Transhumanism, is it possible?

First, we must differentiate three different concepts:

a)   Technological singularity: the apparently exponential increase of our technological advances will tend to infinity in a very short time. By then, anything we may want to do, will be possible.

b)  Transhumanism: the amelioration of the human species by means of technology.

c)   Posthumanism: the generation of a new species as a hybrid of human beings and technology.

Conscience, Self-conscience and Artificial Intelligence

Ramón López de Mántaras

In an article published on 3/22/2021, these words are attributed to Josu Bilbao, head of the ICT area of ​​IKERLAN:

In three years, artificial intelligence will make an intelligent dialogue with machines possible.

We have seen many similar predictions since the term Artificial Intelligence (AI) was invented over 60 years ago. In most cases (if not all) those predictions have been too optimistic. Is the same going to happen here?

I have consulted with one of the world's leading experts in the field of the automatic analysis of natural language, a technique used to implement the type of applications referred to in the article I am commenting, and he told me this:

It depends on how "intelligent dialogue" is defined. If it is restricted to a specific domain, for example, controlling your home automation systems using Google Home, that can be done now with a success rate above 70%, while ten years ago it was science fiction. If you want to have a philosophical conversation where your interlocutor understands what he is saying, rather than generating texts from a language model, this is too optimistic.

When can we expect a strong artificial intelligence?

Ramón López de Mántaras

It has been said that man is the only animal that stumbles twice on the same stone. In other words, it is difficult to learn from history (especially when history is not taught) and it is difficult to learn from our own mistakes. This is happening in relation to the field of Artificial Intelligence. In the previous article I mentioned that the creators of the name of this discipline predicted that in 10 years spectacular results would be obtained. Twenty years later, something similar happened when expert systems were invented. In 1990, Ray Kurzweil predicted in his book The Age of Intelligent Machines that strong artificial intelligence would come by the year 2000. In 1999, when he saw that this prediction was not going to be fulfilled, he moved it to 2010 in his new book The age of spiritual machines. As this prediction was not fulfilled either, between 2009 and 2014 he delayed it until 2029. It seems that now he is making less optimistic predictions in this field, and more about immortality, as I mentioned in another article.

Lately the media are announcing the coming of strong artificial intelligence, the real one, in just three years, or at most ten. What do the true experts say about this, those who are doing research on Artificial Intelligence? Let us look at the opinion of Ramón López de Mántaras, director of the Institute for Research in Artificial Intelligence (IIIA, of the Spanish Higher Council for Scientific Research, CSIC). He has received the Donald E. Walker Award for Artificial Intelligence in 2017; the EurAI Distinguished Service Award in 2016; the Spanish National Computing Award in 2012; and the Robert S. Engelmore Award from the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) in 2011. This is what he thinks about all these announcements: