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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lizard" data-source="post: 248064" data-attributes="member: 1054">But that's just the point. Humans routinely build machines to do the things we can't.No human could do all the math needed to render a single frame of Quake. No human could search the Internet the way Google can."But those are just basic algorithms, executed trillions of times. There's no creativity!"True. So you might want to look at some of the work being down with self-modifying evolutionary algorithms. Computers are designing circuits which work, but which the programmers of the computer *do not understand*. That is, using evolutionary processes, beginning with an effectively random circuit, the computer can design a circuit which  does the desired task optimally, but do it in a way which no human being ever would. There's no reason to believe that an 'ideal society' could not be designed by a machine, if it had a sufficiently large knowledge base to work from. The fact no one knows what the 'ideal' is does not mean it is unknowable. A computer, free from human prejudices and predilections, might well see radical solutions to problems which no human ever could. The idea that the network of neurons in the human mind is *metaphysically* different from a network of circuits may provide some emotional comfort, but it is unlikely to prove true. Until AI research has advanced much further, no definitive answer is possible.Hell, we already require machines to run our society. Imagine banking, air travel, or traffic control run without machines. There was never a time in human history when we were not dependant on technology. To be human is to be dependant on tools for survival. That's what we are. That's the niche we fill.</blockquote>

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