reject them, or build on them, or whatever.
The ideas that are my own syntheses, are quite subtle in some cases, and I am excited about using the higher “speaker-to-audience semiotic bandwidth” of the video format, for communicating these subtleties. Picture-in-picture, graphics, even occasional video clips from film and interviews, plus the ubiquitous whiteboard, all can be used together to help get across difficult or unusual ideas. I am looking forward to leveraging that and experimenting with the capabilities of the format, for exhibiting multifaceted, highly interconnected or unfamiliar ideas.
So, for now, I am enmeshed in all the research I can find that helps me investigate what I think might be my contribution. If I fail, I might as well fail by daring greatly, to steal from Churchill or whomever it was (Roosevelt, maybe?) But I am fairly smart, and examined ideas for many years. I might be on to one or two pieces of what I think is the puzzle. So wish me luck, fellow AI-ers.
Besides, “failing” is not failing; it is testing your best ideas. The only way to REALLY fail, is to do nothing, or to not put forth your best effort, especially if you have an inkling that you might have thought of something valuable enough to express.
Oh, finally, people are telling where they live. I live in Phoenix, highly dislike being here, and will be moving to California again in the not too distant future. I ended up here because I was helping out an elderly relative, who is pretty stable now, so I will be looking for a climate and intellectual environment more to my liking, before long.
okay—I’ll be talking with you all, for the next few months in here… cheers. Maybe we can change the world. And hearty thanks for this forum, and especially all the added resource links.
Who are you? Would you like to introduce yourself to the rest of us? Perhaps tell us about what brings you here, or what interests you.
Hi! I’m Nathan Holmes, and I’ve bounced around a bit educationally (philosophy, music, communication disorders, neuroscience), and am now pursuing computer science with the intent of, ideally, working on AI/ML or something related to implants. (The latter may necessitate computer engineering rather than CS per se, but anyway.)
One of my lifelong interests has been understanding intelligence and how minds work.
Previously, in spite of having been an off-and-on follower of Less Wrong (and, earlier, Overcoming Bias, when EY published there), I hadn’t really treated unfriendly AI as worthy of much thought, but reading a few more recent MIRI essays convinced me I should take it seriously—especially if I’m interested in AI research myself. Hence the decision to read Superintelligence.
Nice to meet you all. I live in Berkeley, am a researcher at MIRI, and write a blog. I’m particularly interested in seeing whether AI is the highest priority thing to work on, and if so what should be done.
Hello! My name is Christopher Galias and I’m currently studying mathematics in Warsaw.
I figured that using a reading group would be helpful in combating procrastination. Thank you for doing this.
I stumbled across EY’s writings back before the start of Overcoming Bias, which eventually got me interested in transhumanism, the idea of an intelligence explosion, the Friendliness design problem—oh yes, and also rationality. I concluded back then that how we deal with upcoming supertechnologies (MNT, SI, possibly emulation) will be the deciding factor in what happens to our civilization (or the parts that aren’t in simulations with close termination conditions, in any case), and that hasn’t changed.
Hi everyone!
I’m Tom. I attended UC Berkeley a number of years ago, double-majored in math and philosophy, graduated magna cum laude, and wrote my Honors thesis on the “mind-body” problem, including issues that were motivated by my parallel interest in AI, which I have been passionately interested in all my life.
It has been my conviction since I was a teenager that consciousness is the most interesting mystery to study, and that, understanding how it is realized in the brain—or emerges therefrom, or whatever it turns out to be—will also almost certainly give us the insight to do the other main goal of my life, build a mind.
The converse is also true. If we learn how to do AI, not GOFAI wiht no awareness, but AI wilh full sentience, we will almost certainly know how the brain does it. Solving either one, will solve the other.
AI can be thought of as one way to “breadboard” our ideas about biological information processing.
But it is more than that to me. It is an end in itself, and opens up possibilities so exciting, so penultimate, that achieving sentient AI would be equal, or superior, to the experience (and possible consequences) of meeting an advanced extraterrestrial civilization.
Further, I think that solving the biological mind body problem, or doing AI, is something within reach. I think it is the concepts that are lacking, not better processors, or finer grained fMRIs, or better images of axon hillock reconformation during exocytosis.
If we think hard, really really hard, I think we solve these things with the puzzle pieces we have now (just maybe.) I often feel that everything we need is on the table, and we just need to learn how to see it with fresh eyes, order it, and put it together. I doubt a “new discovery”, either in physics, cognitive neurobiology, or philosophy of mind, comp-sci, etc, will make the design we seek pop-out for us.
I think it is up to us now, to think, conceptualize, integrate, and interdisciplinarily cross-pollinate. The answer is, I think, at lest major pieces of it, available and sitting there, waiting to be uncovered.
Other than that, since graduation I have worked as a software developer (wrote my obligatory 20 million lines of code, in a smattering of 6 or 7 languages, so I know what that is like), and many other things, but am currently unaffiliated, and spend 70 hours a week in freelance research. Oh yes, I have done some writing (been published, but nothing too flashy).
RIght now, I work as a freelance videographer and photographer and editor. Corporate documentaries and training videos, anything you can capture with a nice 1080 HDV camcorder or a Nikon still.
Which brings me to my youtube channel, that is under construction. I am going to put a couple “courses” …. organized, rigorous topic sequences of presentations, of the history of AI, but in particular, my best current ideas (I have some I think are quite promising) on how to move in the right direction to achieving sentience.
I got the idea for the video series from watching Leonard Susskind’s “theoretical minimum” internet lecture series on aspects of physics.
This will be what I consider to be the essential theoretical minimum (with lessons from history), plus the new insights I am in the process of trying to create, cross research, and critique, into some aspects of the approach to artificial sentience that I think I understand particularly well, and can help by promoting discussion of.
I will clearly delineate pure intellectual history, from my own ideas, throughout the videos, so it will be a fervent attempt to be honest. THen I will also just get some new ideas out there, explaining how they are the same, and how they are different, or extensions of, accepted and plausible principles and strategies, but with some new views… so others can critique them, reject them, or build on them, or whatever.
The ideas that are my own syntheses, are quite subtle in some cases, and I am excited about using the higher “speaker-to-audience semiotic bandwidth” of the video format, for communicating these subtleties. Picture-in-picture, graphics, even occasional video clips from film and interviews, plus the ubiquitous whiteboard, all can be used together to help get across difficult or unusual ideas. I am looking forward to leveraging that and experimenting with the capabilities of the format, for exhibiting multifaceted, highly interconnected or unfamiliar ideas.
So, for now, I am enmeshed in all the research I can find that helps me investigate what I think might be my contribution. If I fail, I might as well fail by daring greatly, to steal from Churchill or whomever it was (Roosevelt, maybe?) But I am fairly smart, and examined ideas for many years. I might be on to one or two pieces of what I think is the puzzle. So wish me luck, fellow AI-ers.
Besides, “failing” is not failing; it is testing your best ideas. The only way to REALLY fail, is to do nothing, or to not put forth your best effort, especially if you have an inkling that you might have thought of something valuable enough to express.
Oh, finally, people are telling where they live. I live in Phoenix, highly dislike being here, and will be moving to California again in the not too distant future. I ended up here because I was helping out an elderly relative, who is pretty stable now, so I will be looking for a climate and intellectual environment more to my liking, before long.
okay—I’ll be talking with you all, for the next few months in here… cheers. Maybe we can change the world. And hearty thanks for this forum, and especially all the added resource links.
Hi, Katja! This is Steve.