Isaac Asimov
Article
Isaac Asimov is a recurring person in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between April 22, 2021 and September 18, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as “to quote Asimov, “That’s funny""; “Isaac Asimov wrote some books about the Spacers”; “Imagine trying to convince Isaac Asimov that you’re 100% certain the AI that wrote this has nothing resembling true intelligence”. It most often appears alongside Eliezer Yudkowsky, ACX, African Gray Parrots.
Metadata
- Category: People
- Mention count: 3
- Issue count: 3
- First seen: April 22, 2021
- Last seen: September 18, 2024
Appears In
- Your Book Review: Are We Smart Enough To Know How Smart Animals Are?
- Highlights From The Comments On The Repugnant Conclusion And WWOTF
- Sakana, Strawberry, and Scary AI
Related Pages
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- Eliezer Yudkowsky (2 shared issues)
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- ACX (1 shared issues)
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- African Gray Parrots (1 shared issues)
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- AGI (1 shared issues)
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- AI-risk (1 shared issues)
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- AIDER (1 shared issues)
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- Ajeya Cotra (1 shared issues)
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- Alan Turing (1 shared issues)
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- Alexander Berger (1 shared issues)
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- AlphaFold (1 shared issues)
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- AlphaGeometry (1 shared issues)
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- America (1 shared issues)
External Links
Source Context
Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.
...of hours of careful observation. Put that observation together with a thorough understanding of relevant theory (like evolution), and when a professional scientist says, to quote Asimov, "That's funny", we likely have a good candidate to design a robust experiment for. Ethology also demonstrates the importance of interrelating different methods of gathering data. Field...
Isaac Asimov wrote some books about the Spacers, far-future humans who live the lives of old-timey aristocrats with thousands of robot servants each. Suppose we imagine a civilization of super-Spacers with only one human per thousand star systems - even though all of these star systems are inhabited by robots who have built beautiful monuments and are doing good scientific and creative work (which the humans know about and appreciate). Overall there are only five thousand humans in the galaxy, but galactic civilization is super-impressive and getting better every day. Sometimes some people die and others are born, but it’s always around five thousand.
Imagine trying to convince Isaac Asimov that you’re 100% certain the AI that wrote this has nothing resembling true intelligence, thought, or consciousness, and that it’s not even an interesting philosophical question (source) Now we hardly dare suggest milestones like these anymore. Maybe if an AI can write a publishable scientific paper all on its own? But Sakana can write crappy not-quite-publishable papers. And surely in a few years it will get a little better, and one of its products will sneak over a real journal’s publication threshold, and nobody will be convinced of anything. If an AI can invent a new technology? Someone will train AI on past technologies, have it generate a million new ideas, have some kind of filter that selects them, and produce a slightly better jet engine, and everyone will say this is meaningless. If the same AI can do poetry and chess and math and music at the same time? I think this might have already happened, I can’t even keep track.
Inline links: source