The Diane Rehm Show

As a system designer I believe we have all the mechanical understanding to recreate human intelligence. We know that stimulus comes in, it is processed against a list of known reactions, that reaction is filtered down to the one that offers the most pleasure circuit activity via running the scenario in the PFC, and the resulting reaction to the stimuli is manifest in physical return. If the stimulus is completely new, it is redirected through the fight or flight network, the mind is searched for closest example to the new stimulus and a reaction is chosen and a reaction to the behavior is acknowledged and assimilated into the behavioral options. It is this last part that you can't just "program" into a computer. You8 can't "program" experience. Since the womb set the baseline do perfectly fed, protected, and temperature and all stimulus are measured to determine whether it brings us closer to that baseline or drives us further from it, and no computer is "born", we can't recreate that either. Simply put, you can't recreate thought, reaction, behavior and personality since you can't recreate "Life".

HOW DOES THE CONCEPT OF A HIGHER POWER FIT INTO THIS NEW SCENARIO?

IS THERE A SEPARATE SPIRITUAL SELF WHICH SURVIVES THE PHYSICAL BODY (EVEN IF ENHANCED WITH TECHNOLOGY)?

In his 1946 short story Rescue Party, Arthur C. Clarke stated that the ultimate fate of intelligent life is a shared conciousness (a networked hive mind). He presents an example of this using a fictitious alien species whose brains are networked telepathically, allowing them to problem solve and acquire data from multiple locations as a single entity; a process that mimics parallel processing models used in today's super computers. Do you think that this is the ultimate fate of humanity via the development of hard memory storage and networking?

Thank you for your consideration.

Nick Armstrong
Grand Rapids, MI

One of my dreams is to be able to access a simulation of the collective best intellectual minds of the world through a hand-held device (think Faculty of 1000 on a grand scale). How soon would Ray predict that we will be able to simulate a complete person in real-time and then to create such a collective mind? This Oracle would probably create many original works that would be on par with human scientists, artists, philosophers. How will human society cope socially with this new kind of intelligence? Would it be used by humans as the ultimate justification for political/social ideas? Will multiple countries create competing Oracles that might disagree?

Great stuff, but of course focusing on the neocortex as the primary source of intelligence is a coarse approximation of what allows the brain to understand the environment. Did insects die out with the dinosaurs? Do they have a neocortex? Many birds have been found to have extremely good reasoning ability. Do they have a greatly expanded neocortex? Cephalopods can be very smart: very different brain. I do feel computer algorithms can be made to simulate living intelligences, but also feel there is much more to actually living than simulating the neocortex. The origins of agency and will, for example, almost certainly do not originate int he cortex. Bottom line is it is not merely the quantity of computing power that confers intelligence, or personhood. Perhaps computers will have our evolved sense of agency handed down to them from us, but I predict it does not emerge denovo from passing a certain (unknown) number of calculations per second.

Computers have been a tool to the human mind, when they become more intelligent will humans become a tool for computers. Could that lead to a decline in human intelligence (like cars made us more out of shape). And is our escape would be to implement some type of microchips in our brains that would allow us to keep the high grounds.
I do believe this time will happen and we'll look at anything that happened before as the middle age.
Thank you

Can your guest comment on how reflex information are stored or processed? Also when memory loss happens most of the time people forget their abstract thoughts rather than their spoken language, can your guest comment on that as well?

1. In the recent election we saw how one group truly believed in an outcome that did not eventuate. So, even though machines can read all of what is known, who decides what has value? In the election, one group valued certain things that another group did not. And the losing group could not fathom how their set of values did not prevail. So how will machines evaluate what is known? Is it relevant that within miliseconds a machine can provide an answer, when what we are needing more of is a shared sense of what is valuable and tolerance for differences?

2. As consciousness never dies, then aren't we already free of our biology through death and rebirth. We cast away the old suitcase of our consciousness and reform in another?

I do agree with Mr. Kurzweil's assessment of the technology's exponential growth but in all of his musings he fails to adequately address the contribution of the irrational mind of homo sapiens and the central role played by awareness of human mortality in human ingenuity. Man would not have created any of his culture had it not been for his motivation to transcend his finality. So, what culture will computers create based on their "self-awareness?"

While our ability to think at the level we do has allowed us to do amazing things, by the same token it has created problems. For example, due to medical science, people who heretofore might have died are surviving or at least living longer than they otherwise might. In addition, science has allowed procreation among people for whom this would previously not have been possible. While these are wonderful advances, it means that genes are being perpetuated that might otherwise have evolved out, and also that the world is quickly overpopulating in part due to these advances. Many other species are teetering on the brink of extinction due to our overpopulation and/or to the manner in which our societies spread or advance. Even as regards to our own species, there are societies in which people are starving due to overpopulation, meanwhile other societies are becoming largely sedentary, working on computers all day when evolutionarily we're probably still more well adapted to be working the land. Our own rate of evolution can't seem to keep up with our technology, and as a result we're developing overweight societies. On top of that, technology has allowed us to create conveniences and processes that enhance our lives, but many of them are polluting our environment and essentially poisoning the Earth. Species historically have survived based on their ability to adapt to, succeed in and change with their environments, but it seems that rather than doing this we're dominating our environment. In so doing, we run the distinct risk of killing off our host and thus ensuring our own demise. So my question is: do you anticipate that future advances in thinking and technology will be such that we'll be able to "think" our way out of the dilemma we've created and, if so, what kind of advances might they be?

I've heard Kurzweil speak before and I've come to the conclusion that his primary profession is not computer science, but self-promotion.

Diane is normally very good at keeping guests honest but here is one small example where he spouted some obvious B.S. and Diane should have called him on it. When talking about energy sources, Kurzweil said that solar energy use has been growing exponentially and talked about it continuing on this exponential path until it supplies 100% of our power needs. Easy to say, but is it realistic? Of course not. Solar power is good, and all, but it is not physically possible for it to continue to grow exponentially indefinitely. Around 1800, Malthus predicted that human population growth would exhaust the world's food supply by about 1850. Oops. This example is just the tip of Kurzweil's B.S. iceberg. If I had heard the whole show I'm sure there would have been bigger examples.

If you hear a scientist take a short term trend and extrapolate it forever, you are probably listening to a poor scientist that is more interested in selling books than arriving at the truth.

Beware of "futurists"; they're mostly hucksters.

1. degrees, speaking engagements, authored articles, and patents will tell you Ray is, indeed, a computer scientist.

2. nice conclusory statement on solar power. i'm sure your various degrees in electrical and materials engineering led you to that. otherwise, why would you rest on such an assertion with no evidentiary support.

3. Analogy to Malthus would be good example, if Malthus used the same model as Ray; or even analyzed a similar trend. But he doesnt, so it isn't.

4. You should listen to a whole segment or at least visit wikipedia to know Ray's whole premise of exponential returns is entirely based on very long-term trends, not short term.

5. "futurists" are mostly hucksters. but not this one.