"Biological Intelligence is a Fleeting Phase in the Evolution of the U

[RAMA]

I have posted this link before within threads, but seeing how we know that humanity has taken out biology as the sole influence in our evolution...what are your thoughts? Science fiction has for many years explored this question, machine evolution being central to Gregory Benford's Galactic Center series, with machine evolution parelleling biology and gravitating to many similar paths that biology takes.


http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2012/11/the-human-species-is-at-an-evolutionary-inflection-point-weekend-feature.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheDailyGalaxyNewsFromPlanetEarthBeyond+%28The+Daily+Galaxy+--Great+Discoveries+Channel%3A+Sci%2C+Space%2C+Tech.%29&utm_content=Google+International#.UJc3MwP5xWk.facebook

Personally, it seems pretty obvious to me evolution would head towards machine based advancement, and whether or not that includes human influenced desires, hopes and experiences is really up to us now.

 

[{ Emilia }]

Re: "Biological Intelligence is a Fleeting Phase in the Evolution of t

It's an interesting topic for speculation but I don't really see it as more than that. Maybe I'm too skeptical?

The article claims we're more likely to meet an AI than a "biological intelligence" during our "first contact" because:

In the current search for advanced extraterrestrial life SETI experts say the odds favor detecting alien AI rather than biological life because the time between aliens developing radio technology and artificial intelligence would be brief.

That's a fun thought but I don't see any evidence for this since we're nowhere near developing a self-aware AI. We don't know how long it takes biological life to develop true AI or if it will ever happen at all.

But hey, I'm very skeptical about "first contacts" or long-distance space travel, too. Considering all the time-related issues.

 

[RAMA]

Re: "Biological Intelligence is a Fleeting Phase in the Evolution of t

It's an interesting topic for speculation but I don't really see it as more than that. Maybe I'm too skeptical?

The article claims we're more likely to meet an AI than a "biological intelligence" during our "first contact" because:

In the current search for advanced extraterrestrial life SETI experts say the odds favor detecting alien AI rather than biological life because the time between aliens developing radio technology and artificial intelligence would be brief.

That's a fun thought but I don't see any evidence for this since we're nowhere near developing a self-aware AI. We don't know how long it takes biological life to develop true AI or if it will ever happen at all.

But hey, I'm very skeptical about "first contacts" or long-distance space travel, too. Considering all the time-related issues.

There are several issues involved with this..firstly sheer practicality, cost and sense would suggest that it is much easier for life forms (if they exist other than ourselves..which I do think is likely) to send out robot probes laden with either replication technology (3D printing, nanotech, or simple machine replication) to spread through the galaxy. Such exploration would be dogged and slow but completely within the laws of physics, not needing light travel, and would spread like a virus, settling fractions of our galaxy within a few hundred thousand to millions of years (a mere speck in universal time).

Long distance space travel already exists, guess what..they are robots. One such example has left our heliosphere (so they say). A robot casually meeting another robot from an alien race is highly unlikely, but intelligent robots, or robots programmed to seek such things is more likely.

I find it amazing (even shocking) that within my liftetime, there are now ACTUAL searches for such things (within the last few years) ...robots, dysons spheres, even on a rudimentary level. So far nothing.

The evidence mathematically would suggest human level AI by 2030, and superior AI intelligence after 2045. Already we have mouse level AI developed in only a few decades, as opposed to our own evolution of billions of years. I feel there is more than enough evidence there even if the actual dates are not universally agreed on to say strong AI is within reach, and not in millions or even thousands of years.

 

[{ Emilia }]

Re: "Biological Intelligence is a Fleeting Phase in the Evolution of t

I'm going to ignore your religious views on AI for now but I'd like to address this:

Long distance space travel already exists, guess what..they are robots. One such example has left our heliosphere (so they say).

I was talking about long distance travel that actually goes to a another potentially inhabited planet.

Having some probes leave our own solar system isn't nearly the amount of distance that's needed to actually get somewhere.

Even if we were to magically find a civilization on some other planet it would be a logistical nightmare to talk to them, let alone visit them. The time it would take for signals to travel would make communication a little tedious to say the least.

 

[RAMA]

Re: "Biological Intelligence is a Fleeting Phase in the Evolution of t

I'm going to ignore your religious views on AI for now but I'd like to address this:

Long distance space travel already exists, guess what..they are robots. One such example has left our heliosphere (so they say).

I was talking about long distance travel that actually goes to a another potentially inhabited planet.

Having some probes leave our own solar system isn't nearly the amount of distance that's needed to actually get somewhere.

Even if we were to magically find a civilization on some other planet it would be a logistical nightmare to talk to them, let alone visit them. The time it would take for signals to travel would make communication a little tedious to say the least.

I've always had a complete lack of religious views. Well at least since 13 years of age.

The AI views are based on pure science and mathematics, not religion, what the final outcome is is educated speculation (yes speculation) but with a more accurate basis than the previously linear and obsolete view.

Yes, i know the robots aren't even close to Alpha Centauri but you have to start somewhere..It's likely Voyager will be surpassed by later developed robots with better propulsion.

 

[Avon]

Re: "Biological Intelligence is a Fleeting Phase in the Evolution of t

i don't know, you seem to have the required blind faith and wishful thinking on this sort of subject to call it religious.

 

[YellowSubmarine]

Re: "Biological Intelligence is a Fleeting Phase in the Evolution of t

It never crossed my mind that the reason we never find any DNA evidence of paleocontact is because the paleocontact was with giant mechanical insects.* I am sure that they would resemble natural lifeforms after a million generations of self-replication and repair. I just wonder why the Persians thought they looked like fish?

* Or because it never happened. But hey, that's really not a reason not to expand our search parameters.

 

[Metryq]

Re: "Biological Intelligence is a Fleeting Phase in the Evolution of t

Maybe the alien DNA had an NDA?

 

[YellowSubmarine]

Re: "Biological Intelligence is a Fleeting Phase in the Evolution of t

Our DNA has an NDA. Even the NSA hasn't gotten close enough to cracking it.

 

[fonzob1]

Re: "Biological Intelligence is a Fleeting Phase in the Evolution of t

Maybe a related topic. Food for thought at the very least. There is nothing nearby that we can detect as of yet.

http://www.space.com/29362-search-i...pid=514630_20150517_45608526&short_code=3008v

A wide-ranging search of faraway galaxies has turned up no obvious signs of advanced alien civilizations.

A team of scientists dug through observations made by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) spacecraft, hunting for telltale heat signatures coming from 100,000 galaxies— a strategy suggested by theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson back in the 1960s.

 

[Mudd]

Re: "Biological Intelligence is a Fleeting Phase in the Evolution of t

There's no reason to think that what we call human-like intelligence is a "phase in the evolution of the Universe" at all. It's as likely as not just a happenstance. Life on this one planet managed to go on for billions of years without producing it or even tending toward it, and when it disappears there's no evidence that it will recur again in the history of life.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Re: "Biological Intelligence is a Fleeting Phase in the Evolution of t

Personally, it seems pretty obvious to me evolution would head towards machine based advancement

Of course it wouldn't. Evolution requires the presence of a self-replicating paradigm that maximizes reproductive fitness. Machines do not reproduce, and have no reason to reproduce, therefore evolution would not head in that direction.

and whether or not that includes human influenced desires, hopes and experiences is really up to us now.

Unless there is another sapient species in the universe developing AIs for use in day-to-day information technology, human desires are really the only influences that they WILL have.

There's no reason to think that what we call human-like intelligence is a "phase in the evolution of the Universe" at all. It's as likely as not just a happenstance. Life on this one planet managed to go on for billions of years without producing it or even tending toward it, and when it disappears there's no evidence that it will recur again in the history of life.

There's also the possibility -- slim as it seems -- that intelligence has actually risen up on Earth in various species many times over the past billion years or so, only to be extinguished in extinction events and cataclysms. It's not really certain that any artifacts they'd have left behind would actually be recoverable after tens of millions of years of the Earth trying hard as hell to grind them back into the dust they were carved from in the first place.

Also, it's very strange to think of AI as being the next phase of human evolution at a time when true machine intelligence isn't even known to be possible.

 

[Dryson]

Re: "Biological Intelligence is a Fleeting Phase in the Evolution of t

How would a metallic machine know how to build itself without having an understanding of motion since the main minerals involved with its manufacture would be inert or not having a knowledge base of how to move in order to develop plans on how to create moveable parts?

Organics have fluids that transfer energy help keep the body cool and other things. A machine would not know of these systems either because its thought process is like that of the rock that just sits there until an outside influence moves the rock.

Now organics living inside of a rock and then using the rock to create an exterior shell out of that is completely possible where the organic would evolve to rearrange the molecular configuration of the minerals to create a bipedal being that would be similar to humans but would have harder structures when compared to ours.

As reference think of the T - 100 as the exosketelon with the T-1000 being the internal organics. What would be cool about a machine like this is that it would have evovled to have the ability to convert available minerals from the ground it walks on with every step into the use able energy it needed for movement .

 

[Gov Kodos]

Re: "Biological Intelligence is a Fleeting Phase in the Evolution of t

No. Just, no.

 

[Lakenheath 72]

Re: "Biological Intelligence is a Fleeting Phase in the Evolution of t

I don't hold to the belief that Earth is the only location with life. Life exists out there. If it's life like humans, it does many of the things I or others do. Have a family, have a job, have an education, etc. I have heard and read that artificial life may or may not come about. It is dependent on our knowledge of the brain and our ability to replicate a working brain in a machine. I think that synthetic life - a combination of organic and inorganic - has a greater chance of succeeding - we have been experimenting with synthetic life for some time, and I think it is possible that there might be "living machines" in the universe.

When I read about the study NASA did, see above, I was like, what were they expecting? We are seeing galaxies as they appeared many millions of years ago, tens of millions of years ago, etc. It is possible in that span of time that an advanced civilization did arise in the gap between the time we are observing the galaxy and our now. When we "catch up" to our now, sometime in the far future, I don't know if humans will be around to see it. I kinda doubt it.

 

[USS Triumphant]

Re: "Biological Intelligence is a Fleeting Phase in the Evolution of t

At some point one of my kids* is going to get completely modeled into a computer environment to a sufficiently fine degree that the person in the computer will be indistinguishable from a real person to interact with. Then that "virtual person" will meet another, have sex, and one of them will get pregnant - with a computer model of what the combination of their virtual sex cells would become. A new person, not modeled on a person in meatspace. Is that a real person? Is it a "human"?

My answer is YES, and I'm completely at peace with that, and since they will quite possibly have access to this very board and an ability to ramp up their "clock speed" and to borrow processing power that will allow them to absorb and work with information in ways that I'm probably not capable of imagining, I want them to know when they read this, that this meatspace grandfather of theirs loves them and accepts them as his own.

If we survive, most of our descendants will live in the computers.

And possibly, the reason we haven't made first contact is that from any similar point to what I'm describing above, interest in exploring *outward* mostly disappears as we gain an almost infinite space *within* to explore and abilities to make such dramatic changes to ourselves that we *become* the aliens we always wanted to meet. When your world contains whole universes, and you can spend a year out of your infinite life exploring what it is like to be a lamppost if that strikes your fancy, Alpha Centauri may lose its appeal.

*or my grandkids. Or great-grandkids. Or one of yours. It really doesn't matter for the point I'm making or the feeling I'm conveying.

 

[Lakenheath 72]

Re: "Biological Intelligence is a Fleeting Phase in the Evolution of t

It's impossible to tell where we are going. Sometimes people get things right. There were writers in the 19th century who imagined things that came later in the next century. However, there are events that we can't foresee that alter the path of our future history. They could be happening now, for all we know.

A fallacy is generalizing the future. Not everyone will be at the same level of development, for whatever reason. There will always be elements of our society that will seek a different way. They might even be viewed as being retrogressive.

 

[rhubarbodendron]

Re: "Biological Intelligence is a Fleeting Phase in the Evolution of t

From my experience "intelligence"and "human" rarely go together. Particularly in governments.
Since those (together with money) control science and its developments, I think we can safely assume that mankind is going to extinct itself rather sooner than later.

 

[PurpleBuddha]

Re: "Biological Intelligence is a Fleeting Phase in the Evolution of t

From my experience "intelligence"and "human" rarely go together. Particularly in governments.
Since those (together with money) control science and its developments, I think we can safely assume that mankind is going to extinct itself rather sooner than later.

Do you think that you personally have no intelligence, or do you see your self as that rare exception?

 

[Silvercrest]

Re: "Biological Intelligence is a Fleeting Phase in the Evolution of t

Either way, she makes a good case. When intelligence does appear in humans, it's a fleeting phase!