Because absent evidence that there is something fundamental preventing us from one day copying the structure of a human brain and ending up with a working device, whatever claims they make are hand-waving.
In other words, the only working models we have for "intelligence" are nothing like the silicon binary switches we are attempting to use to replicate it.
So if the brain is an analog computer, then it seems reasonable to believe that we might be able to someday construct an equivalent analog computer (or a digital equivalent thereof).
Analog computers exists, and we have used bio-mechanical systems for computation... Heck, the first "computers" were humans.
Getting hung up on the current preferred paradigm of computation as the only possible one is one of the biggest flaws of the article.
If X and Y appear dissimilar, the burden of proof is on he who would argue they are similar.
If one contends a brain and a computer and the functions of each appear similar, then one is being disingenuous.
You can't prove a negative in this sense. In general, we know things are possible... but we never know if things are impossible.
And, don't call me surely.
Sure you can't prove that silicon devices behave like turing machines, or even that they really exist, but for the sake of this discussion, what does that matter?
What would you consider to be an example of that? And how does that square with the Problem of Induction which is the hole in our entire system of empirical knowledge generation?
If I change the underlying axioms and rules, I could certainly prove that 2+2=5, just as I can prove that The sum of a triangles interior angles exceed 180 degrees, or that two identical number squared can equal -1. (Redefining what a straight line means for the former, and inventing an imaginary number system for the latter.)
Proving what can and cannot follow given a set of rules, however, is not what philosophers mean when they speak or impossibility in the real world.
Yes to apply that to the real world, we have to use some assumptions like, the universe isnt a giant trick, the sun will rise tomorrow, we dont live in the matrix, etc. However given the context of this discussion those are fairly reasonable assumptions.
Perhaps there could be general AI... I'm not saying it can't be done. I would point out, though, that IF it is to be done, it certainly won't be by copying a brain. Nobody even knows the hell the brain works...
There is no proof, or we would not be having this discussion over and over again.
I contend the brain is by definition a duck.
It's easy to redefine words.
A brain is an organ within another known organism in a differing position in the tree of life with different characteristics.
A computer is a device which takes in input via some means and uses input to transform elements that together represent its internal state based on input and prior internal state resulting in output that is the result of both internal state and input arranged in a fashion such that an actor with sufficient knowledge of functioning can manipulate input in order to achieve desired output.
A programmer is such an actor.
In such a context it appears that a brain is merely programmer and computer and AI is merely the achievement of a sufficiently complex and capable system as to represent the same thing in silicon or whatever medium you prefer.
Arguing that such is impossible seems to be merely a failure of imagination.
You imagine a 'thinking' machine all you want. Doesn't change to reality of the situation that no digital device comes close to thinking.
Some find this frustrating. So, they reduce the idea of a brain to a digital computer.
Ita a confusion of the Model with that being Modelled. A photo of you, is a representation -- or model -- of you. But, it would be silly to become so enamourwd with the photo that you begin to think YOU are a representation of the photograph.
Doesn't it though. Someone from the 1800s would probably absolutely think it does. We have computers that can identify what is in a photo, computers that can do complex math problems (pretty sure historically, the ability to do logic was considered first and foremost what made humans intelligent and not simple "animals", its only recently with the rise of computers this has taken a back seat), computers that can translate between languages, etc. That's not the same as being human, there is no sense of self or independence of action (nor are we anywhere close to having that) but we've made amazing, almost unconcievable strives, in only 100 years. So i think its unfair to say computers dont think at all.
Convolutional networks and neural nets in general are cool, but hardly magical. It’s just glorified curve-fitting. A person from the 1800’s would not be all that impressed with the idea. (What’s impressive is the bread-and-butter of it... namely, the technology that enables the millions of simple calculations per millisecond.)
Indeed, the term was originally used about people - our electronic computers today have the name because they were taking over functions carried out by human brains.
Programmers effectively emulate a compiler in their minds when they are programming. I don't see why it's so hard to accept that the brain has many "computer" capabilities, even if it's implemented with different materials.
I do not accept that there is a difference between computation and thought without some meaningful definition of thought.
If I know everything about the nature of X, yet I know very little about the nature of Y, it would be illogical to say "I will assume Y is like X until proven otherwise."
It is worse to imagine that there is a physical process that exists wholly in the physical world that happens in the world within reasonable parameters cannot possibly be engineered to happen in a controlled fashion.
This is a proof that would require a major shift in physics and math and yet we are expected to accept it purely based on intuition without even a compelling theory of how it does work.
The difference, though, is that the Wright Brothers were never foolish enough to arrogantly say a bird is actually a type of airplane...
It reduces to the following: Given X, if I could create a Y such that Y=X, then X would equal Y!
That adds nothing.
It isn't a given that it is even possible to 'copy' a brain. Why would one think it is? Does not quantum mechanics preclude the possibility of copying something perfectly at the atomic scale? Indeed, even if you could perfectly copy the 'material' aspect, you will still need to copy the configuration of electrical charges that existed at the moment of copying. This too is, from what I gather from QM, inherently impossible.
Does this preclude general AI? No. But it does demonstrate the absurdity of arguments that begin, "if I could copy the brain atom by atom, then..." as such a thing is impossible.
> A closer look reveals that although development of artificial intelligence for specific purposes (ANI) has been impressive, we have not come much closer to developing artificial general intelligence (AGI). The article further argues that this is in principle impossible, and it revives Hubert Dreyfus’ argument that computers are not in the world.
This is not an argument about cost - the article argues that it is "in principle impossible".
Any argument about cost I think is also irrelevant: We know from the existence of the brain and how a brain is produced that it is possible to produce one relatively cheaply via biological processes.
It seems highly unlikely that our ability to produce an artificial brain will not eventually approach the cost of growing one, because the "worst case" scenario is for us to find ethical ways of growing brain matter via biological processes and hook them up to computers, and it would seem unlikely that we will not eventually find cheaper ways of doing so than growing full mammalian bodies with it, and that we can not find any ways of optimising the process.
The limiting factor is not budget or time, but 'stomach'. How elastic are your ethics?
To me, it's not far fetched to say that you can't make it happen again. Though I think it's technically possible.
We're missing something big with intelligence. We know neurons and synapses a little bit. We know a few dozen neurons a little, though it's complexity is crazy big.
But that gap between a normal brain down to a few dozen neurons is just boggling right now. There are just so many questions that need to be studied ethically.
It may not be possible to answer them all in a reasonable time window.
We know the volume of the machinery that constructs it, which allows us to compute an upper bound on the informational complexity of a system capable of constructing human brains.
To me it is totally unreasonable to suggest we will never be able to at the bare minimum mimic that process and grow whole brains.
To me most of the opposition to the idea of artificial intelligence seems to come down to people assuming we're bound to only try to do this with software on a digital computer. But if that proves fruitless, there's no reason to assume we won't try analog systems, or if all else fails try biochemical systems, all the way down to genetic manipulation and tricking cells into growing into brains for us to hook up to computers.
Something really new, like radios were to communication, or steel hulls to shipping, is needed in bio to get things moving apace. The tools we have are really great, but they are a bit slow it seems.
Also, the neocortex is somewhat stereotypical, but those long range projections that come in/out at every layer are the things that make the brain so hard to understand. Everything is flying everywhere all at once.
Take all the hard parts of bio normally, and now add in a ton of mitosis, long range movement of cells, hard to detect chemical gradients, cell-to-cell junctions, and pure random chance. All just going bananas fast for 'normal' bio processes.
It is a crazy tough field to get work done in. No wonder no one uses mammals to do anything.
If I were a betting person, I would wager that the connectome is enough to get something like intelligence, but that without the biochemistry the entire system is unstable in some way. The chemistry that we see in the brain is far more complicated than what would be required to minimally sustain the cells. There's a reason all of this chemistry is going on, and unfortunately I think we're going to find that intelligence just cannot exist as we know it without the chemistry. If that's true, then we're talking hundreds of years before we have computers powerful enough to model the chemistry at the requisite level.
The "learning" problem is solved. We've developed numerous algorithms to take a neural network and have it learn a task. We've solved specific problems, including image recognition, and text synthesis. Companies have figured out how to make sensory equipment including cameras, microphones, touch sensors...
Just because no one has managed to put together all the pieces doesn't mean it will never happen. People for thousands of years did not think it was possible to build a flying machine, until someone did.