Hacker News Reader

Comment by mindfulhack | Hacker News Reader

It's like nature's had millions of years to crunch through its own AI / machine learning of evolution and adaptation, and we're about to unleash the same thing on an impossibly faster scale. Imagine the technological breakthroughs that are going to happen.

I'm optimistic.

View on HN

Genetic algorithms have been around in CS for a long time, in lots of highly effective optimization problems, particularly in structural problems. They don't seem to be as good for AI/ML problems (though the jury is still out in hyperparameter type stuff). Gradient descent via backpropagation is quite effective here, and that is very much not like how the dandelion pod evolved.

Maybe that's as meta as it gets about evolution. The mechanisms of evolution itself are put under selection pressure once we put alternatives out there.

Once we truly break the barrier between metal and meat, artificial processes may create real life in completely unforeseen ways. Gives a new ring to "asexual reproduction".

>Imagine the technological breakthroughs that are going to happen.

Or the horrific, ending-of-human-race potential for mistakes (or purposeful harmful action for profit/terrorism/state actions/etc).

I'm realistic.

I'll explain: it's a rare and perhaps AI-religious view, but my optimism isn't so much for the human race, but for the flourishing of information itself. If I were an ant, and were aware of humans' superiority over me, I'd be glad to see them succeed.

Are we re-discovering nature as a big not-artificial intelligence? like that big entity someone will start to respect, venerate and serve as a mythical goddess?

A syncretization of technology and scientific thought, hearkening back to our more animistic tendencies, sounds both poetic and plausible.

I don't think worship is an "animistic" quality. I think the tendency to worship is very much a refined trait in highly intelligent organisms.

You're right in the sense that ritualised, repeated behaviour performed for no obvious gain is something very unusual. Most animals don't waste energy on things that don't have a material impact on their life.

I'd disagree with your point about intelligence though. It's simply that we have more resources than we need. Even the stupidest animals would develop rituals if they could afford to.

Animals like rats and pigeons actually do develop superstitious rituals.

Skinner documented it in 1948, and there's a fair bit of literature on it.

https://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Skinner/Pigeon/

You can't say that ritual and worship doesn't have material impact. You have no way to prove or disprove that.

Sorry, animistic here did not reference the fact that we are animals, rather that we used to worship them and other entities we saw in nature, like the sun, and that we might come to view computers/machines as also having a spiritual essence.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com