What I think about everything

Genesis

Being now many years into programming I never thought that I would reach this level of knowledge; when I started with this career, one of the first things I wanted to do was a program to think. I have failed, and got back to boards, and failed, and again to the boards, and then you have an idea stuck there, it never leaves, but you think that maybe, maybe, we can have artificial intelligence, but we are not doing it.

I must confess that I'm not interested into learn AI at a University, or talking with the people in the state of the art technology in AI, if I'm going to do this, it has to be a clear idea, without the dust of other ideas... but why? you may say... this because one of my first failures was trying to copy the work of others; I must provide an example of this so you could understand my frustration: mathematical operations are not part of the basic way the brain or a mind works, no, the proto element is: concept.

OK, a computer uses ones and zeros to process, but that is not how the brain works, at least not at a conscious level; meaning that, it could process ones and zeros, but that is not the final function of the brain, a brain or mind later can learn mathematics because we can understand it; sadly this makes us really slow into processing numbers, and that's why machines are better.

The concept

The concept is what you use every day, you take a shower, you use your hands, you talk, you walk, you use a pen to write... oh beautiful concepts... so simple... so complex... If I write an AI, it should manage that, learning concepts.

Beyonds this, I thought about the uses of this tech; thought about a system to manage traffic lights, all the machines conscious about the others and the amount of cars and people in the street; that doesn't mean that the machines know who you are, but that you are there, and with rules, they could manage the traffic in a more efficient way than a human, think about it as the Deep Blue of the streets.

The Planets

Oh! the planets, I've thought about this concept so many times! and then again back to the boards... except a few day ago, when it hit me like a freight train. What I was (am) trying to do is teaching a piece of software how to recognize planets, meaning that, I fill the program with data, I ask questions and the program manages to solve the question without guide, only using the current and basic information provided; this program does not exists (yet) because I run it in my mind, if the test works, I write the code, but until then, it means that it's failing, and failing hard.

OK, lets say the system knows three planets, Earth, Mars and Jupiter; if I ask: tell me the planets you know? then the conscious program would ask: what's a planet? a total fair question, but that implies that I have to feed her with more basic concepts, what's space, what's gravity, what's the Sun, orbits, rocks, asteroids and beyond... never ending... is it? OK, lets say that it knows what a planet is, so I ask, which is the red planet? that means that it would ask what is a color, very basic question, even a child knows what red is... do you? do you actually know what a color is... seriously, define color, I'll wait.

Color

So there I was, in the bus, road to my work... and I could not answer what the concept of color is... I thought: a color is that difference we see in objects, we know a color is a color because there are other colors. But I wasn't sure, so I look up to it on the internet... Wikipedia said (in the spanish version) that it is a perception... which means nothing to me, that is a concept that can not be subdivided... and there it was, the most basic concepts are the ones that we feel with our senses... when we are able to discern at least two of them... so binary... so amazing, so simple, so complex, how I never saw that?

It will think as you think

I fiends of mine told me

- It will think like you
- yes.
- It will be flawed like you.
- yes
- But it would be smarter than you
- that's the idea

Beautiful nonexistent AI, it makes me think that, it would be so similar to me, in image and likeness... so the blasphemy begins... ideas that mix with others that I thought in earlier years, and then confirmed by recent news.

This is my everything

I have this tendency to search for patterns, I'm very fast connecting ideas if I'm interested in them, don't confuse me with someone with Apophenia, I'm in another level of weird.

Religion, Atheism, AI, God, software, reality, Quantum Mechanics, The Matrix, this universe, other universes, parallel universes, you and I, items that share concepts, ideas, all that I can relate.

Here we have, this hypothetical AI, made to my image and likeness, so godlike which I'm not, but then I recall my ideas about this universe being fake, that we are some sort of simulation, a really advanced simulation, and then God, is he or she or it real? I can not doubt that a system needs a programmer a Divine Programmer that starts all, and then that one article I read about the universe being flat, a sort of holographic projection at the end of the universe... we certainly are not real... are we? are we a simulation? and then the Religion... God created you, to his image and likeness... how could this be possible? only if the have the mind patterns of God in our brain, because we are machines, we are a software in a giant computer that we can not understand, because the system is limited, as the speed of light, as the amount of graphics in a computer running per clock tick... and then the Atheist, scientists at heart, devouring themselves into the idea that there is no one there; don't get me wrong, I don't like atheists and religious people by equal, both never stop speaking about God... oh the irony implied... but you want to hear a pattern? it's not going to happen now, or soon, if the science proves that this is a simulation, suddenly, Atheist and Religion will have a lot in common.