by Richard Hemingway

Created on: April 15, 2009

I recently wrote an article on here on how strong artificial intelligence was impossible. I argued the halting problem, the turning test, John Searle's "Chinese Room Thought Experiment" and a zen like query called qualia. I don't want to rewrite all of it - that's not why I am writing this - you are all free to read it. At the end of the article, I wrote, that if strong AI came about in my life time, I would shoot myself in the foot. That's how sure I was. Let's just say, I'm not getting my gun out just yet. I'm still certain that a computer will never replicate human intelligence. But! I did unearth something I think you will all find to be quite interesting.

What I am about to write on, is a form of artificial intelligence in the sense it is natural intelligence, enhanced by man. When we are children, we all go through what is called, "the critical period." During this time we learn things effortlessly. External stimuli competes for our attention and whatever dominates, the child focuses on and learns about with little to no effort. When we get older - especially if you are like me, and can sometimes be lazy - learning requires work and energy. It takes the force of conscious will to focus. The reason that learning requires little to no energy for a child going through critical periods is, because the nucleus basalis is always on within the brain.

So, Mike Merzenich took adult rats and stimulated their nucleus basalis with an electrical pulse and kept it on. Then he exposed them to a 9Hz frequency. The rat was given no training or reward, but effortlessly developed a brain map for this new frequency. The 9Hz frequency was given a clear, expanded, neural representation in the rat brain and they were able to increase the neural response time. I just want to be clear, the rat put no real effort into learning anything about the 9Hz frequency.

In short, if we all as humans had microelectrodes in our nucleus basalis, that kept it on all the time, we would be forever trapped in a critical period. We would all be constantly learning, without any real effort, and our neural response time would increase as well. In other words, we would all be geniuses. The closes we would ever see to strong AI would be the increase in pre-existing human intelligence. That's the truth. I don't want to start any conspiracies, but maybe the government and the NSA are already working on these super-intelligent humans. I wouldn't put it passed them, those sneaky little butt holes.

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