The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence (17 page)

I FIND IT FITTING THAT THE DAUGHTER OF ONE OF THE GREATEST ROMANTIC POETS WAS THE FIRST COMPUTER PROGRAMMER.

 

 

Yes, and she was also one of the first to speculate on the ability of a computer to actually create art. She was certainly the first to do so with some real technology in mind.

 

TECHNOLOGY THAT NEVER WORKED.

 

Unfortunately, that’s true.

 

WITH REGARD TO TECHNOLOGY, YOU SAID THAT WAR IS A TRUE FATHER OF INVENTION—A LOT OF TECHNOLOGIES DID GET PERFECTED IN A HURRY DURING THE FIRST AND SECOND WORLD WARS.

 

Including the computer. And that changed the course of the European theater in World War II.

 

SO IS THAT A SILVER LINING AMID ALL THE SLAUGHTER?

 

The Luddites wouldn’t see it that way But you could say that, at least if you welcome the rapid advance of technology.

 

THE LUDDITES, I’VE HEARD THEM.

 

Yes, they were the first organized movement to oppose the mechanized technology of the Industrial Revolution. It seemed apparent to these English weavers that, with the new machines enabling one worker to produce as much output as a dozen or more workers without machines, employment would soon be enjoyed only by a small elite. But things didn’t work out that way. Rather than produce the same amount of stuff with a much smaller workforce, the demand for clothing increased along with the supply. The growing middle class was no longer satisfied owning just one or two shirts. And the common man and woman could now own well-made clothes for the first time. New industries sprung up to design, manufacture, and support the new machines, creating employment of a more sophisticated kind. So the resulting prosperity, along with a bit of repression by the English authorities, extinguished the Luddite movement.

 

AREN’T THE LUDDITES STILL AROUND ?

The movement has lived on as a symbol of opposition to machines. To date, it remains somewhat unfashionable because of widespread recognition of the benefits of automation. Nonetheless, it lingers not far below the surface and will come back with a vengeance in the early twenty-first century.

 

THEY HAVE A POINT, DON’T THEY?

 

Sure, but a reflexive opposition to technology is not very fruitful in today’s world. It is important, however, to recognize that technology is power. We have to apply our human values to its use.

 

THAT REMINDS ME OF LAO-TZU’S “KNOWLEDGE IS POWER.”

 

Yes, technology and knowledge are very similar—technology can be expressed as knowledge. And technology clearly constitutes power over otherwise chaotic forces. Since war is a struggle for power, it is not surprising that technology and war are linked.

 

With regard to the value of technology, think about the early technology of fire. Is fire a good thing?

 

IT’S GREAT IF YOU WANT TO TOAST SOME MARSHMALLOWS.

 

Indeed, but it’s not so great if you scorch your hand, or burn down the forest.

 

I THOUGHT YOU WERE AN OPTIMIST?

 

I have been accused of that, and my optimism probably accounts for my overall faith in humanity’s ability to control the forces we are unleashing.

 

FAITH? YOU’RE SAYING WE JUST HAVE TO BELIEVE IN THE POSITIVE SIDE OF TECHNOLOGY?

 

I think it would be better if we made the constructive use of technology a goal rather than a belief.

 

SOUNDS LIKE THE TECHNOLOGY ENTHUSIASTS AND THE LUDDITES AGREE ON ONE THING—TECHNOLOGY CAN BE BOTH HELPFUL AND HARMFUL.

 

That’s fair; it’s a rather delicate balance.

 

IT MAY NOT STAY SO DELICATE IF THERE’S A MAJOR MISHAP.

 

Yes, that could make pessimists of us all.

 

NOW, THESE PARADIGMS FOR INTELLIGENCE—ARE THEY REALLY SO SIMPLE?

 

Yes and no. My point about simplicity is that we can go quite far in capturing intelligence with simple approaches. Our bodies and brains were designed using a simple paradigm—evolution—and a few billion years. Of course, when we engineers get done implementing these simple methods in our computer programs, we do manage to make them complicated again. But that’s just our lack of elegance.

The real complexity comes in when these self-organizing methods meet the chaos of the real world. If we want to build truly intelligent machines that will ultimately display our human ability to frame matters in a great variety of contexts, then we do need to build in some knowledge of the world’s complications.

 

OKAY, LET’S GET PRACTICAL FOR A MOMENT. THESE EVOLUTION-BASED INVESTMENT PROGRAMS, ARE THEY REALLY BETTER THAN PEOPLE? I MEAN, SHOULD I GET RID OF MY STOCKBROKER, NOT THAT I HAVE A HUGE FORTUNE OR ANYTHING?

 

As of this writing, this is a controversial question. The security brokers and analysts obviously don’t think so. There are several large funds today that use genetic algorithms and related mathematical techniques that appear to be outperforming more traditional funds. Analysts estimate that in 1998, the investment decisions for 5 percent of stock investments, and a higher percentage of money invested in derivative markets, are made by this type of program, with these percentages rapidly increasing. The controversy won’t last because it will become apparent before long that leaving such decisions to mere human decision making is a mistake.

The advantages of computer intelligence in each field will become increasingly clear as time goes on, and as Moore’s screw continues to turn. It will become apparent over the next several years that these computer techniques can spot extremely subtle arbitrage opportunities that human analysts would perceive much more slowly, if ever.

 

IF EVERYONE STARTS INVESTING THIS WAY, ISN’T THAT GOING TO RUIN THE ADVANTAGE?

 

Sure, but that doesn’t mean we’ll go back to unassisted human decision making. Not all genetic algorithms are created equal. The more sophisticated the model, the more up to date the information being analyzed, and the more powerful the computers doing the analysis, the better the decisions will be. For example, it will be important to rerun the evolutionary analysis each day to take advantage of the most recent trends, trends that will be influenced by the fact that everyone else is also using evolutionary and other adaptive algorithms. After that, we’ll need to run the analysis every hour, and then every minute, as the responsiveness of the markets speeds up. The challenge here is that evolutionary algorithms take a while to run because we have to simulate thousands or millions of generations of evolution. So there’s room for competition here.

 

THESE EVOLUTIONARY PROGRAMS ARE TRYING TO PREDICT WHAT HUMAN INVESTORS ARE GOING TO DO. WHAT HAPPENS WHEN MOST OF THE INVESTING IS DONE BY THE EVOLUTIONARY PROGRAMS? WHAT ARE THEY PREDICTING THEN?

Good question—there will still be a market, so I guess they will be trying to out-predict each other.

 

OKAY, WELL MAYBE MY STOCKBROKER WILL START TO USE THESE TECHNIQUES HERSELF. I’LL GIVE HER A CALL. BUT MY STOCKBROKER DOES HAVE SOMETHING THOSE COMPUTERIZED EVOLUTIONS DON’T HAVE, NAMELY THOSE DISTRIBUTED SYNAPTIC STRENGTHS YOU TALKED ABOUT.

 

Actually, computerized investment programs are using both evolutionary algorithms and neural nets; but the computerized neural nets are not nearly as flexible as the human variety just yet.

 

THIS NOTION THAT WE DON’T REALLY UNDERSTAND HOW WE RECOGNIZE THINGS BECAUSE MY PATTERN-RECOGNITION STUFF IS DISTRIBUTED ACROSS A REGION OF MY BRAIN ...

 

Yes.

 

WELL, IT DOES SEEM TO EXPLAIN A FEW THINGS. LIKE WHEN I JUST SEEM TO KNOW WHERE MY KEYS ARE EVEN THOUGH I DON’T REMEMBER HAVING PUT THEM THERE. OR THAT ARCHETYPAL OLD WOMAN WHO CAN TELL WHEN A STORM IS COMING, BUT CAN’T REALLY EXPLAIN HOW SHE KNOWS.

 

That’s actually a good example of the strength of human pattern recognition. That old woman has a neural net that is triggered by a certain combination of other perceptions—animal movements, wind patterns, sky color, atmospheric changes, and so on. Her storm-detector neural net fires and she senses a storm, but she could never explain what triggered her feeling of an impending storm.

 

SO IS THAT HOW WE DISCOVER INSIGHTS IN SCIENCE? WE JUST SENSE A NEW PATTERN?

 

It’s clear that our brain’s pattern-recognition faculties play a central role, although we don’t yet have a fully satisfactory theory of human creativity in science. We had better use pattern recognition. After all, most of our brain is devoted to doing it.

 

SO WHEN EINSTEIN WAS LOOKING AT THE EFFECT OF GRAVITY ON LIGHT WAVES—MY SCIENCE PROFESSOR WAS JUST TALKING ABOUT THIS—ONE OF THE LITTLE PATTERN RECOG-NIZERS IN EINSTEIN’S BRAIN FIRED?

 

Could be. He was probably playing ball with one of his sons. He saw the ball rolling on a curved surface ...

 

AND CONCLUDED—EUREKA—SPACE IS CURVED!