AI, The Singularity, and the Limitations of Intelligence

There's a top-notch discussion going on in a recent Winds of Change.NET post about "The Singularity" and what exponential technological growth might mean in the future. There's a ton of good stuff in those discussions, but I wanted to highlight one aspect because it both amused me and struck me as in tune with my own experiences re: intelligence and its limitations.

'Celebrim'...

"In science fiction, S1+ intelligences almost invariably 'uplift' themselves into some sort of godlike being a short time after they are created. I think that this narrative of the superbeing is based on our poor understanding of the limitations of intelligence. It's not at all clear to me that all problems are ammendable to computation. It's not at all clear to me that all problems are solvable. In fact, in computer science you learn that some problems are provably unsolvable. Now, I have no doubt that an S1 intelligence will be able to do fantastic and startling things, but exactly what that will look like I wouldn't want to speculate. In my science fiction story, I would imagine people building a S1 computer and asking it some wicked problem question like, "How do we end world hunger?", and the computer replying, "Wait a minute...You don't know the answer to that question either? That's been baffling me for the last hour and I thought it was just me."

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