Table Of ContentSUPER-INTELLIGENT
MACHINES
SUPER·I NTELLIGENT
MACHINES
Bill Hibbard
University of Wisconsin at Madison
Madison, Wisconsin
Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hi bbard, Bi ll.
Super-intelligent machineslBill Hibbard.
p. cm.
lncludes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4613-5227-3 ISBN 978-1-4615-0759-8 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-4615-0759-8
1. Artificial intelligence. 2. Computers. 3. Machine learning. I. Title.
Q335 .H53 2001
006.3-dc21
2002073080
ISBN 978-1-4613-5227-3
©2002 Springer Science+Business Media New York
Origina11y published by Kluwer AcademiclPlenum Publishers in 2002
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1s t edition 2002
10987654321
A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
Ali rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording, or otherwise,
without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied
specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive
use by the purchaser of the work
PREFACE
We all see the acceleration of technological change, and many of us
feel it in our lives. Will it eventually slow down, or will it continue until it
drives us all mad? This book is my prediction of how technological
acceleration will eventually resolve itself in a fundamental change in the
nature of human life. We are only a few generations away from an event
with impact equal to the first appearance of humans on earth. The idea of the
event will seem distasteful to many and the actual event certainly poses real
dangers. But it will also be a great opportunity. If done right, it will be a real
blessing to those who experience it. I wish I could be one of them, and am
writing this book as an indirect way to participate in the event.
Richard Wagner was an anti-Semite admired by the Nazis. But
many decent people admire his operas for their musical beauty and drama,
and I have chosen to illustrate my ideas by their symmetry with his operas.
If this offends you, please forgive me.
Many of the notes in this book include references to World Wide
Web pages. It is possible that some of these pages may no longer be
available when you want to view them. However, you should be able to find
all of them in the WayBackMachine web archive at http://www.archive.orgl.
Thank you to A. 1. Hibbard, Hal Snyder, Josh Snyder, Michael
Bottinger, Ugo Taddei, Grant Petty, Bob Norton, Sandy Schink, John
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vi Super-Intelligent Machines
Moore, Jim Green, Dave Allen, John Benson, Bob Krauss, Brian Osborne
and the editors and reviewers at Kluwer AcademiclPlenum Publishers for
reviewing drafts and other help with this book.
CONTENTS
1. Gotterdiimmerung ............................................................................ 1
Part I
Humans Will Create Super-Intelligent Machines
2. The Basics of Machine Intelligence ................................................... 7
3. Computers as Tools ........................................................................ 15
4. Arguments Against the Possibility of Machine Intelligence ............. 27
5. The Current State of the Art in Machine Intelligence ...................... .41
6. Neuroscience .................................................................................. 79
7. Dawn of the Gods ........................................................................... 99
Part II
Super-Intelligent Machines Must Love All Humans
8 Good God, Bad God ..................................................................... 113
9. Brain Engineering ......................................................................... 133
10. Current Public Policy for Information Technology ........................ 145
11. Public Education and ControL ..................................................... 155
12. Visions of Machine Intelligence .................................................... 165
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viii Super-Intelligent Machines
13. Endings ........................................................................................ 175
Part III
Should Humans Become Super-Intelligent Machines?
14. Current Connections Between Brains and Machines ...................... 185
15. Humans Minds in Machine Brains ................................................ 189
16. Humans Will Want to Become Super-Intelligent Machines ........... 193
17. Super-Intelligent Humans Must Love All Humans ........................ 199
Part IV
Conclusion
18. The Ultimate Engineering Challenge ............................................. 205
19. Inventing God ............................................................................... 209
20. Messages to the Future .................................................................. 213
Bibliography ....................................................................................... 217
Index ................................................................................................... 223
Part I
HUMANS WILL CREATE
SUPER-INTELLIGENT MACHINES
Chapter 1
GOTTERDAMMERUNG
"If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him." -Voltaire
Richard Wagner's four-opera cycle, Der Ring des Nibelungen, is the
story of how the Norse god Wotan tried to save his world by creating a
human hero with free will who could do things that Wotan could not.l But
by creating free humans Wotan ensured that, in the final scene of
Gotterdammerung, the Norse gods were destroyed by fIre in Valhalla and
the world passed to human control.
In reality the Norse gods were destroyed by knowledge. Or more
precisely, when people began to know how nature works they ceased to
believe in the Norse gods and other ancient explanations that were
incompatible with that knowledge. And they had confidence in their
knowledge because they could use it to control the world.
There is still a place for religious belief outside of scientific
knowledge. For example, science does not offer an explanation of why
anything exists at all. The arbitrariness of existence is profoundly disturbing
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B. Hibbard, Super-Intelligent Machines
© Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers 2002
2 Super-Intelligent Machines
to many people, including myself. This existential void is a motive for
modern religious belief. Similarly, while science can explain how one
species evolves into another, it does not yet offer a good explanation of how
life first evolved from inanimate molecules. This miracle of life is also a
motive for modern religious belief. God is offered as the creator of existence
and of life.
There is a knowledge gap between our subjective experience of our
minds, and our scientific understanding of our brains. As science unravels
mental behavior in terms of physical brain processes, it is difficult for some
people to accept that their experience of consciousness can have a physical
explanation, no matter how complex. These people fill the gap between their
minds and brains by religious belief that consciousness resides in a soul
outside the physical world. .
But we do not require religion to accept each other's consciousness.
We know that other people are conscious based on our emotional
connections with them. We could say this gap in scientific knowledge is
filled by emotional knowledge. Does anyone really doubt that their spouse,
their children or their parents have minds similar to their own?
Science gradually answers more and more of our questions. There
are serious efforts to explain how life evolved from inanimate molecules,
and to explain the physical basis for consciousness. Some physicists even
toy with explanations for existence itself. The sense of the inevitable success
of science leads many people to abandon religion altogether, and instead
place their faith in science.
However, a critical event in the progress of scientific knowledge is
imminent. Science will provide a physical explanation and demonstration of
consciousness by building a conscious machine. We will accept it as
conscious because of our emotional connection with it. The fundamental
instrument of creating knowledge, the human mind, will be known and
subject to human control. I think this will happen within about 100 years,
and some computer scientists think it will happen sooner. Shortly after this
event it will be possible to construct machines with much greater than
human intelligence.
Our ability to understand the mind of a super-intelligent machine
will be similar to our pets' ability to understand our own minds. And the
knowledge gap that has been so steadily shrinking over the centuries will
start to grow. Not in the sense that scientific knowledge will shrink, but in
the sense that people will have less understanding of their world because of
their intimate relationship with a mind beyond their comprehension. Our
