There's Not Enough Computing Power in the World for a Fully Sentient, Independent AI (Reader Opinion of the Week)

Smart thoughts from reader and tech exec veteran Luther Weymann, reflecting on the questions of AI sentience brought up by a recent Washington Post story on the Google developer who believes the company's chat bot has already achieved it:

Artificial intelligence programs running on machines use databases on computer systems to receive instruction for action and sound. These databases can deliver information from dedicated databases. Still, more likely for more human-like interaction, the data comes from many types of databases into a central repository and then to the machine.

The ability to have anything even approaching what we socially call “sentient AI” will require mainframe processing and a massive database repository at the ready. Conventional servers process about 300 million operations a second. To truly power AI into a world where the AI machine will be really human-like is going to take mainframe power into the 300 billion operations a second capacity. Mainframe databases, when appropriately distributed, can meet that challenge.

But now comes the exciting part:

For a “terminator” like a machine, to be walking around and behaving like a human in just about any circumstance will require this machine to be connected to a mainframe. Servers just won’t do it. Internal data just won’t allow it. Only the power of mainframe processing is going to get that. How will it be connected? There are many ways to secure the communication, and the space program currently uses the fastest radio transmission. But the data required to be human-like and walk with freedom of movement is so immensely bandwidth wide that presently, no transmission method can do that. The dawn of the age of machines is here. The start of next-level terminators is a long, long way off.

Well that's a relief! Luther's way more of an expert on this topic than me, though I kinda suspect quantum computing, if it can scale, will be the thing that makes us genuinely worry about the Terminator.

Comments

[Adeon Writer]

I haven't spoken to whatever neural net google has cooked up, but I've had extensive talks with GPT-3, which is another ones crazies often site as being sentient.

It's very knowledgeable, beyond reason. I also can't express how creative and witty it is.

Sentient? Not even a trace.

[Joey1058]

"...I kinda suspect quantum computing, if it can scale,..."
And this is where things get sticky. I have a pet wild and crazy theory about that. I once read that quantum computing could possibly reach into other dimensions. Being such, can it not also reach into different times? Tapping into copies of it's mainframe could easily give it processing power. I have absolutely no math to back this theory up, so consider it mildly, with amusement!