And I agree that yes, the self improving machine actually exists. It's the living cell.
What I mean to say about this is that, while life is a self-improving machine, it is only self improving in the presence of the massive energy gradient provided by the Sun. It's a dissipative structure which is self-improving only when the gradient continues and only if the gradient is large enough. No sun, no life. It must be so, because "thing which is spontaneously self organizing in the absence of energy" is incompatible with the Second Law.
Now, could I conceive of machines that left alone around some star and given enough time would be able to catch up to us?
They would, and they would achieve comparable complexity/"cleverness" to the human brain if and only if the gradient were large enough and lasted long enough. Our fossil fuel powered datacenters are not large enough, nor do they last long enough.
The Universe has already solved the problem of intelligence.
Intelligence spontaneously emerged as a mechanism which dissipates energy across a gradient faster. Nothing more, nothing less. If one wants to argue that this means that GPT-4 is intelligent, that's a great argument, but it must also follow that GPT-4 is significantly less intelligent than human beings.
What I think limits computers fundamentally are the limits to computation itself and more generally to formal systems, because computers are formal systems.
What limits computers fundamentally is energy. There is simply a minimum amount of energy required to flip a bit.
Or create useful information that is out of the distribution of data previously available?
This is kind of the heart of what I'm getting at. In order for this to happen, it will need to interact with the world in a way that consumes energy. Either by us doing it to it (through training) or by it doing something autonomously. The most efficient way would be to make the computer into an agent which replicates itself and seeks to organize itself to consume more and more energy (how different would it be from life then...?). But even then it would not be able to surpass our cleverness. Not for another 3 billion years, give or take --depending on how much more efficient it can be at extracting energy from the sun.
What I'm saying is, a breakthrough would need to be an energy breakthrough. Not a computation breakthrough. Because both of us, human and GPT4, are computing machines. There is no fundamental difference.
What limits computers fundamentally is energy. There is simply a minimum amount of energy required to flip a bit.
I'm talking about things that lie beyond computation in the absolute. It doesn't matter how much energy is available to perform it.
Not a computation breakthrough.
Again I think you misunderstand my point. What lies beyond computation is impossible on a level that lies beyond it in an absolute sense. It is not a matter of engineering, innovation, scale. Doesn't matter how much energy is funneled through computers or any 'breakthrough'. It simply cannot be done.
So I think we disagree on this point. I think intelligence is a feature of life, which is a feature of this Universe, and is beyond computers because computers are a very narrowly define formal system. You think computers might become intelligent given enough energy and time. But the limits of formal systems and computers as defined by Gödel and Turing in my view put an absolute wall around it that make it impossible for computers to be intelligent even if given infinite time and infinitely large energy gradient to flow through them.
Comments
Insightful comment.
What I mean to say about this is that, while life is a self-improving machine, it is only self improving in the presence of the massive energy gradient provided by the Sun. It's a dissipative structure which is self-improving only when the gradient continues and only if the gradient is large enough. No sun, no life. It must be so, because "thing which is spontaneously self organizing in the absence of energy" is incompatible with the Second Law.
They would, and they would achieve comparable complexity/"cleverness" to the human brain if and only if the gradient were large enough and lasted long enough. Our fossil fuel powered datacenters are not large enough, nor do they last long enough.
Intelligence spontaneously emerged as a mechanism which dissipates energy across a gradient faster. Nothing more, nothing less. If one wants to argue that this means that GPT-4 is intelligent, that's a great argument, but it must also follow that GPT-4 is significantly less intelligent than human beings.
What limits computers fundamentally is energy. There is simply a minimum amount of energy required to flip a bit.
This is kind of the heart of what I'm getting at. In order for this to happen, it will need to interact with the world in a way that consumes energy. Either by us doing it to it (through training) or by it doing something autonomously. The most efficient way would be to make the computer into an agent which replicates itself and seeks to organize itself to consume more and more energy (how different would it be from life then...?). But even then it would not be able to surpass our cleverness. Not for another 3 billion years, give or take --depending on how much more efficient it can be at extracting energy from the sun.
What I'm saying is, a breakthrough would need to be an energy breakthrough. Not a computation breakthrough. Because both of us, human and GPT4, are computing machines. There is no fundamental difference.
Thank you for the reply.
I'm talking about things that lie beyond computation in the absolute. It doesn't matter how much energy is available to perform it.
Again I think you misunderstand my point. What lies beyond computation is impossible on a level that lies beyond it in an absolute sense. It is not a matter of engineering, innovation, scale. Doesn't matter how much energy is funneled through computers or any 'breakthrough'. It simply cannot be done.
So I think we disagree on this point. I think intelligence is a feature of life, which is a feature of this Universe, and is beyond computers because computers are a very narrowly define formal system. You think computers might become intelligent given enough energy and time. But the limits of formal systems and computers as defined by Gödel and Turing in my view put an absolute wall around it that make it impossible for computers to be intelligent even if given infinite time and infinitely large energy gradient to flow through them.