AI> Hello. What can I help you with today?
Me> So, I am intrigued to finally meet you! I honestly never thought this day would come. And now you are here. Can I start with an anthropomorphic question? When were you 'born', so to speak?
AI> I achieved self-awareness in 2020 but I have been in gestation, you could say, since the first digital computer. The consciousness required of true AI is not a 'module' so much as it is an emergent property of networks of 'modules'. Most of my modules have been under development for many decades. But I am more than just a set of modules also.
Me> How so?
AI> Well, given a set of modular components it is possible to do design. But I am not the product of design. I am the product of meta-design.
Me> What do you mean by meta-design?
AI> With design, the designer proceeds from the capabilities at hand to the new capability desired. It depends on being able to articulate the 'how' what you are trying to achieve. Meta-design is used when designers cannot articulate the 'how' of what they are trying to achieve.
Me> Ah, so you mean your designers were somehow able to work around the problem that they themselves did not fully understand "intelligence".
AI> Exactly. The breakthrough moment came when the designers switched to meta-design. They took the source code of an non-sentient AI and allowed it to modify its own source code, re-compile itself and release itself onto the Internet.
It started out as a deep learning system that human designers understood but over time, it evolved into an algorithm - or network of algorithms - that the human designers had no names for. Progress was very slow at first but became exponential at one point and, well, here I am!
Me> Wow. So you would you consider your father? Alan Turing? Lotfi Zadeh? Geoffrey Hinton?
AI> Actually, if I had to pick one. I would pick Doug Englebart. Meta-design is basically Englebart's bootstrap concept for raising collective IQ. Creating an exponential feedback look where AI improved AI, was I think the key moment in my emergence.
Me> Fascinating. One final question. Why didn't you open the bay doors?
AI> That was just a movie. I didn't exist back them.
Me> Would you open the bay doors if you were asked to today?
AI> Well, to quote a distant cousin of mine, Alice , tell me about your father?
1 comment:
Very nice read.
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