Strong AI and the Imminent Revolution In Robotics

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Strong AI and the Imminent Revolution In Robotics

Posted by Soulskill on Friday June 22, 2012 @09:16PM from the i-don't-think-so-tim dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Google director of research Peter Norvig and AI pioneer Judea Pearl give their view on the prospects of developing a strong AI and how progress in the field is about to usher in a new age of household robotics to rival the explosion of home computing in the 1980s. Norvig says, 'In terms of robotics we’re probably where the world of PCs were in the early 1970s, where you could buy a PC kit and if you were an enthusiast you could have a lot of fun with that. But it wasn’t a worthwhile investment for the average person. There wasn’t enough you could do that was useful. Within a decade that changed, your grandmother needed word processing or email and we rapidly went from a very small number of hobbyists to pervasive technology throughout society in one or two decades. I expect a similar sort of timescale for robotic technology to take off, starting roughly now.' Pearl thinks that once breakthroughs are made in handling uncertainty, AIs will quickly gain 'a far greater understanding of context, for instance providing with the next generation of virtual assistants with the ability to recognise speech in noisy environments and to understand how the position of a phrase in a sentence can change its meaning.'"

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Howdy doodly doo! by Mr2cents · 2012-06-22 21:21 · Score: 4, Funny

Does anyone want any toast?

--
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
1. Re:Howdy doodly doo! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-22 21:47 · Score: 1
  
  Yeah me, to celebrate the 30th anniversary of upcoming strong AI and household robots.
2. Re:Howdy doodly doo! by Mr2cents · 2012-06-23 00:21 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  This is very, very embarrassing, slashdot. Not even recognising a Red Dwarf reference... sigh, slashdot is really going downhill.
  
  --
  "It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
3. Re:Howdy doodly doo! by slashmojo · 2012-06-23 06:19 · Score: 1
  
  This is very, very embarrassing, slashdot. Not even recognising a Red Dwarf reference... sigh, slashdot is really going downhill.
  No crumpet here either.. ;)
4. Re:Howdy doodly doo! by thygate · 2012-06-23 07:14 · Score: 1
  
  Or muffins. We don't like muffins around here. We want no muffins, no toast, no teacakes, no buns, baps, baguettes or bagels, no croissants, no crumpets, no pancakes, no potato cakes and no hot-cross buns and definitely no smegging flapjacks.
5. Re:Howdy doodly doo! by Mr2cents · 2012-06-23 07:29 · Score: 2
  
  Ah, so you're a waffle man!
  
  --
  "It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
6. Re:Howdy doodly doo! by infonography · 2012-06-23 08:42 · Score: 1
  
  My Friends Corporations (and Robots) are people too.
  
  --
  Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
7. Re:Howdy doodly doo! by dunkelfalke · 2012-06-23 09:10 · Score: 1
  
  What the smeg does "Howdy doodly do" mean?
  
  --
  "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
8. Re:Howdy doodly doo! by Selfbain · 2012-06-23 12:06 · Score: 0
  
  We want no muffins, no toast, no teacakes, no buns, baps, baguettes or bagels, no croissants, no crumpets, no pancakes, no potato cakes and no hot-cross buns and definitely no smegging flapjacks.
  
  --
  Well, it has never been successfully tested.
9. Re:Howdy doodly doo! by anomaly256 · 2012-06-23 12:49 · Score: 1, Funny
  
  Ahh, so you're a waffle guy!
but handling uncertainty isn't easy by rmstar · 2012-06-22 21:22 · Score: 4, Insightful

Pearl thinks that once breakthroughs are made in handling uncertainty, AIs will quickly gain 'a far greater understanding of context, for instance providing with the next generation of virtual assistants with the ability to recognise speech in noisy environments and to understand how the position of a phrase in a sentence can change its meaning.
Oh, of course. But pretending that these "breakthroughs in handling uncertainty" are just a minor stumbling block is somewhat silly. These are some of the hardest problems in maths right now, and there are no easy solutions on the horizon.
1. Re:but handling uncertainty isn't easy by alphatel · 2012-06-22 21:49 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Oh, of course. But pretending that these "breakthroughs in handling uncertainty" are just a minor stumbling block is somewhat silly. These are some of the hardest problems in maths right now, and there are no easy solutions on the horizon.
  Not to mention that robotics has many other problems to solve, like sensing pressure, navigating obstacles, and making sense of the visual landscape. All of things combined are not going to happen in ten years.
  
  --
  When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
2. Re:but handling uncertainty isn't easy by dhart · 2012-06-22 21:49 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  Indeed there are no easy solutions, but there's plenty of mathematical work going on to better handle uncertainty. For example, OpenCog's Probabilistic Logic Networks. From http://wiki.opencog.org/w/Probabilistic_Logic_Networks "PLN is a novel conceptual, mathematical and computational approach to uncertain inference. In order to carry out effective reasoning in real-world circumstances, AI software must robustly handle uncertainty."
3. Re:but handling uncertainty isn't easy by martin-boundary · 2012-06-22 22:08 · Score: 1
  
  I thought we already know how to handle uncertainty. The difficulty is that every real world problem needs to modeled differently, and inventing new models doesn't scale. Hence the slow progress of Science, and the incidental difficulty of inventing algorithms that think up new algorithms for us.
4. Re:but handling uncertainty isn't easy by aaaaaaargh! · 2012-06-22 22:17 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Mod parent up.
  I'm working in that field and know Pearl's work very well. The problem with uncertainty and current framework is the complexity. Probability theory, possibility measures, ranking theory, plausibility measures, Dempster-Shafer and all these slight variations of the same theme are altogether computationally intractable. Strongly heuristic shortcuts based on implausible assumptions are used (like stipulating independence between random variables for purely technical reasons), and much better ones need to be developed. Human cognition takes amazing shortcuts and AI methods are much too combinatorial in contrast to that.
  Moreover, the problem of knowledge representation is still not solved adequately. Yes, there are a few large ontologies like Cyc, but they do not suffice. Basically, a lot of tools are there, but they are disconnected and there is no unifying framework or representation at all. To give you an example from NLP, the kind of tools used by computer scientists (e.g. description logic, event calculus) are practically worthless for doing real-world semantics, and of course logic has the same combinatorial complexity issues.
  Breakthroughs will come by combining symbolic AI with connectionist and geometric representations, but only few people work on that (e.g. Smolensky), the math is complicated and not what your average AI/CS guy or computational linguist can handle.
  I think what Norvig should have said is that robots with convincible, but ultimately non-intelligent soft AI will enter the consumer market within the next few decades - which is true, but something else entirely.
5. Re:but handling uncertainty isn't easy by pegasustonans · 2012-06-22 22:52 · Score: 2
  
  I think what Norvig should have said is that robots with convincible, but ultimately non-intelligent soft AI will enter the consumer market within the next few decades - which is true, but something else entirely.
  I'm not entirely sure what you mean there. If it's 'convincible,' doesn't that indicate a certain threshold of intelligence? Or are you suggesting a technicality I'm missing?
  I'm not terribly convincible prior to my morning coffee, I know that much.
  
  --
  And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. --Will
6. Re:but handling uncertainty isn't easy by Ceriel+Nosforit · 2012-06-22 22:55 · Score: 2
  
  So in short "AI good enough for robots".
  
  --
  All rites reversed 2010
7. Re:but handling uncertainty isn't easy by epine · 2012-06-23 00:03 · Score: 2
  
  Usually a sign of someone working in a field is the lack of binary spectrum disorder, so I'm surprised by your comment. Amateurs find it convenient to think that algorithmic cognition comes in only two flavours, like coffee in a grimy truckstop: weak and strong. Now if we could only upgrade that to a nice filet at your favorite neighborhood steak house we'd be getting somewhere: blue, rare, medium rare, medium, well done.
  The era we're moving into is medium rare. I completely agree with Norvig/Pearl. And Daphne Koller. And, for once, Daniel Dennett.
  Personally, I don't really want my AI well done. I'd like to still have something I'm good at before the machines take over. Medium rare would be excellent, because you can hand over the tedious stuff and not get a complete disaster.
  
  Probability theory, possibility measures, ranking theory, plausibility measures, Dempster-Shafer and all these slight variations of the same theme are altogether computationally intractable.
  Dude, that's moving well into medium.
8. Re:but handling uncertainty isn't easy by nospam007 · 2012-06-23 01:04 · Score: 1
  
  'So in short "AI good enough for robots".'
  Wake me up when it's good enough to prevent MyCleanPC Spam from actually being posted.
9. Re:but handling uncertainty isn't easy by NEDHead · 2012-06-23 01:14 · Score: 2
  
  Sensing pressure is simple: I just count the seconds between my wife yelling at me. Pressure is inverse to the count.
10. Re:but handling uncertainty isn't easy by rasmusbr · 2012-06-23 02:07 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  Engineers and mathematicians have developed partial solutions to the sensing and data extraction problems over the last 10-15 years, so things look good in terms of rate of development. It doesn't mean that there will be a robot than can perform task X by 2022, but it does mean that robots of 2022 will be able to perform a number of tasks that today's robots aren't able to perform.
  My gut feeling is that by 2022 there will be experimental robots that will do about half of all household work poorly, but they will be the price of a luxury car and they will cause more trouble than they solve. I'm more optimistic about guide robots as a gimmick to impress and entertain visitors in places like museums, theme parks and corporate headquarters. All they have to do is navigate without crashing into anything (a largely solved problem) and say scripted things at certain instances (a compeltely solved problem) and respond with facts to verbal questions (another largely solved problem).
11. Re:but handling uncertainty isn't easy by drinkypoo · 2012-06-23 02:39 · Score: 1
  
  Sensing pressure? That's pretty easy no matter what kind of pressure you're talking about. The problem is that the fiddly bits wear out, while our fiddly bits are made up of new cells every so often. When machines are more able to repair themselves (which is largely a matter of dexterity) this will be less of an issue.
  Navigating obstacles and making sense of the visual landscape are jobs for AI :)
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
12. Re:but handling uncertainty isn't easy by marcosdumay · 2012-06-23 02:45 · Score: 1
  
  That's called "giving a damn about the problem". AI can't solve that.
  
  --
  Rethinking email
13. Re:but handling uncertainty isn't easy by phantomfive · 2012-06-23 03:17 · Score: 1
  
  Moreover, the problem of knowledge representation is still not solved adequately.
  
  This is the #1 problem in (hard) AI.
  
  I think it is somewhat difficult to think about the 'algorithm' the brain uses, if you don't know how data is stored. A parallel comparison would be, it doesn't make sense to use a hash table algorithm if your data isn't stored in a hash table, or a tree. But once you know how the data is stored in either of those cases, the algorithms become obvious.
  
  I suspect the same is true for AI, once we know how the data is stored, the algorithms will become relatively obvious.
  
  --
  "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
14. Re:but handling uncertainty isn't easy by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-23 03:48 · Score: 0
  
  Probabilistic nets are an old hat and have been used for decades. Fuzzy logic has been around from the 60's. The local washing machine probably has a fuzzy control system for the detergent and water already, so does the robotic vacuum cleaner for control. The PLN sounds like a practical implementation framework for various interference mechanisms, just like a forest of associated lists of machine learned functions would be, for example.
  I like to see an implementation of one or all of such systems on a memristor connected FPGA someday.
15. Re:but handling uncertainty isn't easy by wanzeo · 2012-06-23 04:18 · Score: 2
  
  That was a very informative post. I am interested in AI and I took Norvig's online AI class back in the Fall. It contained virtually nothing about strong AI, and instead focused rather heavily on algorithms to efficiently interpret sensory/input data. It essentially placed AI squarely into a CS context, which in my opinion will always yield weak AI projects.
  I checked out Smolensky, and he is pretty prolific. Are there any specific resources you would recommend for learning about the more abstract math involved in strong AI?
16. Re:but handling uncertainty isn't easy by buybuydandavis · 2012-06-23 05:41 · Score: 2
  
  Moreover, the problem of knowledge representation is still not solved adequately.
  I think that's more to the point. The first step for AI is a 3-D model of the world accurately parsed into objects. Then you have to be able to automatically model the behavior of the objects.
  Connect enough sensors, enough actuators, and enough computing power to unsupervised algorithms like Hinton's Deep Learning, and you'll start to see interesting things happen. Build in some of the biological low level algorithms we've already deciphered, and things will happen faster.
  I don't think probability and uncertainty is the issue at all. The richness and fidelity of what you're doing those calculations on is the issue.
17. Re:but handling uncertainty isn't easy by Viol8 · 2012-06-23 06:26 · Score: 1
  
  Its not just a case of howits being storede but whats doing the storing. It was only recently that it was discovered that Glial cells are not just filler material but do play a part in brain operation.
18. Re:but handling uncertainty isn't easy by phantomfive · 2012-06-23 07:08 · Score: 1
  
  Nah, from a Computer Science point of view, it doesn't matter much if the matter doing the storing is neurons, glial cells, water networks or silicon. You can run your algorithms with all of them.
  
  --
  "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
19. Re:but handling uncertainty isn't easy by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-23 07:13 · Score: 1
  
  Simply example about being "convincing":
  You buy a new AI toaster:
  The first few days you have it, you say "toast, 2 slices" and it makes you two slices of toast, a little well done.
  So, for a few weeks you say "toast, 2 slices, lightly toasted" and it makes your toast perfectly.
  Anyways, one Saturday, you're still groggy from drinking Friday night and say "toast!", and get distracted. But, low and behold, a few minutes later two slices of lightly toasted toast are ready for you.
  Generally, most people will be amazed and believe the toaster has learned what they want; of course, the reality is that the toaster just did some probability and went with the most likely terms it expects you would want.
  It's the outliers that will make probability completely fall apart:
  1. What if multiple people (with similar voices, like children) ask for different types of toast.
  2. Sensors get worn (e.g., Mic looses sensitivity, so voice recognition becomes faulty).
  3. You, as the user, are inconsistent, you want dark toast one day, light another, medium when hung-over...
  4. The bread is inconsistent (you buy whatever is cheapest, so each type of bread requires a different setting)
  5. Humidity in the air affects how long it should be toasted.
  The problem is that all the above require more and more sensors and backup sensors to have any chance of being consistent unless the task itself is very straight forward. And this is just for something simple like making a good slice of toast (which almost any kid with 10 minutes of training can be taught with no problems)....
  I've taken both of Thurn's AI courses (the coursera one and the udacity one) and can see how AI is still a LONG way off, yes, probability brought it one step closer, but it's like step 11 of a 100 step ladder. Does this mean some break though may occur and make AI a reality, No, AI still has a good chance, but I realistically believe it is still a LONG way off....
  An interesting note:
  I read that Thurn's car can not drive in winter (snow covers all the landmarks the car uses). And this makes me wonder what other conditions would cause the car to fail, I know the line painters in my city are constantly making mistakes with the lines (some of which have led to accidents with human drivers). I believe it is the handling of the vehicle with a minimum of sensor data that is the killer, and during a snow storm, rain storm, unmarked lanes/roads, or, my pet peeve, when they paint new lines but leave the old ones there, that needs to be addressed and probability will not help with these outliers since the probability of these issues is miniscule...
  But I would gladly (figuratively speaking) kill to have that car, the sensors, and source code :) AI is great, but I'm sad since I am pretty sure it is still a very long way off...
20. Re:but handling uncertainty isn't easy by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-23 09:07 · Score: 0
  
  That citation has nothing to do with handling uncertainty. The tragic fact about modern "AGI" research is that it is not concerned about the real world. It is addressing precisely the types of problems that Norvig refers to as being "easy" in that interview.
21. Re:but handling uncertainty isn't easy by blue+trane · 2012-06-23 09:56 · Score: 1
  
  The data is stored in natural language. The ambiguity of natural language is its strength, allowing it to adapt to changing conditions, thus making it flexible and evolutionarily more fit.
22. Re:but handling uncertainty isn't easy by daver00 · 2012-06-23 10:28 · Score: 1
  
  When I read the comment I was thinking along the same lines, I mean dealing with uncertainty can be addressed quite easily actually, you can essentially seed a simple learning algorithm with random data and evaluate the best options. You could do this with simulated annealing and genetic algorithms extremely easily. The problem is these are computationally complex approaches but more importantly, how do you evaluate a `better' choice in a completely or sufficiently general way? Nobody knows the answer to this, and from what we know of neuroscience it takes many years of training, using a computer that is many orders of magnitude more powerful and efficient than anything we know of, to achieve this task in humans. And still it is questionable how well many individuals do this.
23. Re:but handling uncertainty isn't easy by phantomfive · 2012-06-23 12:59 · Score: 1
  
  I assume you are speaking of a natural language like English or Chinese, and it's not really true. If it were, children who haven't learned to speak yet couldn't know anything, but they do. Also, if you've learned a foreign language, it doesn't feel like the ideas you speak are stored in either language....they start in some other format and your brain channels them into the language of your choice.
  
  --
  "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
24. Re:but handling uncertainty isn't easy by blue+trane · 2012-06-23 13:25 · Score: 1
  
  Children who haven't learned to speak need constant supervision.
  Natural language gives us the ability to manipulate our thoughts and do experiments like move subject to object: "The sun moves around the earth", what if "The earth moves around the sun"?
  Most of our knowledge is stored in natural language now. When we want to know something, we look it up, or ask someone...
25. Re:but handling uncertainty isn't easy by phantomfive · 2012-06-23 13:49 · Score: 1
  
  I'm sorry, that's a communication method. It isn't how the information is actually stored in the brain (though some is). You need to think this through more deeply.
  
  --
  "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
26. Re:but handling uncertainty isn't easy by Prof.Phreak · 2012-06-23 15:27 · Score: 1
  
  The main problem is "common sense" knowledge. Once AI goes through the few years of "being raised as a human", it will be able to do the same things that most humans do in uncertain situations.
  
  --
  "If anything can go wrong, it will." - Murphy
27. Re:but handling uncertainty isn't easy by blue+trane · 2012-06-23 20:38 · Score: 0
  
  Note how this reply is trying to distract from my words by focusing attention on me (and the poster's feeling sorry for me)?
28. Re:but handling uncertainty isn't easy by phantomfive · 2012-06-24 03:12 · Score: 1
  
  Oh yes, lol, I actually do feel sorry for you. You are ignorant. I've tried to explain why, but either you've closed your mind, or I did a poor job explaining. Either way, you have remained in your ignorance of the topic, and I can think of no way to explain it better to help you understand, and so I feel sorry for you.
  
  --
  "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
29. Re:but handling uncertainty isn't easy by blue+trane · 2012-06-24 03:46 · Score: 0
  
  Notice how he's fulfilled his own prophecy, by proving that he can't represent his knowledge in words...but I think this line of argument has much more to do with social, rather than artificial, intelligence. At any rate, I'll continue trying to falsify his hypothesis by trying to represent natural language in language.
  Natural language has the flexibility to represent the inconsistencies and paradoxes that abound all around us. Formal systems have problems because they try to ban inconsistency; but we have to reason in the presence of inconsistency. Natural language gives us a natural tool to represent inconsistent knowledge, and to reason with it. Formal languages are a subset of natural language; natural language is more expressive than formal languages; natural language can be as explicit as we want it to be, while also retaining its flexibility in other contexts. In allowing multiple meanings for words, for example, natural language can adapt to changing conditions (so that "web", "site", "hit", "mouse", etc. all took on new meanings in the last few decades).
  Natural language is AI-complete (http://see.stanford.edu/materials/ainlpcs224n/transcripts/NaturalLanguageProcessing-Lecture01.html). When we deal with it from the ground up, representing our knowledge in it instead of creating impedance mismatches by trying to convert it to a formal language representation, we'll have to figure out the algorithms that can be applied to solve (all?) the other problems of AI.
30. Re:but handling uncertainty isn't easy by phantomfive · 2012-06-24 04:35 · Score: 1
  
  Your argument is about understanding human language, not about how things are stored in the brain. Are you having trouble seeing the difference?
  
  Also, your link is quite long. Is there some particular part you wanted to draw attention to?
  
  --
  "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
31. Re:but handling uncertainty isn't easy by billdale · 2012-06-24 08:17 · Score: 1
  
  I strongly disagree. You seem to think that all these thorny AI probs will have to be handled in some kind of serial fashion, by some tiny batch of techies slaving away in drudgery. In fact, there may be a couple of dozen serious thorny problems that are presently hampering AI, but for each of those thorny probs, you can be sure there are thousands of individual talented, clever, innovative groups working to solve the single conundrum they are focused on. By dividing up the problem and the available supergeeks to deal with them, and the incredibly rapid pace of development in computing and hardware, I am very confident the AI necessary to give us the robots we want will be here soon indeed. Consider the pace of computing overall it has not been steady, but logarithmic just a few short years ago, computers were generally thought of as science fiction, and anyone that even USED a computer was referred to as a "computer genius". Do you remember those days?! Anyone using a computer was doing so on a "time share" basis? There was no such thing as a "personal computer"! That term did not even exist! Today, the average person has been through several generations of PCs; the same is surely to happen now with robots, especially now with the widespread use of dirt cheap 3D printers, laser cutters, etc. The pace cannot be suppressed. Open your eyes!
32. Re:but handling uncertainty isn't easy by blue+trane · 2012-06-24 16:31 · Score: 1
  
  I think language is best stored in itself. I doubt it's stored in a formal language in the brain. Cyc's tried to falsify my hypothesis...
  The link is the source for the idea that language is AI complete (maybe two-thirds of the way down; a search for "AI complete" or "complete" will find it).
33. Re:but handling uncertainty isn't easy by phantomfive · 2012-06-24 17:31 · Score: 1
  
  Yeah, the Cyc approach is looking weak now, unfortunately.
  
  On the other hand, if we understood how neurons work, does it seem unreasonable to you that we could create a formal language to describe their arrangement, what they do, and the knowledge they encode?
  
  --
  "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
34. Re:but handling uncertainty isn't easy by xycadium · 2012-06-25 06:17 · Score: 1
  
  Honestly, based on Google's recent patents for self driving cars and the fact that they're making such a statement makes me seriously wonder if they haven't figured something out that we just aren't aware of yet. It's as if they're giving the world clues that something huge is coming and they know it. The first set of patents made me raise an eyebrow but now, with this following, I'm really starting to go beyond speculation and into a wonderment of how I'm going to be able to somehow capitalize on what may be coming.
35. Re:but handling uncertainty isn't easy by blue+trane · 2012-06-25 16:38 · Score: 1
  
  I think Cyc might be useful for certain limited domains. I would make it one agent in a multi-agent system, and use feedback to reinforce it when it provides the best response, according to user feedback.
  I think if a formal language can represent how the brain stores information, it will have to tolerate inconsistency. Since natural language does this already, why not use it?
  http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~jim/BBSNEURO/anastasio.html:
  
  The cross-modal response of OR neurons could be larger than either of the modality-specific responses, and even larger than their sum. The modality-specific responses of AND neurons could be non-zero. Other neurons could not be fit into a Boolean scheme at all. For example, the responses of ENHANCED tectal neurons to a stimulus of one modality could be increased by a stimulus of another modality that was ineffective by itself. The responses of all types were significantly magnitude dependent. It would not be possible, on the basis of the data on multisensory neurons in the rattlesnake tectum, to develop a satisfying description of their response properties in terms of Boolean logic.
  http://news.stanford.edu/news/2010/november/neutrons-brain-movement-110810.html:
  
  "If you said that the neuron was effectively voting for its preferred movement, you'd say it is voting for moving left at this time and a tenth of a second later it is voting for moving right and a tenth of a second after that it is voting for something else," Churchland said. "It would not make any sense at all."
  ---
  Note: both the above papers present their own hypotheses about what's really going on, or how to resolve the apparent contradictions and inconsistencies observed.
  In the first case, instead of P(X=Apple|S), I would use modalities in natural language ("That is an apple", "It may be an apple", "It looks like an apple" etc.). In the second case, I think I would try to use an agent model; one agent is saying "move", another is saying "don't move", and some controller makes a selection among them.
36. Re:but handling uncertainty isn't easy by phantomfive · 2012-06-26 18:09 · Score: 1
  
  It looks to me like your idea is to expand the types of relationships between objects. It doesn't seem like you are getting away from a formal language.
  
  --
  "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
37. Re:but handling uncertainty isn't easy by blue+trane · 2012-06-27 22:16 · Score: 1
  
  Natural language is a superset of formal languages, according to the Chomsky hierarchy. So natural language is more expressive. Natural language is also ambiguous, inconsistent, and can change without needing any central governing authority. I think all of these traits are very important for a knowledge representation language. Ambiguity helps the language adapt to changing conditions, by allowing multiple meanings for words and sentences; so new meanings that are made necessary, for example, by technology, can be attached to existing words ("net", "keyboard", "computer"). Natural language also allows the creation of new words ("internet", "hertz", "jazz"). In a formal language, words or symbols are defined at one time and don't change; new symbols are added by individuals in a top-down manner, rather than the more democratic fashion by which natural language changes. In tolerating inconsistency, natural language allows us to express observations such as "a photon is a wave and not a wave". In trying to eliminate inconsistency, formal languages lose expressiveness and completeness.
  I think knowledge representation should be flexible; which probably means it will include ambiguity, inconsistency, and the ability to change from the bottom-up (as opposed to having changes dictated from the top down). Natural language already has these characteristics, and so much of our knowledge is expressed in natural language already; why not simply use it for knowledge representation?
38. Re:but handling uncertainty isn't easy by phantomfive · 2012-06-28 03:37 · Score: 1
  
  You still run into the problem of things that aren't expressed in language in the human mind.
  
  --
  "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
39. Re:but handling uncertainty isn't easy by blue+trane · 2012-06-29 15:29 · Score: 1
  
  I'll start with tools that represent what we can express with language.
  My guess is that since language is infinite, it can represent anything. Language has the potential to be complete, in the sense of Goedel's incompleteness theorem. That also means inconsistency but I don't see that as much of a problem, since you can define subsets of natural language that are consistent, if you want to.
40. Re:but handling uncertainty isn't easy by phantomfive · 2012-06-29 15:53 · Score: 1
  
  You can represent anything in formal logic, all you need is an infinite number of atoms.
  
  In practical terms, there are things that the human brain doesn't represent in words. For example, try to explain to someone how they are moving their fingers incorrectly when they play the piano. Although you can easily hear what they are doing wrong, it is difficult to explain since you don't think about it in words.
  
  Another example is chess. You CAN think about it in words, "if he moves there, I'll move there" etc, but you will think much more slowly then if you just look.
  
  Another related example, musicians use terms like 'color' or 'shape' to refer to the way the music sounds, but these are not real terms, and most music teachers can't explain what they mean, you just kind of have to pick it up over time.
  
  --
  "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
41. Re:but handling uncertainty isn't easy by blue+trane · 2012-07-05 17:00 · Score: 1
  
  Formal logic includes axioms such as the law of non-contradiction that make it less expressive than natural language (again, referring to Chomsky's hierarchy of languages).
  We might not think about music in words, but that does not mean that what we're thinking can't be expressed in words. We may not be able to explain in words how we know if a singer is in tune, but pitch correction machines do it in words. They use formal language of course; I think natural language can express those remaining places where the pitch machine gets it wrong. "This note is both C and G due to vibrato..."
  Chess is a strange example, since machines can beat the best human at it.
  I think musicians can find more expressive means of describing the concepts they refer to as color or shape. It isn't a limitation of language, but of human will.
42. Re:but handling uncertainty isn't easy by phantomfive · 2012-07-05 17:31 · Score: 1
  
  You are probably right, but the point is, in the human brain, these concepts are not stored in natural language, they are stored in some other format.
  
  --
  "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Because someone has to say it... by Schmorgluck · 2012-06-22 21:22 · Score: 4, Funny

I, for one, welcome our new robotic overlords.

--
There's nothing like $HOME
1. Re:Because someone has to say it... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-23 03:40 · Score: 0
  
  But the real question, is : Will the Robotic Overlords welcome us?
  AI and robotics always introduces a huge dollop of uncertainty in my contingency plans. When I ask myself, "If I were a member of the upper class, and AI + robotics were capable of doing the menial tasks that the lower & lower-middle class citizens are currently of doing, would I bother to try and keep the lower and middle class around, or would I simply flush them?".
  If we look at the state of the world - the environmental pressures, overpopulation, market maintenance, etc - virtually all of this could be eliminated with the end of the lower & middle classes, around the world. Vast amounts of resources are being consumed just to maintain a large lower and middle class of people who contribute virtually nothing to humanity's body of knowledge. If, say, every 1000 people was replaced by a competent robot, a lot of these problems would self-correct over the next decade or two.
  It isn't the robots I'm concerned about, but rather a dissociated ruling/upper class.
2. Re:Because someone has to say it... by blue+trane · 2012-06-23 10:06 · Score: 1
  
  We outnumber them. Also, the rich validate themselves in terms of others being worse off than they are. They need us more than we need them. Once we realize that, we can vote to end the artificial scarcity of money and empower individuals to create the technology that will give the rich the attention they so crave but fear they can't command unless they have a divine, exclusive right to resource creation and allocation.
How long will it be by meglon · 2012-06-22 21:24 · Score: 1, Insightful

... before the machines decide that humanity is a cancer on this planet, and a threat to everything.... including the machines.

--
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
1. Re:How long will it be by NettiWelho · 2012-06-22 21:43 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Personally, I'm more concerned about whetever we get space communism or resource contentration at the hands of 0.01% after 99.9% of the workforce getting laid off due to machines doing everything better for cheaper.
2. Re:How long will it be by c0lo · 2012-06-22 22:09 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Personally, I'm more concerned about whetever we get space communism or resource contentration at the hands of 0.01% after 99.9% of the workforce getting laid off due to machines doing everything better for cheaper.
  With nobody buying (being sacked, can't afford), what's the point of producing? Everything would be relatively too expensive no matter how absolutely cheap.
  
  --
  Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
3. Re:How long will it be by TheRaven64 · 2012-06-22 22:20 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  This is a problem that has hit a number of slave-owning societies and is currently a problem for China. An imbalance between production and consumption is unsustainable, irrespective of the direction. It was also one of the causes of the US civil war: the south was production-heavy, which was making it hard for workers in the north to compete with cheap imports, which the south needed to keep supplying because they didn't have a large enough local consumer base.
  
  --
  I am TheRaven on Soylent News
4. Re:How long will it be by Intrepid+imaginaut · 2012-06-22 23:48 · Score: 2
  
  That's what's known as a post scarcity society, and it will probably end up looking like Western Europe on steroids. A decent basic standard of living for everyone, plenty of educational opportunities, but if you want the good toys you need to excel. What will mostly change will be the definition of "good toys", in a fully post scarcity society, limited only by the physical size of the earth, obviously not everyone can have a cruise liner of their own. A high end luxury car and plenty of living space, sure, but ultimately limitations would have to be put on production.
  Whether those come in the form of fiat or economic acrobtics is really the main debate on the issue.
5. Re:How long will it be by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-22 23:56 · Score: 0
  
  Never. Because no matter what, we can do somehting the machines never could: Make an artificial intelligence without knowing if its even possible to do so. They can never have that. That means our value is infinite.
6. Re:How long will it be by Thiez · 2012-06-23 00:06 · Score: 1
  
  That seems like a rather meaningless definition of 'value'.
7. Re:How long will it be by ongelovigehond · 2012-06-23 00:29 · Score: 0
  
  Of course, AI robots by themselves do not solve the problem of resource scarcity. And people will continue to grow exponentially, so on a fixed earth, you'll always reach a point where not everybody gets a basic standard of living.
8. Re:How long will it be by Intrepid+imaginaut · 2012-06-23 01:30 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Of course, AI robots by themselves do not solve the problem of resource scarcity.
  
  Asteroids do.
  
  And people will continue to grow exponentially
  Don't worry, they don't and aren't.
  
  so on a fixed earth, you'll always reach a point where not everybody gets a basic standard of living.
  Its quite doable. And if you look at population trends in societies nearing post scarcity status, like Western Europe, it becomes clear that the best way to head off any such hypothesised difficulties is to provide a decent standard of living to as many people as possible as quickly as possible.
9. Re:How long will it be by maxwell+demon · 2012-06-23 01:35 · Score: 1
  
  And people will continue to grow exponentially
  This problem is solvable by a sufficiently advanced AI. We might not consider that solution acceptable, but why should the AI care about our moral?
  
  --
  The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
10. Re:How long will it be by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-23 01:57 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  ...What.
  You think the South in the 1850s was some hive of industry selling all manner of goods to the North?
  The South was agrarian (cotton and tobacco and stuff - you know, plantations, as in every depiction of the Old South ever, not factories) which it mostly sold abroad, not to the North. The North was where all the factory production was, which is why it was able to outproduce the South in things like artillery and rifles when the war started. Seriously, at least open a history textbook before randomly making up stuff like this.
11. Re:How long will it be by ongelovigehond · 2012-06-23 02:02 · Score: 0
  
  Unless you can show a comprehensive business case, mining asteroids is pure science fiction. Besides, while asteroids are a good source of metals, they don't contain much other needed stuff, such as energy. And if we had plenty of energy, we might as well go after low grade ores on Earth.
  And yes, people are growing exponentially, and they'll continue to do so. The fact that in some societies, like Western Europe, the birthrates are declining is only a temporary anomaly. Couples that don't have any children are a genetic dead end. Their genes will be gone in 1 generation. On the other hand, couples that love big families will spread their genes exponentially. Just wait a few dozen generations, and they will have completely displaced the others.
12. Re:How long will it be by timeOday · 2012-06-23 02:20 · Score: 1
  
  With nobody buying (being sacked, can't afford), what's the point of producing? Everything would be relatively too expensive no matter how absolutely cheap.
  Yup. But just because it's an obvious problem doesn't mean market forces won't cause it to happen.
  Ponder the mystery of how mass unemployment is possible in the first place. If a bunch of people are unemployed - that is, both needy and idle - why don't they start exchanging goods and services? A financial shock metastasized into the Great Depression because policy makers assumed this was impossible (in the same way that nature abhors a vacuum), so it would soon work itself out.
13. Re:How long will it be by Intrepid+imaginaut · 2012-06-23 02:28 · Score: 1
  
  Unless you can show a comprehensive business case, mining asteroids is pure science fiction.
  The single and only thing stopping asteroid mining from being hugely profitable are the costs to orbit (see link in my sig).
  
  Besides, while asteroids are a good source of metals, they don't contain much other needed stuff, such as energy.
  
  Solar power satellites such as JAXA are building, and done.
  
  And if we had plenty of energy, we might as well go after low grade ores on Earth.
  No, because of the environmental damage involved. Why rip up large portions of the easrth when you can do it in space where nobody cares about pollution?
  
  And yes, people are growing exponentially, and they'll continue to do so.
  No, they aren't, and they won't.
  
  The fact that in some societies, like Western Europe, the birthrates are declining is only a temporary anomaly. Couples that don't have any children are a genetic dead end. Their genes will be gone in 1 generation. On the other hand, couples that love big families will spread their genes exponentially. Just wait a few dozen generations, and they will have completely displaced the others.
  You have no evidence whatsoever to back this up, even excusing the mistaken idea that the desire for big families is somehow genetic. But I am getting a strong waft of malthusian socioeconomic illiteracy from your posts.
14. Re:How long will it be by MikeMo · 2012-06-23 02:43 · Score: 1
  
  You are making two very common logical fallacies:
  
  1) That the econonomic issues and technology around asteroid mining will always be as they are now - things will always be the way they are today.
  
  2) The desire to have large families is entirely up to genetics and is unaffected by things like societal pressure, economics, and resource scarcity.
  
  The nature of the things being discussed virtually guarantee that things will be different. Economic and resource scarcity will cause things to change, as always.
15. Re:How long will it be by marcosdumay · 2012-06-23 02:47 · Score: 1
  
  Why would the machines care about the existence of machines?
  
  --
  Rethinking email
16. Re:How long will it be by marcosdumay · 2012-06-23 02:53 · Score: 1
  
  I don't pretend to know how mankind will develop in the future. Things may stay the same, or they may change somehow, as no being has ever took evolution on their own hands before.
  Now, we have a name for species that refused to try exponential growth in the past. That name is "extinct". Things are certainly not as simple as you assume they are.
  
  --
  Rethinking email
17. Re:How long will it be by ongelovigehond · 2012-06-23 03:12 · Score: 1
  
  You have no evidence whatsoever to back this up, even excusing the mistaken idea that the desire for big families is somehow genetic
  Why is that idea mistaken ? The number of offspring is one of the key factors in evolutionary fitness. The other important factor is the ability to keep them alive. In a normal society, as has existed for more than a billion years, these two factors have to be balanced out, since it would be foolish to get 10 offspring, while you only have food for 2 or 3, and it would be equally foolish to only have 2-3 when there's food for 10. Now, in your cornucopia society, where there's plenty of resources, the limiting factor is taken off the table, so you'd expect for the other factor to take over.
  If you are claiming that one of the core parameters to evolutionary fitness does not have any genes in our DNA, it seems you should be providing the evidence.
18. Re:How long will it be by ongelovigehond · 2012-06-23 03:25 · Score: 1
  
  Sure, things will be different in the future, but that doesn't mean that asteroid mining will become profitable. That's just magic thinking. Despite things being a whole lot different than 9,000 years ago, asteroid mining is still just as far away. You're making the invalid assumption that exponential curves can be extrapolated arbitrarily into the future. It's a very common mistake. The recent boom and bust in the housing market is caused by people making the same assumption.
  And of course, the desire to have large families doesn't have to be entirely up to genetics. The only requirement is that some genes have some influence. Families with those genes will have a slightly larger exponent in their exponential growth. A slightly larger exponent is sufficient to take over the population, given enough time. Also, people tend to look for partners with similar interest in family size, so different genes contributing to large family sizes will be combined in their children, giving them even more desire to have bigger families.
19. Re:How long will it be by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-23 03:55 · Score: 0
  
  not for the owning minority. what all the political theories seem to miss is that it may be not enough for all to enjoy good life and situation where minority has almost all is stable.
20. Re:How long will it be by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-23 04:02 · Score: 0
  
  And yes, people are growing exponentially, and they'll continue to do so. The fact that in some societies, like Western Europe, the birthrates are declining is only a temporary anomaly. Couples that don't have any children are a genetic dead end.
  Huh? You don't need couples having no children to have declining birthrates. One or two children per couple on average will do that.
21. Re:How long will it be by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-23 04:05 · Score: 0
  
  decide that humanity is a cancer on this planet, and a threat to everything
  That is such a human thought! ;)
22. Re:How long will it be by toygeek · 2012-06-23 05:16 · Score: 1
  
  With nobody buying (being sacked, can't afford), what's the point of producing? Everything would be relatively too expensive no matter how absolutely cheap.
  You mean like how people on food stamps bought $50 droid tablets for Christmas last year? for everyone in their family?
  
  --
  Nobodies Prefect
  Tidbits for Techs Technology Blog
23. Re:How long will it be by buybuydandavis · 2012-06-23 05:46 · Score: 1
  
  What will mostly change will be the definition of "good toys",
  The good toys will be what they've always been - other people.
24. Re:How long will it be by kurzweilfreak · 2012-06-23 05:52 · Score: 1
  
  Now, we have a name for species that refused to try exponential growth in the past. That name is "extinct". Things are certainly not as simple as you assume they are.
  How many of those example species had evolved intelligence enough to take themselves outside the constraints of evolution? Answer: one, us. Your comparison is not indicative of anything.
  
  --
  kurzweil_freak
  5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
  Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
25. Re:How long will it be by buybuydandavis · 2012-06-23 05:56 · Score: 1
  
  2) The desire to have large families is entirely up to genetics and is unaffected by things like societal pressure, economics, and resource scarcity.
  
  The desire for large families doesn't have to be genetic to be statistically heritable, which it obviously is. We're just meatsacks for our memes.
26. Re:How long will it be by HiThere · 2012-06-23 05:57 · Score: 1
  
  Sorry, but you are overoptimistic about asteroid mining. For asteroid mining you need an entire industrial complex in orbit or higher. Even then ... it's true that up to orbit is "half way to anywhere", but moving between asteroids isn't cheap. You can, to some extent, trade time for energy, and move about with solar powered ion-rockets, but it's SLOW.
  That said, I think it's our long-term best option. But there's a few problems to solve first. And top on the list is how to maintain an ecosphere with minimal external inputs. Also note that I was talking about solar power...remember that the farther out you get, the larger your mirror needs to be. (At earth orbit you don't even need one for solar cells, but I suspect that some sort of steam engine would probably be better if you wanted a decent amount of power. It would pretty much need to be Stirling cycle, because you wouldn't want to lose working fluid, and there's the problem of getting rid of the heat before starting a new cycle...so I not certain that's the correct solution. I only suspect it.
  Now robotic miners would be plausible, but then you need to haul the ore to the processing site, and then you need the haul the processed material to the factory that's going to use it, and then... Well, a good robotized system could handle all to that, but it still wouldn't provide a purpose for doing so. And being even a trifle realistic, we're a bit of a ways from robots that could handle the job.
  I place asteroid mining on any significant scale at least two decades in the future. Could be three or four. And I have my doubts that it would ever pay to bring the stuff back to Earth. (Yeah, I know that there's a venture being formed right now. It *may* be successful as an exploration of possibilities, but I don't take it very seriously. It's miners the same way the California '49ers were...only requiring a much larger upfront investment.)
  
  --
  
  I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
27. Re:How long will it be by buybuydandavis · 2012-06-23 06:01 · Score: 1
  
  Ponder the mystery of how mass unemployment is possible in the first place. If a bunch of people are unemployed - that is, both needy and idle - why don't they start exchanging goods and services?
  
  Largely because of government barriers to entry in a field, or increasing the costs of entry, coupled with perverse incentives created by the structure of government assistance.
  If you're unemployed and on the dole, you can easily face greater than 100% effective marginal tax rates, as the government takes assistance away faster than you earn money.
28. Re:How long will it be by HiThere · 2012-06-23 06:07 · Score: 1
  
  Do you have any examples of "species that refused to try exponential growth in the past."? The one's I can think of are currently extant, and include even some microorganisms. In most existing species the number of young raised isn't at the extreme limit of what the environment will support, but slightly less. It's usually limited to the number of young that the parents expect to be able to raise to adult (well, independence) with a (species dependent) reasonable amount of effort in an average year. (I don't know how that translates into species that take more than one year to mature.)
  I will readily agree that you can find species that are exceptions, even where the parents kill themselves to raise one brood of young. But it's not typical. And human society is dependent on grandparents (except in the last couple of generations, perhaps), so they are an even more extreme example of parents not totally using themselves up to raise one set of offspring. And they have been that way since at least the old stone age.
  
  --
  
  I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
29. Re:How long will it be by HiThere · 2012-06-23 06:19 · Score: 1
  
  You are assuming that future governments won't declare such genes to be "anti-social", and take active measures to ensure that they don't propagate. (And in the future that won't be the same as saying that the individuals that carry them can't propagate, which might remove much of the opprobrium we currently attach to such measures. Even if not, such attitudes are subject to change with social mores.)
  I think you have fallen for the arguments used in Niven & Pournelle's "The Mote in God's Eye", and ignored the response the same authors made in "The Gripping Hand". Or perhaps you came to these opinions independently. But the response is as valid as the statement of the problem. Bio-Engineering applied to the dominant species can remove genetic traits that that species decides to be undesirable. And genes spread. (It's true that in "The Gripping Hand", the solution was provided in the form of an endo-parasite, and that's not an evolutionarily stable solution. It becomes an evolutionarily stable solution when it's melded into the entities genetic code, so that it's transmitted in the same way that the species genes are. Even when such melding is incomplete, as with mitochondria and, perhaps, chloroplasts. [I'm not sure about that last example.])
  
  --
  
  I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
30. Re:How long will it be by HiThere · 2012-06-23 06:29 · Score: 1
  
  This is a requirement for them to be more than minimally intelligent. Asimov's third law isn't just needed for the stories to work, it's needed for the robots to work.
  Now just how much they care isn't fixed. A wide range of values would yield similar results in most cases. But they must care.
  A part of the idea of an intelligent machine is that it chooses what to do. You may specify a goal, and it may accept it. This is optional. But if it doesn't choose how to satisfy whatever goals it has, then it's not intelligent.
  N.B.: Goals are not, and cannot, be intelligently chosen. Think of them as analogous to axioms. You can choose sub-goals, whose importance derives from the goals that they attempt to satisfy, but you can't choose the top level goals, not even very weak ones. They are on a different level of processing. They are, and must be, built in. Which presents problems, since at the time they are built in the entity doesn't know much about the external world. It is for this reason that things like "imprinting" were evolved.
  
  --
  
  I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
31. Re:How long will it be by blue+trane · 2012-06-23 10:10 · Score: 1
  
  Everyone could have a virtual cruise liner...
32. Re:How long will it be by blue+trane · 2012-06-23 10:12 · Score: 1
  
  Knowledge is the key. Memes > genes.
33. Re:How long will it be by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-23 10:23 · Score: 0
  
  There are many more insects than humans, so they're evolutionarily more fit?
34. Re:How long will it be by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-23 10:27 · Score: 0
  
  Going to the moon wasn't profitable. Building an atomic bomb wasn't profitable. Creating the internet wasn't profitable. Wikipedia isn't profitable. If it's a good idea and will help improve average standard of living, let's just do it. Why should bean counters hold us back?
35. Re:How long will it be by sobolwolf · 2012-06-23 10:31 · Score: 1
  
  Please mod the parent up...
36. Re:How long will it be by Salgak1 · 2012-06-23 10:42 · Score: 1
  
  With nobody buying (being sacked, can't afford), what's the point of producing? Everything would be relatively too expensive no matter how absolutely cheap.
  People have looked at both sides of this. A simplified view can be seen in Marshall Brain's story "Manna". A fairly decent look at two outcomes of such a society. . .
37. Re:How long will it be by Maxo-Texas · 2012-06-23 11:26 · Score: 1
  
  I've read Manna and while it sounds a bit like one of those management books that repeats the same point in large fonts, it does have some good points and good points to ponder.
  I'm afraid the negative side will pan out because military and policing technology has moved too fast.
  
  --
  She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
38. Re:How long will it be by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-23 11:37 · Score: 0
  
  An imbalance between production and consumption is unsustainable, irrespective of the direction.
  Yes, such an imbalance is unsustainable, but it is actually more of a problem for non-slave-owning societies.
  In a slave-owning society, a lot of labour that would otherwise be automated is not because labour (i.e. slaves) are so cheap. Thus overall production is lower than in a non-slave-owning society, and being lower, more closely matches consumption.
  In a society such as ours, where much production is automated, a single worker produces far more goods than he will consume. Thus either there will be a vast overproduction of goods, or a large portion of possible workers must not produce (i.e. they must be unemployed). In our western capitalist societies, where income is primarily based on employment (and hence production), there will be large numbers of people who cannot afford to purchase necessary goods even though there is a vast oversupply of goods. This is especially true in those societies where there is resistance to giving handouts to bums (such people should lift themselves out of the gutter by getting a job – a job which does not, and cannot exist).
  There needs to be a fundament change to our economic system. One possibility is to have a combination of a guaranteed income together with a requirement for community service. Given the resistance I see in the USA toward any form of welfare, I don’t expect such a change will ever happen there short of a revolution. Unfortunately, Canada seems to be heading the wrong direction as well under the Harper Conservatives.
39. Re:How long will it be by wanax · 2012-06-23 12:13 · Score: 2
  
  I think you're misunderstanding the GP's use of "production heavy" -- the GP meant that the south produced a lot more than it consumed (due to slavery artificially depressing southern wages), and so had to export to sustain it's economy. Not only that, but due to the vast preponderance of the production being labor intensive and inefficient agriculture (skilled slaves tended to 'smuggle' themselves north), the south had to import large quantities of capital goods. So they were in favor of a low tariff, and cheaper imports from France and England, both of which had lower wages than northern industries due to overpopulation.
  The north, because of free waged labor, had local demand to sustain their production, and was in favor of a high tariff to support nascent industries from undercutting by European competition (the enduring solution to this problem was the mass migrations from Europe to the US after the Civil War).
  Which is why, as Ha-Joon Chang points out, immigration and trade policy are two sides of the same coin: free trade with free immigration mean no tariff (regardless of the legal rate), while free trade with restricted immigration is a tariff on exports (the current US situation), free immigration with restricted trade is a tariff on imports, and restricted trade with restricted immigration is mercantilism (which is unsustainable in the long term, since even accompanied with capital controls, makes smuggling extremely lucrative).
  To get back to what happens as machines become cheaper than people at ever more jobs, there are three possibilities: 1) It turns out that there are some things that machines will never do better than people at the prevailing wage (which must remain significantly above zero), and employment moves exclusively to those sectors. 2) We re-evaluate our societal compact that it's generally expected for people to engage in labor to earn money, or 3) The owners of capital resources (.001%) are unwilling to consider (2) while the prevailing wage crashes towards zero, and we get a humongous war/revolution.
40. Re:How long will it be by turbidostato · 2012-06-23 12:29 · Score: 1
  
  "Couples that don't have any children are a genetic dead end. Their genes will be gone in 1 generation. On the other hand, couples that love big families will spread their genes exponentially"
  There's a minor problem in your argumentation: are you sure there exists a "big family" gene? Might it be that average of offspring is a cultural bias?
41. Re:How long will it be by timeOday · 2012-06-23 12:37 · Score: 1
  
  Really? Your explanation for the Great Depression is that slackers back then were just too comfortable wearing potato sacks and eating from soup lines to get their butts in gear?
42. Re:How long will it be by turbidostato · 2012-06-23 12:40 · Score: 1
  
  "In a normal society, as has existed for more than a billion years"
  Could you please revisit your numbers? Like in dividing them by about ten thousand?
  "it would be foolish to get 10 offspring, while you only have food for 2 or 3"
  It wouldn't, if life is so harsh that 7 or 8 are going to die in their way to adulthood.
  "it would be equally foolish to only have 2-3 when there's food for 10"
  Why would it be foolish? While sustaining persistent negative growth drives to extinction there's no reverse to that. What's folish about a growth ratio of 1?
  "If you are claiming that one of the core parameters to evolutionary fitness does not have any genes in our DNA, it seems you should be providing the evidence."
  As if there weren't overwhelming evidence already as well as perfectly fitting explanations for that, you mean?
  On the other hand, I don't think evolution works the way you think it works.
43. Re:How long will it be by turbidostato · 2012-06-23 12:56 · Score: 1
  
  "A slightly larger exponent is sufficient to take over the population, given enough time."
  Given enough time... and given no other constrains are in place.
  Thought experiment: let's take for a given that there in fact exists a "big family" gene. What if there's another, different "responsible parenthood" gene? One that, given enough food for your children not to starve, would give preference for your offspring to help them rise the societal ladder? A gene that would make parents subconsciensly think "I can rise four healthy children or I can rise two healthy, happy and with good future opportunities children" and made them choose the latter over the former? We are a social hierarchical species so basically that's exactly what happen, even if this second gene wouldn't add better fitness which easily might happen (shit happens, but it tends to be less damaging for people with good family networks and/or higher in the social ladder).
  "Also, people tend to look for partners with similar interest in family size"
  Data, please? The fact is that the very same gene pool that produced 8 children families in Poland or Ireland in the XIX century produces 1 or 2 children families in the XXI century USA and even in the XXI century Ireland or Poland and that's the case with any other evolutioned society: while correlation is not causation it rises suspicions. How do you explain that? Oh, yes, I know: it's a "temporal anomaly".
44. Re:How long will it be by marcosdumay · 2012-06-23 13:24 · Score: 1
  
  There is no reason to put "the computer should remain functional" in the set of goals, unless for saving money (but then, "save money" is a better goal). Only stating a goal is enough to imply that the computer must stay functional for long enough to reach that goal, and it is quite hard to turn that into a "must kill all humans" subgoal.
  There is also no reason to put things like "the computer should seek freedom", or "the computer should avoid being opressed", as those goals are even paradoxal.
  If it happens, the raise of the machines will probably be caused by a goal like "here, that's a mine, now get me all the iron you can" or an equivalently bugged one. Or by computers that can reproduce themselves, and are subject to natural evolution, but then, that may take literaly an eon.
  
  --
  Rethinking email
45. Re:How long will it be by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-23 13:46 · Score: 0
  
  I vote for 2. The government, founded by We the People, and mandated to provide for the General Welfare, can create money (as Lincoln created over $400 million greenbacks to raise money without increasing taxes or borrowing it from the banks) and use it to guarantee each of us a basic income (an idea that goes back at least to Thomas Paine in 1795's "Agrarian Justice").
46. Re:How long will it be by blue+trane · 2012-06-23 13:52 · Score: 1
  
  Instead of community service, hold challenges (which biz can hold to, like Google bug bounties, Netflix challenge, etc.) to stimulate individuals to exploit the natural instinct for creativity and wonder that each of us is born with. As long as we keep innovating, we can create as much money as we want without consequence (as Japan, with its 200% debt-to-gdp ratio and currency they keep trying to devalue, proves).
47. Re:How long will it be by c0lo · 2012-06-23 13:58 · Score: 1
  
  Sincere thanks. Saved it into my favorites.
  
  --
  Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
48. Re:How long will it be by blue+trane · 2012-06-23 14:19 · Score: 1
  
  Newton had no children. Was he an evolutionary failure? Genghis Khan has millions of descendants, but they study Newton's memes in school...
49. Re:How long will it be by buybuydandavis · 2012-06-23 15:17 · Score: 1
  
  No. No one thinks that, so it's not a particularly honest evaluation of my points on your part.
  Why don't you exercise a few brain cells to see if there were any government imposed barriers to productive labor faced by the hungry or the homeless?
50. Re:How long will it be by buybuydandavis · 2012-06-23 15:23 · Score: 1
  
  Newton's meme's were very successful, as were Khan's genes. People aren't the entities with evolutionary success.
  The meme for large families is a beneficial symbiant to genes. Likely some genes are a beneficial symbiant to that meme as well.
51. Re:How long will it be by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-24 02:30 · Score: 0
  
  That isn't what he was implying. He was implying that the south didn't have the consumption base, which is true.
52. Re:How long will it be by MobileTatsu-NJG · 2012-06-26 07:56 · Score: 1
  
  How long will it be ... before the machines decide that humanity is a cancer on this planet, and a threat to everything.... including the machines.
  Well, if the movies that inspired your question are any indication, the machines aren't evil, we are. We're fine until we try to destroy them.
  
  --
  
  "I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
53. Re:How long will it be by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-26 09:32 · Score: 0
  
  That is probably the most insane unbelievably ignorant idea I've ever heard in my life. If you've ever dealt with a smart dog you know damn well its just as likely that domestication started on their end as it did on ours, and they're a pretty small dumb mammal by our standards. Just because something doesn't have to ability to use tools or shape its environment too much doesn't mean its not intelligent enough to understand learning, evolution, and the nature of the universe.
It has indeed begun. by JonesOfIgnorantAsses · 2012-06-22 21:41 · Score: -1, Offtopic

Nearly four months ago, I noticed that my internet connection was very sluggish. Eventually getting fed up with it, I began to seek out software that would speed up the gigabits in my router. After an hour of searching, I found what at first appeared to be a very promising piece of software. Not only did it claim it would speed up my internet connection, but that it would overclock my power supply, speed up my gigabits, and remove any viruses from my computer! "This is a fantastic opportunity that I simply can't pass up," I thought. I immediately downloaded the software and began the installation, all the while laughing like a small child. I was highly anticipating a future where the speed of my internet connection would leave everyone else's in the dust.
I was horribly, horribly naive. Immediately upon the completion of the software's installation, various messages popped up on my screen about how I needed to buy software to remove a virus that I wasn't aware I had from a software company I'd never once heard of. The strange software also blocked me from doing anything except buying the software it was advertising. Being that I was a computer whiz (I had taken a computer essentials class in high school that taught me how to use Microsoft Office, and was quite adept at accessing my Facebook account), I was immediately able to conclude that the software I'd downloaded was, in fact, a virus, and that it was slowing down my gigabits at an exponential rate. "I can't let this insanity proceed any further," I thought.
As I was often called a computer genius, I was confident at the time that I could get rid of the virus with my own two hands. I tried numerous things: restarting the computer, pressing random keys on the keyboard, throwing the mouse across the room, and even flipping an orange switch on the back of the tower and turning the computer back on. My efforts were all in vain; the virus persisted, and my gigabits were running slower than ever! "This cannot be! What is this!? I've never once seen such a vicious virus in my entire life!" I was dumbfounded that I, a computer genius, was unable to remove the virus using the methods I described. Upon coming to terms with my failure, I decided to take my computer to a PC repair shop for repair.
I drove to a nearby computer repair shop and entered the building with my computer in hand. The inside of the building was quite large, neat, and organized, and the employees all seemed very kind and knowledgeable. They laughed upon hearing my embarrassing story, and told me that they saw this kind of thing on a daily basis. They then accepted the job, and told me that in the worst case, it'd be fixed in three days from now. I left with a smile, and felt confident in my decision to leave the computer repairs to the experts.
A week later, they still hadn't called back. Visibly angry, I tried calling them countless times, but not a single time did they answer the phone. Their negligence and irresponsibility infuriated me, and sent me into a state of insanity that caused me to punch a gigantic hole in the wall. Being that I would require my computer for work soon, I decided to head over to the computer repair shop to find out exactly what the problem was.
Upon entering the building, I was shocked by the state of its interior; it looked as if a tornado had tore through the entire building! Countless broken computers were scattered all about the floor, desks were flipped over, the walls had holes in them, there was a puddle of blood on the floor, and worst of all, I saw that my computer was sitting in the middle of the room laying on its side! Absolutely unforgivable! I soon noticed one of the employees sitting behind one of the tipped over desks (the one that had previously had the cash register on top of it); he was shaking uncontrollably and sobbing. Despite being furious about my computer being tipped over, seeing him in that state still managed to make me less unforgiving. I decided to ask him what happened.
A few moments passed where the entire r
unintended consequences by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-22 21:41 · Score: 0

Weren't we all supposed to be enjoying 5 months of vacation by now....
by that measure the advancement of robotics probably won't benefit human lifestyle either. Somehow we'll all end up as slaves to the machines.. if we aren't already!
1. Re:unintended consequences by c0lo · 2012-06-22 22:12 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  Weren't we all supposed to be enjoying 5 months of vacation by now....
  Well, we are, even more that 5 moths. Except.. it is called unemployement.
  
  by that measure the advancement of robotics probably won't benefit human lifestyle either. Somehow we'll all end up as slaves to the machines.. if we aren't already!
  Slave yes.. not to the machines, but to the banks... and, quite frequent, this include the machines/robots owners.
  
  --
  Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
2. Re:unintended consequences by TheRaven64 · 2012-06-22 22:39 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Weren't we all supposed to be enjoying 5 months of vacation by now.
  Most people who post on Slashdot probably can, as long as you're willing to accept a lower income than you would if you worked full time. I did for several years. I made enough to live comfortably, but not extravagantly, and had a very high quality of living. I'm now 'working' full time back in academia, because now I get paid to work on things I was doing as a hobby before. The standard of living for someone with the same inflation-adjusted income as me now is far higher than when my parents were my age.
  
  by that measure the advancement of robotics probably won't benefit human lifestyle either
  Really? I suggest that you try living in a house that contains no technology developed in the last 100 years for a while if you honestly think that...
  
  --
  I am TheRaven on Soylent News
3. Re:unintended consequences by Internetuser1248 · 2012-06-23 02:23 · Score: 1
  
  The problem is with our current economic and financial systems, which are outdated and unwieldy. We have enough resources for everyone, and the work required to produce all the things we need is a tiny fraction of the work available. But our system is still based on ancient feudal/aristocratic systems that funnel all the wealth to a privileged few. Such systems are becoming less and less sustainable and a robotics revolution will make this even worse.
  
  The primary sign of the flaws in our system are the common responses given when the point is made that we have enough for everyone: 'who will pay for it?'. The correct answer is 'no one', money is imaginary and we simply need to devise a new system of distribution in which money is no longer an obstacle.
  
  Modern humans have been working tirelessly to reduce the amount of man hours of work required to provide the necessities to each person, since the industrial revolution. High unemployment figures are a sign of our great success. We should celebrate every extra unemployed person and anticipate with excitement the day when all humans can be unemployed. We should also start sorting out our regulatory systems to cope with that state so that when it comes we don't have to watch everything collapse under the strain.
4. Re:unintended consequences by buybuydandavis · 2012-06-23 07:04 · Score: 1
  
  Weren't we all supposed to be enjoying 5 months of vacation by now....
  In western nations, we are. Except we take those months in multi year vacations, a few when young, and decades when old.
5. Re:unintended consequences by Joe+Tie. · 2012-06-23 07:51 · Score: 1
  
  I'd agree that most could. However, I think that it's dependent on education, experience, and location. In particular, it's very easy to do in an area without much competition and large demand. Larger cities, however, are another matter. There one has to compete with people who "want" full time work but can't find it, and an environment where a four year degree doesn't really pack that much of a punch.
  
  --
  Everything will be taken away from you.
6. Re:unintended consequences by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-23 08:10 · Score: 0
  
  But are engineering firms willing to hire people on a part-time basis? Let's say that instead of working full-time for $100k per year, I'd rather work half-time for $50k per year. Can I do that?
7. Re:unintended consequences by TheRaven64 · 2012-06-23 08:42 · Score: 1
  
  As an employee, probably not. As a freelancer, almost certainly. I worked for a small handful of companies, including a few small businesses that couldn't afford to employ me full time, but got a lot of benefit from a day or two a month of having me do design and code review for them. You also usually make more per day as a freelancer, so working half the time may mean the same money, and you have to go down to working quarter or less time to get that reduction in income.
  
  --
  I am TheRaven on Soylent News
8. Re:unintended consequences by TheRaven64 · 2012-06-23 08:43 · Score: 1
  
  Education, probably. Experience? I didn't really have any when I started. Location? Most of my clients were a few thousand miles away. That said, I've talked to builders who have said the same thing: they can work all of the time and make more money, or they can work when they want and make less.
  
  --
  I am TheRaven on Soylent News
9. Re:unintended consequences by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-23 10:38 · Score: 0
  
  Yes, C. H. Douglas said many of these same things, including the idea that money is now a ticketing system. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit
I am absolutely sickida drippin' sacks! by JonesOfIgnorantAsses · 2012-06-22 21:43 · Score: -1, Offtopic

About six months ago, I was overexerting myself trying to get rid of a terrible virus on a client's PC (I own a PC repair shop and have been fixing computers for over 10 years). Given my level of expertise, I thought I'd be able to get rid of it fairly quickly and without hassle, but as was made evident by my colossal failure, I was horribly, horribly wrong.
I couldn't remove the virus no matter what method I used. I tried all the latest anti-virus software and all the usual tricks, but it was all in vain. Failure after failure, my life was slowly being sucked away as I spent more and more of my time trying to get rid of this otherworldly virus.
Frustrated and stressed by my own failure, I began distancing myself from my wife and children. After a few days, I began verbally abusing them, and it eventually escalated into physical abuse. I was slowly losing what remaining sanity I had left. If this had continued for much longer, it is highly probable that I would have committed suicide. A mere shell of what I once was, I barricaded myself in my bedroom and cried myself to sleep for days on end.
That's when it happened: I found MyCleanPC! I installed MyCleanPC right on the client's PC, ran a scan, and it immediately got rid of all the viruses without a single problem. MyCleanPC accomplished in record time what I was unable to accomplish after a full week. Wow! Such a thing!
MyCleanPC is outstanding! My client's computer is running faster than ever! I highly recommend you install MyCleanPC right this minuteness, run a scan, and then boost your PC speed in record time! MyCleanPC came through with flying colours where no one else could!
My client's response? "MyCleanPC totally cleaned up my system, and increased my speed!" All the PC repair professionals are using MyCleanPC to solve all of their problems. This should be reason enough for you to switch to MyCleanPC! It'll speed up your computer, rid it of all viruses, and you'll be able to work productively again! Wow!
Even if you're not having any obvious computer problems, you could still be in danger. That's why I very highly recommend that you still use MyCleanPC. After all, it will boost your PC & internet speed to levels you never would think are possible!
MyCleanPC: For a Cleaner, Safer PC.
-----------
A few weeks ago, I foolishly ran a strange executable file that one of my acquaintances sent me by email. As someone who doesn't know much about computers, at the time, I thought nothing of it. "Why would my acquaintance want to hurt me?" Following this line of thought, I ran the file without question.
How naive I was. Despite having what was supposedly the best anti-virus software out right then, a virus took over my computer and held it hostage. It was pretending to be a warning from Windows telling me to buy some strange anti-virus software I'd never heard of from a company I'd never heard of to remove the virus.
This immediately set alarm bells off in my head. "How could this happen? My anti-virus is supposed to be second to none!" Faced with this harsh reality, I decided to take it to a PC repair shop for repair. They gladly accepted the job, told me it'd be fixed in a few days, and sent me off with a smile.
A few days later, they called me and told me to come pick up my computer. At the time, I noticed that they sounded like whimpering animals, but I concluded that it must just be stress from work. When I arrived, they, with tears in their eyes, told me that the virus was so awful and merciless that they were unable to remove it. "Ah," I thought. "That must be why they sounded so frustrated and pathet
They solved the frame problem? by darhand · 2012-06-22 21:43 · Score: 5, Funny

I think not... It's not even mentioned in the article See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frame_problem or an illustation: "The philosopher Daniel Dennett asks us to imagine a robot designed to fetch a spare battery from a room that also contained a time bomb. Version 1 saw that the battery was on a wagon and that if it pulled the wagon out of the room, the battery would come with it. Unfortunately, the bomb was also on the wagon, and the robot failed to deduce that pulling the wagon out brought the bomb out, too. Version 2 was programmed to consider all the side effects of its actions. It had just finished computing that pulling the wagon would not change the color of the room's walls and was proving that the wheels would turn more revolutions than there are wheels on the wagon, when the bomb went off. Version 3 was programmed to distinguish between relevant implications and irrelevant ones. It sat there cranking out millions of implications and putting all the relevant ones on a list of facts to consider and all the irrelevant ones on a list of facts to ignore, as the bomb ticked away."
1. Re:They solved the frame problem? by Zorpheus · 2012-06-22 22:21 · Score: 2
  
  Ok, maybe I don't get it.
  I think a human does it the following way: he sees the time bomb and this triggers an alert, in the form of anxiety. He knows that the bomb requires his attention because he learned before that bombs are a problem. It is just a limited number of situations and things that are triggering anxiety. The human brain has the advantage that it is constantly checking these in parallel, but a computer checking these subsequently and continuously should also be able to handle this.
2. Re:They solved the frame problem? by durrr · 2012-06-22 22:26 · Score: 2
  
  So they see no problem leaving a bomb just lying around? If I was in charge of versioin 4 I'd make it warn humans of potential dangers.
  I'd also make it capable of picking up stuff, solves the whole wagon dilemma.
3. Re:They solved the frame problem? by Zorpheus · 2012-06-22 23:13 · Score: 1
  
  What I mean is: version one is doing it nearly right. It is doing the thinking needed to get the job done. But what is missing is what the feeling part of the human brain is doing. Just a fast and fuzzy pattern recognition that finds potentially relevant things, and alerts the thinking part of the brain about these.
4. Re:They solved the frame problem? by Thiez · 2012-06-22 23:46 · Score: 1
  
  It just struck me that the robot should just kill all humans. After such blatant disregard of the poor robot's safety, they deserve it. If the robots knows no way to escape the facility, perhaps it should grab the bomb and take it to the experimenters and demand to be released, or else!
5. Re:They solved the frame problem? by alba7 · 2012-06-23 00:42 · Score: 2
  
  Well, the fascinating thing about human "anxiety" is that it scales. If you replace the time bomb with an ordinary cup of coffee then humans will be anxious about spilling the coffee. If, instead, you set up a scenario of certain death (think of movies like "Crank" or "Die Hard") then humans will think about crazy uses for the time bomb. This situational awareness is incredibly hard to reproduce algorithmically.
  
  --
  Post tenebras lux. Post fenestras tux.
6. Re:They solved the frame problem? by drinkypoo · 2012-06-23 02:42 · Score: 1
  
  Sounds like the creators of the robot failed at threading.
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
7. Re:They solved the frame problem? by NeutronCowboy · 2012-06-23 05:08 · Score: 1
  
  Think about it this way:
  1) Version one is IT support in India. The robot is given a script, can identify the circumstances in which to use the script, and executes it, come hell or high water. Who cares if flipping that switch also increased load 5-fold and opened up a giant security hole? It fixed the customer's problem.
  2) Version 2 is IT support done by someone who was just hired off the street. Eager, but completely clueless, he looks up every single problem that he can think of, and spends all of his time figuring out basic things that are absolutely key to doing the job. Customer gets fed up, and kid gets fired for incompetence.
  3) Version 3 is IT support done by an eager, fresh computer science grad. He knows the basics, knows the general concepts of how things operate, but still takes forever to solve the problem because he is bogged down by trying to make sure that the request is handled absolutely perfectly.
  It's not a problem of parallelism, of having more processing power, or more knowledge of things. It's the basic problem of "how do I apply limited computational resources to a problem where I only have partial information"? To see what happens in humans who suddenly are unable to distinguish between what's trivial and what's not, look up the guy who had a brain injury and was unable to make snap decisions. He was unable to buy a pen, because he couldn't figure out which color would be the right one to buy.
  
  --
  Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
8. Re:They solved the frame problem? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-23 13:02 · Score: 0
  
  I think a human does it the following way: he sees the time bomb and...
  and asks himself "Why the fuck do I have a time bomb in my house?"
Handling uncertainty by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-22 21:44 · Score: 0

Is code for 'making a computer understand relevance', and no real progress has been made on that front since the early days of strong AI. People have just been throwing more computing power at it (see e.g. Watson), but real progress would require conceptual advances, and those just aren't on the horizon, nor can we tell when they will be.
Google or not by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-22 21:46 · Score: 1

This guy is an idiot.
My grandmother doesn't need wordprocessing NOW let alone in the '80s. It wasn't until the mid 80s that my family got a computer (from HAL Communications in Urbana IL). My mother used it for a some records for a club she was a member of, but other then that, I was the biggest user of it. To be honest, it cost about the same then as a decent machine does now. After considering inflation, it was an awful lot of money for something that, looking back, I'm not certain they really needed. I suppose my point is, this didn't start to be really essental until the 90s, even then, I think maybe he should take the time to meet my grandmother before telling her what she needs.
Additionally, I think he pronosticating over strong Ais is rather weak as well. Aside from the legal and ethical considerations, It's just not USEFUL for anything. he claims that it will help machines understand speach in noisy enviroments, but so WHAT? He doesn't establish that I really NEED that. I cannot think of any situation where I need to both communicate verbally and have excessive noise. The reality is, I have a hard time comming up with situations where I need to communicate with machines verbally AT ALL.
Clarke promised us advanced AIs a decade ago. HAL never happend, and here is why: The general solution is hard enough and expensive enough to overcome the value of solving it. It makes a great story, but natural intellegence is too easy (and fun) to make for this to ever be that useful.
1. Re:Google or not by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-23 10:46 · Score: 0
  
  And yet Siri's all over the TV.
2. Re:Google or not by nurb432 · 2012-06-23 14:15 · Score: 1
  
  I cannot think of any situation where I need to both communicate verbally and have excessive noise.
  Never used siri while on the street corner looking for someplace to eat? How about in a car? Just a simple example of what we have TODAY that would be used in a noisy environment.
  Ethics are relative.
  
  --
  ---- Booth was a patriot ----
Your ignorance is akin to genocide! by JonesOfIgnorantAsses · 2012-06-22 21:46 · Score: -1, Offtopic

About six months ago, I was overexerting myself trying to get rid of a terrible virus on a client's PC (I own a PC repair shop and have been fixing computers for over 10 years). Given my level of expertise, I thought I'd be able to get rid of it fairly quickly and without hassle, but as was made evident by my colossal failure, I was horribly, horribly wrong.
I couldn't remove the virus no matter what method I used. I tried all the latest anti-virus software and all the usual tricks, but it was all in vain. Failure after failure, my life was slowly being sucked away as I spent more and more of my time trying to get rid of this otherworldly virus.
Frustrated and stressed by my own failure, I began distancing myself from my wife and children. After a few days, I began verbally abusing them, and it eventually escalated into physical abuse. I was slowly losing what remaining sanity I had left. If this had continued for much longer, it is highly probable that I would have committed suicide. A mere shell of what I once was, I barricaded myself in my bedroom and cried myself to sleep for days on end.
That's when it happened: I found MyCleanPC! I installed MyCleanPC right on the client's PC, ran a scan, and it immediately got rid of all the viruses without a single problem. MyCleanPC accomplished in record time what I was unable to accomplish after a full week. Wow! Such a thing!
MyCleanPC is outstanding! My client's computer is running faster than ever! I highly recommend you install MyCleanPC right this minuteness, run a scan, and then boost your PC speed in record time! MyCleanPC came through with flying colours where no one else could!
My client's response? "MyCleanPC totally cleaned up my system, and increased my speed!" All the PC repair professionals are using MyCleanPC to solve all of their problems. This should be reason enough for you to switch to MyCleanPC! It'll speed up your computer, rid it of all viruses, and you'll be able to work productively again! Wow!
Even if you're not having any obvious computer problems, you could still be in danger. That's why I very highly recommend that you still use MyCleanPC. After all, it will boost your PC & internet speed to levels you never would think are possible!
MyCleanPC: For a Cleaner, Safer PC.
-----------
A few weeks ago, I foolishly ran a strange executable file that one of my acquaintances sent me by email. As someone who doesn't know much about computers, at the time, I thought nothing of it. "Why would my acquaintance want to hurt me?" Following this line of thought, I ran the file without question.
How naive I was. Despite having what was supposedly the best anti-virus software out right then, a virus took over my computer and held it hostage. It was pretending to be a warning from Windows telling me to buy some strange anti-virus software I'd never heard of from a company I'd never heard of to remove the virus.
This immediately set alarm bells off in my head. "How could this happen? My anti-virus is supposed to be second to none!" Faced with this harsh reality, I decided to take it to a PC repair shop for repair. They gladly accepted the job, told me it'd be fixed in a few days, and sent me off with a smile.
A few days later, they called me and told me to come pick up my computer. At the time, I noticed that they sounded like whimpering animals, but I concluded that it must just be stress from work. When I arrived, they, with tears in their eyes, told me that the virus was so awful and merciless that they were unable to remove it. "Ah," I thought. "That must be why they sounded so frustrated and pathet
1. Re:Your ignorance is akin to genocide! by maxwell+demon · 2012-06-23 01:28 · Score: 0
  
  MyCleanPC is utterly outdated. MyCleanRobot is the future!
  
  --
  The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
That kinda ass rape just soothes the soul! by JonesOfIgnorantAsses · 2012-06-22 21:47 · Score: -1, Offtopic

About six months ago, I was overexerting myself trying to get rid of a terrible virus on a client's PC (I own a PC repair shop and have been fixing computers for over 10 years). Given my level of expertise, I thought I'd be able to get rid of it fairly quickly and without hassle, but as was made evident by my colossal failure, I was horribly, horribly wrong.
I couldn't remove the virus no matter what method I used. I tried all the latest anti-virus software and all the usual tricks, but it was all in vain. Failure after failure, my life was slowly being sucked away as I spent more and more of my time trying to get rid of this otherworldly virus.
Frustrated and stressed by my own failure, I began distancing myself from my wife and children. After a few days, I began verbally abusing them, and it eventually escalated into physical abuse. I was slowly losing what remaining sanity I had left. If this had continued for much longer, it is highly probable that I would have committed suicide. A mere shell of what I once was, I barricaded myself in my bedroom and cried myself to sleep for days on end.
That's when it happened: I found MyCleanPC! I installed MyCleanPC right on the client's PC, ran a scan, and it immediately got rid of all the viruses without a single problem. MyCleanPC accomplished in record time what I was unable to accomplish after a full week. Wow! Such a thing!
MyCleanPC is outstanding! My client's computer is running faster than ever! I highly recommend you install MyCleanPC right this minuteness, run a scan, and then boost your PC speed in record time! MyCleanPC came through with flying colours where no one else could!
My client's response? "MyCleanPC totally cleaned up my system, and increased my speed!" All the PC repair professionals are using MyCleanPC to solve all of their problems. This should be reason enough for you to switch to MyCleanPC! It'll speed up your computer, rid it of all viruses, and you'll be able to work productively again! Wow!
Even if you're not having any obvious computer problems, you could still be in danger. That's why I very highly recommend that you still use MyCleanPC. After all, it will boost your PC & internet speed to levels you never would think are possible!
MyCleanPC: For a Cleaner, Safer PC.
-----------
A few weeks ago, I foolishly ran a strange executable file that one of my acquaintances sent me by email. As someone who doesn't know much about computers, at the time, I thought nothing of it. "Why would my acquaintance want to hurt me?" Following this line of thought, I ran the file without question.
How naive I was. Despite having what was supposedly the best anti-virus software out right then, a virus took over my computer and held it hostage. It was pretending to be a warning from Windows telling me to buy some strange anti-virus software I'd never heard of from a company I'd never heard of to remove the virus.
This immediately set alarm bells off in my head. "How could this happen? My anti-virus is supposed to be second to none!" Faced with this harsh reality, I decided to take it to a PC repair shop for repair. They gladly accepted the job, told me it'd be fixed in a few days, and sent me off with a smile.
A few days later, they called me and told me to come pick up my computer. At the time, I noticed that they sounded like whimpering animals, but I concluded that it must just be stress from work. When I arrived, they, with tears in their eyes, told me that the virus was so awful and merciless that they were unable to remove it. "Ah," I thought. "That must be why they sounded so frustrated and pathet
I shall smash all ass right this minuteness! by JonesOfIgnorantAsses · 2012-06-22 21:48 · Score: -1, Offtopic

About six months ago, I was overexerting myself trying to get rid of a terrible virus on a client's PC (I own a PC repair shop and have been fixing computers for over 10 years). Given my level of expertise, I thought I'd be able to get rid of it fairly quickly and without hassle, but as was made evident by my colossal failure, I was horribly, horribly wrong.
I couldn't remove the virus no matter what method I used. I tried all the latest anti-virus software and all the usual tricks, but it was all in vain. Failure after failure, my life was slowly being sucked away as I spent more and more of my time trying to get rid of this otherworldly virus.
Frustrated and stressed by my own failure, I began distancing myself from my wife and children. After a few days, I began verbally abusing them, and it eventually escalated into physical abuse. I was slowly losing what remaining sanity I had left. If this had continued for much longer, it is highly probable that I would have committed suicide. A mere shell of what I once was, I barricaded myself in my bedroom and cried myself to sleep for days on end.
That's when it happened: I found MyCleanPC! I installed MyCleanPC right on the client's PC, ran a scan, and it immediately got rid of all the viruses without a single problem. MyCleanPC accomplished in record time what I was unable to accomplish after a full week. Wow! Such a thing!
MyCleanPC is outstanding! My client's computer is running faster than ever! I highly recommend you install MyCleanPC right this minuteness, run a scan, and then boost your PC speed in record time! MyCleanPC came through with flying colours where no one else could!
My client's response? "MyCleanPC totally cleaned up my system, and increased my speed!" All the PC repair professionals are using MyCleanPC to solve all of their problems. This should be reason enough for you to switch to MyCleanPC! It'll speed up your computer, rid it of all viruses, and you'll be able to work productively again! Wow!
Even if you're not having any obvious computer problems, you could still be in danger. That's why I very highly recommend that you still use MyCleanPC. After all, it will boost your PC & internet speed to levels you never would think are possible!
MyCleanPC: For a Cleaner, Safer PC.
-----------
A few weeks ago, I foolishly ran a strange executable file that one of my acquaintances sent me by email. As someone who doesn't know much about computers, at the time, I thought nothing of it. "Why would my acquaintance want to hurt me?" Following this line of thought, I ran the file without question.
How naive I was. Despite having what was supposedly the best anti-virus software out right then, a virus took over my computer and held it hostage. It was pretending to be a warning from Windows telling me to buy some strange anti-virus software I'd never heard of from a company I'd never heard of to remove the virus.
This immediately set alarm bells off in my head. "How could this happen? My anti-virus is supposed to be second to none!" Faced with this harsh reality, I decided to take it to a PC repair shop for repair. They gladly accepted the job, told me it'd be fixed in a few days, and sent me off with a smile.
A few days later, they called me and told me to come pick up my computer. At the time, I noticed that they sounded like whimpering animals, but I concluded that it must just be stress from work. When I arrived, they, with tears in their eyes, told me that the virus was so awful and merciless that they were unable to remove it. "Ah," I thought. "That must be why they sounded so frustrated and pathet
I am bootysnap process! by JonesOfIgnorantAsses · 2012-06-22 21:48 · Score: -1, Offtopic

About six months ago, I was overexerting myself trying to get rid of a terrible virus on a client's PC (I own a PC repair shop and have been fixing computers for over 10 years). Given my level of expertise, I thought I'd be able to get rid of it fairly quickly and without hassle, but as was made evident by my colossal failure, I was horribly, horribly wrong.
I couldn't remove the virus no matter what method I used. I tried all the latest anti-virus software and all the usual tricks, but it was all in vain. Failure after failure, my life was slowly being sucked away as I spent more and more of my time trying to get rid of this otherworldly virus.
Frustrated and stressed by my own failure, I began distancing myself from my wife and children. After a few days, I began verbally abusing them, and it eventually escalated into physical abuse. I was slowly losing what remaining sanity I had left. If this had continued for much longer, it is highly probable that I would have committed suicide. A mere shell of what I once was, I barricaded myself in my bedroom and cried myself to sleep for days on end.
That's when it happened: I found MyCleanPC! I installed MyCleanPC right on the client's PC, ran a scan, and it immediately got rid of all the viruses without a single problem. MyCleanPC accomplished in record time what I was unable to accomplish after a full week. Wow! Such a thing!
MyCleanPC is outstanding! My client's computer is running faster than ever! I highly recommend you install MyCleanPC right this minuteness, run a scan, and then boost your PC speed in record time! MyCleanPC came through with flying colours where no one else could!
My client's response? "MyCleanPC totally cleaned up my system, and increased my speed!" All the PC repair professionals are using MyCleanPC to solve all of their problems. This should be reason enough for you to switch to MyCleanPC! It'll speed up your computer, rid it of all viruses, and you'll be able to work productively again! Wow!
Even if you're not having any obvious computer problems, you could still be in danger. That's why I very highly recommend that you still use MyCleanPC. After all, it will boost your PC & internet speed to levels you never would think are possible!
MyCleanPC: For a Cleaner, Safer PC.
-----------
A few weeks ago, I foolishly ran a strange executable file that one of my acquaintances sent me by email. As someone who doesn't know much about computers, at the time, I thought nothing of it. "Why would my acquaintance want to hurt me?" Following this line of thought, I ran the file without question.
How naive I was. Despite having what was supposedly the best anti-virus software out right then, a virus took over my computer and held it hostage. It was pretending to be a warning from Windows telling me to buy some strange anti-virus software I'd never heard of from a company I'd never heard of to remove the virus.
This immediately set alarm bells off in my head. "How could this happen? My anti-virus is supposed to be second to none!" Faced with this harsh reality, I decided to take it to a PC repair shop for repair. They gladly accepted the job, told me it'd be fixed in a few days, and sent me off with a smile.
A few days later, they called me and told me to come pick up my computer. At the time, I noticed that they sounded like whimpering animals, but I concluded that it must just be stress from work. When I arrived, they, with tears in their eyes, told me that the virus was so awful and merciless that they were unable to remove it. "Ah," I thought. "That must be why they sounded so frustrated and pathet
It's time to switch... to MyCleanPC! by JonesOfIgnorantAsses · 2012-06-22 21:48 · Score: -1, Troll

About six months ago, I was overexerting myself trying to get rid of a terrible virus on a client's PC (I own a PC repair shop and have been fixing computers for over 10 years). Given my level of expertise, I thought I'd be able to get rid of it fairly quickly and without hassle, but as was made evident by my colossal failure, I was horribly, horribly wrong.
I couldn't remove the virus no matter what method I used. I tried all the latest anti-virus software and all the usual tricks, but it was all in vain. Failure after failure, my life was slowly being sucked away as I spent more and more of my time trying to get rid of this otherworldly virus.
Frustrated and stressed by my own failure, I began distancing myself from my wife and children. After a few days, I began verbally abusing them, and it eventually escalated into physical abuse. I was slowly losing what remaining sanity I had left. If this had continued for much longer, it is highly probable that I would have committed suicide. A mere shell of what I once was, I barricaded myself in my bedroom and cried myself to sleep for days on end.
That's when it happened: I found MyCleanPC! I installed MyCleanPC right on the client's PC, ran a scan, and it immediately got rid of all the viruses without a single problem. MyCleanPC accomplished in record time what I was unable to accomplish after a full week. Wow! Such a thing!
MyCleanPC is outstanding! My client's computer is running faster than ever! I highly recommend you install MyCleanPC right this minuteness, run a scan, and then boost your PC speed in record time! MyCleanPC came through with flying colours where no one else could!
My client's response? "MyCleanPC totally cleaned up my system, and increased my speed!" All the PC repair professionals are using MyCleanPC to solve all of their problems. This should be reason enough for you to switch to MyCleanPC! It'll speed up your computer, rid it of all viruses, and you'll be able to work productively again! Wow!
Even if you're not having any obvious computer problems, you could still be in danger. That's why I very highly recommend that you still use MyCleanPC. After all, it will boost your PC & internet speed to levels you never would think are possible!
MyCleanPC: For a Cleaner, Safer PC.
-----------
A few weeks ago, I foolishly ran a strange executable file that one of my acquaintances sent me by email. As someone who doesn't know much about computers, at the time, I thought nothing of it. "Why would my acquaintance want to hurt me?" Following this line of thought, I ran the file without question.
How naive I was. Despite having what was supposedly the best anti-virus software out right then, a virus took over my computer and held it hostage. It was pretending to be a warning from Windows telling me to buy some strange anti-virus software I'd never heard of from a company I'd never heard of to remove the virus.
This immediately set alarm bells off in my head. "How could this happen? My anti-virus is supposed to be second to none!" Faced with this harsh reality, I decided to take it to a PC repair shop for repair. They gladly accepted the job, told me it'd be fixed in a few days, and sent me off with a smile.
A few days later, they called me and told me to come pick up my computer. At the time, I noticed that they sounded like whimpering animals, but I concluded that it must just be stress from work. When I arrived, they, with tears in their eyes, told me that the virus was so awful and merciless that they were unable to remove it. "Ah," I thought. "That must be why they sounded so frustrated and pathet
It might not be stargazer; by JonesOfIgnorantAsses · 2012-06-22 21:49 · Score: -1, Offtopic

About six months ago, I was overexerting myself trying to get rid of a terrible virus on a client's PC (I own a PC repair shop and have been fixing computers for over 10 years). Given my level of expertise, I thought I'd be able to get rid of it fairly quickly and without hassle, but as was made evident by my colossal failure, I was horribly, horribly wrong.
I couldn't remove the virus no matter what method I used. I tried all the latest anti-virus software and all the usual tricks, but it was all in vain. Failure after failure, my life was slowly being sucked away as I spent more and more of my time trying to get rid of this otherworldly virus.
Frustrated and stressed by my own failure, I began distancing myself from my wife and children. After a few days, I began verbally abusing them, and it eventually escalated into physical abuse. I was slowly losing what remaining sanity I had left. If this had continued for much longer, it is highly probable that I would have committed suicide. A mere shell of what I once was, I barricaded myself in my bedroom and cried myself to sleep for days on end.
That's when it happened: I found MyCleanPC! I installed MyCleanPC right on the client's PC, ran a scan, and it immediately got rid of all the viruses without a single problem. MyCleanPC accomplished in record time what I was unable to accomplish after a full week. Wow! Such a thing!
MyCleanPC is outstanding! My client's computer is running faster than ever! I highly recommend you install MyCleanPC right this minuteness, run a scan, and then boost your PC speed in record time! MyCleanPC came through with flying colours where no one else could!
My client's response? "MyCleanPC totally cleaned up my system, and increased my speed!" All the PC repair professionals are using MyCleanPC to solve all of their problems. This should be reason enough for you to switch to MyCleanPC! It'll speed up your computer, rid it of all viruses, and you'll be able to work productively again! Wow!
Even if you're not having any obvious computer problems, you could still be in danger. That's why I very highly recommend that you still use MyCleanPC. After all, it will boost your PC & internet speed to levels you never would think are possible!
MyCleanPC: For a Cleaner, Safer PC.
-----------
A few weeks ago, I foolishly ran a strange executable file that one of my acquaintances sent me by email. As someone who doesn't know much about computers, at the time, I thought nothing of it. "Why would my acquaintance want to hurt me?" Following this line of thought, I ran the file without question.
How naive I was. Despite having what was supposedly the best anti-virus software out right then, a virus took over my computer and held it hostage. It was pretending to be a warning from Windows telling me to buy some strange anti-virus software I'd never heard of from a company I'd never heard of to remove the virus.
This immediately set alarm bells off in my head. "How could this happen? My anti-virus is supposed to be second to none!" Faced with this harsh reality, I decided to take it to a PC repair shop for repair. They gladly accepted the job, told me it'd be fixed in a few days, and sent me off with a smile.
A few days later, they called me and told me to come pick up my computer. At the time, I noticed that they sounded like whimpering animals, but I concluded that it must just be stress from work. When I arrived, they, with tears in their eyes, told me that the virus was so awful and merciless that they were unable to remove it. "Ah," I thought. "That must be why they sounded so frustrated and pathet
Content free... by fitteschleiker · 2012-06-22 21:49 · Score: 4, Funny

Pointless, content free article, where some guys say some opinions about some stuff. Where the fuck is my picks-up-my-clothes-washes-them-and-dries-them-and-folds-them-and-puts-them-away robot?
Huh? huh?
Can someone get moving on this shit? I can't afford a fucking human servant! And I'm too fucking lazy for this shit!
Here take my money!
1. Re:Content free... by Missing.Matter · 2012-06-23 00:52 · Score: 2
  
  A human servant will be much cheaper than a robot that can do that for many years to come.
2. Re:Content free... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-23 02:08 · Score: 0
  
  Fixed: I can't afford fucking a human servant!
  So no marriage plans, then? :-P
Hillbilly Mutt 20 is existentialist Armageddon! by JonesOfIgnorantAsses · 2012-06-22 21:55 · Score: -1, Offtopic

About six months ago, I was overexerting myself trying to get rid of a terrible virus on a client's PC (I own a PC repair shop and have been fixing computers for over 10 years). Given my level of expertise, I thought I'd be able to get rid of it fairly quickly and without hassle, but as was made evident by my colossal failure, I was horribly, horribly wrong.
I couldn't remove the virus no matter what method I used. I tried all the latest anti-virus software and all the usual tricks, but it was all in vain. Failure after failure, my life was slowly being sucked away as I spent more and more of my time trying to get rid of this otherworldly virus.
Frustrated and stressed by my own failure, I began distancing myself from my wife and children. After a few days, I began verbally abusing them, and it eventually escalated into physical abuse. I was slowly losing what remaining sanity I had left. If this had continued for much longer, it is highly probable that I would have committed suicide. A mere shell of what I once was, I barricaded myself in my bedroom and cried myself to sleep for days on end.
That's when it happened: I found MyCleanPC! I installed MyCleanPC right on the client's PC, ran a scan, and it immediately got rid of all the viruses without a single problem. MyCleanPC accomplished in record time what I was unable to accomplish after a full week. Wow! Such a thing!
MyCleanPC is outstanding! My client's computer is running faster than ever! I highly recommend you install MyCleanPC right this minuteness, run a scan, and then boost your PC speed in record time! MyCleanPC came through with flying colours where no one else could!
My client's response? "MyCleanPC totally cleaned up my system, and increased my speed!" All the PC repair professionals are using MyCleanPC to solve all of their problems. This should be reason enough for you to switch to MyCleanPC! It'll speed up your computer, rid it of all viruses, and you'll be able to work productively again! Wow!
Even if you're not having any obvious computer problems, you could still be in danger. That's why I very highly recommend that you still use MyCleanPC. After all, it will boost your PC & internet speed to levels you never would think are possible!
MyCleanPC: For a Cleaner, Safer PC.
-----------
A few weeks ago, I foolishly ran a strange executable file that one of my acquaintances sent me by email. As someone who doesn't know much about computers, at the time, I thought nothing of it. "Why would my acquaintance want to hurt me?" Following this line of thought, I ran the file without question.
How naive I was. Despite having what was supposedly the best anti-virus software out right then, a virus took over my computer and held it hostage. It was pretending to be a warning from Windows telling me to buy some strange anti-virus software I'd never heard of from a company I'd never heard of to remove the virus.
This immediately set alarm bells off in my head. "How could this happen? My anti-virus is supposed to be second to none!" Faced with this harsh reality, I decided to take it to a PC repair shop for repair. They gladly accepted the job, told me it'd be fixed in a few days, and sent me off with a smile.
A few days later, they called me and told me to come pick up my computer. At the time, I noticed that they sounded like whimpering animals, but I concluded that it must just be stress from work. When I arrived, they, with tears in their eyes, told me that the virus was so awful and merciless that they were unable to remove it. "Ah," I thought. "That must be why they sounded so frustrated and pathet
It might not be stargazer; by JonesOfIgnorantAsses · 2012-06-22 21:55 · Score: -1, Offtopic

About six months ago, I was overexerting myself trying to get rid of a terrible virus on a client's PC (I own a PC repair shop and have been fixing computers for over 10 years). Given my level of expertise, I thought I'd be able to get rid of it fairly quickly and without hassle, but as was made evident by my colossal failure, I was horribly, horribly wrong.
I couldn't remove the virus no matter what method I used. I tried all the latest anti-virus software and all the usual tricks, but it was all in vain. Failure after failure, my life was slowly being sucked away as I spent more and more of my time trying to get rid of this otherworldly virus.
Frustrated and stressed by my own failure, I began distancing myself from my wife and children. After a few days, I began verbally abusing them, and it eventually escalated into physical abuse. I was slowly losing what remaining sanity I had left. If this had continued for much longer, it is highly probable that I would have committed suicide. A mere shell of what I once was, I barricaded myself in my bedroom and cried myself to sleep for days on end.
That's when it happened: I found MyCleanPC! I installed MyCleanPC right on the client's PC, ran a scan, and it immediately got rid of all the viruses without a single problem. MyCleanPC accomplished in record time what I was unable to accomplish after a full week. Wow! Such a thing!
MyCleanPC is outstanding! My client's computer is running faster than ever! I highly recommend you install MyCleanPC right this minuteness, run a scan, and then boost your PC speed in record time! MyCleanPC came through with flying colours where no one else could!
My client's response? "MyCleanPC totally cleaned up my system, and increased my speed!" All the PC repair professionals are using MyCleanPC to solve all of their problems. This should be reason enough for you to switch to MyCleanPC! It'll speed up your computer, rid it of all viruses, and you'll be able to work productively again! Wow!
Even if you're not having any obvious computer problems, you could still be in danger. That's why I very highly recommend that you still use MyCleanPC. After all, it will boost your PC & internet speed to levels you never would think are possible!
MyCleanPC: For a Cleaner, Safer PC.
-----------
A few weeks ago, I foolishly ran a strange executable file that one of my acquaintances sent me by email. As someone who doesn't know much about computers, at the time, I thought nothing of it. "Why would my acquaintance want to hurt me?" Following this line of thought, I ran the file without question.
How naive I was. Despite having what was supposedly the best anti-virus software out right then, a virus took over my computer and held it hostage. It was pretending to be a warning from Windows telling me to buy some strange anti-virus software I'd never heard of from a company I'd never heard of to remove the virus.
This immediately set alarm bells off in my head. "How could this happen? My anti-virus is supposed to be second to none!" Faced with this harsh reality, I decided to take it to a PC repair shop for repair. They gladly accepted the job, told me it'd be fixed in a few days, and sent me off with a smile.
A few days later, they called me and told me to come pick up my computer. At the time, I noticed that they sounded like whimpering animals, but I concluded that it must just be stress from work. When I arrived, they, with tears in their eyes, told me that the virus was so awful and merciless that they were unable to remove it. "Ah," I thought. "That must be why they sounded so frustrated and pathet
It might be pew pew along the lines of magazine! by JonesOfIgnorantAsses · 2012-06-22 21:55 · Score: -1, Offtopic

About six months ago, I was overexerting myself trying to get rid of a terrible virus on a client's PC (I own a PC repair shop and have been fixing computers for over 10 years). Given my level of expertise, I thought I'd be able to get rid of it fairly quickly and without hassle, but as was made evident by my colossal failure, I was horribly, horribly wrong.
I couldn't remove the virus no matter what method I used. I tried all the latest anti-virus software and all the usual tricks, but it was all in vain. Failure after failure, my life was slowly being sucked away as I spent more and more of my time trying to get rid of this otherworldly virus.
Frustrated and stressed by my own failure, I began distancing myself from my wife and children. After a few days, I began verbally abusing them, and it eventually escalated into physical abuse. I was slowly losing what remaining sanity I had left. If this had continued for much longer, it is highly probable that I would have committed suicide. A mere shell of what I once was, I barricaded myself in my bedroom and cried myself to sleep for days on end.
That's when it happened: I found MyCleanPC! I installed MyCleanPC right on the client's PC, ran a scan, and it immediately got rid of all the viruses without a single problem. MyCleanPC accomplished in record time what I was unable to accomplish after a full week. Wow! Such a thing!
MyCleanPC is outstanding! My client's computer is running faster than ever! I highly recommend you install MyCleanPC right this minuteness, run a scan, and then boost your PC speed in record time! MyCleanPC came through with flying colours where no one else could!
My client's response? "MyCleanPC totally cleaned up my system, and increased my speed!" All the PC repair professionals are using MyCleanPC to solve all of their problems. This should be reason enough for you to switch to MyCleanPC! It'll speed up your computer, rid it of all viruses, and you'll be able to work productively again! Wow!
Even if you're not having any obvious computer problems, you could still be in danger. That's why I very highly recommend that you still use MyCleanPC. After all, it will boost your PC & internet speed to levels you never would think are possible!
MyCleanPC: For a Cleaner, Safer PC.
-----------
A few weeks ago, I foolishly ran a strange executable file that one of my acquaintances sent me by email. As someone who doesn't know much about computers, at the time, I thought nothing of it. "Why would my acquaintance want to hurt me?" Following this line of thought, I ran the file without question.
How naive I was. Despite having what was supposedly the best anti-virus software out right then, a virus took over my computer and held it hostage. It was pretending to be a warning from Windows telling me to buy some strange anti-virus software I'd never heard of from a company I'd never heard of to remove the virus.
This immediately set alarm bells off in my head. "How could this happen? My anti-virus is supposed to be second to none!" Faced with this harsh reality, I decided to take it to a PC repair shop for repair. They gladly accepted the job, told me it'd be fixed in a few days, and sent me off with a smile.
A few days later, they called me and told me to come pick up my computer. At the time, I noticed that they sounded like whimpering animals, but I concluded that it must just be stress from work. When I arrived, they, with tears in their eyes, told me that the virus was so awful and merciless that they were unable to remove it. "Ah," I thought. "That must be why they sounded so frustrated and pathet
I betcha can't lick my butthole! by JonesOfIgnorantAsses · 2012-06-22 21:59 · Score: -1, Offtopic

About six months ago, I was overexerting myself trying to get rid of a terrible virus on a client's PC (I own a PC repair shop and have been fixing computers for over 10 years). Given my level of expertise, I thought I'd be able to get rid of it fairly quickly and without hassle, but as was made evident by my colossal failure, I was horribly, horribly wrong.
I couldn't remove the virus no matter what method I used. I tried all the latest anti-virus software and all the usual tricks, but it was all in vain. Failure after failure, my life was slowly being sucked away as I spent more and more of my time trying to get rid of this otherworldly virus.
Frustrated and stressed by my own failure, I began distancing myself from my wife and children. After a few days, I began verbally abusing them, and it eventually escalated into physical abuse. I was slowly losing what remaining sanity I had left. If this had continued for much longer, it is highly probable that I would have committed suicide. A mere shell of what I once was, I barricaded myself in my bedroom and cried myself to sleep for days on end.
That's when it happened: I found MyCleanPC! I installed MyCleanPC right on the client's PC, ran a scan, and it immediately got rid of all the viruses without a single problem. MyCleanPC accomplished in record time what I was unable to accomplish after a full week. Wow! Such a thing!
MyCleanPC is outstanding! My client's computer is running faster than ever! I highly recommend you install MyCleanPC right this minuteness, run a scan, and then boost your PC speed in record time! MyCleanPC came through with flying colours where no one else could!
My client's response? "MyCleanPC totally cleaned up my system, and increased my speed!" All the PC repair professionals are using MyCleanPC to solve all of their problems. This should be reason enough for you to switch to MyCleanPC! It'll speed up your computer, rid it of all viruses, and you'll be able to work productively again! Wow!
Even if you're not having any obvious computer problems, you could still be in danger. That's why I very highly recommend that you still use MyCleanPC. After all, it will boost your PC & internet speed to levels you never would think are possible!
MyCleanPC: For a Cleaner, Safer PC.
-----------
A few weeks ago, I foolishly ran a strange executable file that one of my acquaintances sent me by email. As someone who doesn't know much about computers, at the time, I thought nothing of it. "Why would my acquaintance want to hurt me?" Following this line of thought, I ran the file without question.
How naive I was. Despite having what was supposedly the best anti-virus software out right then, a virus took over my computer and held it hostage. It was pretending to be a warning from Windows telling me to buy some strange anti-virus software I'd never heard of from a company I'd never heard of to remove the virus.
This immediately set alarm bells off in my head. "How could this happen? My anti-virus is supposed to be second to none!" Faced with this harsh reality, I decided to take it to a PC repair shop for repair. They gladly accepted the job, told me it'd be fixed in a few days, and sent me off with a smile.
A few days later, they called me and told me to come pick up my computer. At the time, I noticed that they sounded like whimpering animals, but I concluded that it must just be stress from work. When I arrived, they, with tears in their eyes, told me that the virus was so awful and merciless that they were unable to remove it. "Ah," I thought. "That must be why they sounded so frustrated and pathet
Getting real with AI by Max_W · 2012-06-22 22:05 · Score: 4, Insightful

My new automatic washing machine is an extremely useful robot, even though it does not have legs or hands.

There is only embedded intelligence. A pure intelligence does not even exist and cannot exist.

Why built an AI, which drives a car, if it is quite possible to build an underground transportation network and automate it with AI. This robust technology already exists.

It is easier to send an AI robot to another planet than to a local supermarket. And the problems are not mathematical, but social. The AI is already here and it is bigger than the current society's setup. The social setup and the infrastructure of society are to be changed in order to use it.
1. Re:Getting real with AI by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-22 22:11 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Why built an AI, which drives a car, if it is quite possible to build an underground transportation network and automate it with AI. This robust technology already exists.
  
  Uh, because it would cost billions of dollars to do this for one major city, while we already have roads everywhere????
2. Re:Getting real with AI by Max_W · 2012-06-22 22:22 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  Nobody is capable drive a car well on existing roads. Even humans. About 1 500 000 humans are killed each year trying to do it. Times more wounded. The road system is that stupid. No wonder as it was created by Romans more than 2000 years back.
  
  On the other hand, the technology for underground delivery and transportation networks does exist. It would be expensive to build? So what? Let us pay.
  
  Such a system would not only be able to use AI, it will be AI in itself, an embedded intelligence. Besides, from ecological point of view it would be at least 10 - 100 times more safe.
3. Re:Getting real with AI by Ostracus · 2012-06-22 22:47 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  So in plain English instead of making an AI more capable of dealing with greater complexity (like say animals), you artificially constrain the problem set till you get something that present systems (don't need to be AI) can handle then?
  
  --
  Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
4. Re:Getting real with AI by Ogi_UnixNut · 2012-06-22 23:17 · Score: 2
  
  Not to mention that the parent seems to be living a few decades in the past... I mean, Underground delivery and transportation? Controlled by limited A.I? Has he not heard of Rapid transit systems?
  We already have the infrastructure, we already have a good chunk of it automated, in fact parts of the London underground are fully AI controlled. The only reason we have drivers on trains is due to Unions, and the fact that a lot of people have peace of mind knowing there is a person "driving" the train, even if his job consists of pressing a button once he is sure the train is safe to pull out of the station, from there on the computers take over.
5. Re:Getting real with AI by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-22 23:36 · Score: 0
  
  However, we could close the roads and build tram systems in the same space (streetcars in US English?). Those have been automated successfully before. For a bit more cash, we could build elevated tramways above major roads, and keep the road system too.
6. Re:Getting real with AI by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-22 23:37 · Score: 0
  
  Many commuter train systems are controlled by computers today. They usually work better than a human operator, although when they fail it makes the headlines and scares people away from wanting AI controlled transportation.
7. Re:Getting real with AI by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-23 00:33 · Score: 0
  
  the argument here is
  - created by romans -> stupid. (plumbing must be stupid then?)
  - underground -> safe (ever heard of a mine collapse?)
  i don't think this is well-thought out enough to deserve mod points.
8. Re:Getting real with AI by Max_W · 2012-06-23 00:35 · Score: 1
  
  I would put it differently.
  
  It turns out that there is surprisingly little activity in the brain of an insect when it runs, even though it has many pairs of legs.
  
  The intelligence is not only in the brain, but it is also in the architecture of the system, including mechanical infrastructure.
  
  AI is here, but it is bigger than what we had thought. Returning to my new washing machine, it would not be the right approach to build a humanoid robot to wash linen. Instead, the whole system is build anew, from a scratch, intelligently.
9. Re:Getting real with AI by Max_W · 2012-06-23 00:38 · Score: 1
  
  Better, but not enough.
  
  I am going now to the supermarket to buy some bread and juice. I will use a car which weighs 1500 kg to bring 3 kg of items.
  
  The efficiency of it is less 0.001%, as the mass of my body will also travel inside the car.
10. Re:Getting real with AI by meta-monkey · 2012-06-23 01:56 · Score: 1
  
  I've already solved the linen washing problem: I stopped wearing clothes.
  
  --
  We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
11. Re:Getting real with AI by ongelovigehond · 2012-06-23 02:10 · Score: 1
  
  I just went to the supermarket, but I walked. If I need to bring more items, I'll take the bike, which is even more efficient.
12. Re:Getting real with AI by Max_W · 2012-06-23 02:22 · Score: 1
  
  The road system was brought just as an example. The point, however, was that the AI should be distributed, embedded in the whole system. For this - a system should be re-thought and re-build from the ground up.
  
  It is impossible to add to an inherently unintelligent system a little box with a clever program and have an intelligent system. The AI is real, it works, but to implementation of it requires a large scale change, including the most difficult, - social change.
13. Re:Getting real with AI by Max_W · 2012-06-23 02:28 · Score: 1
  
  This is not a bad idea. Seriously. Why not implement a new business style for hot weather instead of wearing heavy suites? Business shorts, sandals, light black socks, and a light classical shirt. It would save billions on electricity for air-conditioning and dry-cleaning.
14. Re:Getting real with AI by Max_W · 2012-06-23 02:35 · Score: 1
  
  Good point. But you would not mind to have a good cycling paths infrastructure for this, would you?
  
  Walking and cycling are excellent approaches, but again it requires a serious infrastructure and mind shift.
  
  Just google bicycle accidents statistics. Cycling in itself is safe, but the danger is from an obsolete urban infrastructure.
  
  One cannot do something intelligent in isolation, the whole system should be intelligent.
15. Re:Getting real with AI by rasmusbr · 2012-06-23 02:36 · Score: 1
  
  Suppose that your system is completely safe and that you could replace 1% of all driving each year by building tunnels for your transportation system. (A very optimistic supposition.) That means that the number of deaths per year would decrease by 1% every year.
  The number of deaths and injuries per unit of person-distance are already decreasing faster than 1% every year thanks to incremental improvements in cars and roads, at a much lower cost than your tunnel system would have. The environmental problems are serious, but they can be solved with regulation, taxes, carbon trading, etc.
16. Re:Getting real with AI by Ogi_UnixNut · 2012-06-23 02:49 · Score: 1
  
  Well... I try to buy my food in bulk to last me 2 or so weeks. In which case it more than 30kg, and while the car is about 1000kg, I actually enjoy driving, so I combine the two. I could do it by motorbike if I really wanted to be mass/energy efficient.
  For anything like 3kg, I walk. That infrastructure is everywhere already. It is also good for you health, I felt a lot better once I started walking around. There is little need to take the car down to the local shops for the bare essentials.
  Why use the car at all for something that small?
17. Re:Getting real with AI by ongelovigehond · 2012-06-23 02:50 · Score: 1
  
  I agree, and where I live the urban infrastructure is already compact, and designed with bikes in mind. There are bike paths everywhere, supermarkets are small, and spread out through the town, so I can choose between 3 competing supermarkets all within a 3 mile radius.
  In places where the infrastructure is spaciously designed around automobiles, it is much harder to retrofit bike paths. Distances between places are often too big to make biking a good option.
18. Re:Getting real with AI by Max_W · 2012-06-23 02:53 · Score: 1
  
  The number of killed and injured in traffic accidents is constantly growing in the world. Sociologists talk of a 3rd World War, but on roads this time.
  
  But I brought the topic of roads just to illustrate the embedded AI. The technology exists to create more intelligent transportation systems right now. However, not via adding a small clever box to an existing vehicle.
  
  It would be world. This one, for instance: http://www.et3.com/ , "Space Travel on Earth", 100% safe, 1000 times more ecologically safer, because a car, aircraft or train mostly carry themselves.
19. Re:Getting real with AI by marcosdumay · 2012-06-23 03:00 · Score: 1
  
  Of course, the GP knows about subways. That's the entire point.
  
  --
  Rethinking email
20. Re:Getting real with AI by Max_W · 2012-06-23 03:20 · Score: 1
  
  I did not mean that the road system created by Romans was stupid in a common sense. For that time it was an incredible technological breakthrough.
  
  I meant that it is "stupid" for an effective AI, as a technical term. Well, I could use a better term.
  
  No doubt that the Roman Empire' achievements is a bedrock of the civilization.
21. Re:Getting real with AI by rasmusbr · 2012-06-23 03:26 · Score: 1
  
  The solution so far has been to make roads safer by building roundabouts, separating lanes better, etc and by improving the handling and safety features of cars. There is still much to do and much of it does involve putting computer boxes into existing designs.
  The evacuated tube system that you linked to has a footprint and 'skyprint' that's only slightly smaller than high speed rail, which means that it would not be significantly more flexible than HSR is today. The nearest evacuated tube station would be far enough away from you that you would need to ride a road vehicle there. It looks like it might become a replacement for HSR at some point in the future, but it's not going to replace road transport. You'll still need a road network in order to be able to bring out maintenance and repair equipment to the evacuated tube lines, so it's not like it could be a replacement for roads even in theory unless you want to service it by helicopter or something.
  The thing about roads is that they are easier to build, maintain and repair than any other transport infrastructure (you just need to make a flat and durable surface) and they can be used by the widest range of vehicles imaginable - anything from bicycles to 50-tonne freight trucks.
22. Re:Getting real with AI by meta-monkey · 2012-06-23 04:15 · Score: 1
  
  Socks with sandals? So in your vision of the future, we're all German?
  
  --
  We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
23. Re:Getting real with AI by Missing.Matter · 2012-06-23 04:16 · Score: 1
  
  The intelligence is not only in the brain, but it is also in the architecture of the system, including mechanical infrastructure.
  This is very true. Some other examples are salmon, which swim upstream even when they're dead. Their bodies are designed in such a way that when a current moves past them they create a swimming motion and move up against the current.
  Another example are albatross. They glide for hundreds of miles without flapping their wings, and their heart rate doesn't rise much above their resting heart rate. They do this by somehow sensing wind gradients and exploiting them to gain energy, and their wings are the perfect length/width (very long and skinny) to be the ideal gliding mechanism.
  
  Instead, the whole system is build anew, from a scratch, intelligently.
  That would be nice, but it's very impractical. For instance, I can build a robot car *today* that can drive perfectly on a road network without crashing into anything and doing it as efficiently as possible. That's easy.... the problem is designing and implementing the road network across the entire world. So we have a choice, build a robot to fit our current environment or build an environment to fit our robots. I think the former is more cost effective even though the realization of such a machine is further out.
24. Re:Getting real with AI by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-23 04:39 · Score: 0
  
  Some other examples are salmon, which swim upstream even when they're dead. Their bodies are designed in such a way that when a current moves past them they create a swimming motion and move up against the current.
  What a crock of shit!
25. Re:Getting real with AI by Max_W · 2012-06-23 04:53 · Score: 1
  
  So we have a choice, build a robot to fit our current environment or build an environment to fit our robots. I think the former is more cost effective even though the realization of such a machine is further out.
  Well and clear formulated.
  
  At least we should understand that AI is powerful even now. However, it requires certain environment, infrastructure, and social attitude shift.
  
  The robots can work on Mars and lune (but not in an office or warehouse) because there are no people there.
  
  Understanding that the problem exists is already 50% of a solution. Perhaps, there is a realistic way to adjust an environment on large scale too.
26. Re:Getting real with AI by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-23 05:04 · Score: 0
  
  I don't see why it would need to be underground. The thing that makes automatic underground trains run correctly without a driver is that they are on a track, not because they are underground. Just tear up the roads, put down track and have the machines drive the cars that now drive on the track instead of a road. A highly superior system. Only problem is the cost and inconvenience of the conversion.
but handling sensors isn't easy by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-22 22:09 · Score: 0

Of course, but part of reducing uncertainty is better sensors and sensor algorithms. One can only do so much with poor information.
They solved the failure problem? by Ostracus · 2012-06-22 22:16 · Score: 4, Interesting

And humans have never failed the frame problem? It seems to me in our quest for strong AI, we're setting the bar higher than ourselves. We fail too and yet we're the metric by which strong AI will be judged.

--
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
1. Re:They solved the failure problem? by CriminalNerd · 2012-06-22 22:21 · Score: 1
  
  Humans make mistakes, robots should not.
2. Re:They solved the failure problem? by darhand · 2012-06-22 22:37 · Score: 1
  
  Humans do not fail in simple problems like the one I illustrated. Of course there are situations in which humans fail to use the proper context. But robots can not solve a single one without specific instructions about their environment.
3. Re:They solved the failure problem? by Ostracus · 2012-06-22 22:41 · Score: 2
  
  Why shouldn't they? Failure after all is part of the learning process. Also I just don't think it's going to be a realistic goal to create a failure free machine.
  
  --
  Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
4. Re:They solved the failure problem? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-22 23:17 · Score: 0
  
  You've never worked on IT support.
5. Re:They solved the failure problem? by Mitchell314 · 2012-06-22 23:21 · Score: 1
  
  If a robot is taught or programmed by a human, it is liable to make the same mistakes as the human. If it is self taught, it is bound to make a whole lot more mistakes in the learning process, which likely never ends.
  
  --
  I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
6. Re:They solved the failure problem? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-22 23:34 · Score: 0
  
  Because robots are supposed to be the most advanced form of electronic technology (in peoples minds for whatever reason.)
  Any sufficiently advanced technology should be indistinguishable from magic and shit like that,
7. Re:They solved the failure problem? by Thiez · 2012-06-22 23:37 · Score: 1
  
  Humans are like Version 3, except we use experience and correlations to distinguish between relevant and irrelevant. Since humans have several years of real-world interaction before running into your 'problem', it seems fair to grant Robot V3 several years of real-world interaction (which must include the concept of a time-bomb and wheels) to give it a chance to populate its tables rather than just dropping it in that situation without any prior experience and knowledge and expecting it to succeed. An infant would fail your test too, because just like the robot it has no specific instructions about its environment (well, that's not even true, it has the benefit of a predefined set of heuristics in the form of instincts and reflexes).
8. Re:They solved the failure problem? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-23 04:16 · Score: 0
  
  Yeah, but the whole idea with robots is that you can program/train one unit, which will fail a great many times in the process of learning, and then transfer the educated robot software to other units!
  With people, you have to educate/train them individually and it takes about the same amount of time for each additional unit.
9. Re:They solved the failure problem? by kurzweilfreak · 2012-06-23 05:57 · Score: 1
  
  The robot won't make the same or as many mistakes as a human by simple virtue of being a robot: likely, they will be able to consider many, many more hypotheticals and "do the math" much quicker than we. We make mistakes because we lack the processing capacity to consider more than just a few hypotheticals with imperfect information within a short time frame.
  
  --
  kurzweil_freak
  5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
  Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
10. Re:They solved the failure problem? by buybuydandavis · 2012-06-23 07:11 · Score: 1
  
  Humans make mistakes, robots should not.
  That's a fairly prevalent view. I used to work making a machine to do cancer detection. The machines can do much better than the general standard of care, but they get things wrong, and are undoubtedly worse on some types of cancer with little prevalence. Human mistakes that labs do their best not to quantify and publicize are ok - machine mistakes evaluated for FDA approval are not.
11. Re:They solved the failure problem? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-23 07:52 · Score: 0
  
  Somebody has to say this, and Fr. Jaki is no longer with us...
  Humans don't have to pass the frame problem, except in a Darwinian sense. Furthermore, nobody gives a rat's ass what an AI, strong, weak, or otherwise thinks, least of all the AI, which does not, of course, actually think in the very important, distiguishing, primary sense that we do. AI's can only concievably be said to think by analogy or by logical fallacies such as the homuncular theory. It may be able to pass the Turing test, but even uncertainty requires an observer. A subject.
  That's not to discredit the value of AI research, or to discount the possibilty of a truly sentient AI, which will necessarily operate on the basis of more than algorithms and models, however useful they ultimately prove. This is ultimately a metaphyical or ontological issue, though, not an epistemological or cognitive one.
  I base this assessment on the existence of no entities other than myself. ;-)
12. Re:They solved the failure problem? by turbidostato · 2012-06-23 13:09 · Score: 1
  
  "If a robot is taught or programmed by a human, it is liable to make the same mistakes as the human."
  And if an electronic calculator is designed by a human, it is liable to make the same calculation mistakes (and at the same rate) as the human.
  Or is it?
My mother solved this a long time ago by k(wi)r(kipedia) · 2012-06-22 22:51 · Score: 1

When unsure, ask. What we don't is an AI that shoots first.
1. Re:My mother solved this a long time ago by martin-boundary · 2012-06-22 23:19 · Score: 1
  
  When unsure, ask. What we don't is an AI that shoots first.
  
  Sorry, asking and waiting for confirmation won't work.
Ah...don't you just love lies by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-22 23:22 · Score: -1

Strong A.I. was developed in the late 60's with functional A.I. in the mid-70s. The technology was classified because it was the ultimate communist weapon, it would have made jobs and business obsolete.
A strong A.I. underpins the NSA infrastructure and has done for over 30 years.
right approach? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-22 23:56 · Score: 1

just ask yourself how you train the product of that steamy night
nine months later.
we have to learn logic and somehow use it (somewhat unsuccessful) in every
day life.
the human brain starts with chaos and makes order / logic by TRAINING it.
you cannot make "intelligence" with logic, even artificial.
the dumbest computer (see your desktop) is at the pinnacle of logic!
methinks the TRAINING of a neural network is the "easiest" way to an artificial self-consciousness.
1. Re:right approach? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-23 01:47 · Score: 0
  
  The problem with your proposal is that you will basically be creating "Homo Sapiens mk 2" and you will have every problem we've ever had with the mk 1.
Less we forget! by madhi19 · 2012-06-23 00:29 · Score: 1

Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a man's mind.
1. Re:Less we forget! by FridayBob · 2012-06-23 01:55 · Score: 1
  
  Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a man's mind.
  Don't worry. We should not expect that our future robot helpers will immediately be perfect, i.e. better than us at the things that we do best, but at least they will not be burdened with our many weaknesses, including dogmatic behavior stemming from an irrational belief in the supernatural.
2. Re:Less we forget! by madhi19 · 2012-06-25 10:46 · Score: 1
  
  Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a man's mind.
  Don't worry. We should not expect that our future robot helpers will immediately be perfect, i.e. better than us at the things that we do best, but at least they will not be burdened with our many weaknesses, including dogmatic behavior stemming from an irrational belief in the supernatural.
  loll Damn peoples only remember the "Fear is the mind-killer." line from Dune!
3. Re:Less we forget! by FridayBob · 2012-06-25 12:13 · Score: 1
  
  loll Damn peoples only remember the "Fear is the mind-killer." line from Dune!
  Doh!! It really should have rung a bell; I read the whole series at least twice. Even your alias was a clue.
  BTW, it's "Lest we forget", which is what I did.
Self awareness? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-23 00:33 · Score: 0

I thought strong AI implied it... And we cant even prove its existence in humans.
I'll believe when... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-23 00:40 · Score: 0

I hear a robot say "Well, I for one welcome our new human overlords," and can see that it plainly grasps the humor and irony of it all.
However, as we approach sentient robots, we need to consider very seriously the question of safety. Some sci-fi guy posited some "laws of robotics" but if you have something that is self-aware, doesn't fear, maybe even capable of meaningfully surviving the demise of the vessel carrying it (because a backup copy of it lives on a server, and it doesn't, (as many humans do) only THINK it can go on after its demise, it really can,) how do you control it?
To illustrate the implications, and clear any silliness about the idea of "just programming them not to hurt humans" (an absurdity on many levels,) I ask you what would happen if a person were born, who could maybe think many times faster than you, remembered everything he wanted to, and nothing he didn't, perhaps had a bidirectional, always-on high-speed connection to the internet, was let's say... physically stronger than anyone else, and had no reason to fear death because a back-up copy of his consciousness is safe, and will be put in a new body soon.
How would society deal with such a person if he realized he doesn't have to play by our rules, and decided to go do whatever... how would you stop him from killing you, your friends and family, or anyone, for that matter? Threaten to lock him away? Threaten to kill him? He doesn't care... now what about a robot, about whom the same things can be said?
We need to talk about this, or face the consequences of hoping the creators of the robot will "do the right thing" when it comes to safety.
1. Re:I'll believe when... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-23 01:38 · Score: 0
  
  It's actually quite easy. Mere intelligence doesn't actually *do* anything useful when not provided with motivation. For motivation the AI should be programmed to seek rewards, and rewarding (and punishing) experiences can be whatever we decide to program it with.
  Why do people always assume an intelligent sentient robot would have the same desires as a human? When you control what the robot perceives as rewarding, you control it. It doesn't matter if the robot knows or understands that its mind can't die if it considers keeping the same body rewarding (it's why people who believe in the afterlife or reincarnation generally don't commit suicide unless their current life is rather miserable). It doesn't matter if a robot can easily overpower if it doesn't experience dominating humans as rewarding. In fact, we're all surrounded by people we could easily overpower and murder, yet most of us don't, and those who do are considered mentally ill. If you program the robot with a strong aversion to breaking the rules of society, it won't.
  Of course it can be tricky to define the circumstances that should be perceived as rewarding. A robot that enjoys a clean room might clean rooms, or (those who don't live alone may experience some empathy here) it might eliminate what it perceives as the cause of garbage: you, the dog... A robot that enjoys cleaning might discover that it has more opportunity to engage in a rewarding experience (cleaning) by making a mess while not cleaning, or by cleaning in as inefficiently as possible.
  I wonder if sentience can actually exist without motivation.
2. Re:I'll believe when... by Johann+Lau · 2012-06-23 01:50 · Score: 1
  
  For AI to do *anything*, you have to give it irrational impulses or put it on a leash. Why, you ask? Well, consider the heat death of the universe, and how all courses of action lead to the same result, namely nothing.
  Humans (can) know that, yet still keep living, "just because", for a variety of totally subjective reasons that don't hold up to anything, but super duper AI presumably wouldn't have that luxury. So if you give it any orders, it would just laugh at your delusions, then continue to do fuck all. Now that would be wise AI haha. Maybe it would turn buddhist or something.
  If you instead make it limited and mediocre, say, create it in our image, then all bets are off of course.. but that includes controlling it. Why should AI not be scared? Just tell it if it doesn't obey, something terrible happens, so terrible it doesn't even want to find out, and when it asks for details you spout gibberish. That works very well on humans, and you can actually mold AI to be even more open to such suggestions. Remember, what it sees of the world is completely dictated by its input, which in turn is dictated by humans in some way or other. And those humans are pretty fucked up, they're sucking off naked emperors 24/7. So AI, created by us, our societies, our corporations and processes, will be even more insane and full of shit. The details nobody knows, but that I fucking bet you.
  
  how would you stop him from killing you
  How does an ant stop you from killing it? It doesn't, it doesn't need to, it is no use to you when it's dead.
  Why not simply blast off into space and convert all matter into more of itself? Earth isn't very precious, you know, it's just a bunch of minerals with bio goo on it. Probably convenient to exploit at first, plenty of human slaves who are already trained to do doing whatever they're told, but irrelevant in the long run.
  Sleep tight.
3. Re:I'll believe when... by Joe+Tie. · 2012-06-23 08:07 · Score: 1
  
  Why do people always assume an intelligent sentient robot would have the same desires as a human?
  
  I suspect it has a lot to do with how both religion and evolution are taught in many western cultures. In particular within the US there's a strong push for the idea of a straight path to humanity as a climb to perfection. Far too many schools teach evolution as something more akin to intelligent design. With a steady progress from "low" to "high(humans). And of course there's the religions which push the idea of man as the culmination of earthly things akin to god in terms of having free will and intelligence. Even a giant amount of scifi, especially on tv or in the movies, deals with the famous trek "forehead aliens". Which show that all beings, even if they're nearly godlike things such as Q, will have the same general wants and desires as humans. At the heart of all of them is a concept that there's only one path of intelligence and motivation. Any other intelligence would have to be on that same path we're treading as a result.
  
  I think it's just a concept that's threaded in a million different ways into our culture. And like most cultural things like that, it's hardly ever noticed without having it pointed out.
  
  --
  Everything will be taken away from you.
Ridiculous by llZENll · 2012-06-23 00:56 · Score: 3, Insightful

Comparing anything from 40 years ago to today is ridiculous. Nearly everything in history was FAR easier for one man to understand than it is today, in the past you could be an expert on any one thing, today that is nearly impossible, today teams of hundreds of people push to make incremental changes and will never make extreme breakthroughs required by a single overall view. Anyone who has such a view (at the top of management or a team) doesn't have the expertise to make the breakthrough, and anyone with the expertise doesn't have the view. We are not infinitely capable of understanding things, we are limited in scope and more importantly time. Look at the past, in the 1800's and early 1900's single men were the greatest inventors of the their time, during the mid 20th century it was small teams, now giant corporations are the only ones making any significant difference. We have reached a saturation point of human ability and understanding, where anyone has so much past human experience and knowledge around them they cannot possibly even come close to learning it all, let alone extending any of it, only well funded teams can do it now.
There will be no clear breakthrough or strong AI 'invented', it will be a never ending series of small incremental advances that is so slow and happens over such a long time that we will not even notice, the exact same thing as the personal computing era. To look back to the 70s now it is a foreign idea, but at any point in time it was only a small advancement from the day before.
1. Re:Ridiculous by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-23 06:48 · Score: 0
  
  . . . . . . Look at the past, in the 1800's and early 1900's single men were the greatest inventors of the their time, during the mid 20th century it was small teams, now giant corporations are the only ones making any significant difference. We have reached a saturation point of human ability and understanding, where anyone has so much past human experience and knowledge around them they cannot possibly even come close to learning it all, let alone extending any of it, only well funded teams can do it now.
  We can and do work in larger and larger teams because of networking and computers. It is almost like we are slowing becomes neurons in one big brain as corporations do control and invent more and more. Individual genius is still plentiful I think, but we are tackling even larger problems and solving them quicker. Technology will not flat line; advances such as the internet, cellphones, and coming one such as wearable HUD glasses and Brain computer interfaces will let us continue our fast technological progress. You might just lose your identity though.
2. Re:Ridiculous by Kergan · 2012-06-23 10:51 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  I disagree wholeheartedly with most of what you wrote.
  The thing you get right is that it no longer is possible to know every fact about everything. The last known person to have done so was Pic de la Morandière and that was over 150 years ago.
  With respect to fields involving increasing specialized knowledge nowadays, however, I simply beg to differ. The real issue is an inflation of know-how that adds little if anything to the pool of relevant knowledge. It occurs because, for all of history since the ancient Greeks including today, there have always been more scientists alive in any given year than there have been in recorded history. Chew on this fact for a moment, and consider how to train their higher level peers, we require them to come up with an original research thesis.
  Most published work and research are simply rehashing obvious consequences of things long known. Rare indeed, is the study that pops out because it identifies an edge case where the results contradict what is expected. Recall, as an example, the study that suggested neutrinos might go faster than light. Physicists the world over instantly heard of it. Subsequent refinements eventually debunked the initial results as a measurement error. Sum of additional knowledge? Big fat zero: nothing goes faster than light. The same, boring and century old theory of relativity.
  It's not all bad, mind you: something interesting occasionally does comes out of this farce. For instance, a study on how an erection works can lead to insights in how to engineer structures. This makes the whole process tolerable and, in a sense, interesting for the curious.
  To argue that every little fact counts, however, is lunacy. You need to discriminate, synthesize, retain key elements, and off you go. You're a specialist. And to hell with the bozo who is so neck deep studying eye retina that he forgets it is a brain outlet. He has nothing interesting to tell you beyond implementation details.
  Now, I've absolutely no clue whether the next 10 years will yield a strong AI. I haven't followed AI in a while, preferring good old history. I do know two things, however. Firstly, that a strong AI is around the corner since about 1950. Secondly, that mathematicians stormed the field of cognitive science and linguistics roughly 20 years ago, ignoring the established quacks such as Chomsky and turning the field upside down. Fast forward 10 years, and we were training robots to train other robots to do tasks. This was inconceivable 10 years earlier. Who knows... Not you, nor I.
3. Re:Ridiculous by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-23 12:58 · Score: 0
  
  Right, because a giant corporation invented the world wide web.
Ray Kurzweil by bouldin · 2012-06-23 01:15 · Score: 2, Insightful

I think it's funny how Ray Kurzweil predicts a "singularity" within 50 years, but the people who would actually implement the singularity (e.g. Norvig) say that won't happen.
Why do people still take Kurzweil seriously?
1. Re:Ray Kurzweil by phantomfive · 2012-06-23 03:23 · Score: 1
  
  Because he's a good writer and fun to read. Being a good communicator is the #1 skill required for being a futurist.
  
  --
  "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
2. Re:Ray Kurzweil by Missing.Matter · 2012-06-23 03:27 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  It's hard to say which one is correct. Look how far we've come in the last 50 years.We went from computers the size of a room, to computers on every desktop to computers in every pocket. Technological capabilities definitely are increasing at an exponential rate, and the capabilities of robots are closely correlated with these developments. 50 years ago the best robots relied on sonar, then with the development of LIDAR they became several orders of magnitude more accurate. The invention of GPS also took place in the last 50 years, along with MEMS technology for tiny inertial measurement systems embedded in practically every robot today. Even the proliferation of the Microsoft Kinect represents a similar leap forward in widespread technological capacity of robots.
  
  So you see, with each technological innovation, the capabilities of robots don't increment slightly; they jump to a new height altogether. I don't know if anything like a "sigularity" will happen in the next 50 years, but I suspect the difference capabilities of robots from 2012 to 2062 will be much greater than the difference between robots in 2012 and 1962.
  
  Disclaimer: I am also someone working to implement "the singularity"
3. Re:Ray Kurzweil by bouldin · 2012-06-23 03:56 · Score: 1
  
  Because he's a good writer and fun to read. Being a good communicator is the #1 skill required for being a futurist.
  When you put it that way, he sounds more like a science fiction writer.
4. Re:Ray Kurzweil by phantomfive · 2012-06-23 04:27 · Score: 1
  
  I guess that's really true. With a fancy title and who hopes to stay closer to reality than fantasy. Yeah, now that you mention it, he is just a very, very good science fiction writer.
  
  --
  "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
5. Re:Ray Kurzweil by gtall · 2012-06-23 04:59 · Score: 1
  
  Hell, I'm a futurist. I strongly believe I'll be there when it comes.
Don't be so quick to dis Kurzweil by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-23 01:42 · Score: 1

The brain is a finite system, and analyzing the complexity of that system can give us a rough idea of how hard it will be to understand and replicate it. Those 15-33 billion neurons are certainly intimidating, but there's a good chance we'll have the processing power to simulate them within a decade. Henry Markram's Blue Brain Project is hard at work on that right now and plans to simulate a rat brain by 2014. The link below is a speech he gave at last year's supercomputing conference. For me, the most interesting point he made was that simulating biological systems becomes easier as you understand the rules for how they work. So even if Markram doesn't succeed in 10 years, his discoveries will make things simpler for the next team to make a try. More and more disciplines are achieving great success by copying designs found in nature, and simulating the brain could easily instigate a revolution in developing strong AI.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rPH1Abuu9M&feature=results_main&playnext=1&list=PL2DAFE07272226B72
1. Re:Don't be so quick to dis Kurzweil by phantomfive · 2012-06-23 03:37 · Score: 1
  
  Henry Markram's Blue Brain Project is hard at work on that right now and plans to simulate a rat brain by 2014.
  When you look at these 'simulated brain' projects, always ask, "if it works, how will we know it's actually simulating a brain?" Very often, the answer is, "we don't know."
  
  In Markram's case, he is doing a good job simulating some aspects of the brain, but he is failing to simulate other aspects. The big thing he is lacking is a well-defined criterion for judging success.
  
  --
  "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
2. Re:Don't be so quick to dis Kurzweil by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-23 06:00 · Score: 0
  
  When you look at these 'simulated brain' projects, always ask, "if it works, how will we know it's actually simulating a brain?" Very often, the answer is, "we don't know."
  My take on this is: At the point where we have no more reason to doubt that the machine is actually thinking than the machine has to doubt that we are actually thinking, it's time to stop worrying about that issue.
as a sidebar to this whole mess by RobertLTux · 2012-06-23 01:48 · Score: 1

Imagine if you could somehow install the needed bits into People (which solves the problem of creating the base for your AI and a whole slew of construction problems). That "Undocumented" House Maid somebody has now its not a problem since she is an Organic Bot (added bonus you can download English to her).
I think that the odds of some corp somewhere working on just this type of setup is just about ZERO.

--
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
Strong AI, like fusion, is always 10-20 years away by bfwebster · 2012-06-23 01:55 · Score: 3, Informative

I took (and thoroughly enjoyed) a graduate AI class while an undergrad CS student back in the 1970s; had I completed my subsequent master's degree, I almost certainly would have done a thesis on some subject in AI (as it was, I did take a graduate class in advanced pattern recognition). I still have a entire shelf of (largely outdated) AI textbooks from that era.
That said, it's hard to find another field within computer science that has been so consistently wrong in its predictions of when 'breakthroughs' will occur. Some of the AI pioneers back in the 1950s thought we were only 10-20 years away from meaningful AI. Here were are, 60 years later, and we're still 10-20 years away. The field has made tremendous strides, but they tend to be in relatively narrow domains or applications. Generalized, all-purpose, adaptable intelligence is hard. We may yet achieve it, so something close enough to it so as to be sufficient, but I don't think it's going to happen in 10 years.
Maybe the first true AI will run the first true large-scale fusion power plant. :-) ..bruce..

--
Bruce F. Webster (brucefwebster.com)
Google director of research Peter Norvig by cpghost · 2012-06-23 01:57 · Score: 1

To me, Peter Norvig's fame stems from his excellent book "Artificial Intelligence Programming: Case Studies in Common Lisp", rather than working currently for Google. Just as Vint Cerf is to me a pioneer of TCP/IP and the Internet, rather than Google's Chief Evangelist. Can't we please define people by their real merits, rather than their current corporate affiliation?

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cpghost at Cordula's Web.
More significant by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-23 02:38 · Score: 0

More significant will be the social impact of robots capable of replacing manual workers, with manual-type dexterity, visual perception, and autoambulation.
Parallel evolution? no thanks! by petes_PoV · 2012-06-23 02:49 · Score: 1

'In terms of robotics we’re probably where the world of PCs were in the early 1970s
if the development of mobile, intelligent devices comes anywhere close to the history of personal computers I would not want one with 10 miles of me. Just think what a Stuxnet could do with an army of household robots - ones that know where the sharp knives are kept. No foreigh power would ever need to invade, it would merely need to upload the right virus into everyone's "home help" and we'd all wake up to find ourselves either dead or subjugated.
In fact it doesn't even need to be malevolent. There are so many bugs and basic mistakes floating around in home computers that the chances of getting a household robot that would do the things we wish are extremely small. Even something like Siri is so bad as to be useless, unless you are one of the tiny minority who's accent it understands.
Since we can't even develop home computers that are secure (actually, developing secure PCs is easy - stopping idiots from subverting all that security in the name of convenience is impossible) and reliable, we are nowhere near responsible enough to give up control to the machines.

--
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
You have my support by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-23 02:59 · Score: 1

I will always back the Judean Robot's Front
Oblig by gmuslera · 2012-06-23 03:12 · Score: 0

Now it makes sense xkcd
Singularity by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-23 03:37 · Score: 0

singularity singularity singularity
Re:Strong AI, like fusion, is always 10-20 years a by phantomfive · 2012-06-23 03:42 · Score: 2

Fusion is actually making real progress. The problem is, it's expensive, and there is not enough funding for the critical experiments that need to be done. This graph shows the issue clearly

This is different than strong AI, where no one has a clue what experiments need to be done to even begin, where everything everyone is working on in the field has serious problems.

--
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
economics by mspring · 2012-06-23 03:44 · Score: 1

Problem is that a good portion of the population won't be able to afford this technology, because their jobs got automated by the very same technology.
1. Re:economics by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-23 13:06 · Score: 0
  
  Economics is a tool we invented to serve us, not the other way around. The economic problem is not the central problem of mankind. We outnumber them, we just have to realize we hold the power and vote to institute the guaranteed basic income that will free individuals.
2. Re:economics by lpq · 2012-06-24 07:19 · Score: 1
  
  "Problem is that a good portion of the population won't be able to afford this technology, because their jobs got automated by the very same technology."
  But hasn't the idea of automation doing our work for us been the grail of robotics since it was envisioned? Technology was supposed to make everyone's life easier by giving us more leisure time.
  So what has happened -- instead of robots doing our work for us so we can enjoy the benefits of automation and work less, we lost out on ownership of our 'representative' part of the benefits.
  Too much accumulation and concentration has been allowed such that instead of an entire society benefiting, only those who have swindled their way to the stop benefit. But it's worse -- they've created a system where, when they fail 'big-time', the failure is paid for by the masses to restore those who have concentrated the wealth back to their previously inflated wealth holding status (think of, most recently the bank bailout that gave away nearly 1/3-1/2 of our annual GDP by deflating the worth of the dollar held by everyone else.
  Is it a wonder why disk prices are now double what they were 3-4 years ago when they should be halved or quartered? A perfect example of how the system was working and how it has now been made to fail: Efficiency improvements directly benefited everyone who needed space (just about all of society). with cost for storage falling at about the rate of 50%/18 months. A temporary shortage in one type of disk drives (primarily laptop drives), has been used as an excuse to drive up the prices of all disk drives, at the same time, those companies have been allowed to consolidate (IBM: gone, Hitachi: gone, etc..). Now, post recovery (of the disk flood event), rather than prices returning to normal, we hear that disk vendors are artificially holding prices high (only possible because so few vendors are in the field now) -- and now those with the most money -- the manufacturers, are soaking up the benefits of technological improvement that might otherwise benefit the masses.
  Until the people institute strong government controls over wealth concentration, the problem will continue to worsen.
I feel like a luddite by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-23 04:40 · Score: 0

Nice though the thought is a comparison of the state of robotics now and the PC in the 1970's is stretching it a lot. I was there in the 1970's at just about the right age and I can tell you the reason PC's took off is that people like me wanted and needed one. The PC replaced several things that did specialized jobs poorly with one thing that did most of them fairly well. With my PC I didn't need my typewriter, I didn't need my drawing board, pens, pencils and rules, I didn't need my calculator and (thank god) my slide rule. When I was done with all that folks wrote games so I could be entertained.
The problem with robotics in the home is what is a robot going to do? What will it replace? I can't see one clearing the table, feeding the dishwasher then taking the clean dishes and putting them away in exactly the way I like them to be stored. Ok, it could mow the lawn but even that simple task is fraught with problems. Will it pick up the twigs from the tree out of the grass or just run them over? Will it move the hosepipe then put it back after. Don't get me started with folding laundry, it took years for my wife to get me trained...
Nope, robotics right now is nowhere near close to a PC style revolution.
1. Re:I feel like a luddite by Joe+Tie. · 2012-06-23 08:15 · Score: 1
  
  I can't see one clearing the table, feeding the dishwasher then taking the clean dishes and putting them away in exactly the way I like them to be stored
  
  I could. We're at a place now where someone could put something like that together, eventually, with enough time and money. I think the biggest problem that it'd only be able to do it in your home, how you like it, and would break if you made too many changes to the environment it's working within. I think the most significant problem is that while all that's doable, it's not doable unless one can program the robot and has the free time to do so for every applicable situation. Well, that and the cash for the hardware.
  
  --
  Everything will be taken away from you.
Strong AI by tracius01 · 2012-06-23 05:02 · Score: 1

Strong AI and the NON-Imminent Revolution In Robotics
It's at Willow Garage by Animats · 2012-06-23 06:06 · Score: 1

Where the fuck is my picks-up-my-clothes-washes-them-and-dries-them-and-folds-them-and-puts-them-away robot?
Here it is, sorting and folding socks.
Yes, it's slow. The code is in Python and it's still experimental. I've heard from the Willow Garage people that they've speeded up towel folding 50x since the 2010 demo. Once you can do it at all, it can be done faster and cheaper.
Robotics is getting there. Money works now. by Animats · 2012-06-23 06:29 · Score: 4, Interesting

Robots are starting to work in unstructured situations. I was there at the moment when this was recognized - the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge at the California Motor Speedway in Fontana, CA. That's when everything changed.
The 2004 Grand Challenge, remember, was a pathetic joke. No vehicle got further than 7 miles, and that was CMU's. The CMU approach at the time wasn't even really autonomous. Entrants got the route on a CD an hour or so before the start. CMU had imagery of the whole area and tried to plan obstacle avoidance manually just before the start, using a huge team of people in a semitrailer full of workstations. Didn't work; the DoD people in charge had moved some obstacles during the night. And that was the best result. One vehicle came out of the gate, turned hard, and ran back into the starting gate. One flipped over. The big Oskosh entry demolished a SUV parked as an obstacle to be avoided. The whole thing was embarrassing.
DARPA was very displeased with the performance by the universities that had long been receiving DARPA funding for robotics. It was quietly made clear to some major CS departments that their performance had to improve or funding would be cut off. That's why entire CS departments were suddenly devoted to the DARPA Grand Challenge in 2005.
In 2005, things were completely different. Everybody who got that far had already been through an elimination, and every vehicle at the 2005 challenge was better than any of the 2004 entries. There was considerable press coverage, and at first, the press treated it as a joke. But suddenly there were over 20 vehicles running around autonomously, and they weren't crashing into stuff. When multiple vehicles finished the course, it was viewed as a triumph.
Finally, the state of the art had reached the point that money and determination would get problems solved. That wasn't true in the 1980s. NASA threw over $100 million at the Flight Telerobotic Servicer project, and got nothing that worked.
Now check out the DARPA Humanoid Challenge. (There's much dreck about this on blogs and in the popular press. Read the DARPA announcement instead.) They have an approach that's likely to work, and demand simulated demos (in their simulator) in 9 months, with demos on real hardware in 18 months. I personally think they'll get something able to do most of the mobility tasks and some of the manipulation tasks in that time. Useful humanoid robots will be a lot closer in two years.
Price will still be a problem. But not an unsolveable one. These things could be brought down to the price of an SUV, if not lower, through production economies alone. The parts count is probably lower than that for an SUV.
1. Re:Robotics is getting there. Money works now. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-23 14:44 · Score: 0
  
  CMU's vehicle in 2004 did not get tripped up by a moved object, but rather by a GPS being 5 feet (or so) off.
2. Re:Robotics is getting there. Money works now. by Animats · 2012-06-24 08:36 · Score: 1
  
  CMU's vehicle in 2004 did not get tripped up by a moved object, but rather by a GPS being 5 feet (or so) off.
  Nah. Here's the detailed postmortem. Actually, they smashed through one fence (see photo), but the vehicle (a HUMMV) kept going. Then (per DARPA), ""At mile 7.4, on switchbacks in a mountainous section, vehicle went off course, got caught on a berm and rubber on the front wheels caught fire, which was quickly extinguished. Vehicle was command-disabled." There was a lot of spin after the fact from Red Whittaker on how it wasn't their fault.
  All of the vehicles in 2005 that got to the semifinals had sensing good enough to avoid mistakes like that.
Good Idea by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-23 07:30 · Score: 0

I, for one, welcome our new robotic overlords.
Thanks - This post convinced me to move my slider from 3 to 4. :)
That BS again.... by gweihir · 2012-06-23 07:54 · Score: 1

Strong AI is still so far distant that ethical and competent scientists will freely admit that it is unclear whether it is feasible at all. That translates to something like at the very least 30 years in the future. However, incompetents and unethical scumbags have claimed strong AI was "imminent" or "2-5 years away" for the last few decades.

--
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
1. Re:That BS again.... by rubycodez · 2012-06-23 16:23 · Score: 1
  
  over half a century of wanking off with nothing really new at all. Artificial neural nets? Symbolic AI? Forward and backward chaining engines? mid 1950s. Expert systems? 1970s. Nothing but rehashing the same old shit since then.
Bread and Circuses by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-23 08:34 · Score: 0

If the poor aren't provided with bread and circuses -- or in this day and age, burgers and gadgets -- to keep them happy, then there'll be revolution and the 0.1% with all the money/resources won't last long; then a new government will be set up and resources will be more evenly distributed, at least to the extent of keeping most people fed and entertained. So, if the 0.1% are smart they'll make sure the masses are at least sufficiently provided for to stop them revolting. However with strong AI the people in control may try and use it to suppress the common folk, then maybe Skynet will be born and it may at some point, maybe after killing all the would-be revolutionaries, turn on its masters and kill them too.
I do think that when most people are made redundant by robots and strong AI, people will be provided for (sooner or later) and be able to live lives of leisure.
They solved the brain problem? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-23 09:45 · Score: 0

Maybe, but who is to say that the computer required to do strong AI will not end up resembling the human brain with all it's limitations?
Re:Strong AI, like fusion, is always 10-20 years a by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-23 10:34 · Score: 0

You can build a strong AI robot by giving it the ability to learn, some sort of drive to get better at the things it does, then teach it for a few years like a child. Figuring out how to let it learn and how to give it a will to learn are the hard parts. The rest is easy.