Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.
-Blaise Pascal

There is a certain kind of scientist who creates confusion instead of understanding, who invents problems instead of solutions, who conceals the truth instead of revealing it, who complicates things instead of simplifying them. His vague papers are full of complicated words or equations, although he has found out nothing. You might call him cheater, impostor, bluffer, or swindler (in German “Schwindler”).

Some scientists explain the most complicated things in very simple words. Other scientists explain the most simple things in very complicated words. At the end of this scale, you can find the extremes: the genius and the impostor. The genius explains everything with nearly nothing, the impostor explains nothing by making everything unclear.

The scientific impostor acts like magician. He confuses the audience. He pretends to be able to do s.th, and he hides perfectly that he is not able to do it. He works with illusions. He creates a kind of “reality distortion field”. There is only one science where it is legitimate to distort reality: Marketing. Marketing is an exception. Here you have to distort reality to convince customers to buy a product. In all other sciences, scientists learn to tell the truth. They should support understanding, not impede it.

Scientific impostors hide themselves behind complicated

• word-monsters in Sociology and Philosophy
• formulas and equations in Physics and Mathematics
• frameworks and formalisms in Computer science and Engineering

All they really do is inventing acronyms and buzzwords. This is where they good at. They are acronym finders and buzzword specialists. They know when and where you have to use what buzzword to achieve a maximal effect. They know what kind of buzzwords are out of date. They know how to produce something which looks real, although it is not.

There are many impostors and air merchants at the universities. In German you call them “Schwindler” or “Schaumschläger”. All they do is producing hot air and inventing new buzzwords. They are a bit like intelligent bots (ELIZA etc.), which never will achieve real intelligence, they only produce a perfect illusion of intelligence. Likewise, Schaumschläger will never produce any real progress to science, only a perfect illusion of progress. They are good in selling themselves, in getting jobs and grants, and in pretending to be important. Apparently you can not get a grant or a job as a professor if you admit that it is impossible to find out something new. But if you pretend that you can, and if you are good in self-marketing, you might be successful. This is the reason why impostors are very common in areas where it is very hard to find out anything new. In a sense, they are an adaptation to fields where it is nearly impossible to find out new things. Imposture is an adaptation to domains where it is impossible to achieve a goal with honesty and truth. In general, imposture, fraud and lies are adaptations to situations where honesty and truth will not lead to a success.

An underground economy is an adaptation to a weak economy, to a place at the edge of economy where it starts to fail. Underground economy – including black markets, prostitution and drug dealing – is an adaptation to failure of the economy to cover basic needs of the population. It comes into play if there is a strong demand for a certain good, but no official or legal supplier.

An underground economy can be the result or unintended consequence of a prohibition or ban. In this case, the demand growths endlessly, while the supply is officially zero. The prohibition of alcohol in the United States is an example. Prostitution and drug dealing are two examples where the is a never ending demand. They reflect people’s basic need for sex and drugs.

Drug dealing is an area which is not well covered by the global economy. It does not allow the production of drugs, and it prohibits their trade for good reasons. There would be even a bigger problem if more people could afford to buy drugs. It is not uncommon for children of stars and rich people to have a drug problem. The main consumers can be found where the economy is strong – among the winners of capitalism, the rich people. The main producers can be found where the economy is weak – among the losers of capitalism, the poor people. A successful drug market can of course turn the drug consumers into poor losers, and the drug producers into rich winners. However, all this takes place at the edge of society and economy.

The result is the emergence of an underground economy to service the rich where the global economy is really weak: in places like Afghanistan. In this poorly developed region, the drug market is nearly the only source of economic growth. It is one of the few sources of economic activity and prosperity in an otherwise barren wilderness. And it is the source of many other problems, because it is also a major source of funding for the Taliban and local drug lords. The modern Taliban act like a private army for a kind of drug cartel. In a shadow economy, cartels take the place of organizations and companies. Afghanistan is poor, there are no resources, no attractions for tourists, no possibilities to escape poverty – except drugs. Penalties for possession, use, production or trade of illegal drugs are low in Afghanistan. Even if they were higher, the state and the police are weak. The government does not even manage to get rid of the opium fields. Therefore the drug market is a key problem in Afghanistan. There will be no peace until this problem is solved. It is a global problem which cannot be solved because the origin lies deep in the western culture itself: the demand for drugs among the rich and famous. Even if the drug market is completely banned from Afghanistan, it will pop up in another poorly developed country – for instance Yemen or Somalia.

(The cocaine picture is from Wikipedia)

..Physics 101..

..Computer Science 101..

.. and Business 101

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So yes, we will be able to create an AI, but it will be hard. Despite all the difficulties, eventually we will be able to construct an AI which develops a similar form of self-consciousness than we have – but it certainly will be as confused as we are about it. It is doubtful that it will be much more intelligent or “radically super-intelligent” than any human (or group of humans) could ever be. There will be no “explosion if intelligence” as long as the AI speaks the same language, experiences the same worlds, and explores the same universe at the same resolution. Humans take 18-20 years of learning to grow up, and the pool of human knowledge available and accessible on the internet is quite large. Our thoughts may be contained in plain text, simple
“one-dimensional strings of code”, but they are not one-dimensional.

Intelligence depends on experience, learning and training. Intelligent software or intelligent machines, like humans, will need to be trained in particular domains of knowledge and expertise. This takes time and deliberate attention to the kind of knowledge you want the machine to have. If intelligent means just being flexible, adaptive and attentive to change, is there a stronger form of intelligence than a “blank slate” with absolute formability and plasticity, which can be found in an agent which is constructed and formed by its environment?

Everyone of us speeks at least one language, the native language. Some may speak clearer and faster than others, but basically all people are able to formulate any idea which they want to express. It is hard to invent radically new metaphors or words for daily life because people have done this for hundreds of years. Therefore even if an AI finally understands language, it will be difficult to come up with completely new metaphors, analogies or words for the same reason. If machines will understand the world using the same methods humans do, then they will face similar difficulties and problems. But an AI of the future may have access to different languages, to different virtual worlds and computational universes that are completely distinct from ours. It may handle a greater amount of information at a greater speed and store and combine a much larger number of patterns. Then it may indeed produce ideas which exceed the limits of our imagination.

If a technological singularity will happen, then probably more as a result of a major transition in evolution, or in the way of Koch and Tononi, and less as a point of exponential increase in intelligence. According to Koch and Tononi, you need to be a single integrated entity with a large repertoire of highly differentiated states to be conscious: ideally a universe of states mapped and compressed on a single point, which resembles the notion of a mathematical singularity. Before an agent is able to recognize itself it must be able to roughly understand a world. During this adaptation process, it has to learn to represent all the basic structures and dynamic processes, until a complete internal universe of neural assemblies has been built up. In one world our self is a single agent, in the other world our self is a complete universe. Self-consciousness is the confusion which arises if we try to bring the one point of view into agreement with the other, the chaos which results if different worlds collide. In this sense, each of us is a small singularity, a small exceptional 1/x point where different universes meet and worlds collide.

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The neuron picture is a Flickr picture from Scott Ingram Photography

“Curiosity is the lust of the mind.”
-Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)

We had Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Artificial Life (ALife). What comes next? Maybe Artificial Curiosity. The tremendous computational power of a human brain comes from years of learning and adaptation. Therefore programming all necessary knowledge into computers seems to be hopeless. The only hope is a general purpose learning algorithm. Contrary to computers and robots today, we are all equipped with an inquisitive mind, with the drive to explore and understand the world. At least as children.

Many grown ups have lost not only the happiness and innocence of childhood, they have also lost their natural curiosity. Children are endlessly curious and ask questions without end, they are naturally imaginative, innovative and open to worlds of possibilities. They are insatiably curious because it is fun to learn new things: to make new connections and to gain new insights is very pleasant. It is the same pleasure that scientists love about their jobs: the pleasure of finding things out. Children are like little researchers. For a child, there is always more to know. Some people stay curious for their life, for scientists it is their profession: universities are citadels for the pursuit of curiosity.

An autonomous agent with artificial curiosity would be childlike, a bit like an artificial scientist: it would enjoy insights and like the mysterious, i.e. it would like research and exploration, continuously investigating and questioning the world. Would an agent which shows artificial curiosity also be bored? Or be fascinated if there is something completely new and very interesting? How to be childlike is a good question for grown-ups, but it is also a question which leads maybe one day to true AI and ALife.