Technological Evolution

Alexandre Lomovtsev

CS575 – Spring 2010CSULA

Background

Ray Kurzweil

• The Age of Spiritual MachinesWhen computers exceed human intelligence

(1999)

• The Singularity is NearWhen humans transcend biology

(2005)

Ray KurzweilSkills• optical character recognition

(OCR)• text-to-speech synthesis• speech recognition

technology• electronic keyboard

instruments

Ray Kurzweil

Current occupation • predicting the future of AI

and the human race

• obtaining immortality

• Singularitarian

Skills• optical character recognition

(OCR)• text-to-speech synthesis• speech recognition

technology• electronic keyboard

instruments

Ray’s PredictionsEarly 2000s• Translating telephones allow people to speak to each other in different languages. • Machines designed to transcribe speech into computer text allow deaf people to

understand spoken words. 2010• PCs are capable of answering queries by accessing information wirelessly via the

Internet.2019• A $1,000 personal computer has as much raw power as the human brain.• Pinhead-sized cameras are everywhere. 2029• A $1,000 personal computer is 1,000 times more powerful than the human brain. • Reverse engineering of the human brain completed.2049• Food is commonly "assembled" by nanomachines.2072• Picoengineering (technology on the scale of trillionths of a meter) becomes practical. 2099• Machines have attained equal legal status with humans. • "Natural" humans are protected from extermination. In spite of their shortcomings and

frailties, humans are respected by AI's for giving rise to the machines.

Ray’s Present

Evolution Laws The Moore's Law• Doubling the number of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an

integrated circuit every two years.

Evolution Laws

The Law of Time and Chaos • In a process, the time interval between salient events (i.e., events that change

the nature of the process, or significantly affect the future of the process) expands along with the amount of chaos.

The Law of Increasing Chaos • As chaos exponentially increases, time exponentially slows down (i.e., the time

interval between salient events grows longer as time passes).

The Law of Accelerating Returns• As order exponentially increases, time exponentially speeds up (that is, the

time interval between salient events grows shorter as time passes).

The Moore's Law• Doubling the number of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an

integrated circuit every two years.

Evolution Pace Decreasing evolution pace• inventing the wheel - thousands of years• the telephone - a half of century to reach a quarter of

population

Evolution Pace

Technological evolution1. evolve some capability2. adapt it3. use it to evolve to the next stage

Decreasing evolution pace• inventing the wheel - thousands of years• the telephone - a half of century to reach a quarter of

population

Evolution Pace

Historical Exponential View• a linear prediction algorithm is “hardwired” in our brain• result = failure in “seeing” real future

Technological evolution1. evolve some capability2. adapt it3. use it to evolve to the next stage

Decreasing evolution pace• inventing the wheel - thousands of years• the telephone - a half of century to reach a quarter of

population

Disruptive technology

• Innovations that improve a product or service in ways that the market does not expect– lowering price– designing for a different set of consumers

Building AI (software)

Building AI (software)

Seeing patterns• face recognition

• speech recognition

• gesture recognition

Building AI (software)

Seeing patterns• face recognition

• speech recognition

• gesture recognition

Garik Kasparov “Deep Blue”

as he said, “less than one” ability to analyze about 300,000,000 board positions on it’s decision tree

Strong AI (robotics)

• reverse engineering of the human brain

• replicating human brain in a hardware form

Building human brain

• Can computer have consciousness?

• Can consciousness be replicated or simulated by computer or another non-organic form?

• What is the nature of memory? How is it stored in the brain?

Enhancing human's abilities

• Ethic issues– Where is the line to distinguish human from its

replica?

Teaching AI

• Two computers may be very smart, but even they need somebody (someone) to teach them how to communicate, even between themselves.

• “The neural net's teacher, which may be a human, a computer program, or perhaps another, more mature neural net that has already learned its lessons, rewards the student neural net when it is right and punishes it when it is wrong.”

Self-Teaching AI• Cellular automata

– Rule 110

• Can we evolve AI from simple rules?

x x x x x x x x x x x x1 1 1 1 1

Runaway AI

• Phenomenon of rapidly escalating superintelligence.

• Passing the Turing test.

Goal: build a computer

Group:

1. 100 randomly selected humans (from a shopping mall)

2. 100 technically trained people (not ITs)

3. 100 barely-passed the Turing test AI-machines

AI Toolkits

• Expert Systems

• Bayesian Nets

• Markov Models

• Neural Nets

• Genetic Algorithms

AARON- a computerized robot (and associated software), designed by Harold Cohen that creates original drawings and paintings.

Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden

Conclusion

I'm as fond of my body as anyone else, but if I can be 200 with a body of silicon, I'll take it!

-Danny Hillis

Thank you!