Introducing the Future

Hi AT,

I think you are pretty much correct with all that. And the probability of AI taking over or relieving humans from the leading role on the planet is seen as quite high, certainly by those who have been considering these issues for some time. Many have called this inevitable episode the singularity, and I plan to start another thread just for that very soon – or at least I will when my work here settles down a bit.

Cheers
Cris

 

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Reply to Borism's......

<i><b>"I just read this by Porfiry. It seems to go right along with the discussion"</i></B>


Porfiry
aka DaveW (admin)

Scientists have genetically engineered mice with enhanced memory that persists until researchers switch it off by removing a drug that controls a gene that encodes a key memory-governing enzyme. With enhanced memory, the mice perform better on memory tests and then revert to normal when the drug is removed.

The achievement, say the researchers who developed the mouse model, offers important insights into the delicate molecular balance by which memory storage is achieved. Although memory-boosting drugs are a long way off, the researchers believe that the work opens new avenues for understanding the molecular basis of memory.

Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigator Eric R. Kandel and his colleagues reported their experiments in the March 9, 2001, issue of Cell. Lead co-authors of the paper are Gaël Malleret and Isabelle Mansuy, who was formerly in Kandel’s Columbia University laboratory. Mansuy is now at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich.

The scientists created the mice by inserting a gene that, when activated by the antibiotic doxycycline, produces an inhibitor of the enzyme calcineurin. In the brain’s principal memory-storage region, the hippocampus, calcineurin counteracts the effects of another enzyme, PKA, in signaling pathways governing a process called long-term potentiation (LTP). LTP enhances connections between neurons and is one of the main neural pathways by which are stored in the brain. PKA is a kinase, which adds a phosphate to enzymes, and calcineurin is a phosphatase, which removes a phosphate.

Development of the mouse was prompted by an earlier study conducted at the HHMI laboratories at Columbia University with Cell co-authors Danny G. Winder and Isabelle Mansuy, said Kandel. "In that study, we overexpressed calcineurin in mice using this same system by which genes can be switched on and off," said Kandel. "And, we saw that such overexpression inhibited a component of LTP, and interfered with memory storage. We reasoned that inhibiting the action of calcineurin would enhance LTP and memory storage."

After developing the mice, the scientists first performed biochemical studies on slices of hippocampus and electrophysiological studies in whole mice that confirmed that doxycycline enhanced LTP. The whole-animal studies were performed by co-authors Tim V. P. Bliss and Matthew W. Jones of the National Institute for Medical Research in London. "The whole-animal studies allowed recording the effects of calcineurin inhibition for days and convinced us that we were really seeing an enhancement of LTP even in the intact animal," said Kandel.

The researchers next measured the animals’ memories in behavioral tests. The researchers found that the calcineurin-inhibited animals were better able to remember when familiar objects were moved to novel locations or replaced with novel objects. The calcineurin-inhibited mice were compared to both normal mice and mice that had been taken off doxycycline.

"An important point is that we built into this experiment tests showing that we could reverse the memory enhancement by switching off the inhibitory gene," said Kandel. "You worry in such experiments that the animals’ memory will become better or worse because you’ve somehow interfered with some normal function during development. But we found that was not the case; and we also did experiments showing that the animals can see, smell and locomote perfectly well, and are well motivated. So we really are seeing an effect on hippocampal learning."

In other studies, the scientists showed that the calcineurin-inhibited animals displayed enhanced spatial memory—they were better able remember the location of a platform in a murky water pool. And, the scientists performed tests showing that working memory—memory of immediate past circumstances—was not affected by the inhibition. In those tests, the animals were required to find food in a radial-arm maze, a task enhanced by immediate recall of the maze arms already explored.

According to Kandel, the mouse studies revealed the importance of a balance of activation and inhibition in memory storage. "One tends to think of memory storage as a process that is only positively directed, involving a mechanism that allows you to store memories," he said. "But our earlier work on lower organisms had revealed inhibitory constraints on memory storage, and in this present work, we demonstrate the first evidence for an inhibitory threshold in a mammalian brain. It confirms what is really common sense—that you only want to store important things in memory, so you need inhibitory constraints that you have to overcome."

Kandel emphasized that further study will likely reveal other such balancing mechanisms. He also emphasized that practical applications in the form of memory-enhancing drugs remain possible, yet unclear.

"While it’s quite uncertain at this point, these findings could yield a useful target for drugs designed to enhance memory in people with age-related memory loss, although not for those with serious memory loss due to Alzheimer’s disease," he said. "Such drugs might prove to be the ‘aspirins’ of memory—in the sense that they are able to enhance memory modestly," he said. Kandel cautioned that any memory-enhancing drugs that target calcineurin would have to be quite specific since calcineurin plays a number of important roles in the body, especially in the immune system.


<blink><i>"Personality is just a colorful way of distinquishing one computer geek from another"</i></blink>

 

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Sorry for coming in late but I have to reply to some earlier posts:

"For us to develop AI that even comes close to human (if that is the objective) then we would need to develop a sensory organ's as complex as human skin, as human eye's, as human smell, taste and hearing. Devices like the tongue that can sense taste, temp, pressure, smell all at the same time. Without this technology I think that man's dreams of AI are just that. Dreams."

I don't believe that the "smart machines" in the future will look anything like people at all. For the most part they will be a HAL like design, basically a computer. Input data would be gathered from the Internet and other things a computer today may access. The bigger question is what is intelligence? Currently we do not know. There have been many arguments between experts about whether it is biological, complexity or something undiscovered. Personally I see it as complexity. One day we will wake up and realize that what we have sought after was created by accident. A program meant to do many things and learn like many programs today "learn." It reaches a certain complexity and begins to learn other thing than it is supposed to and gains more and more intelligence. Creating algorithms that simulate intelligence only simulates it. It will never become it. The intelligence that will spring from This accident will most likely be much different than we are, having "grown up" in a much different world.
Naturally, our technology is not grate enough at this point to come across this and we will need many breakthroughs until it is possible.

I disagree with the BT technology timeline. Years ago it was thought we would have flying cars and little robots to clean our floors today. Timelines are always shortened, they have to be within the lifetimes of the readers as any good psudoscience is. Carl Segan goes into thin in his book Demon Haunted World in a different context but same idea. It seems to me that silicon technology cannot take us where we need to go. We need a new breakthrough to get us there and that will take time. Eventually we will hit the limit in current methods. History shows us this many times. Breakthroughs happen rapidly and then stop until a breakthrough that transcends current ways of thinking comes about. The Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age are prime examples. I still feel that I will live to see it happen and maybe live to feel the consequences.

Also, all this talk about us being in the picture with improved bodies and minds I think will be stopped before it happens. The problem lies in that the biological is entirely inefficient and useless. Why improve on that which is outdated? You don't upgrade your 386 computer, you buy a new one. Biological discoveries will continue to improve people but they are slow and will never keep up with computers. Before we are all super genus gods computers will gain intelligence. We will die and they will take our place. A saying comes to mind:

Humans are just one step in the evolution of computers.

In that rings a horrific truth.

Well I'm spent tonight, hope you all like my post.

 

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I believe that the introduction of AI will not threaten the human race at all. Sure these machines will be capable of reason and thought, but only as far as we allow them. Computers these days aren't anywhere near AI, but even still, they can't perform beyond their programming, neither will AI. Just because Terminator gets out of control with Cyberdyne Systems computers and Data from Startrek seems to have his own agenda sometimes, doesn't mean this will occur in real life. AI will be there to compliment the human race, not to conquer it.

 

The difference is that today’s computers do not have true AI in any form. To have true AI the computer must go beyond its original programming. My point assumes that the computer will begin to learn on its own and absorb outside influences. Basically growing up in a human environment will cause it to grow up with some human tendencies, like subverting lower races, war and reproduction.

 

<b>INDEED SPOCK! YEAH!!!!! you read my mind & beat me to the punch!</b>

Welcome to Exoscience, junior member!!!!!! Glad to hear your point of view!

<i>" The lion is known by his claw marks" (...only Newton could have solved the equation)</i>

 

]Originally posted by FA_Q2

 

Tony H 2 0: I believe that you are right in the following quote;
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To make a machine that mimics human one must make a machine that learns through interaction with
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its surrounding environment.
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But I don't think that it will necessarily need all our human-type senses. For sure it will need some kind of sight & hearing; but to narrow a robot to our senses, may be to limit their potential. What it will probably need, are all sorts of electromagnetic sensors, & maybe other things that we now can't even think about or fathom. We may never know until we progress far enough to have working, production models.
_____________________________________________
Learns through senses as complex and human senses.
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Live long and prosper!

 

HEYHEYHEYHEY

YEP! I AGREE WITH THAT!???????????????

O'WELL?

 

There is a lot of interesting views presented in these posts .. morality, theology/scientology ... I happened by these forums by accident and found a roller coaster ride full of exciting near future prospects ! One wonders how or if society can bear the upheaval of current progress in AI and GE development.
Some of the things that made a mark is the requirement of future processing power and software advances to develop the required 'learning' capabilities of AI. Perhaps our endeavours to find faster processing technologies will push the frontiers further still towards near-light speed computations (I remeber reading somewhere that a research community has a laser computer completing basic logic). Coding seems the most discouraging point raised - we can almost gaurantee astronomical advances in storage and computational power, but our own intellectual knowledge requires a jump-start to bridge the next phase of AI software design ... I can only hope on some mathmatician to theorise the unplausable and prove it.
I find some of the comments quite humourous ... computers outhinking humans .. heck, I'm not nearly as intelligent as some of my peers - millions of people out think me everyday. I guess if the struggle to power and influence were on the same keel as those that endure the intellectual persuits - I doubt that my petrol driven car would be stuck in peak-hour traffic.
What I'm trying to say is - intellect without emotive empowering is no more a threat than the bill of rights .. 'the right to bear arms..' (they still haven't worked that one out ?!) .. perhaps when our scaled, furry and feathered species no longer roam the earth the intellectuals of the future might think this obsolete (Then again, we've still got fission chambers .. heck, one'll down enough standing animals to feed the empovouriched of the world..hmmm, roast them at the same time at a few kelvins less than the surface of the sun).

 

Just saw AI, & so I was checking past posts & found that no one had up-dated this one. If AI is the future, the movie may not be anywhere close to what will happen? Food for thought!!!

 

Randolfo,

Hi, yep just seen it. I've started a new thread. Would very much apreciate your comments.

Cris