The technological struggles are in some ways beside the point. The financial bet on artificial general intelligence is so big that failure could cause a depression.
If it’s substrate dependent then that just means we’ll build new kinds of hardware that includes whatever mysterious function biological wetware is performing.
Discovering that this is indeed required would involve some world-shaking discoveries about information theory, though, that are not currently in line with what’s thought to be true. And yes, I’m aware of Roger Penrose’s theories about non-computability and microtubules and whatnot. I attended a lecture he gave on the subject once. I get the vibe of Nobel disease from his work in that field, frankly.
If it really turns out to be the case though, microtubules can be laid out on a chip.
Penrose has always had a fertile imagination, and not all his hypotheses have panned out. But he does have the gift that, even when wrong, he’s generally interestingly wrong.
If it’s substrate dependent then that just means we’ll build new kinds of hardware that includes whatever mysterious function biological wetware is performing.
Discovering that this is indeed required would involve some world-shaking discoveries about information theory, though, that are not currently in line with what’s thought to be true. And yes, I’m aware of Roger Penrose’s theories about non-computability and microtubules and whatnot. I attended a lecture he gave on the subject once. I get the vibe of Nobel disease from his work in that field, frankly.
If it really turns out to be the case though, microtubules can be laid out on a chip.
Penrose has always had a fertile imagination, and not all his hypotheses have panned out. But he does have the gift that, even when wrong, he’s generally interestingly wrong.
Imagine that we just end up creating humans the hard, and less fun, way.
I could see us gluing third world fetuses to chips and saying not to question it before reproducing it.