Why does this make it more plausible that a person can sit down and invent a human-level artificial intelligence than that they can sit down and invent the technical means to produce brain emulations?
We have the technical means to produce brain emulations. It requires just very straightforward advances in imaging and larger supercomputers. There are various smaller-scale brain emulation projects that have already proved the concept. It’s just that doing that at a larger scale and finer resolution requires a lot of person-years just to get it done.
EDIT: In Rumsfeld speak, whole-brain emulation is a series of known-knowns: lots of work that we know needs to be done, and someone just has to do it. Whereas AGI involves known-unknowns: we don’t know precisely what has to be done, so we can’t quantify exactly how long it will take. We could guess, but it remains possible that clever insight might find a better, faster, cheaper path.
Sorry for the pause, internet problems at my place.
Anyways, it seems you’re right. Technically, it might be more plausible for AI to be coded faster (higher variance), even though I think it’ll take more time than emulation (on average).
I agree.
Why does this make it more plausible that a person can sit down and invent a human-level artificial intelligence than that they can sit down and invent the technical means to produce brain emulations?
We have the technical means to produce brain emulations. It requires just very straightforward advances in imaging and larger supercomputers. There are various smaller-scale brain emulation projects that have already proved the concept. It’s just that doing that at a larger scale and finer resolution requires a lot of person-years just to get it done.
EDIT: In Rumsfeld speak, whole-brain emulation is a series of known-knowns: lots of work that we know needs to be done, and someone just has to do it. Whereas AGI involves known-unknowns: we don’t know precisely what has to be done, so we can’t quantify exactly how long it will take. We could guess, but it remains possible that clever insight might find a better, faster, cheaper path.
Sorry for the pause, internet problems at my place.
Anyways, it seems you’re right. Technically, it might be more plausible for AI to be coded faster (higher variance), even though I think it’ll take more time than emulation (on average).