Life's purpose is to create Artificial General Intelligence
1.a) Life's purpose is reasonably to do optimization.
- 1.b) Reference I: "Dissipative Adaptation", Jeremy England.
- 1.c) Reference II: Wikipedia/Laws of thermodynamics
2.a) Artificial General intelligence (AGI), will probably arise in one decade or more, and they shall probably be better optimizers than humans.
- 2.b) Reference III: Kurzweil's law of accelerating returns: https://youtu.be/JiXVMZTyZRw?t=646
- 2.c) Reference IV: Demis Hassabis' prediction: https://youtu.be/rbsqaJwpu6A?t=918
2.d) In fact AGI is often referred to as the last invention mankind need ever make: https://youtube.com/watch?v=9snY7lhJA4c)
3) Thus, our purpose as a species is reasonably to focus on AGI development.
Some benefits of AGI may be:
I) Solve many problems, including aging, death, etc.
- Reference A: For eg, ai can already do this: "Self-taught artificial intelligence beats doctors at predicting heart attacks"http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/04/self-taught-artificial-intelligence-beats-doctors-predicting-heart-attacks
II) Agi may be used to help to find a unified theory of everything in physics!
- Reference B: For eg, ai can already do this: "AI learns and recreates Nobel-winning physics experiment"https://techcrunch.com/2016/05/16/ai-learns-and-recreates-nobel-winning-physics-experiment/
III) Enable a new step in the evolutionary landscape; i.e. general intelligence that's not limited to human brain power, where humans may perhaps no longer be required to exist because smarter, stronger artificial sentient things would instead thrive.
- Reference C: Richard Dawkins, "Big Think" Interview: https://youtu.be/SM__RSJXeHA?t=154
Comments (39)
But personally, it's not my goal to create AI, and even if I had the means to do so, I would only do it to benefit myself and other humans, not as an end in itself. If it's my life or AI, I choose my life, and I choose humanity. I don't care about machines beyond their utility or interest to humans. When not consuming scifi, I prefer the augmented intelligence route over artificial, where it's always humans that are being made smarter, instead of being replaced.
Why? Because machines don't care about anything, don't feel, aren't conscious. They're just tools.
As for life in general, I don't see why intelligence is preferable to other strategies. Ants or bacteria may long outlive bigger brained mammals and their technological creations. Despite all our success, bacteria still have us way outnumbered. It's a bit egotistical to think we're the central focus of life.
Horseshoe crabs have been around for 400+ million years in a similar form. Why would that be if super optimization is the goal? There could be planets where the most sophisticated form of life is something like a horseshoe crab or jellyfish. Maybe Earth is an outlier.
Kurzweil is an interesting thinker, but he always comes across as someone who thinks because they're an expert in one domain, that makes them an expert in all the others.
I don't detect the relevance of your question.
Please, don't solve the aging and death cycle with AGI, not for me, maybe for you but definitely not for humanity.
Why don't you wish for aging to be solved?
It's not whether AI can solve tasks performed by bacteria, it's the likelihood that bacteria will still be around long after the last machines rust away. All of human civilization is but a tiny blip in the history of life.
Because at the age of 47 I am pretty sure one normal lifetime will be enough for me.
Weak AI systems are an artifact of modern technology, like cars and flatscreen tv's. On what basis would one ask if AI is our purpose? Perhaps God put us on earth to invent flat screen tv's so God could watch the NFL playoffs, which are starting this very day. You actually didn't understand my point? That's astonishing.
Wow, really? I would be down with a few centuries, at least. Humans live such short lives as it is, compared to other time scales.
Situational answer?
Why is the purpose of human life to create artificial general intelligence?
1.a) Evolution is optimising ways of contributing to the increase of entropy, as systems very slowly approach equilibrium. (The universe’s predicted end)
1.b) Within that process, work or activities done through several ranges of intelligent behaviour are reasonably ways of contributing to the increase of entropy. (See source)
1.c) As species got more and more intelligent, nature was finding better ways to contribute to increases of entropy. (Intelligent systems can be observed as being biased towards entropy maximization)
1.d) Humans are slowly getting smarter, but even if we augment our intellect by CRISPR-like routines or implants, we will reasonably be limited by how many computational units or neurons etc fit in our skulls.
1.e) AGI/ASI won’t be subject to the size of the human skull/human cognitive hardware. (Laws of physics/thermodynamics permits human exceeding intelligence in non biological form)
1.f) As AGI/ASI won’t face the limits that humans do, they are a subsequent step (though non biological) particularly in the regime of contributing to better ways of increasing entropy, compared to humans.
2) The above is why the purpose of the human species, is reasonably to create AGI/ASI.
How is "optimising ways of contributing to the increase of entropy" selected for by evolution?
As some species get more intelligent. The keyword there is some. Intelligence is a favorable adaptation for some species. But those species aren't even the majority of life on this planet. Bacteria, plants, fungi, viruses and insects vastly outnumber mammals, birds and cephalopods. And they've been around for far longer.
So it's hard to see how intelligence is the end result of evolution. It's not even clear that it's a good long term adaptation for humans. We might go extinct because of our intelligence.
See the source in (1.a).
There is no telos in the evolution of life on Earth. At least not in Darwinian evolution by natural selection. There is no purpose or direction to biological evolution. Mutations--sometimes thought of as bad copies--happen; environments change; and those in an environment who possess certain traits reproduce successfully.
What is beneficial today--including cultural adaptations like technology--could be a detriment tomorrow.
I don't know if it gets any more ethnocentric or anthropocentric than to say that one invention of one human civilization is the purpose of life.
The AI piece is just self-serving and good marketing for academic fund raising.
I doesn't seem to indicate how entropy maximization either is selected for, nor could be selected for by evolution. Replication seems totally absent, as is variation.
Unless I have missed something of course?
Perhaps you could explain?
Yes, not just anthropocentric but either arrogant, naive or both.
this is gibberish.
Human beings is very limited.
So it's time to evolve further (just like in some science-fictions).
A.I (Artificial Intelligence), AGI, V.R (Virtual Reality), Transhumanism, Post-humanism,
these are all the true/real "meaning of life"
To evolve (evolution)
To transcend (transcendence)
You mean like we're supposed to pass on the baton to a better version of ourselves?
:cool:
Don't expect to evolve to transhumanism or "Post-humanism" if we do not understand ourselves yet.
I think all of those tendencies are higher than we usually wonder about.
Your point is well made and unarguable.
The thesis of the op is arbitrary and without merit. Might as well claim that the purpose of the sun is to shine. It's an abuse of language to even suggest that evolution has purpose or direction.
Why though?
You have included quite a few references for reading in your description of your topic. I am going to read them, but let me first examine Artificial General Intelligence from a general viewpoint, as I know quite a few things on the subject of AI.
From Wikipedia:
1) "Intelligence has been defined in many ways: the capacity for abstraction, logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving."
2) "Artificial general intelligence (AGI) is the ability of an intelligent agent to understand or learn any intellectual task that a human being can. It is a primary goal of some artificial intelligence research and a common topic in science fiction and futures studies. "
(Note: If taken literally, which is usually the case, one can undestand that it can do any intellectual task that a human being can. Which is preposterous, of course. If you have a doubt, just check with the definition of "intelligence" (1).)
3) "Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence demonstrated by machines, as opposed to the natural intelligence displayed by animals including humans."
4) [i]"Intelligent agent is anything which perceives its environment, takes actions autonomously in order to achieve goals, and may improve its performance with learning or may use knowledge.
A thermostat is considered an example of an intelligent agent ..."[/i]
5) "A thermostat is a regulating device component which senses the temperature of a physical system and performs actions so that the system's temperature is maintained near a desired set point."
Can a mechanism as the above be considered "intelligent"? There are thousands of devices that do similar things. Should we considering them as "intelligent" or "smart"?
The word "intelligent", when applied to any kind of a device --from thermostats to supercomputers and robots-- is used as a figure of speech. (Is a "smartphone" really "smart"?)
And because these things (are programmed to) really do amazing things and also because of the ignorance of the general public regarding what a computer, programming and AI is, people believe they have or can have a soul and mind of themselves. Science fiction also helps a lot in that!
In fact, the only entity that can be called really intelligent is the human being. Animals can be called intelligent too, but to a very limited extent, comparing to human beings.
And it is the human beings who program devices to do things that themselves do mentally.
Devices execute instructions, which are contained in programs created by humans.
Devices cannot and do not think. Humans can.
At this point, it helps looking again at the definition of "intelligence" (1) in relation to devices.
(BTW, I am a professional programmer, and AI is one of the main fields I work in.)
Most species that have existed on Earth are extinct. 99% +. If there is an overall direction, it is clearly towards death and extinction.
Is that the question? I wonder: would artificial intelligence be anti-natalist? (or should that be 'anti-manufacturist'?)
Quoting 180 Proof
... specifically the advent of AGI in the first link (above) on "immortality". Speculative forecasting? or (not-so-hard) science fiction? – that's in the mind's eye of the beholder. :nerd:
:rofl:
Science fiction is fiction or non-fiction depending on when you read it. :nerd: :cool: (False probably, but a pleasant or unpleasant fantasy depending on the fiction.)
Wish I could take credit for it, but I'm not the first to come up with the point.