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Extraction Summary
1
People
2
Organizations
1
Locations
0
Events
0
Relationships
5
Quotes
Document Information
Type:
Transcript / interview excerpt (house oversight committee record)
File Size:
Summary
This document appears to be page 192 of a larger House Oversight Committee file (stamped HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_016412). It contains a transcript or excerpt of a philosophical/scientific discussion regarding Artificial Intelligence, cellular automata, and the nature of consciousness. The speaker argues there is no bright line between intelligence and computation, presenting a scenario where human consciousness is virtualized into a 'box of a trillion souls' which is physically indistinguishable from a rock except for its historical data inputs.
People (1)
| Name | Role | Context |
|---|---|---|
| Unidentified Speaker/Author | Speaker/Writer |
Person discussing AI, cellular automata, and the future of human consciousness. Uses first-person pronouns ('my compu...
|
Organizations (2)
| Name | Type | Context |
|---|---|---|
| YouTube |
Mentioned in an analogy about human history: 'including whatever people watched on YouTube the day before.'
|
|
| House Oversight Committee |
Indicated by the footer stamp 'HOUSE_OVERSIGHT'.
|
Locations (1)
| Location | Context |
|---|---|
|
Mentioned in the context of the 'Copernican story'.
|
Key Quotes (5)
"The problem of abstract AI is similar to the problem of recognizing extraterrestrial intelligence: How do you determine whether or not it has a purpose?"Source
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Quote #1
"Again, there is no bright line between intelligence and mere computation."Source
HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_016412.jpg
Quote #2
"Let’s say there comes a time when human consciousness is readily uploadable into digital form, virtualized and so on, and pretty soon we have a box of a trillion souls."Source
HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_016412.jpg
Quote #3
"What’s the difference between the rock and the box of a trillion souls?"Source
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Quote #4
"Realizing that there isn’t a genuine distinction between intelligence and mere computation leads you to imagine that future—the endpoint of our civilization as a box of trillion souls, each of them essentially playing a video game, forever."Source
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Quote #5
Full Extracted Text
Complete text extracted from the document (2,205 characters)
different from this cellular-automaton system. The difference is a detailed difference.
This brainlike neural network was produced by the long history of civilization, whereas
the cellular automaton was created by my computer in the last microsecond.
The problem of abstract AI is similar to the problem of recognizing
extraterrestrial intelligence: How do you determine whether or not it has a purpose? This
is a question I don’t consider answered. We’ll say things like, “Well, AI will be
intelligent when it can do blah-blah-blah.” When it can find primes. When it can
produce this and that and the other. But there are many other ways to get to those results.
Again, there is no bright line between intelligence and mere computation.
It’s another part of the Copernican story: We used to think Earth was the center of
the universe. Now we think we’re special because we have intelligence and nothing else
does. I’m afraid the bad news is that that isn’t a distinction.
Here’s one of my scenarios. Let’s say there comes a time when human
consciousness is readily uploadable into digital form, virtualized and so on, and pretty
soon we have a box of a trillion souls. There are a trillion souls in the box, all virtualized.
In the box, there will be molecular computing going on—maybe derived from biology,
maybe not. But the box will be doing all kinds of elaborate stuff. And there’s a rock
sitting next to the box. Inside a rock, there are always all kinds of elaborate stuff going
on, all kinds of subatomic particles doing all kinds of things. What’s the difference
between the rock and the box of a trillion souls? The answer is that the details of what’s
happening in the box were derived from the long history of human civilization, including
whatever people watched on YouTube the day before. Whereas the rock has its long
geological history but not the particular history of our civilization.
Realizing that there isn’t a genuine distinction between intelligence and mere
computation leads you to imagine that future—the endpoint of our civilization as a box of
trillion souls, each of them essentially playing a video game, forever. What is the
“purpose” of that?
This brainlike neural network was produced by the long history of civilization, whereas
the cellular automaton was created by my computer in the last microsecond.
The problem of abstract AI is similar to the problem of recognizing
extraterrestrial intelligence: How do you determine whether or not it has a purpose? This
is a question I don’t consider answered. We’ll say things like, “Well, AI will be
intelligent when it can do blah-blah-blah.” When it can find primes. When it can
produce this and that and the other. But there are many other ways to get to those results.
Again, there is no bright line between intelligence and mere computation.
It’s another part of the Copernican story: We used to think Earth was the center of
the universe. Now we think we’re special because we have intelligence and nothing else
does. I’m afraid the bad news is that that isn’t a distinction.
Here’s one of my scenarios. Let’s say there comes a time when human
consciousness is readily uploadable into digital form, virtualized and so on, and pretty
soon we have a box of a trillion souls. There are a trillion souls in the box, all virtualized.
In the box, there will be molecular computing going on—maybe derived from biology,
maybe not. But the box will be doing all kinds of elaborate stuff. And there’s a rock
sitting next to the box. Inside a rock, there are always all kinds of elaborate stuff going
on, all kinds of subatomic particles doing all kinds of things. What’s the difference
between the rock and the box of a trillion souls? The answer is that the details of what’s
happening in the box were derived from the long history of human civilization, including
whatever people watched on YouTube the day before. Whereas the rock has its long
geological history but not the particular history of our civilization.
Realizing that there isn’t a genuine distinction between intelligence and mere
computation leads you to imagine that future—the endpoint of our civilization as a box of
trillion souls, each of them essentially playing a video game, forever. What is the
“purpose” of that?
192
HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_016412
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