{"id":89562,"date":"2019-04-16T10:02:40","date_gmt":"2019-04-16T17:02:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/04\/is-superintelligence-impossible"},"modified":"2019-04-16T10:02:40","modified_gmt":"2019-04-16T17:02:40","slug":"is-superintelligence-impossible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/04\/is-superintelligence-impossible","title":{"rendered":"Is Superintelligence Impossible?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/is-superintelligence-impossible2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>David Chalmers is University Professor of Philosophy and Neural Science and co-director of the Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness at New York University. He is best known for his work on consciousness, including his formulation of the \u201chard problem\u201d of consciousness; Daniel C. Dennett is University Professor and Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy and director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University. He is the author of a dozen books, including Consciousness Explained, and, most recently, From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds; John Brockman, moderator, is a cultural impresario whose career has encompassed the avant-garde art world, science, books, software, and the Internet. He is the author of By The Late John Brockman and The Third Culture; editor of the Edge Annual Question book series, and Possible Minds: 25 Ways of Looking at AI.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<blockquote><p> [ED. NOTE: On Saturday, March 9th, more than 1200 people jammed into Pioneer Works in Red Hook, Brooklyn, for a conversation between two of our greatest philosophers, David Chalmers and Daniel C. Dennett: \u201cIs Superintelligence Impossible?\u201d the next event in Edge\u2019s ongoing \u201cPossible Minds Project.\u201d Watch the video, listen to the EdgeCast, read the transcript. Thanks to physicist, artist, author, and Edgie Janna Levin, Director of Sciences at Pioneer Works, who presented the event with the support of Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation initiative. \u2014JB] <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><em>Somebody said that the philosopher is the one who says, \u201cWe know it\u2019s possible in practice, we\u2019re trying to figure out if it\u2019s possible in principle.\u201d Unfortunately, philosophers sometimes spend too much time worrying about logical possibilities that are importantly negligible in every other regard. So, let me go on the record as saying, yes, I think that conscious AI is possible because, after all, what are we? We\u2019re conscious. We\u2019re robots made of robots made of robots. We\u2019re actual. In principle, you could make us out of other materials. Some of your best friends in the future could be robots. Possible in principle, absolutely no secret ingredients, but we\u2019re not going to see it. We\u2019re not going to see it for various reasons. One is, if you want a conscious agent, we\u2019ve got plenty of them around and they\u2019re quite wonderful, whereas the ones that we would make would be not so wonderful. <strong>\u2014Daniel C. Dennett<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>One of our questions here is, is superintelligence possible or impossible? I\u2019m on the side of possible. I like the possible, which is one reason I like John\u2019s theme, \u201cPossible Minds.\u201d That\u2019s a wonderful theme for thinking about intelligence, both natural and artificial, and consciousness, both natural and artificial. \u2026 The space of possible minds is absolutely vast\u2014all the minds there ever have been, will be, or could be. Starting with the actual minds, I guess there have been a hundred billion or so humans with minds of their own. Some pretty amazing minds have been in there. Confucius, Isaac Newton, Jane Austen, Pablo Picasso, Martin Luther King, on it goes. But still, those hundred billion minds put together are just the tiniest corner of this space of possible minds. <strong>\u2014David Chalmers<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p><em><strong>__<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.edge.org\/conversation\/david_chalmers-daniel_c_dennett-on-possible-minds-philosophy-and-ai\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><\/p>\n<div style=\"clear:both;\">Read more<\/div>\n<p><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>David Chalmers is University Professor of Philosophy and Neural Science and co-director of the Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness at New York University. He is best known for his work on consciousness, including his formulation of the \u201chard problem\u201d of consciousness; Daniel C. Dennett is University Professor and Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":499,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[418,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-internet","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/499"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89562\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}