How computers can replicate (but not replace) scientists...

Strong Artificial Intelligence formed a large part of my doctoral research - yes, I've heard most of the jokes about being an 'artificially intelligent' doctor... And, the good news is that most of them are true! ha ha!

I proposed a hypothesis, among other things, based on a mathematical model for the exponential growth of representational and emulative intelligence in machines (showing an exponential increase in computing capacity from data retention, to information processing, to knowledge management, and then to intelligence and finally sentience). In order for this to take place Moore's law would need to be exceeded (which has happened), and we would need to harness the accuracy and computational power of artificially intelligent machines to create even more intricate and powerful machines (much to complicated for a human person to create in the limited space of our lives, and with the clumsiness of our knowledge and skill). These are likely to be quantum computers, or possibly some form of enzyme based biomechanical machines...

The long and the short of it was that we could see the rise of truly intelligent machines by as early as 2029 (as per Ray Kurzweil's suggestion).

Well, some of this is already taking place in credible scientific research. Simply linear (and some more complex parallel) emulative processes are already being reproduced using super computers. However, as this post below suggests, whilst computers can perform comparative tasks between existing models, they are not yet at the place where they can fathom the creative mustre to develop new models by themselves... But, who knows, that may not be too far off! All that we need is to find some realiable self agregating code that gathers knowledge, tests it through a simple Turing test (in comparrision to other valid data - of course both of these processes are already possible), and then agregates and adjusts its code base for increasing accuracy and complexity. If a machine can do this faster and more accurately than a human person it may just be able to develop more stringent and previously unfathomed models of knowledge and perhaps even wisdom!

But for now, here's what is possible:

In his first column for Seed magazine, my Institute for the Future colleague and pal Alex Pang looks at efforts to create software that doesn't just support scientific discovery, it actually does new science. From Seed:

Older AI projects in scientific discovery tried to model the way scientists think. This approach doesn’t try to imitate an individual scientist’s cognitive processes — you don’t need intuition when you have processor cycles to burn — but it bears an interesting similarity to the way scientific communities work. (Cornell professor Hod) Lipson says it figures out what to look at next “based on disagreement between models, just as a scientist will design an experiment that tests predictions made by competing theories.”

But that doesn’t mean it will replace scientists. (Cornell graduate student Michael) Schmidt views it as a tool to see what they can’t: “Something that is not obvious to a human might be obvious to a computer,” he speculates. A program, says Schmidt, may find things “that look really strange and foreign” to a scientist. More fundamentally, the Cornell program can analyze data, build models, and even guess which theories are more powerful, but it can’t explain what its theories mean — and new theories often force scientists to rethink and refine basic assumptions. “E=mc2 looks very simple, but it actually encapsulates a lot of knowledge,” Lipson says. “It overturned a lot of older preconceptions about energy and the speed of light.” Even as computers get better at formulating theories, “you need humans to give meaning to what the system finds.”

Why We're Not Obsolete: Alex Pang in Seed

From boingboing

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I would be interested to hear your thoughts. Do you think that sentient machines could be a threat to humanity? I once postulated that perhaps the extinction of the human race was part of God's evolutionary plan for the redemption of the cosmos... It would seem that humanity has two radical problems. First, we have a tendancy to displace God from the centre of the universe (so much popular theology goes around humanity, the needs and will of humans and the actualisation of human desire)... Surely that can not be right!? Second, humans are clearly a destructive force in the greater scheme of cosmic reality. We fight, we consume, we destroy and generally seem to be quite bad for the cosmic ecosystem.

Of course the converse argument is that the Gospels show that Jesus died for BOTH humans and the cosmos... But, I could be wrong (or right)! What do you think?

Comments

[Jenny Hillebrand]

I think that a few years ago I would have said that computers would never by able to replicate human intuition and that is what guranteed our continued usefulness. But as the article says enough processing power can allow a machine to emulate that - if it has access to enough information. Add the power of the web and I would imagine that the problem-solving capacity of a machine would be endless. Problems: time available, lack of self-correcting mechanisms (we sometimes know that something is wrong, however logical it looks - and that's not intuition)and as the article suggests interpretation of the solution and also formulation of the problem.
What will 'save us' from tyranny of a machine? Humanity's inability to willingly give over control to anything! Hooray for humanity - we even treat God with suspicion. But something leads us to faith in God - I don't see us being led to faith in a machine.
About your last point - do you think that humanity is REALLY ultimately destructive? I know we are not perfect, but we have SURVIVED. I wonder what a computer would tell us if we plotted the path of history and changed some significant choices. What if we never used fossil fuels, what if . . . Where do you think we would be today? Would we have survived this far?
Just my early morning thoughts . . .