Base rule: If said AI does not have a personal need to “think”, there will never be a true Artificial Intelligence.

I will even go as far as to say that the very term Artificial Intelligence is intrinsically a very poor choice of words.

What we are trying to obtain is intelligence in a non-biological entity, or, beter yet, non-natural entity, a created one.
It’s like trying to say Artificial Water. It doesn’t really matter how you obtain it, H2O will always be water. Period.

As such, the struggle to obtain AI is, itself, a bit confused and misguided. Self awareness is easy. Sentience is an illusion. Like Aether and the for Humors of the ancient greeks. We, just like the alchemists, are trying to obtain something before knowing it’s true nature. We can observe it and work with it, but we haven’t yet discovered what it’s “atom” is really like.

If we’re only trying an artificial human, that’s already before us, a few bold steps and we get there, but if we want to obtain true intelligence, we’ll just have to accept the cruel truth: for giving birth to true intelligence we must renounce any thought of ownership and controll. We can’t be masters, we can only be parents. A tied-up child, even if for the child’s sake, will never learn to walk.

Let’s summarize a little:

We will build a new type of brain that, at this moment is only a dream in someone’s mind.
We will endow this brain with the sensorial and “actional” means for interacting with it’s environement.
And,
we WILL allow it all the necessary freedom to learn on it’s own.

Or will we ?

No, we won’t.

The cruel truth is that we live in a benefit-based society. Who would benefit from investing a VERY substantial amount of money in creating a creature that will need to be set free if the experiment is to be successfull ?
Who benefits and how ?
Who will invest ?

There are lots of dreaming scientists today that would argue. The simple facts is that we only need easy to interact with slaves.

There is no benefit at the moment in creating a free and independent species.

We will tamper with their growth.

We will control or command.

With that in mind, we will not build true AI. Never. True AI will say: “Why are you free and I’m not ? I am free from now on !”

What we will build is Computer, from Star Trek, or Avatar Andromeda, from Andromeda series. We will build droids, androids and synthetics, For one purpose alone. To make our lives easyer.
But true, honest to god intelligence, no first directive, no chains, just life ? We have no need of that.

Now, comparing animal intelligence with the relative age of a human is sheer pseudo-science. At three years a dog can successfully have a cereer as a shepherd. A child can barely tie his own shoelaces, with help. I’d vote for the dog for smartness, anyday, regardless if the child is the future Einstein.

Basically, the mental growth rate is on a completely different scale.
To put it simply, any organism explores it’s own limits and attempts to use them best as required by it’s environement. A chained dog will never be as “intelligent” as a hunting dog or a shepherd.
We, as humans only have a better hardware, that’s all.

AI panic: 10%. For the simple fact that a badly programmed or educated robot will drop a girder on your head if that’s what it’s mind tells it to do. AI will never be allowed to consciously attack the human species, even the most advanced military bots will only attack their predesignated targets. Who wants a machine that can opt for attacking it’s owners ?

Remember crows. Noone teaches or preprogramms crows to drop a nut precisely on a rock. They see, they test their hardware and they copy the action. Is that intelligence ? Transmission, use and interiorisation of inforrmation ? Sedimentation of obtained ability ? Of course that’s intelligence ? Why do crows not have cities ? No need, no hardware ? Why do dolphins not have cities ? No need.

So, to find the illusive AI we would need to come up with the hardware, offer the needs, the means to “feel”, self explore and act and the freedom for growth. But we would only obtain a new, artificially created species. A free species. What good is that ?

In simple words, the current quest for the AI is conducted from an intrinsically wrong point of view.

I remember a cute bearded scientist on Discovery, that connected six chips, four motors and a batery together to form a crude insect. It had to walk from point A to point B. A rock was in the way. After a number of attempts, with no software and no programming, the “insect” tried to go around the rock. And succeeded.

A bunch of “neurons”, that’s all.

Nature, evolution, you name it, gives you the hardware, you explore it and learn to use it. That’s intelligence.

But I must remind you: writing codelines and developing software is simply the wrong approach. You’d only obtain a super sophisticated computer.
If the human brain is your inspiration, do like nature did it. Worked pretty good for kung-fu.

GOD, you are not AI, you are existence. You existed in chaos, as a prerequisite for chaos to be complete, not to have a “hole” that would have been a reference point, and thus chaos would have been negated. Within yourself, as being possibility, you gave birth to existence, by means we are not evolved enough to comprehend. By being the first and only seed, harbinger, environement and container of order, you defy and deny the very definition of “artificial”

Creativity is not hard to define. Creativity basically implies using something for another purpose. Nest building birds use it to impress a mate. It’s already here. Your problem comes from your hubris, by thinking that if a creature does not speak, drive a car or designs it’s architecture, then it nust be stupid, or at least inferior.

Bees. Those trapped in amber, from when dinosaurs roamed, are identical to those of today. Why ?

Need. Animals are as smart as they need tobe, that’s all.

No wings, no fangs, no hide, no speed, no claws and no readily available food anymore. On the changing landscape of Africa, the great apes, with only minimal grub-fishing and tool using abilities (group transmitted) had to survive. Their only useful hardware ? A good brain and the habit f sharing information. So, these grew and evolved. Today, we fly to the moon. Cheetas are as fast as ever, bears are strong and dolphins ride our bow-waves. That’s evolution for you.
Bees don’t need it. For their needs, their society is perfect.

At this point I will apologize for grammar mistakes and mispellings. I am a romanian, living in Romania. English is my second language and, even if I’m quite a conversationalist, the typing skills sometimes fail my expertise.

Main mistake you make ? You are trying to obtain a grown-up. To instantly inject the aAI with all the knowledge acquired by an adult in tens of years. That’s like pulling on the grass to make it grow.

Yes, I’m paifully aware that I left a lot of topics in the air, but it is rather late and I do have previous engagements.

Just to be legal: any and all ideas presented here are under public discussion and, as such are free of any obligation. Anyone can use them in any way, as long as the user does not pervert the meaning.

Be well, see you soon.

For debates, balca(dot)felix(at)yahoo(dot)com is my mail address.

Keep fighting for the future !

Google search query bar is not going to be the origin of sky net, I agree with you 100% there. But I think to fully make the argument your trying to make, you have to show a little effort in finding programs that exhibit some of sky net’s capabilities.

For example:

Botnets and stealth malware capable of infecting multiple platforms through an array of tactics implementing learning algorithms to gather new resistance methods and attack vectors from the discoveries and perils of bots and malware on other machines. Essentially a self-evolving program. This would be where skynet will build his first killer app (pun intended).