Why is transhuman AI is inevitable?
Just because someone is a pretentious asshole doesn’t mean he doesn’t have anything worthwhile to say
Why is transhuman AI inevitable? Because there’s too much money at stake. In this month’s Wired magazine Jonah Lehrer suggests that Science has Failed Us because (hold your gasps of surprise) human beings are flawed. We are blinded by preconceived notions, false assumptions, and oversimplifications. He also seems to be saying that The Philosophers of Yore had a better handle on this. In other words, he’s making a living knocking science.
But he does have a point: we reached the point of diminishing returns for throwing teams of smart guys at a problem. His example is a replacement for Lipitor, and his target is Big Pharma Science, but his point is still well taken. There are just too many interrelationships for one human being (or group of human beings) to handle
Watson, Come Here, I Need You!
You may remember a special that the game show Jeopardy! ran a few months ago. It featured Watson. Not exactly and AI, not really an expert system, but it shredded it’s human competition. Big Money is going to fund projects like Watson because we need them. They will be built because all of the simple answers are gone. Our chemistry, our society, our economies, our world, all are becoming too big to handle by “mere” human beings.