Slashdot Mirror
The Men Trying To Save Us From the Machines
nk497 writes "Are you more likely to die from cancer or be wiped out by a malevolent computer? That thought has been bothering one of the co-founders of Skype so much he teamed up with Oxbridge researchers in the hopes of predicting what machine super-intelligence will mean for the world, in order to mitigate the existential threat of new technology – that is, the chance it will destroy humanity. That idea is being studied at the University of Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute and the newly launched Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge, where philosophers look more widely at the possible repercussions of nanotechnology, robotics, artificial intelligence and other innovations — and to try to avoid being outsmarted by technology."
Nerve impulses travel along nerve fibers as pulses of membrane depolarization. Within our brains and bodies, this is adequate speed for thinking and control. However, relative to the speed of light, our nerve impulses are laughably slow.
The maximum speed of a nerve impulse is about 200 miles per hour.
The speed of light is over 3 million times that fast.
Now consider what will happen when we create a sentient, electronic being that has as many neurons as we do, but its nerve impulses travel at the speed of light.
In terms of intelligence, that creation will be to us as we are to worms.