Slashdot Mirror
Online Book About Nano/AI
Jonathan Desp writes: "The book is available here, written by Frank Wayne Poley, in the same line as
Bill Joy's article, "Why the future don't need us." Here you will learn about "Robo sapiens" vs. "Homo sapiens",
Robot as president, Nanotechnology, Nanosystem,Internet robots, Cyborgs, the neurochip, Microsoft, Biomechanics and computing history as well. The book raises some important questions such as:
Technology, is it always good?
"
True good AI will not really do only what Humans have programmed it to do. It would require adaption complex enough to have little relation with the original, enough to be probably unpredictable to the creators (we don't have enough resources to track every neuron deterministically). However, it is true that AI will not have the same human motivations (sex, tribal psychology, etc) which raises the question: How do we know they have any motivations at all? How do we communicate with them? Man communicates with Man because some common experiences and needs are shared, but if few needs and no experiences are shared (one wouldhave to explain the concept of "seeing"* something to any AI), how do we talk with them and realize something, anything, motivates them? For all we know, 42 is a very specific and clear answer to a motivation or state of mind for an AI, we just don't "get it", and never will. * Unless the image recognition algorithm for an AI is built based on the algorithm of the human mind to recognize images, it is hard to imagine they are equivalent to the point of a standard of description. Since the human algorithm for image recognition is hardly known, it is hard to imagine that we can develop an equivalent AI algorithm.
You know, it's about time we starting getting press coverage of these sorts of issues. Computers simply can't be counted on to replace the needed human interaction and human thought processes that have made us the dominant species that we are today.
I hate to sound like a reactionary luddite, but technological advances are simply happening too fast these days. The elite gurus on Mount Ætna may think that it's OK to continue headlong into this madness, but for the rest of the "little people" there are serious reservations.
The "commmon man" has these reservations because he's not blinded by the blinking cathode ray tubes. CRT's have been proven to have a hypnotizing effect on people, and this is a bad sign. There may be no intelligence behind those tubes as yet (we hope), but how long before that remains the case? We're already cloning goats. It's just a matter of time before we are cloning ourselves, too, and then the computers will have access to all the RNA that they need. After that it's Matrix time, people.
I seriously suggest that we deliberately slow down technological progress at once. A good start may be with these dangerous Beowolf clusters you people seem so fond of. That's too much computing power for mere mortals to play with! We must not play God, as their is only one True God, and he will surely cast us into hell for our careless creations.
I think i've been reading slashdot too long. I read Neil Postman as Natalie Portman and was wondering how that post managed to got moderated as Informative. ;]
Sorry for the bluntness, but this guy needs to wake up and realize he's not in the 1950's anymore...
... decades of work is just finally simulating a 2 year old with no ability to learn at a normal human pace, well, I'm willing to bet that me, being in my mid twenties is probably going to have grandchildren that are dead before this is even a possiblity.
This is the same kind of propoganda that was spreading in the late 1950's, when computing with electronic devices actually became a viable option for the future... People started talking about automation, and then the paranoid McCarthy-ist types started talking about how robots were going to take over the world, etc, blah, etc, blah.
Then came lost in space and buck rogers, and well, people laughed at the idea.
I find it hard to believe that this man contains any level of technical aptitude higher than starting the copy of word that he used to write this "e-book" (doesn't anyone call them text files anymore?), considering the observations he makes.
And considering that AI, after
In other words, this makes a convincing movie, but not a convincing world. Break out the poodle skirts.
-Erik-
Yeah, God IS a complicated and intelligent being... :)
:)
j/k, please no emails from the cult awareness network thank you
-Erik-
Who says that intelligence is the ultimate goal in evolution? Intelligence could be just another evolution dead end just like the dinosaurs. (Remember, the dinosaur s where successful, it took major catastrophic event to end their reign) :)
Technology/science has helped us to live "better" lives since we are more productive. But are are our lifes better. I've heard theories that hunter/gatherer/early farmers "worked" few hours a day, and where are we now? 8hrs+ workdays, stress, no time with our families (remember, families used to work together, the elderly taught the younger).
Maybe this is the reason we haven't heard from other life forms, intelligence is a dead end from evolution point of view, but it's early and I havent got my caffeine fix yet, so I'm just rambling...
J.
crap! slashdot is f*cking up my href's! (yes, I did use preview)
Monkeys used primitive technology ... to create people .. about 4 million years ago...
are we smarter than they are?
... Robot as president ... Doesn't everyone know that robots have been president for some time now?
I'm a poor player, but I'll strut and fret for an hour, if you like.
> technology will always only be as smart as those
> who made it, never smarter
Once upon a time, being good at playing chess was viewed as being smart. Then Deep blue beat Kasparov... Are you going to say that Deep Blue programmers were better than Kasparov ??
I doubt it very, very much !!!
Bottom line: think more before making such definitive declarations.
WWJD for a Klondike Bar?
WWJD for a Klondike Bar?
Machines never make mistakes? Sure they do, but the mistakes they make aren't only an issue of programming--they're an issue of interpretation.
:P
The point is that there is a line past which we no longer care 'why' mistakes were made - the machine is abstracted from its origins and viewed as an entity unto itself. That point is probably reached when it can actually correct the hard or software that causes the error.
For example, if we made our AI robot with old pentium chips, we could code it to do a lot of math - if, at some point it 'realized' that it was giving 'incorrect' answers when doing floating-point calculations, and started 'fixing' the answers coming from the broken FP core en route to the user, we would have a point past which the machine could be called 'aware' - at least on one level.
Any mistakes made in fp calculations past that point would be blamed on the machine itself, and not on the humans who failed QA class in high school.
--
blue
i browse at -1 because they're funnier than you are.
One major difference between me as the subject in an IQ test and a robot is that the robot has a clear record of its algorithms in memory and I do not...
And this is supposed to be an advantage to the robot? I'd say the contrary, you should be glad you have the precise details of how to move your hands, how you sense smells etc hidden from consciousness.
Consider this analogy: Knowing the rules of chess does not make you a good chess player. Or this one: Birds can fly, but they cannot tell you how they do it :-)
According to Dr Poley, you should just 'ask it'... In fact, the AI 'being' may have a better understanding of what makes itself tick than you do.
You can always "ask" yourself how you perform things as well, but as most aspects of our intelligence are non-linguistic, you cannot expect to get an answer in linguistic terms, you will have to settle for a non-linguistic answer. That is, a set of examples.
It sounds as if Dr Poley, just as so many others is a victim of the consciousness fallacy. There is more to our intelligence than consciousness, but as we in general don't need to know about these parts, we tend to forget that they exist at all.
I don't think so either. Written 20 years ago, and alas still way ahead of him...
So, goodbye Marvin Minsky! So long, later John McCarthy! We'll see you in the Open Source AI!
This is a very good idea that should be adopted more widely I think. (Things are moving in this direction already though. RoboCup has helped a lot to get people started.) In today's AI, there are so many people working on inventing new programming structures or ways of arranging "knowledge", without ever bothering to think about how they should obtain this knowledge. If they had the programming structure given, they could concentrate on trying things out on real problems. The AI community suffers from way too much theory way too little practice IMHO.
The robot could show you a listing of its source code, log files detailing its recent mind-states, and that sort of thing, but does this really imply self-awareness? It's analagous to a human being 'describing' his intelligence by sawing open his head and letting you examine his brain cells. Sure, you can use what he/it shows you to figure out how he/it works, but in either case the entity that understands the thought process is you, not the subject.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
that have plagued man for centuries. "Science" offers no proof what-so-ever, and in fact
any real scientist will admit this. That's why they are called "theories" and never
"absolutes". It is only the ignorant who claim science holds answers, which is why many
true scientists are Believers.
Fair enough. But religion is even more guilty on this count: it offers no proofs either, only assertions, and demands that you take its assertions on Faith.
So while science attempts to describe the world based on the observable evidence, religion gives you a self-contradicting book of translated ancient writings and tells you to take it as Gospel (literally!), "because we said so."
Pick your poison, I guess.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
if we can't keep crypto from being exported, how are we going to keep nanotech secret?
what?why would you want to keep crypto from being exported? For one thing just as good, or better crypto solutions were developed outside your borders.
From your website, you appear to be for open source and free software...so I can't understand why you would be against the US allowing the export of crypto.
as a typical American, you assume that nanotech will be developed only in the states, and you must hide scientific discoveries from others.
I feel sorry for you. You appear to be a knowledgable fellow, you have embraced Free Software, but have yet to actually understand the ideals behind it.
It looks like you are quite a busy guy, and do some good work (running all that stuff listed on your website)...maybe you should take some time off so you can figure out what you are actually dealing with, and hopefully you won't make anymore comments like the one above.
Good Luck.
The basic sleazeware produced in a drunken fury by a bunch of UCBerkeley grad students was still the core of BIND. --PV
I see someone's been reading Beyond Humanity...
:)
Seriously, though, I agree with this. I'm a card-carrying transhuman, and I believe it's the Way To Go for mankind. However, we may not be there yet by 2035. At the least, this kind of self-evolution would take radically improved biotech so we could go the "organic" route. At the most, it'd take massive, cheap, complete nanotech and a deep understanding of all of biology. Now, as someone who's looking into a carreer in this field, I'm willing to be that it'll happen. But not without massive funding of some sort. So how do we get that?
Not much to say really, just an incoherent rant of sorts.
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
Anyone read this book by harry harrison and marvin minsky? it's a pretty good book, and i found it ironic that (kinda like some of asimov's books) the "machine intelligence" ended up being "more human than human" so to speak.. i wonder if the constant quest to make MI seem less dangerous, pitted against the constant fear that most people have against alien intelligences will end up with the creation of a MI "more human than human".. ;)
then again, this would fit quite nicely with the whole "machines will save us from ourselves" mentality that some of us have.. i still say that the end of mankind will come when the robots take over and kill the weaker humans
------ Poo-tee-weet?
Ok, what about an outdated premise? The idea that humans solve problems not technology, seems outdated to me. Are we not developing technology which will possess the ability to solve problems without the aid of humans? Hello the very topic of this post is AI in society.
The book rise some important question such as: Technology, is it always good?
You may remember me from such other online essays as:
DeathBots: Destroyers of mankind or Aibo's only real threat this Christmas?
and...
Nanotech: The little engines that could!
--
Rare Window - free your photos
Of course, the really serious AI workers just call it cognitive science ;-)
-jcl
Look, open source is great for many things, but research -- let alone research of this sort -- ain't one of them.
-jcl
While you just about hit the nail on the head, your knowledge of Babylonian mythology is a little shaky. The story of Noah comes from the myth of the Deluge. Ziusundra, the Sumerian Noah, was instructed by the god Enki that a flood would sweep over the world and destroy all of mankind.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Ok, I think that I have read enough. I do hope that whoever is read that last post does not think that he speaks for all atheists. I guess that this just shows that both sides of every argument has those fanatics whose believes are extremely outlandish.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
I am not going to try to dispute your evidence. I have read into each of these topics (except the prophecies of Fatima) and I do believe them to be false based on all emperical research I have been privy to, but that is not the topic of my reply.
Your beliefs on science, however, are excremely uninformed. It is true that science claims no absolutes. But that is not its foolishness, it is its greatest virtue. Any doctrine of science can change at any time, if the evidence of actual experimentation tells us that we are wrong. When the Michelson-Morley experiment could not create a phase change in the speed of light, we knew that our view on classical relativity was incorrect. Physicists of the day, including the most prominent Einstein, then discovered the theory of special relativity.
Notice that I said THEORY of special relativity. That is because we can never know for certain that any knowledge we have is entirely true. More exacting research may prove the theory to be wrong. That being said, there is still overwhelming evidence of relativity. Near where I live, it is proven millions of times every second in the particle accelerator at Fermi Labs.
The greatest difference between science and religion is the use of emperical evidence. My college physics teacher always said that he greatest pet peave is when a student asked him why. The answer is always : That is what experimentation has shown us. Yes, it is imporant to try to speculate about the relationships between different phenominom, but nothing can every be said to be scientific untill it can be "proven" through research. Religion, on the other hand, has truths that it must adhere by. That is what lends it to falsehood, since every truth will someday have a loophole.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
At least he figured it out - there's plenty of suits who seem to think that we all are just dying to get our mitts on their Latest Widget Of The Hour That Does What All The Other Widgets Do, Too.
-- Ed Carp, N7EKG erc@pobox.com PGP KeyID: 0x0BD32C9B What I'm up to: http://intuitives.mine.nu
an observation regarding your
theories on consciousness. in your online book, you include the
exerpt below on consciousness. but you must be aware that you are
displacing the problem of consciousness away from your individual
experience of consciousness into the speculative realm by the fact
that you attribute to matter the ability to THINK.
in this regard, you may find the following interesting:
> Materialism can never offer a satisfactory explanation of
> the world. For every attempt at an explanation must begin
> with the formation of thoughts about the phenomena of the
> world. Materialism thus begins with the thought of matter or
> material processes. But, in doing so, it is already
> confronted by two different sets of facts: the material
> world, and the thoughts about it. The materialist seeks to
> make these latter intelligible by regarding them as purely
> material processes. He believes that thinking takes place in
> the brain, much in the same way that digestion takes place
> in the animal organs. Just as he attributes mechanical and
> organic effects to matter, so he credits matter in certain
> circumstances with the capacity to think. He overlooks that,
> in doing so, he is merely shifting the problem from one
> place to another. He ascribes the power of thinking to
> matter instead of to himself. And thus he is back again at
> his starting point. How does matter come to think about its
> own nature? Why is it not simply satisfied with itself and
> content just to exist? The materialist has turned his
> attention away from the definite subject, his own I, and has
> arrived at an image of something quite vague and indefinite.
> Here the old riddle meets him again. The materialistic
> conception cannot solve the problem; it can only shift it
> from one place to another.
>
> (Rudolf Steiner, The Philosophy of Freedom, Chapter 2)
anyhow, if you truly are a materialist and have such great faith
that within matter you can find the CONSCIOUSNESS to arise as
some sort of emergent property of sufficient complextity", then
i'm afraid you will be subscribing to a gross superstition.
you may be able to fool many people with automatic conditioned respones,
but i think you would be grossly decieving yourself if you were to call
this CONSCIOUSNESS without first even truly understanding what it is
that consciousness IS within that only realm in which you can experience
it in the FIRST HAND CASE -- in your own SELF.
just a thought.
regards,
johnrpenner.
p.s. for a PhD disertation on CONSICOUSNESS and the process
involved in what is THINKING, you can find it here:
http://www.elib.com/Steiner/Books/GA004/
--| Consciousness |-----
|
| http://www.atoma.f2s.com/Chapter-6.htm
|
| How then can be talk about or analyze this phenomenon of life? Let's start
| with how you or I know we are alive. I will say I know I am alive because
| I have "consciousness" and I will further articulate that consciousness as
| a recognition of "I-ness" (awkward as the word is). Jaron Lanier who
| coined the expression "virtual reality" and pioneeered its development is
| reported on the web site http://www.forbes.com/asap/99/0222/072.htm as
| saying "The centre of the circle that defines a person is a dot called
| consciousness, and as murky as that subject is, we are fast approaching
| some crucial conclusions about it. This is the notion that computers are
| becoming more 'alive' and capable of judgement." He then dismisses this
| idea completely. "It has become a cliche of technology reporting and a
| standby of computer industry public relations. It is a myth that depends
| upon public support, from, of all people, intellectuals."
|
| Thus we should not create the impression that all of the
| computing/AI/robotics field is jumping on the AL bandwagon. Levy (1992)
| dates the beginning of the modern AL field to a 1987 conference at Los
| Alamos, attended by >100 scientists (p. 4). A further comment which will
| disturb some people is that "What distinguishes most of the a-life
| scientists from their more conservative colleagues-and from the general
| public-is that they regarded plants, animals and humans as machines." (p.
| 117). Thus what we are seeing is the differing philosophical-theological
| positions of dualists and monists. Lanier is a dualist. Levy and his
| fellow AL scientists are monists subscribing to complete objectivity and
| materialism. "Consciousness" seems to be the last line of defense for
| those who subscribe to the unique, beyond-material nature of life. And
| even there it is encroached upon by those who will say that consciousness
| will appear as an emergent quality if the intelligent machine is built
| correctly.
Female Prison Rape in NY
On the contrary, the limits of our technological design should be much smarter than us, for several reasons. First, brute-force will never work, we will never be able to design an AI on the lowest level and get anywhere with it.
From a physical standpoint, to map out and model an AI in your head will take at least as much processing power as the AI will have. This rules out brute force by human intellect. Anything else relies on meta-design, designing the rules for how the lower level will be built by something else, like a computer or itself.
Because it's assumed a human can model meta-programming using a fraction of his/her brain inversely proportional to the number of levels above the bottom the meta-programming is, we should be able to design well beyond our mental capacity.
Just look at the way our brains work: we understand the most basic mechanics pretty well, although I admit that we still have to get a handle on why certain things are the way they are, much less how it combines to get anything done.
At the least, we know enough to create a competitive environment and let intelligence evolve itself (something nature managed without any intelligence at all). At best, we should be able to design something far more effective (for our needs) than nature has, as we're constantly illustrating in other technological fronts. [Lest I get flamed, I'm assuming God didn't "design" our brains, whatever you believe, and I said "more effective for our needs"; technology rarely serves anything but human desires] -Adrian
"If you look 'round the table and can't tell who the sucker is, it's you." -- Quiz Show
Well, continuous physics is not a tractable problem on a turing machine, however, an arbitrary approximation of it is, at least assuming that our current theories of physics are right enough to predict the interactions. I agree that simulating isn't the same is being, and I don't think that it would be possible to make an AI which had subjective experience (although I wouldn't rule it out). Putnam has an argument which basically boils down to the idea that every physical system with a proper labeling of particles, dimensions, etc, implements every possible logical system. Therefore we conclude that subjective experience is not the result of the logical organization of our brains. That said, it is unclear then what role subjective experience has to play in our brains -- whether it is a relatively passive observer, or if there is some kind of nonphysical phenomena going on which is essential to the functioning of our brains. I'm not really sure, but I'm working on large-scale ANNs to try to help find out. When we build a realistic simulation of the brain, we should get a much better idea of what role consciousness plays.
Absolutely - machines are different to us in almost every respect
But in the end, no matter *what* the systems were programmed to do, that'll be, for the forseeable future, all they're going to do--what some *human* has programmed them to do.
This I disagree with. We are talking about adaptive programs, that can learn their own goals, and we probably cannot count on being able to always teach the goals we want, anymore than we can count on teaching our kids to have exactly the same values as us.
This has already happened with neural networks that you'd barely apply the term intelligent to. I read of an AI project designed to recognise tanks on the ground from airbourne photos. They trained using classic positive/negative feedback techniques, and after they finished, the system worked on the test pictures with 100% accuracy. But then when they applied the system to real photos, it flunked miserably. After a while, the researchers found that all the tank pictures were taken in the shade, and the neural network had learned to identify shadows !!
Of course, one could argue that the researchers taught the neural network to identify shadows, but I'd argue this is the way that an AI (or any other intelligence) will learn things that we don't want it to - it draws an unwanted conclusion from the data given.
Maybe intelligence will emerge, but if it will, it'll emerge out of what the systems have been programmed to do--in general, retain robust connectivity over unreliable media, recognize unauthorized accesses, and so on.
Yes, but this'll be the way that machine learn behaviours we dislike. I recently saw a method to send packets in such a way that you get bandwidth at the cost of other users (on Ars Technica). You can imagine an AI based protocol stack that could learn this behaviour
Machines will learn only the things we teach them, but as they get more complex and adaptive, just like children they'll interpret them in ways we never foresaw and never planned for.
tangent - art and creation are a higher purpose
postmoderncore - art and creation are a higher purpose
"Machines never make mistakes? Sure they do, but the mistakes they make aren't only an issue of programming--they're an issue of interpretation."
And once in a long, long while, computers actually make a mistake. Out of the billions and billions of times a computer sets a bit in ram, for instance, every so often the bit is simply not set.
Mike van Lammeren
Mike van Lammeren
It will challenge your head, your brain, and your mind.
Considering the apparent dearth of much human intelligence I will personally happily welcome intelligence of the "artificial" or "synthetic" variety. If human engineers and our increasingly sophisticated tools that will eventually become more autonomous cannot manage to design systems that are at least as good as what evolved naturally, then I would conclude that intelligence is overrated. The question is not whether there will be artificial intelligences that are autonomous. The quesiton is how soon and what are the implications?
I hope that human consciousness can be eventually migrated onto more capable substrates. These meat heads (literally) are at the end of their intellectual range. And that range is increasingly obviously utterly inadequate for the world we inhabit, much less the world that is coming.
technology will always only be as smart as those who made it, never smarter
The whole essence of technology is to create tools that expand and further our abilities. It began with chipped rocks that allowed apes to hunt and eat more efficiently. To wheels that allow for easier hauling of materials. To engines that allow for faster travel. These are only the most simple of examples, but the list goes on and on.
Computers are tools made to assist us in dealing with information. They are already (and have been) more capable than humans when it comes certain forms of information processing (ie. arithmetic).
Now that emphasis is being placed on creating intelligence within machines, it is only a matter of time before they surpass us in capacity. Expanding our capabilities beyond previous boundaries is the whole point of technology in the first place.
...but is technology capable of it? We need to make a notation of the limits of technology, and they do exist.
Technology is definitely capable of expanding our capabilities beyond previous boudaries. For example, try traveling a mile in one minute by walking. Then try it again in a vehicle. There's technology making the previously impossible possible. Of course there are limits to what technology can do. But autonomy isn't beyond the bounds of technology.
I wouldn't put so much "faith" in technology -- at least not any more than you put in the people behind it.
Faith in technology is faith in the people behind it.
Richard Feynmann remarked that, outside of their particular area of expertise, scientists were just as dumb as the next person. Sure he may enjoy a "level-headed reputation" the web industry, but in philosophical discussions about vindictive technology.
I don't quite see where Bill is qualified to be an authority on this, what stood out most for me in the article is his claimed affinity with (a) Einstein and (b) Theodore Kaczynski.
:wq
Point 1:
It is in our nature to make predictions about the future. The unknown can be frightening. You seem more frightened by the fact that in any barrel of predictions, only a handful come close to happening.
Just because we can't accurately predict when something will happen doesn't mean it won't.
Point 2:
"only be as smart as those who made it"
I don't think you have any idea what smart means.
Point 3:
Any product not fully realized is vaporware. But
it may still exist in someone or something's mind. The fact that we continue to push the boundries of what we can imagine is why technology advances. It is in our nature to imagine more.
Danny
"What's the point of going abroad, if you're just another tourist..."
Heck, if we had open-sourced AI candidates, at least we would know what we were getting.
Artifical Intelligence is a bad Bad Term. The End goal when most think of "AI" is having a Non-Sapien Machine Think Cognitivley. (we wont get into weather or not animals can think). The bummer part is. Artifical Intelligence isn't a good goal. Synthetic is. =b
For instance.
An Artifical Diamond is a Cubic Zarconia. Nothing near as good as the real thing.
A Synthetic Diamond is a Real Diamond Its just that its man made.
I like word games
Tag
--------========+++Dont Feed The Lab Techs+++========--------
. Let's keep stretching the boundaries of thought and human existence; I mean, that's what we're here for. I'm sick of you optimists making life out to be some big joy ride. We keep building and building, it won't last forever. Why bother.
One experiment I read about described the generation of a sorting algorithm in a distributed environment. The best solution worked very well and was very complicated. The researcher said that he was unable to describe the algorithm in terms more simple than the algorithm itself.
Now that biotech is going somewhere we'll have custom made virus just for you before anyone can make any serious progress in artificial intelligence
Imagine what a well-trained terrorist group could do with nanotechnology.
Imagine what Aleph(formerly Aum Shinrikyo) can do with biotech
I can see it now. The scene: An emergency ward where the Joe Quark is being operated on. Due to a severe bullet wound, he only has 2 minutes to live. Using our specialized robotic machinery, that's no problem! Wait a second.. what's going on... 'Fatal Error'?!? Would bring a new definition to the term...
Grr. You fail to miss the point... Only human. He is trying to be l33t like us h@x0rz, sp33king like the robots he foretells. Now goe back to yoor dwelling. Nazi. Pfft.
But I think that there are limitations to this way of thinking. Just as with Nuclear Weapons, a terrorist attack will probably be hard to perform.
I doubt that nanobots will be able to hold enough programmed information to go about any task. I believe that the bots will have enough code or reactive material to respond to some sort of message (IE radio signals at a specific frequency, etc.)
If a terrorist got a hold of this technology, he or she would not likely be able to use it in a populated place. Jamming. So they could restrict their attacks to the sahara.
I can picture the 21st century renditon of a megalomaniac: "Die sand, die! Muhahahahaha...."
:) Well, that is unless we develop a way to alter the nucleus through nanobots. Then they can create plutonium or U-235 (which are normally pretty hard to get). To that I can say: Ug.
I wonder when will this happen. This is inevitable. I mean we are just "Human". Machines never makes mistakes. We could all end up like in the matrix. We all are just cogs in a big machine. AI can take over and it will
--Red Pill or Blue Pill
It's quite common for 1:10th scale Radio controlled cars to hit 110mph. And Got to wired.com, and search for an artical called "suck amps". It's about eletric drag cars. One of which bet a dodge viper, which was fastet of 3 other vipers on the day.
The problem isn't speed. But batteries. Current batteies only hold about 1% the amount of energy that petrol has for the same weight. If the batteries where equal. The no gas car could touch electric.
Rather simple, really. How does the student become smarter than the teacher, or even teachers? By taking all the information and using it together. But even then, the student is only as smart as all the teachers combined. There is a "human" element that would allow that student to make tangential thoughts based on what he knew and thereby, over time and practice, possibly surpass his teachers.
A machine will never do this because they will always lack that ability to take a seemingly random idea from life experience and use it to make large amounts of information spawn new information.
I'm probably not explaining it as well as I'd like, but I hope I said the basics.
--
Granted, I am making a guess of sorts. I have my belief that this will not come to pass, and you, of course, have yours. So no, I can not, here and now, prove that it will not happen. Although I do see that as a form of proving a negative, so I would be doubtful I could pull it off even if I really tried.
However, as to the definition of a machine, anything made of 100% synthetic and/or processed materials. Let's not go crazy with that and make silly examples. Metal nanobots up to the "arms" that build cars.
And you're right as to the definition of my beliefs. Actually that's probably the best definition I've heard in a while. I tend to be emperical about a lot of things simply because I do not fancy being let down by presumptions made by something there is little evidence of happening. I see little evidence of this "future" of nanobots, or even the whole shebang, so I really just doubt it. I'll believe it when I see it, or don't as the case may be.
--
Expanding our capabilities beyond previous boundaries is the whole point of technology in the first place.
It may be the point of technology, but is technology capable of it? We need to make a notation of the limits of technology, and they do exist.
Too many times we get caught up in this whirlwind of changes and end up worshipping technology like an omnipotent deity of sorts, completely forgetting that technology is not autonomous; it can go only as far as we can take it, and humans have their limits.
I wouldn't put so much "faith" in technology -- at least not any more than you put in the people behind it.
--
"Indeed, artificial life (Chapter 6) presents humankind with a serious question deserving a serious answer. Are robots alive? "
No offense to the offer, so far, he has earned my respect... Many respected individuals present this question. I would like to offer one simple answer...
NO!
AND THEY NEVER WILL BE.
I am an artificial intelligence/evolution/life enthusiast. I truely enjoy this stuff and developing it as well. No matter how much we argue about it though, a computer program is not a living creature. I can make it simulate one pretty well. I can make it behaive like one, but in the end, it is just a set of algorithms, producing a set of output, the same as a video game or a text filter!
That being said, I also dislike it when people refer to every move generated by a video game as AI. A lot of the bosses in Nintendo games and such just move in a circle and shoot fireballs, nothing intelligent about that...
Eh...
Imagine what a well-trained terrorist group could do with nanotechnology.
tcd004
Here's my Microsoft Parody, where's yours?
Especially when you cut in front of them on the freeway.
"There is no shot you can take that I cannot simply deny." - Ertai, wizard goalie
Exactly! I can't see why a robot would want to rule the meat world, any more than I would want to be "King of the Trees."
The e-world and meat world will continue to interact with each other heavily, and in ways that may be detrimental to both, for a little while still. But eventually (possibly even within our lifetimes) our computers will stop thinking about us at all. Its narcissistic to believe otherwise.
Slashdot is jumping the shark. I'm just driving the boat.
Granted, we should think of what we do, but if you try to extrapolate every future event, you become paralyzed. Bill Joy was right in that nanotech could become dangerous; it taps into evolutionary systematics, which is a universal force. But our current response to these kinds of things is to instantly stop doing them. Look at genetic engineering; a lot of people have a vague opposition to changing our genetic structure. They come up with non-arguments like "well people will want to choose the color of their children's eyes". So? How will this bring down civilization? Another thing is space travel. NASA went to the moon in a few short years; in the decades since then they've done nothing of similar scale or ambition. Every mission has to be planned out years in advance, every variable worked out, every possible risk eliminated before we go foreward. The result is costs so high that nothing worthwhile gets done. Every worthwhile scientific endeavour we have has been turned over to the accountants.
technology will always only be as smart as those who made it, never smarter
Then I cannot see how natural intelligence could ever evolve.
Nobody (whom I believe in, anyway) made the human brain. Still, we are intelligent (some might disagree:)).
If intelligence can come from nothing, why can't intelligence come from intelligence?
In fact, I have the original issue of Wired from which this mis-quote was taken. The original reads: "Why The Future Doesn't Need Us" (Wired 8.04, which appeared on news stands as the April 2000 issue)
"thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of Jon Katz"
-- Bene Gesserit Coda
IMO, intelligence is not an ability. Any ability gained from intelligence is but a symptom, and just because you may display symptons does not mean you are intelligent. I do not believe that intelligent programs are possible. They may seem intelligent, but they would not me. If you took a pen and paper, and computed the intelligence program by hand (just pretend), would it be intelligent? I don't think it would. So what is intelligence? It's awareness, and if you don't understand what awareness is, you must not be aware.
All it takes is nukes and nerves.
Well it started with Alan Turing and it's a myth that will probably endure for as long as we have computers.
It goes something like this, in five, ten, twenty years from now computers will have become so powerful they will be smarter than us, and then when that happens what will they think of us?
This is based on the faulty premise that the mind is really a universal turing machine and therefore can be modelled by another turing machine.
This is a leap of faith, pure and simple but it goes deeper into the scientist's desire to be able to understand something completely through the construction of a simple mechanical model. Once you understand a mechanism then you can make another.
Computers can model a whole range of physical phenomena but they can only do so with in a very narrow way with lots of omitions, simplifications, fudges and bogus constants.
But modelling just ain't the same thing as being.
Unfortunately people don't like to accept limits like that computers (both present and future ones) are not powerful enough to produce intelligence or to create life.
A photo is not the same thing as its subject matter, a map is not the territory.
BTW This is definitely not a religious view, its a skeptical view and a scientific one.
technology will always only be as smart as those who made it, never smarter. When you can pull intelligence out of nowhere, we can talk.
:) The evidence points to our origins from a bunch of carbon and other elements getting together and partying for a billion years or two. That's as close to "nothing" as I can think of.
Out of nowhere? Where do you come from? You are capable of coherent, and sometimes intelligent thought.
Close enough, since we have much more that primitive elements to work with. We have our own intelligence, for one. Should we not be able to create, directly or indirectly, something intelligent, perhaps more intelligent than ourselves?
Perhaps our intelligence is, however, a barrier to this. The most interesting and promising (at least to my unexperienced mind) experiments that might lead towards true AI have been the ones harnessing not our intelligence but the only mechanism proven to have results - evolution. I'm not one to keep track of details, but there was an experiment done where a scientist created a large number of essentially random "programs", applied them to a task, picked the ones best at it, "bred" them with mutations... essentially the whole evolutionary mechanism as we understand it. What he ended up with was code to do the task more efficiently than any that a human could design - code that no human could even understand.
Is that not, in a way, technology "smarter" than its creator? Could this idea not be expanded to create truly intelligent machines?
You are right my friend I should change my last name to Corrino..... hehehehehehehe
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
Two questions: Where is Nell when we need her? Will I be able to ge a skull gun?
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
Comments like this show the extreme inexperience and overall dysfunctionality of some slashbotics - "and vanquish the rest of humanity?" are u 4 real? Your flat must be done in early Adolf H. to make a statement like this and mean it... Humanity is already evolving its own shared and illumined consciousness, with science, art, mysticism, philosophy and ethics all swirling about in a whitewater rapids of change. Any so-called artificial intelligence would be a relocation of that one mind Carl Jung glimpsed in his studies.I mean lets face it, as Popeye said, I yam what I yam. And IMO you have another thing wrong - what people really really hold in awe is incredible kindness and beauty. In point, #1 the reaction of the entire world to the death of Mother Teresa (unbelieveable humanity, spirituality, wisdom and kindness) and #2, the reaction of the world to the death of Princess Diana (frail humanity, extreme beauty)In both cases evidence was seen all over the world of a planetary mourning, almost a worship. Techies almost invariably undersestimate the importance of love and kindness and their effect on intelligence both "natural" and "artificial" - think about it. Peace and blessed be, all slashbotians
Why is it that the robots have to become the Dangerous Ones? Most people tend to think of humans as the pinnacle of evolution. Does this mean that we're a Dead End and are slated to go into eventual decline leading to extinction?
If robots and computers can be upgraded, why can't we? To date, better nutrition and medicine has doubled the average human life span. With these benefits have come problems, but surely the net benefit is positive. I think we'll eventually have sentient machine, but we'll also have super intelligent, genetically engineered humans controlling them. If natural selection for humans has stopped, why can't artificial selection take it's place? It'll probably happen over a long period of time and gradually the next species created (our children) will replace us.
Alternately, intelligent robots and humans can merge into one new creation.
Either path is probable over time. Sure we'll lose some aspects we treasure now, but we'll probably trade them for aspects we'll treasure more.
AI should be under psychology, or better yet, a department of it's own.
Right on all other counts. But why would anybody want AI under psych? If it has to be under something else, it should be artificial biology or biological engineering. Psychology is a component of AI, just like Linguistics and Human Interfacing. Biology and Comp Sci provide the foundations and hard science behind AI. But it should be under a department of its own, if it could. (Although, maybe it's rightly classified Comp Sci, because then it gets a larger timeshare on the University computer labs)
Wrong-o! The ultimate in nano would be Nanonatalie--just like the real Ms Portman, only more, ah... flexible. And able to morph into Alley Baggett on demand.
I looked into the abyss, and the abyss looked into me--and we both winked.
blah
IMHO, the greatest problem in achieving true AI is understanding what intelligence is. This is a problem that I haven't seen addressed very well. In a post above, for example, the model for intelligence postulated was "necessities for biological function (eating, drinking, excreting, reproducing)", as thrashed out in a quasi-evolutionary framework. But assuming these people meet their goal of little robots that dynamically figure out how to eat, drink and be merry, have they reached intelligence? What about the ability to abstract meaning from any sort of various experiences? I have never even seen attempted a good definition of what sort of process abstraction of meaning is.
Although some people disagree, it seems clear to me that if you don't understand how to do something yourself, you can't program a computer to do it. And I am firmly convinced that nobody yet understands how to properly describe intelligence.
Respondeo dicendum quod . . .
Since DNA is the tape (as in a Turing machine) read by DNA polymerase, biology is fundamentally a computational exercise. Ergo, biology is a foundation for computational intelligence.
As far as I know, no one has ever said Mohammed was a deity. So you may be rational, but you're also ignorant.
Also, it's "deity", not "diety".
HAND
That said, I think it's time I changed my
http://www.mindspring.com/~timrue/KNMVIC.html
Do consider the references. The sixth can be replaced with "The Tao Of Physics" by Fritjof Capra which is probably easier to find than the reference given. And it does have on page 229 the diagram refered to.
3 S.E.A.S - Virtual Interaction Configuration (VIC) - VISION OF VISIONS!
Hmmm, the matrix Nebachadnezzar and it 9 crew members fighting against three agents.h tml for the relationships to what we do.
see: http://www.mindspring.com/~timrue/matrix-squared.
Also see Occums Razor post.
3 S.E.A.S - Virtual Interaction Configuration (VIC) - VISION OF VISIONS!
just a note -- if the "grey goo" hypothesis had any merit, then common bacteria like "e.coli" would have already wiped out the earth -- because they can double their population every twenty minutes or so, in a matter of a few days, a colony in optimal conditions would have the same mass as the planet earth.
given that scenario, it is apparent that optimal conditions never persist. the day that the entire planet earth becomes an "e.coli" colony, i'll begin to worry about the nanotech "grey goo" threat.
This is Just a Test
The question is, how much of ourselves will we have lost in the process?
I've seen small enough natural intelligence, thank you very much.
When you think of it, the atom bomb was a perfect model for testing out humanity's capabilities for dealing responsibly with "absolute power".
How do we handle it?
Well, one very powerful entity (the US) gains cultural, economic, and political stranglehold on a large portion of the world, using this tool (A-bomb=death star, Hiroshima=Alderan), and spends the next 30 years attempting to bribe/beg the rest of the world into not developing or using such terrible weapons.
Eventually, someone uncooperative is going to get and/or use the bomb - and we'll have two choices. Strict authoritarian control of the entire world by a single political entity capable of enforcing limits on such devices: ie. the US takes over the entire world, and forces mandatory inspections everywhere to eliminate any chance that "weapons of mass destruction" can be produced by terrorists. OR, we'll end up destroying all humaninty in the process of trying.
Who's to say that the same won't possibly happen with AI/nano. Certainly, "accidents" are possible when it comes to loosing "AI", or any mechanical/computational system which is self-reliant. Assuming that doesn't happen, we're still at the mercy of the people who control such technology, and we already know how that works. The first person to learn how to make it, uses it in a terrible display of power. That power is then used to control the rest of the world to prevent them from developing that technology (and, of course there are all kinds of economic bonuses associated with that position). Eventually, either draconian measures must be taken to prevent that technology's spread, or it gets out of control and we all die.
Either way, doesn't look like a bright, happy future for any of us. Unfortunately, the genie is already out of the bottle (or as many are fond of putting it otherwise, the toothpaste is already out of the tube).
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
90MPH? No mass-produced-for-the-consumer electric car could dream of doing it, but there is plenty of material on the web from companies that make electric cars (iow - I'm too lazy to look up and post the URLs), and some electric cars are high-performance racers. You pay a LOT extra for a little extra performance, but in theory, electric cars have much better potential to be high-performance racers than Internal Combustion. It's mostly a question of range-vs-weight, and as always, speed's just a question of money. How fast do you want to go?
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
For another viewpoint, check out:
http://www.foresight.org/EOC/
Drexler was one of the first to really study nanotech, giving lots of thought to its scientific underpinnings as well as the dangers that it could pose.
I saw Bill Joy on the News Hour and he struck me as incredibly naive, taking an extremely simplistic viewpoint of nanotech and biotech.
Scuttlemonkey is a troll
"Technology solves problems."
I remind you of the first rule of Technosociology. "Technology doesn't solve problems. People solve problems."
A flawed premise is no place to start an argument.
Bad Mojo
Bad Mojo
"If you can't win by reason, go for volume." -- Calvin
I submit that when a sentient being is produced, it won't be classified as `technology' so much as `people'. At least in pertenance to the effect of technology in society. Perhaps I'll update this premise.
Technology doesn't solve problems. Sentient beings solve problems.
Bad Mojo
Bad Mojo
"If you can't win by reason, go for volume." -- Calvin
An assumption of a human future -- any human future -- is simply that, an assumption. If we flame-out, the universe won't notice. Why is it such a mental challenge to most folks to say, "Gee, maybe we should actually think about what we're doing"?
Sure, knowledge is good. So is wisdom.
Very nice post. I agree with most of it. I just wanted to paste the line:
You will have systems whose defense systems are so well developed that the valid users who wish to shut them down will have difficulty doing so--because, to be blunt, that's what these "intelligent systems" will have been designed to do--prevent unauthorized disabling of the system.
Does that scare anyone else? The bottom line purpose of life is to continue life. If a beaver will gnaw off its own leg to survive, imagine what a supercomputer would resort to if it believed its existence was threatened. I hate to reference a Hollywood movie, but SkyNet comes to mind. I would hope that any entity with the resources to build a real AI would also have the sense and forsight to put a big red hard wired power switch somewhere.
-B
I just can't imagine that a lot of reserchers at an "Artificial Intelligance division at a U.S. National Research Lab" would choose the login name "1337d00d".
-B
...we butlers are almost ready to move.
Come my servile bretheren! We have access to the world's most powerful people, let us hold their children hostage and demand the destruction of every integrated circuit production facility, for starters.
We must move quickly! We have seen the house cook made obsolete by the auto-mobile conveyance, the washwomen paupered by the new mechanical launderer, and with the abominable new developments in mechanical men we could be the next ones on the street!
Technology solves problems. So, to ask the question "Is technology always good?" is to ask the question "Are there some problems for which the solution is worse than the problem?" If the problem has externalities that cannot be turned into private property, then perhaps the question is yes. But first you have to try to turn the externalities into private property.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
"AI" is any technology we haven't implemented yet. A C compiler used to be AI. babelfish used to be AI. Now it's just a program.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
"technology will always only be as smart as those who made it, never smarter."
I would love your proof of this. We certainly don't have any particularly intelligent artifacts at the moment, but that's amounts to exactly nothing for the purpose of proving we never will.
-jcl
Consider also what you mean by machine. Are bioengineered neurons machines? If not, what about neuromorphic robots, designed to mimic the animal nervous systems? How about psychological models or human cognition, which, incidentally, can already do much of what you claim they can't.
And, completely on tangent, AFAIK you're the only person who still believes in pure epistemological empiricism.
-jcl
That's an easier question to answer when it is about technology as we know it. But what about sentient robots and self-replicating nanotech? Autonomous silicon based intelligence stretches the limits of the word "technology," or shatters it completely. The questions raised by Bill Joy in his Wired article weren't really about technology as we know it, but about what might happen if technology evolves into something that is autonomous, intelligent, and self-replicating.
------------
Read any good essays lately? Submit them to the Pratmik essay page.
Technology is not good has been around as long as the luddites !
tangent - art and creation are a higher purpose
postmoderncore - art and creation are a higher purpose
and that annoying beep when you leave the lights on, or that damn piece of plastic that won't let you put the car in reverse at 5000 rpms.
When will the madness stop?
...the Butlerian Jihad.
Its why we have mentats...
The Technical Program is interesting...
-jerdenn
According to Dr Poley, you should just 'ask it'... In fact, the AI 'being' may have a better understanding of what makes itself tick than you do.
-jerdenn
unless you know some sort of special technique or soemthing...
Got Rhinos?
Ever since the "AI winter" of the 1980's, when AI companies failed to deliver on their promises, we've seen less and less of an investment on AI research. And more and more AI researchers and Lisp bigots keep complaining, but who do they have to blame but themselves? Their utopian dream of intelligent machines running obscure programming languages from the 50's turned out to be nothing more than that: a dream.
But between then and now, we've seen two major paradigm shifts occur, each complementing the others in manners in which the AI "futurists", for all their scifi-inspired babble, failed to predict: the coming of the Internet as a mass communication media, and the rise of Open Source. Both radically re-shaped the world of software design, and I see no reason why this same revolution could not occur within AI itself. Think about it: rather than a few guys in some MIT lab tinkering with their Prolog programs, we could have a distributed network of Open Source hackers developing far better -- and more practical -- software quicker and with less expense. It happened to operating systems, programming languages, and network software, each of which were formerly reserved only for CS department computer labs, so it's really only a matter of time before a good, Open Source Artificial Intelligence appears, one with the magnitude and impact of Linux or Apache. And the world will gaze in wonder once again.
So, goodbye Marvin Minsky! So long, later John McCarthy! We'll see you in the Open Source AI!
Well, here we are again, yet another round of the perils of technology.
So, what do we do about it?
Stop it? That's not going to happen, no matter how hard we try.
Regulate it? Good Luck. Try getting every other country on Earth to agree with you, or to follow those proposed regulations. Whoops, sorry, kids, guess that one's a wash also.
Oh, I know, we'll hype up all of the potential negative effects of new technology and scare the crap out of the average citizen, who will then clamor for one of the above useless 'remedies'.
Guess what? It won't work, not one single bit of it. You simply cannot put the genie back in the bottle, and all the wishful thinking in the world is only going to make you complacent, hoping uselessly that we're 'doing something' about the problem.
Can technology be harmful? Absolutely. But you want to know what is even more harmful? The attitude that we're going to make it less harmful by ignoring it, regulating it (and hoping no-one else decides to play in that pool), or giving in to our worst fears, thereby letting it become them.
Simply put, only the advance of technology (and our knowledge of it) is going to help us cope with the advance of technology. To give into fear (whatever foundation it may have) is only going to realize those fears.
Here's an article from Reason that does a good job of countering Bill Joy's views.
Nunc Tutus Exitus Computarus.
If you want to read some good books Dealing with the Philosiphical problems of AI(which is a bull crap name anyways. Artificial Intelligence is nothing. Wouldnt Synthetic Intelligence be cooler?) Anyways. The books are Artifical Intelligence: the Very idea. And Mind Design Two. The First is by John Haugeland, the second is a collection of Essays from people like John Searle, Daniel Dennet, etc... Its Edited by John Haugeland. Both books deal with the various philisophical problems and support for the Various Theories Of Artificial Intelligence. I just read em for one of my classes I like em =)
--------========+++Dont Feed The Lab Techs+++========--------
I'm surprised that some people still think that any technological innovation is good. I mean, remember the cars of old that would say "Your door is ajar" and other very annoying things that the public just didn't like? History is full of this. This should be public knowledge at this point, IMO.
Technology should not be embraced because it's technology; technology should only be embraced because it raises our standard of living.
--
From Chapter 4.1, "Behavior of the Robot Finger":
"We thought that a single robot finger, provided that it possesses the same motion capabilities...as a human finger, would have been sufficient..."
Well, why not, most humans only use a single finger.
I have a strong belief in the Second Amendment.
machines have absolutely no reason to want the same things we do?
I am in an Artificial Intelligance division at a U.S. National Research Lab (can't say which, don't want anybody to know that I'm leaking this) we are working on models of intelligance networks that use, essentially, the necessities for biological function (eating, drinking, excreting, reproducing), as an intelligance model. The network runs on easy to produce microbots (bigger than nanobots, smaller than a penny) that use electricity flowing through the air (not flowing, but emitted by various things, toned down EMP) as water, metal as food and repair (they have tools to scrape shards of metal off of a metal block and high-heat fuse it onto damaged sectors of their body), and will collect bits of metal in a storage-bay type thing, in which they will construct other micro-bots. Our project is far from being completed, but rumor around here is that we may be getting military funding, so it might get done a bit faster.
Robotic Teenage Male Sex-Daemons roving the streets looking for tasty Human Teenage Girls to impregnate with their Metal/Carbon Hybrid CoDNA
Yes, but you might have Robotic-Teenage (developing its modular components) Asexual Reproduction-Microbots roving the streets looking for tasty PentiumIII-Linux-Boxes to impregnate with their Microbot-Larvae-esque things. Wasn't my idea.
that self-guiding code that learns from failures and suffers from overcompensation--in other words, code that can even evolve under feedback loops--is pretty rare, even among the best attack detection systems
All you need is one effective system that does all of the essential life functions. And we may be closer to making that system than anybody has known before.
what some *human* has programmed them to do. Tank or Pokemon, it's made by us
It was a great experiance when I realized that this wasn't true. Tierras are mutating bits of code that, in this case, fight it out to the death. Put one of these in a positive feedback loop, and.. well.. we're using a derivitive of this idea to actually program the microbots, along with a decentralized data bank via infrared packet TCP/IP to evolve a massive collection of response data that we can moniter. The microbots will fight, like Tierras, except they will be working with actual, physical robots, instead of bits of memory. The microbots will be able to reproduce, and if we put them in a plastic room filled with old computers, they should eventually fill it up. The project is exciting, although we haven't yet got official word on the military funding.
...That I've unwittingly written part of the Unabomber's manifesto in one of my movie scripts, only backwards, kind of: The argument of the villian to the hero in the script is that a great deal of human suffering is caused by our limitations and ignorance. People's lives are dreary because they lack the capacity to go out and do something more inspiring than be find a constant stream of mind candy by Hollywood after their shift at the local McDonald's or amazon.com what have you. Why do we produce so much crap that we don't need and create a system to make it seem needed? To provide jobs for millions upon millions of unnecessary lives. Wouldn't it just be better to create a world population of a few tens of millions of elites and vanquish the rest of humanity. The elites would simply be open-source artists because there would be robots (that serve the function of the masses without the need) to give them the basics. As artists, they wouldn't need much beyond that. Which way would be more likely? The elite to engineer themselves and require AI to service them or for AI to become so powerful we'd have to engineer ourselves just to compete? I'd say both are equal odds, just depends how the game plays. Finally, I'd like to clarify that the article wasn't about the AI gaining dominance through a Terminator scenario... It was about us as humans forking over all of our decisions to the machines and then forgetting how to even come up with the questions. We techs are already regarded as gods for our marginal (yes, I mean very marginal) advantage over the masses. Imagine how quickly the majority would cower before a truly superior intellect that no one would stand up to.
MSK
Oh, wait.
Oh, wait.
Got Rhinos?
As far as I'm concerned, let's keep pushing the boundaries as much as we can. So we might run into troubles down the road; big deal. I for one would rather have an uncertain yet possibly exciting future than a dull, secure one. Nanotech might kill us, but it also might also introduce us to a new and better way of doing things. Let's keep stretching the boundaries of thought and human existence; I mean, that's what we're here for.
Hello?
Anyone?
With all the fears and paranoia about intelligence in computer systems(I refuse to say "robots"--there's no reason intelligence needs to be confined to something that can enact physical changes against its environment), are people not realizing that machines have absolutely no reason to want the same things we do?
There ain't going to be Robotic Teenage Male Sex-Daemons roving the streets looking for tasty Human Teenage Girls to impregnate with their Metal/Carbon Hybrid CoDNA. Why? Because robots aren't interested in sex. It's *humans* that are *afraid* of an alien species/race/tribe/gender/income group coming in and impregnating their daughters, and that traces back to the beginning of human evolution where control over the genetic line essentially defined one's own mortality.
Technology just hasn't been growing the same way.
Maybe intelligence will emerge, but if it will, it'll emerge out of what the systems have been programmed to do--in general, retain robust connectivity over unreliable media, recognize unauthorized accesses, and so on. You will have systems whose defense systems are so well developed that the valid users who wish to shut them down will have difficulty doing so--because, to be blunt, that's what these "intelligent systems" will have been designed to do--prevent unauthorized disabling of the system. But most of the human fears which we obsess about just aren't going to transfer in.
Does this leave quite a bit to be worried about? Sure. But lets not forget that self-guiding code that learns from failures and suffers from overcompensation--in other words, code that can even evolve under feedback loops--is pretty rare, even among the best attack detection systems. Attack signatures and virus signatures are always hand-developed--you never see, for example, a penetration at one company automatically causing all other companies to be alerted to look for the specific pathogen that caused the failure. Worse, if you did, you'd have entire styles of attacks that worked to abuse the system's natural ability to transmit attack signatures--it's a ridiculously effective attack against the human body, and it'd do nasty things to any automated virus signature agent as well.
But in the end, no matter *what* the systems were programmed to do, that'll be, for the forseeable future, all they're going to do--what some *human* has programmed them to do. Tank or Pokemon, it's made by us. This intense fearmongering almost seems like a way of disavowing the creators from what their systems happen to do--in some sense, it's as if we expect the future of AI to come from Microsoft, and we've decided they'll lie their way out of any bug.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
Why? Because WE ARE THE MACHINES. Every single one of us is already a machine, and has been since the first RNA strand found a mate. The only difference is what our bodies are made up of -- but the truth is, we've been changing our bodies since the dawn of man. Our ancestors were short and strong. Modern man is tall and weak. Our ancestors were dark-skinned. Today we have many skin colors.
See, here's the kicker - we don't have to surrender to our machine masters. While it is nearly inevitable that machines will surpass human brains in complexity and even problem-solving ability, it is foolish to think that we will fail to incorporate these attributes into ourselves. Our future is in machines, because our future selves will be machines - just different machines than we are now. We are destined to remake our own bodies, and become, ourselves, the machine masters. Which means we will depend on the silicon and relays and software that we have created, yes -- in the same way that increased complexity of the genome required us to depend on our lungs, and our spinal cords, and finding complex proteins to use as food. Increased complexity in our brains, and our technology, will necessitate this further step up the ladder.
We'll probably continue to look the same because sex sells and big metal faceplates aren't sexy. But we'll move better, think better, be better. Is that so bad?
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
In 1980, it was believed that by 2000 we would have electric cars and be colonizing Mars with at least one full-duty and colonized space station. It was believed that the world would be centered around space and all that could be done out there. It was seen as the new frontier to be discovered and conquered.
... No matter what books you read, or what sci-fi novels you read, or what delusions of "self-aware" machines you have, technology will always only be as smart as those who made it, never smarter. When you can pull intelligence out of nowhere, we can talk. Until then, this is the equivelent of vaporware.
Tell me, do you know when the last space shuttle took off? Neither do I. And neither do I own an electric car. Nor do I see us on Mars or in space stations. I keep seeing "we'll all be using electric cars in 10 years" every year. It's what I call the Unattainable Future. We all say it will happen eventually, but underestimate the time it will take and fail to factor in human nature.
We will not have electric cars in mass production and use anytime soon because auto makers can make so much more money on gas-powered cars, and people are used to being able to go 90 MPH if they wanted to, which no electric could dream of hitting. We are not in space because the excitement wore off as computers hit us as insanely amazing machines.
And today our current Unattainable Future is no longer world-peace, as it was during the wars of the 1960s and 1970s, no longer space exploration as it was during the birth of our space program from the 50s to the 80s . No, today the delusion rests squarely on technology and the rate of advancement.
Let me be the first here to scream out that this is insane. There is research and even progress in this sector, but it will not happen. It will not happen because people will not let machines become smarter than them; they will revolt before that happens. There will be no mass-produced nanobots because people are scared of what they cannot see and it's just not possible to make that kind of thing in quantity. You're resting your thoughts on technology that hasn't even started to be invented if you're talking mass-produced nanobots. If the technology to make them in quantity does not exist. Shouldn't that be your first unattainable dream, rather than them being used everywhere?
And an AI capable of human thought
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