Intrinsitivity

Penn engineers design computer memory in nanoscale form that retrieves data 1,000 times faster

Scientists from the University of Pennsylvania have developed nanowires capable of storing computer data for 100,000 years and retrieving that data a thousand times faster than existing portable memory devices such as Flash memory and micro-drives, all using less power and space than current memory technologies.

The Singularity Summit 2007 – Qoutes From Prominent Thinkers – Stephen Hawking

Some people say that computers can never show true intelligence, whatever that may be. But it seems to me that if very complicated chemical molecules can operate in humans to make them intelligent, then equally complicated electronic circuits can also make computers act in an intelligent way. And if they are intelligent, they can presumably design computers that have even greater complexity and intelligence.

Singularity Summit 2007: Machine morality | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com

Along with artificial intelligences comes the notion of machine morality, attempting to view intelligent machines with the best of human values. Machine morality–also know as friendly AI, artificial morality, roboethics and computational ethics–is an new field without much ground cultivated, according to Wendell Wallach, Lecturer at Yale Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics, who was speaking at the Singularity Summit 2007.

For levity, I would now like to input my two cents into the store of responses to Wallach’s four core questions.

Do we need artificial morality agents, and if so when and for what?

A traffic light can be said to employ artificial intelligence, in the sense that it adjusts its decisions based on ever-changing traffic patterns. AI is essentially computation plus adaptation. Is a traffic light making a moral decision? I think so, if you consider that it answers the question of how a group of people should act in a given situation based on the available evidence and the agreed social rules governing it. Isn’t it wrong, or one might say, immoral to run a red light and cut someone off?

So, we already have AI that makes ethical decisions for us. The real question is, When and for what should machines not make ethical decisions? It is one thing to forget how to write in cursive or calculate a complex equation on paper, but there seems to be a point at which we would not want machines making decisions about our lives.

Do we want computers to be ethical?

Since computers are already making ethical decisions, it follows that they should continue to do so, but within certain, again, unresolved, limitations.

Whose morality and what morality?

Most people eat meat. They could care less about quality of life for a juicy steak. Most people think they need meat to survive, so they do what they think they must and they eat meat, despite whatever industry-standard cruelty befell the portion of dead animal on their plates.

In the same way, most, if not all, people use computers solely to serve their immediate computational–and, increasingly, noncomputational–needs and desires. So, assuming that the majority will continue to see computers as means to achieve personal ends, it stands to reason that the question of "whose morality" is answered with "human only."

How can we make ethics computable?

Again, it seems that we already have made simple ethical situations, like traffic lights, computable. However, aside from the ethical issue of when to not let a machine govern our lives, I also wonder when we will have the computational capability to manage the required psychological and physical variables needed to make complex ethical decisions, like when and if to have a baby.