The survival of AI and Robotics as the dominate species on this planet is highly unlikely. In evolutionary theory of survival of the fittest, the “fittest” does not imply the relationships between the different species, but rather the relationship with the environment. Of course there are impacts on the environment from other species, but ultimately, the fittest is one that is best correlated with it’s environment. In this regard, the fitness of Ants is much greater than that of humans due to our negative and un-naturalistic approach to survival in the reliance on nonrenewable resources, technologies and tools.

With that being said, an Totally Mechanical body’s fitness and survival in our environment must have an lower fitness than that of humans since their reliance on technology is the soul of their existence and our reliance is simply an tool (even though we are getting more and more attached.). So in my opinion, in order for human survival in the long run, we must become more renewable to earth and everything on it.

Coming back to Creativity. In order to create something creative, the creator has to be creative. If the creativeness can be measured by an coefficient, the coefficient of the creator will always be higher than that of the created since the model or algorithm used cannot exceed the creators own knowledge.

Like I said in my previous comment about “humans reliance on tools and technology, and that we are no longer achieving individual evolutionary advances, but rather, society and mankind advances.” If you view society as a “Super organism”, then the ultimate goal in the organism’s evolution is becoming more efficient and more advanced in all areas of science. An inevitable achievement would be in advanced AI and Robotics.

The human race is great in that we can love, we all have individual wishes and dreams, we can all pursuit different goals. but in the end, we are all selfish. That selfishness ultimately is our weakness in terms of the “Super organism” since our disconnection, disconcisiveness in decision making lacks output efficiency. On the other hand, selfishness and disconnectivity promotes competitiveness and creativity. Therefore, human’s role in the “Super organism” will always be important, and robots will co-exist with us even if they proof to be more powerful. I believe a intelligent AI will have deduce this, so the likely hood of a Terminator is slim.

That’s one of the main arguments I hear against the possibility of simulating the human mind: even If you build the perfect AI – how do you know It “feels” the way we feel?

I understand and respect this argument, but In order to consider It In this kind of scientific study, we must be able to understand It, and “intent” can’t be measured – I agree I can’t prove If a robot has intent, but I also can’t prove anybody else has It!

As Björn, at first I did get the wrong vibe, even though you do make it clear that you are only presenting the limitations AI “seems” to have, not agreeing with them.

But Is the goal really “limitless systems”? I don’t think these exist, not even in the real world. To me it’s all a matter of complexity.

Rain surprises us all the time, though It’s pure physics – a very (very) big system, with a very (very) well definied set of rules. That’s what I think our brain Is.

So It would only be a matter of processing power until “the perfect AI” is doable (following Niels recipe in the comments). And, as you said, this probably won’t take long…

Then the big question will be: will perfect AI lead to “a better world” or to… TERMINATOR (much cooler reference than Matrix)? Note how I’m totally ignoring the much harder question that Is: what Is “a better world”?

But I digress! Thanks for the article Hrafn (and I didnt forget that AI Games wiki thing!

I believe the main focus of creativity should not be on evaluate weather an output is creative (surprise), but rather focus on the reason for creativity. In other words, why are things creative and what ingredients are necessary to achieve this behavior.

I love to give this example, because everyone can relate. The example of an Ant. An Ant with a brain size smaller than a grain of sand, out performs super computers. It does not have a storage cap like us, meaning their memory and learned behavior lacks, however, it can process information just as good, and just as fast. Inputs such as their senses, with one huge one: their antennas which we lack.

I believe that human have a disadvantage in terms of evolutionary advances to our bodies since our reliance on technology and tools has rejected our natural bodies to be adapting to our needs, rather, we invent tools and innovations to adapt to the environment. Some might argue that this reliance is inevitable and critical to our survival, however , Ants has taken over most parts of the earth with the usage of naturalistic tools making them part of nature, thus through evolution, they have a better chance of survival.

my point of all this, is that, the reason for creativity comes from survival and is the behavioral representation of intelligence.

Intelligence does not require 15 billion VMs or human brain, so Creativity can be obtained from something much simpler.

I totally agree with the fact that instructions limit functionality, and the overall capability of creativity. However like I previously said, the importance of creativity is not the human judgment on a particular output, but rather the reason for it.

The AI Aaron draws a picture, why did he it draw it? did the drawing have a underlying purpose that would benefit the survival of Aaron in its environment? Did he draw it willingly? If the answer is no for those questions, then I think Aaron is not being creative, but simply following instructions.

The paper that I am writing focuses on the intelligence from a Reason point of view, and the purpose of life for any object in the universe. I’ll post up a link ones I am finished if you are interested.

Finally, I will attempt to answer the question, “Why it’s hard to make machines think original thoughts?”

The answer is simple, you cannot MAKE it. it has to do it itself.
It has to have a purpose that is self beneficial, not human beneficial. With that being said, it must be able to know it’s needs and wants, and deduce what is beneficial. it must follow a concept of life and death, and a subconscious willingness to be alive. These are fundamental requirements of a intellectual being rather than simply a program.

Like what you said, the closest research for this type of system is a genetics and evolutionary algorithms where the program mutates and reproduces etc to solve a problem based on health. I propose a few tweaks on this design. First, remove the problem. A true being has only one problem, and that is existence. 2nd, there is no Health. Health is a judgment on output, and intelligence cannot be judged by an process outside of the intellects environment, it must judge itself using it’s own thinking process

Agree disagree?

Why can’t you just make 100 billion small, light, virtual machines and implement the rules we know about neurons on each machine and connect certain sets of virtual machines to various simple inputs?

Connectionist AI definitely has promise and applications in creative systems (as can be expected, since it simulates animal brain mechanisms to some extent). But it remains hard to mold them into doing what we want to, so it’s hard to develop broad, general creativity.

I know 100 billion seems like a large number, but you could do it within the construct of something like folding-at-home.

Well, not only is 100 billion a large number but it’s estimated that even the number of hyperlinks on the web still aren’t as many as the number of synapses in the human brain. To apply something like folding-at-home would require a major effort that probably wouldn’t be enough, even though the number of transistors of the internet is greater than the number of neurons in the brain.

If people like Kevin Kelley and Kurzweil are correct, however, a single computing device matching the power of the human brain will cost $1k in 2019. And the internet in the year 2040 will have processing power that matches all 7 billion human brains on Earth.

Now we wait.

I have just heard this prejudice against computer programs too many times.

I hear it all the time as well. Creativity is perhaps the only thing people still have a death-grip on as separating themselves from machines. They’re wrong.

[...] so my apologies. It is a bit of a pity that you wrote that article in an introductory article, because the recipients are exactly the people who will pick up that prejudice.

Apology accepted and feel free to swing by again. Your comment is absolutely right, it just doesn’t apply to me. Good point that the recipients may pick up more prejudice — perhaps I should’ve emphasized more that we do have creative systems. I have a sequel to this article in the works, discussing how we’re gradually overcoming the limitations, that will hopefully make up for it.

I have just heard this prejudice against computer programs too many times. But it is wrong to argue against a prejudice, rather than against your actual article, so my apologies. It is a bit of a pity that you wrote that article in an introductory article, because the recipients are exactly the people who will pick up that prejudice.

As you no doubt know, some of the “creative” algorithms are not even very complex.

I mention several examples of creative systems. Thaler’s neural networks that have invented patentable ideas, Aaron that makes original paintings. If you page through my articles on creativity, you’ll also find a heap of other examples.

As to a New Kind of Science and complex adaptive systems – I’ve referenced it on more than one occasion in my papers on creative systems. I’ve personally created and worked on complex systems that present unpredictable creative behavior. Like I also mention in this article. Some of which are award winning.

Furthermore, limitations do not imply that creativity is impossible. The human brain has limitations, too, yet manages to be creative.

Nowhere do I state that artificial creativity is impossible, nor would I ever think such a thing. I never say that this simple example is the end-all nature of all computer systems, in fact, I state the exact opposite.

This is an introductory article for people unfamiliar with programming and creative systems. I’m explaining a fundamental problem that people working on creative systems have to overcome. Difficulties on the way to creating human-level creative systems. The “thesis” here is only that instructions introduce limitations, and that these limitations have only been overcome to a certain extent in AI systems. If you know an example of a system that has no limitations, and want, for example, to challenge AAAI fellow Peter Norvig on his statement that goals limit systems, then please do so.

Next time you’re going to criticize someone’s article, please read it before you write.

Also, we always knew the outcomes of the computations, we would not bother to write those programs. Obviously we write programs because they will produce unexpected results – otherwise there would be no need to write them.

Furthermore, limitations do not imply that creativity is impossible. The human brain has limitations, too, yet manages to be creative.

That doesn’t make any sense. WE are creative and we can’t yet write programs that are creative.

Maybe we can’t write programs that are creative, because WE aren’t actually creative…

Have them make new connections, sum near-simultaneous interactions into new output, abolish latent connections, establish directionality of connections, reinforce connections that were used early or often, and abolish unused or overused VMs early in the game.

Some get connected to photo-sensitive scintillators, just like rods and cones. Some get connected to narrow-band microphones, just like hair cells of the inner ear? Some get connected to strain gauges, just like sensory corpuscles? Some get connected to motors, speakers, etc. It would presumably take a while to hack all the initial pathways, but it seems doable. A lot of the anatomy is sufficiently detailed at this point, even at the molecular biology level, that such a construct would actually help the molecular biologists understand where they might have gaps in their own taxonomic efforts to detail every molecule.

I know 100 billion seems like a large number, but you could do it within the construct of something like folding-at-home.