Peter Norvig: Singularity is in the eye of the beholder
Really interesting transcript, highly recommend it. Regarding this:<p>&gt; Well, what if I do that an infinite number of times, then it&#x27;s no longer a mountain. When does it not become a mountain, right? So we don&#x27;t quite have answers to that.<p>Is interesting how 21st century technologists are basically asking the same questions as Socrates and his disciples were asking ~2500 years ago. If I remember correctly (I last read some Plato about 15 years ago) the example that Socrates gives related to that is one about a table. Is a table with only 3 legs still a table? Probably, many would say. Is a table with only 2 legs still a table. Less probably. Is a table without any legs still a table? Probably not. Is it correct to ask about the <i>idea</i> of a table? i.e. is there such a thing as a table in the abstract? (or a mountain in the abstract, to go back to Norvig&#x27;s example). Plato famously thought that there was such an <i>idea</i>, many other Greek philosophers were a lot more ambivalent about it (with Heraclitus I think the best-known example).<p>What I&#x27;m trying to say is that maybe today&#x27;s engineers should go back to reading some philosophy, not the modern US-version of analytical philosophy which doesn&#x27;t teach anyone almost anything, but all the way back from the Greeks up until the late 19th-early 20th century, maybe that way those engineers would also be more forthcoming in accepting their ethical responsibilities. I personally didn&#x27;t like how Norvig was quick to set aside AI&#x27;s ethical responsibilities, passing the hot potato to the general field of engineering, i.e. to no-one in particular.