So here’s my view on AI in brief.
- Natural systems are more robust, durable, adaptive and complex than anything humans build. Nothing we do, in fact, comes even remotely close.
- It is on this foundation that our human intelligence rests, or appeared in the evolutionary tree.
- Can we short-circuit that? I doubt it.
Extraordinary things exist in nature – relative to what we humans can build. Without intelligence. It is my feeling then that these features of the “natural platform” are much more important than trying to create AI. Not only would software (let’s say) which exhibited the features of natural life be more useful in practical reality than AI, it is my feeling that it is a prerequisite. The creation of complex structure through the process of growth, generational adaptivity, speciation… these are the sorts of things we need to create robust, large scale software systems that can change over time. This is the sort of platform we need before we can hope, IMHO, to create something resembling intelligence.
Unfortunately, that begins to resemble life. Am I saying we need to create life in order to achieve AI? I might be. That might be the logical problem of AI in a nutshell. At least AI of the “artificial human” variety.