Comment by dmreedy
8 years ago
Perhaps something operational like, "We will marry robots" is measurable. But "outpace human intelligence"? We're arguably incapable of measuring human intelligence right now, much less artificial intelligence, much less comparing between the two. We don't even really have a good operational definition for what the word 'intelligence' means. The closest we have is the Turing Test, which, while pragmatic, does not answer the question, "is this computer smarter than a human", if it answers any question at all.
I'd argue that Kurzweil is selling precisely these kinds of fantasies that cannot be measured.
For a more recent working definition of intelligence, see the work of Marcus Hutter and Shane Legg on Universal Intelligence.
That we don't understand or can't define intelligence is a popular trope not grounded in reality. There are entire scientific and well-established fields that study digital and biological intelligence.
You don't think it will pass the bullshit test if someone claims this computer is more intelligent than humans, and vastly more so ? How is that not measurable or easily taken down?
If we can't do that, I would argue that the computer has indeed become very intelligent, even if we can't define it. Just like beauty: we don't have a good mathematical model for what makes certain humans beautiful, but we all sure know it when we see it.