Artificial Intelligence and the year 2047

[ciphergoth]

Clarification: By "smart" I mean general smarts: the sort of smarts that allow you to do things like pass a Turing test or solve open problems in nanotechnology. Obviously computers are ahead of humans in narrow domains like playing chess.

NB: your guess as to what will happen should also be one of your guesses about what might happen - thanks! This applies to wriggler, ablueskyboy, thekumquat, redcountess, thehalibutkid, henry_the_cow and cillygirl. If you tick only one option (which is not the last) in the first poll, it means you think it's the only possible outcome.

[Poll #1103617]

And of course, I'm fascinated to know why you make those guesses. In particular - I'm surprised how many people think it's likely that machines as smart as humans might emerge while nothing smarter comes of it, and I'd love to hear more about that position.

Comments

[martling.livejournal.com]

I'm going to skip the semantic debate by interpreting "as smart as humans" to mean "able to do everything a human mind can do, at least equally as well".

I don't think that's going to happen in 40 years, just based on looking at where AI has got in the last 50. Raw computing power has not for the most part been the problem, and developments in everything other than raw power are usually slow.

However, whilst not all, I fully expect to see far more of the many things a human mind can do performed equally well by machines within this time. And that may ultimately be enough in itself to bring on what you're alluding to - in particular because such a huge and well-funded sector of research is already focused on machines to help us design the hardware and software of other machines.