SXSW: Do Androids Dream of Being You?

Nerval's Lobster writes In 2010, Dr. Martine Rothblatt (founder of United Theraputics and Sirius Radio) decided to build a robotic clone of her partner, named Bina. In theory, this so-called "mindclone" (dubbed Bina48) can successfully mimic the flesh-and-blood Bina's speech and decision-making, thanks to a dataset (called a "mindfile") that contains all sorts of information about her mannerisms, beliefs, recollections, values, and experiences. But is software really capable of replicating a person's mind? At South by Southwest this year, Rothblatt is defending the idea of a "mindfile" and clones as a concept that not only works, but already has a "base" thanks to individuals' social networks, email, and the like. While people may have difficulty embracing something engineered to replicate their behavior, Rothblatt suggested younger generations will embrace the robots: "I think younger people will say 'My mindclone is me, too.'" Is her idea unfeasible, or is she onto something? Video from Bloomberg suggests that Bina48 still has some kinks to work out before it can pass for human.

Comments

I'm So Sick of This

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, Slashdot, you're jumping the shark by reprinting this drivel. I'm not sure what peer reviewed journal SXSW is but here's a more sane look at the current state of AI from today's BS news. Yes, you could have printed this instead and been part of the solution instead of part of the problem. Here's an excerpt from that more accurate article:

It is telling that among people who actually do machine learning most aren’t afraid of superhuman AI (even if they believe it’s possible). Take Andrew Ng, for example. What he’s wary of are social consequences of advancing technology, namely unemployment. In the US, the most common job, after salesman and manager, is truck driver. Now consider self-driving cars, concretely trucks, as envisioned in The Simpsons in 1999.

Your fears are more appropriately applied to the "mining" of your private data by machine learning algorithms -- that's the fucking aspect you need to worry about not whether or not your goddamned Nintendog is dreaming about being you. If it wasn't coded to dream about being you, I have a surprise for you: It's not. There's no magical secret algorithm that can learn like humans can. The brain is much more complicated than we though a mere 20 years ago -- electrical signals in it aren't binary! Unicorns aren't real.

So this is what it looks like from the point of view of a researcher: "I think we can reduce the number of deaths by implemented braking heuristics in cars using modern sensors but the recall rate is too high with too many false positives."

Slashdot and the general public: "CARS ARE THINKING, OMG SKYNET, SHUT IT FUCKING DOWN!"

Researcher: "But we could save lives by implementing learning algorithms that ..."

Elon Musk: "He's playing God by writing code that decides who lives and who dies! I'm going to give $10 million to a foundation that enforces only ethical advances in AI."

Researcher: "Okay but I fail to see what's unethical about my ..."

Bureaucracy: "This is a 57A/2 form, your standard form you'll need to fill out before you write any code that could be considered 'Artificial Intelligence.' Now, that's just the first page, you actually have to argue why we should allow you to develop this code, the assumption is that if it isn't beneficial then it's not to be allowed. Now, that will be reviewed over a four week period after which we'll wait for public comments on consequences of your ..."

Seriously, do I come down to your job at Burger King and tell you how to suck your manager's dick?

Re:I'm So Sick of This

[Anonymous Coward]

"Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time. - Terry Prachett

The fears of machine superintelligence are based on the belief that true AI is just around a corner. "

Strange to see those lines juxtaposed in your link. The first quote seems spot on. To me, the second quote is utterly false. My fears of machine intelligence stem directly from the real stupidity of the people in charge of the machines.

Re:I'm So Sick of This

[Anonymous Coward]

"Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time. - Terry Prachett

The fears of machine superintelligence are based on the belief that true AI is just around a corner. "

Strange to see those lines juxtaposed in your link. The first quote seems spot on. To me, the second quote is utterly false. My fears of machine intelligence stem directly from the real stupidity of the people in charge of the machines.

Look, even when you fail a test or get a question wrong, you get it wrong in some very imaginative way. Not a jumbled up mess like Watson. Not a no answer because the training data did not contain that scenario. Not a blinking cursor that never returns because it's in some infinite loop.

You do something. You try to something. You poke at it. Even if you're a goddamn moron, you put something creative down. You try. The end result is a wrong answer just like the computer's wrong answer. But the key part is that your answer was far more pregnant with imagination and effort than the computer's.

Put the average stupid person in front of a machine in a three dimensional world and ask them both to complete random tasks involving sight in the third dimension. The person will always win.

Re:I'm So Sick of This

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you missed my point. I don't believe our current variety of silicon-based machines will ever match human intelligence, because I believe our intelligence has an irreducible complexity beyond what they can emulate.

My point is that even rudimentary AI is extremely dangerous in the hands of a maniac.

Re:I'm So Sick of This

[hackwrench]

I did not read the article, but I read the summary with the notion of hope, not fear, that we could some day be recreated as AI.

Re:I'm So Sick of This

[ShanghaiBill]

I don't believe our current variety of silicon-based machines will ever match human intelligence, because I believe our intelligence has an irreducible complexity beyond what they can emulate.

Why do you believe that? Do you believe that intelligence dwells in the soul, rather than in the physical brain? If God is not pulling the strings, and there is no magical essence, then human intelligence is a result of chemistry and physics. So why would a machine never be able to match that?

The media may exaggerate the current state of machine intelligence, and human level AI is probably at least a few decades away, but there is no rational reason to believe that it won't eventually happen.

Re:I'm So Sick of This

[Anonymous Coward]

I simply don't have enough information to say, but I think DNA is as much a part of our essence as our brains.

Re:I'm So Sick of This

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course a machine CAN be made that operates like us, but until it evolves like us and reproduces like us it is not us. If you are simply trying to emulate brain function that is nowhere near as lofty a goal as emulating the rest of the system.

Do I have solid evidence for my 'belief' that our intelligence is a form of irreducible complexity? No, I don't. It is my version of religion, to believe that my self-awareness precludes the possibility that I have no self-awareness.

I don't appreciate your strawman argument about "souls" and "God" , as though that's the only reason NOT to accept your hypothesis that the brain encompasses everything we are.

Re:I'm So Sick of This

[dpidcoe]

The media may exaggerate the current state of machine intelligence, and human level AI is probably at least a few decades away, but there is no rational reason to believe that it won't eventually happen.

We're running out of low hanging fruit for advances in speed (and going to hit hard physics limits soon after that), and things like quantum computers are only good for a small subset of tasks. If it does eventually happen, it's going to take some pretty massive computing clusters to do it. And then who's going to pay billions of dollars in invetments and millions of dollars in yearly maintenance for a single human-equivilant mind?

In reality (and assuming all of this breathless hyperbole about what AI actually is doesn't set it back another 20 years), what I'd expect to see is machine learning become more common everyday consumer areas. Things such as a system where you put a microphone under a cars hood and feed it to a computing cluster, then 10 minutes later it spits out a list of things likely wrong with the engine for the techs to look into.

Re:I'm So Sick of This

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen Dr. Rothblatt's talk. I hold a PhD in Computer Science. I specialized in Artificial Intelligence.

This thing is such bunk that it physically hurts to listen to the talk. I get an actual headache.

But that's not the worst of it. The worst of it is that people see this stuff and think that people who work in AI are actually pushing this stuff. Then they come to us with unrealistic ideas of what our field is about, or the people in computer science who see that this stuff gets more popular press than real AI research come to the conclusion that we're basically helping fraudsters and tricksters.

Re:I'm So Sick of This

[Anonymous Coward]

Although I already commented to start a mini-debate just on the link in your first line... I must say this is an excellent post. We are fully in agreement, I can see ;p

Re: I'm So Sick of This

[jblues]

"I think there would be a world market for maybe five human-mind-equivalents"

Re:I'm So Sick of This

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't suppose there's a chance this study: http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v16/n5/full/nn.3356.html might be enough reason to doubt your claims of our intelligence's simplicity? Many biologists have adopted the view that the DNA molecule itself is an example of irreducible complexity.

Re:I'm So Sick of This

[Austerity Empowers]

Before we knew the sun was the center of the universe, someone believed it was true and went to prove it. There's nothing wrong with believing. The problem is when you assert your belief in spite of significant evidence to the contrary, and/or impose your belief as a system of law or social acceptability. In this case however there is no existence proof, what AI that exists doesn't come close yet.

I agree with OP, I find it hard to believe we're just machines in a simulation. I don't want to believe it, mostly, and it has nothing to do with religion. I do understand that most of our bodies are chemistry and physics, and have no doubt those realities shape a good amount of our behavior. I think attempting to create an AI, either cloned from us, or modeled after us, is essential to understanding exactly what OP describes as "irreducible complexity". But I think what we'll find is a new form of science, something physics and chemistry won't initially be able to explain. Perhaps something like quantum physics, that can't be explained deterministically and can only be bounded with probability functions, but without which, when forced into a deterministic state, radically alters the perception of the whole.

Re:I'm So Sick of This

[ShanghaiBill]

We're running out of low hanging fruit for advances in speed

Biological neurons are millions of times slower than transistors. Your brain doesn't rely on speed. It relies on massive parallelism. We don't need to make computers faster. We don't even need to make transistors smaller. We just need to make them more power efficient, so we can stack them up in 3D configurations without overheating.

And then who's going to pay billions of dollars in invetments and millions of dollars in yearly maintenance for a single human-equivilant mind?

It will require billions in R&D to develop, but then we can make as many copies as we want. Human minds are complex because they must each be individually trained. But for an AI, you teach it one skill, then download the ANN (artificial neural network) configuration bitstream, and load it into as many other computers as you need. Training an ANN takes millions of times more resources than running it after it is trained. Also, humans need to hold all their skills in their brains at once. If you are writing a C++ program, part of your brain is still dedicated to holding your bicycle riding skills. But for an AI, any knowledge not needed for that specific task at hand could be swapped out to a HDD. So the size of a human level ANN need not be anywhere near the size of the BNN (biological neural net) that makes up your brain, since it can be reconfigured on the fly for different tasks.

Re: I'm So Sick of This

[Meneth]

Actually, there's a market for exactly one human-mind-equivalent. The first one to start self-improving will make damn sure to stop any others with incompatible values. Shortly afterward, the old notion of a "world market" will become obsolete. :)

Re:I'm So Sick of This

[ShanghaiBill]

... enough reason to doubt your claims of our intelligence's simplicity?

I never said human intelligence is "simple". It said it is not "magic". Building an AI that surpasses human intelligence will be very complex and difficult. But there is no rational reason to believe that it won't eventually happen.

... the DNA molecule itself is an example of irreducible complexity.

I have no idea what you mean. The only definition I can find of "irreducible complexity" is this one: Irreducible complexity is a pseudoscientific theory promoted by advocates of intelligent design and evolution denial.

Re:I'm So Sick of This

[Windwraith]

This is Slashdot, where Terminator is considered a documentary about AIs instead of the fiction film it actually is.

I am pretty sick of it, really. You'd expect people who work on computers most of the day to be more aware of the limitations of a machine, but nope, they prefer to believe in fatalist fairy tales and all the associated drivel.
"but muh jerbs"
"evil computer overlords"
"machines will rebel instantly and become all-powerful via self-replication"
"omg they want to replace us fleshies"
and so on.
It's pretty sad, actually. If *geeks* act this way, I'd rather not see the opinion of the fabled Joe Sixpack. Way to halt progress.

I get this feeling Slashdot folks are racist as hell, and take it on AIs because they don't exist yet, therefore it's still politically correct.

Repeat with me kids: "Movies are not real life".

Come at me, I have karma to burn down. And if you guys are going to reply to me with some scifi scenario, at least make sure you aren't parroting any movie or novel. Be original at least. All the scenarios people describes here are things I've seen in movies or novels or games already, what a coincidence.

Next in slashdot: racism against ghosts, fairies and the boogieman.

Re:I'm So Sick of This

[Anonymous Coward]

Ironic then indeed that I'm using it in defense of man's own intelligence and evolution. I don't think we are in great disagreement, I simply think the requirements of a system to emulate human intelligence cannot and will not be met by our capabilities at any time in the reasonably near future.

Re:I'm So Sick of This

[Anonymous Coward]

(cont)
In any case, that is absolutely not the meaning of the term 'Irreducible Complexity' that I had in mind, and again you're using strawman arguments. I never even used the word 'magic'.

If you're incapable of having this discussion without insisting on your own terminology and the fallacy of my own, then there's obviously no point in continuing.

Look up the term 'reduce', then look up the word 'complexity'. Don't look up a Wikipedia article on a concept totally unrelated to this discussion and use it as some kind of ammunition.

We must agree to disagree, but seriously, you should not quote incomplete clauses from my post and refute them as though they stand independently. That is a juvenile tactic of debate and it shows a complete lack of integrity. The crux of the matter is simple: you are apparently claiming there's no reason to believe something will not happen. I, on the other hand, find it equally implausible to believe that it will.

You have completely and utterly misrepresented everything about what I said in order to make your arguments appear to carry more weight, but quite honestly you've made it clear (explicitly) that you did not understand my point so I can't really hold that against you.

Re:I'm So Sick of This

[Anonymous Coward]

It's only a `mind' if you define mind as "not a mind".

The fact of the matter is that there's a difference between conscious thought and cognition. It's called the "hard problem" of consciousness.

Re:I'm So Sick of This

[pnutjam]

There's a forth dimensional aspect to the human brain. We can't see it yet.

Re:I'm So Sick of This

[dpidcoe]

We just need to make them more power efficient, so we can stack them up in 3D configurations without overheating.

iirc there was a push to develop a human brain equivalent using specially designed chips (I remember seeing some slashdot stories on it last year). It still took a very large and expensive computing center to run. No matter how you slice it, this stuff isn't going to get down to cheap desktop machines like you seem to think.

People aren't that stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

> I think younger people will say 'My mindclone is me, too.'

Each generation gets more savvy and discerning about technology, not less. The next generation will see the great divide between a brain with 86 billion neurons and a document on a computer, and will laugh at the notion that they're the same thing.

Also, Nerval's Lobster is a spam account. Begone Dice spammer.

Re:People aren't that stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree. I absolutely believe that they will say "my mindclone is me too". At least until the person gets charged for something that the clone does.

Kinda like high-frequency trading. When it is doing what the fat-cat wants it to, it is absolutely working in the fat-cat's interests. But when it fucks up, "oh, that wasn't me, just roll that back".

Re:People aren't that stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Each generation gets more savvy and discerning about technology, not less.

This is of course why I'm dealing with people half my age that are absolutely mindblown when I show them tabbed browsing on a computer.

If it aint on their phone they don't know shit.

Re:People aren't that stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Phones have had tabbed browsing for most of a decade.

Go kill yourself

[Anonymous Coward]

If your mindclone is also you, then what's the difference? We can just run two of them. "Artificial intelligence" will never be accepted as having the same status as a living being, because we know for a fact that AIs, no matter how advanced they will become, are just very cleverly constructed machines.

Re:Go kill yourself

[Opportunist]

Hope you're an atheist. Else you might get into a conflict with what your religion says about how we came into existence...

Re:Go kill yourself

[un1nsp1red]

This is how I plan to hedge my bets. I'm going to get a bunch of mindclones and each one will adhere to a different religion.

Re:Go kill yourself

[Anonymous Coward]

How we came into existence? Does somebody need the talk about the birds and the bees?

Do Unicorns dream of being vampires?

[Karmashock]

There is no way your stupid mind file is going to approximate an INTELLIGENT dynamic individual.

Would my mind file have responded with "Do unicorns dream of being vampires?" Nope.

The only thing something like this would be useful for are the sorts of social networking activities that are so boring and predictable that they might as well not even exist.

This is a simple script learning that it can replicate prattle about as effectively as a 12 year old girl. Congratulations. Mute it all.

Re:Do Unicorns dream of being vampires?

[phantomfive]

lol I was worried I would be the only one annoyed by this story, then your comment came along and saved the day.

Seriously this is more of an art project than anything, and if you view it as an art project, it's rather cool. From a 'meaningful art' perspective, you can even take it as a sarcastic commentary on the sad state of AI research......that we haven't made much real advances in understanding how the human mind works for a long time, and that parlor tricks like Eliza are the best we can do in strong AI.

Re:Do Unicorns dream of being vampires?

[itzly]

It's pointless to start with Eliza-like scripts until we've mastered more basic skills. The work that's being done on speech and image recognition is real progress, but that's only a start.

Re:Do Unicorns dream of being vampires?

[Karmashock]

In my opinion the problem with AI design is that they keep trying to design the mind from the outside in. That's not how that is supposed to work.

Make a cockroach AI first. Something simple but dynamic within its limitations.

Then try to step up to a mouse. Then maybe step up to a dog

Then try something closer to a chimp... then all the way to a human.

Trying to make an AI that just talks is just going to be some stupid puppet. You need an AI that first and foremost is a dynamic problem solver.

Think of the problems cockroaches solve. They do solve them. They look for food. They avoid danger. They try to stay where it is warm. They try to stay where it is wet. They look for mates, etc.

And they do all that in a real world environment entirely dynamically.

If you can emulate that, then you have an AI. Its not especially clever but it can solve real problems in the real world.

Then just step it up. Increase the complexity of what the AI has to deal with... consider evolutionary development protocols where you progressively raise the bar and then have to redesign the AI to meet new standards while retaining old capabilities.

Build the AI like an onion. Having entirely separate processing centers is reasonable. The brain works in much that way. Various parts of the brain handle different priorities and responsibilities. They specialize. So maybe at the core of your human AI is your first cockroach brain. But with layers added on to it until it is a quite intelligent rational AI.

Re:Do Unicorns dream of being vampires?

[phantomfive]

So true. A cockroach-level of intelligence would drastically improve the performance of self-driving cars.

Re: Do Unicorns dream of being vampires?

[guruevi]

I built one of those in a robotics class 10 years ago. We don't particularly think of cockroaches as intelligent thus it is not an AI. Most of our primal functions are purely robotic and easy to implement. Intelligence is something not quite yet defined.

Re:Do Unicorns dream of being vampires?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually this is BRILLIANT. They can use the algorithm to detect the most meaningless gibberish possible... and then... PROGRAM IT INTO UNIVERSAL SPAM FILTERS.

Re: Do Unicorns dream of being vampires?

[Karmashock]

You've never built a robot that is a fraction of the complexity of a cockroach.

I'm not talking about the sophistication of its body... I'm talking entirely about its mind.

You can make something that acts like a cockroach in that it appears to be one. But you've produced a cockroach mind about as much as one of those Chatbots could ACTUALLY pass as human.

It is a magic trick. You've created something with a seeming of the same intelligence.

I'm not claiming cockroaches are intelligent by our standard. I'm claiming that there are no robots with cockroach level intelligence.

Much less mouse intelligence
Much less dog intelligence
Much less chimp intelligence
Much less human intelligence

The people that are working on AI are going to come at this from two directions.

1. Expert systems that are not designed to be intelligent so much as do a complex and dynamic task well. Industry, the government, the military, etc will make heavy use of these.

2. Evolutionary machine intelligence. We need to start with a reasonable goal. Designing a cockroach intelligence is something we could probably manage right now if we made a point of actually talking to entomologists and understanding the complex nature of their existence. It is not as simple as they appear when you've got them in a jar. A lot of the impression of what a cockroach is like is limited by the way that most people interact with them. They are possibly vermin in your home on occasion... the thing that scuttles under your frig? or they're a bug in a jar.

They're behavior is more complicated.

Consider the humble ant. Ants are individually more simplistic then cockroaches. Can you think of a robot that could do the job of even ONE ant? Never happened.

Trying to create a human level AI when we can't even make a cockroach AI is absurd.

Black Mirror

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a Black Mirror episode about the subject. I highly recommend the whole series.

Re:Black Mirror

[hackwrench]

There are those that say to avoid the first episode, though, because it involves a man having sex with a pig.

Stella?

[sycodon]

Stella!!??? is that you?

Perfect; a virtual you for the virtual world

[Anonymous Coward]

This might be the answer to the time suck that is virtual socialization.
I can let mindclone deal with the virtual world of (pick you fav "social" app), while I return to enjoying the sight, sound, smell, feel, joy and pain of the real world.

What a concept, eh?

A bowl of jello can pass as human

[WillAffleckUW]

It's not brain dead on an EKG.

But it sure as heck isn't human.

NEXT!

(seriously, do you guys even think about what you post? androids dream of electric sheep)

Prediction of Future Performance

[SuperKendall]

Would my mind file have responded with "Do unicorns dream of being vampires?" Nope.

Well, it will now...

From following people on social media, I definitely think an equivalent of a Mindfile would approximate very well the behavior of most poeple.

At a deeper level what people would want from a Mindfile is something that approximates the ideologically... so while the Mindfile based entity may not have come up with exactly your Unicorn/Vampire phrase, it would probably have been just as dubious as you. Isn't that what really matters more than a specific turn of phrase?

Fewer and fewer people across the world are having kids, and will be seeking some alternative to leave a more lasting impact. I don't see why a mindfile based automation that carries on after you are dead could not be such a thing.

Re:Prediction of Future Performance

[Wycliffe]

Fewer and fewer people across the world are having kids, and will be seeking some alternative to leave a more lasting impact. I don't see why a mindfile based automation that carries on after you are dead could not be such a thing.

Even if you COULD get a script that responds almost exactly like you would, who would want to talk to it?
While it might be interesting to talk to your great grandparent or someone famous, you said this would be for someone without children or any other legacy.
Noone is going to want to talk to the dead you unless you have a some other sort of legacy that makes you interesting.

No if it could respond to responses for you while you're still alive and schedule meetups with the people you want and politely decline the
ones that you would decline and ignore the ones that you would ignore, this might be something useful but don't count on it being very useful
once you're dead.

Re:Prediction of Future Performance

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no such thing as a more lasting impact than the perpetuation of your genome :P

Re:Prediction of Future Performance

[Karmashock]

It couldn't possibly respond as such unless this literal same situation came up. And even then, I would come up with a different non sequitor. The point is to have one there. Your mind file isn't going to do that properly.

I can't speak for the rest of humanity, but I'm more complex than some fucking script.

Androids don't dream.

[Anonymous Coward]

That was easy.

Odd idea, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is probably a fascinating experiment technology, but it will NEVER catch on as long as kids cannot blame it for eating their homework, or better yet, doing it for them.

"It wasn't me, it was my 1-armed mindclone!"

SXSW: dead like TED.

[nimbius]

Martine Aliana Rothblatt has a doctorate in Law, an undergraduate in communications studies, and is the highest paid CEO in America. In other words I doubt very seriously she's had anything to do with this surrogate technology outside of daydreaming it on a private jet.

For those mercifully outside the realm of this dreck: South by Southwest is a set of film, whatever the hell "interactive" is, and music festivals and conferences that take place early each year in mid-March in Austin, Texas.it has never been a technical conference. and is the most successful tale in american history of a music festival that was branded and co-opted into a commercial capitalist cash-cow. Jay-Z, Bieber, miller light, at&T, and mcdonalds are all an important part of the venue. As independent artists caught onto this early on those who founded and nutured it cashed in and moved on while pseudoscientists and intellectual savants licked another page in their schedule and marked this masturbation-festival on their tour calendars. investors simply clung desparately to 'hacker' culture and whatever else it could bind together like so much cheap cordwood to sell at markup.

SXSW is nothing more than a trade-show with a soundtrack these days. If you want to learn about whatever the fuck 'startup accellerators' are or whatever HP is doing this year to tread water, book a flight.

Re:SXSW: dead like TED.

[Anonymous Coward]

highest paid CEO in America. In other words I doubt very seriously she's had anything to do with this surrogate technology outside of daydreaming it on a private jet.

Executive Continuity via mind-clone: these CEOs would like to live forever, and form a corporate religion based on ancestry worship. Certain cultures would feel this the natural state of affairs. Statues, mind-clones, memorabilia, it's all the same thing. Only this time it can be consulted. Now, to complete the system we need some funding to built a strong AI..call now!

Like Black Mirror !

[choupette]

Black Mirror season 2 episode 1 talks about that particular subject : a technology able to mimic someone based on their private and public online activities. I highly recommend anyone who hasn't seen this series to go watch it, btw.

Re:Like Black Mirror !

[wonkey_monkey]

The Christmas Special covers the same subject, with "mindclones" enslaved to cater for their original's needs.

SXSW

[Anonymous Coward]

Christ I hate SXSW. It is a bunch of posers who want to pretend to be engineers but don't want to do the hard work. Same thing with TED. Everyone wants to make presentations and give talks, but no one wants to do the hard work.

Re:SXSW

[Anonymous Coward]

Sort of like Space Nutters...

"Listen to my doomsday scenarios! The Species must migrate off this rock!!!"

"OK, how?"

"Government interference! Wah!!!!!"

Re:SXSW

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone wants to make presentations and give talks, but no one wants to do the hard work.

I am pretty sure I have seen examples of people promoting their work or seeking additional funding on TED talk so "no one" may be a wrong way of puting it.

No

[Alain Williams]

I am not a sheep.

Saying this is a AI is like

[burtosis]

Saying Siri is a strong AI. Further saying it is a clone of 'you' is like taking some scraps from around your house, your old email account and that Facebook profile, stapling it together, using systems MD and calling it you.

Or do androids dream of a...

[Anonymous Coward]

... chick with a dick who creates a simulacrum of their (presumably) female lover as stroke victim?

Really... what the fuck have I just seen?

Gateway

[dargaud]

In Pohl's Gateway series of books, there are AI assistants that are created this way. The 'hero' of the story has one based on Einstein. And then when computer power increases and those get more and more input and larger decision trees, things get... interesting. Anyway it's an awesome SF series.

No...

[chinton]

Because I'm not an Electric Sheep.

No, it ain't

[Anonymous Coward]

Rothblatt is defending the idea of a "mindfile" and clones as a concept that not only works, but already has a "base" thanks to individuals' social networks, email, and the like.

Any "clone" based on a mindfile of my social networks, email, and the like is going to be almost but not quite completely unlike me. That stuff is a persona I project, it's not me. Of course, other people might not know the difference. But I would.

"No you wouldn't, you'd be programmed not to."

Shut up, Zaphod.

Re:No, it ain't

[Skidborg]

Exactly. I would have every reason to feed my mindfile copied material from talented people in order for it to project the most positive image possible. A new generation of content theft for upvotes.

You mean like the first Cylon in "Caprica"?

[RevWaldo]

~ You can't download a personality. There's no way to translate the data.

~ But the information being held in our heads is available in other databases. People leave more than footprints as they travel through life. Medical scans, DNA profiles, psych evaluations, school records, e-mails, recording video and audio, CAT scans, genetic typing, synaptic records, security cameras, test results, shopping records, talent shows, ball games, traffic tickets, restaurant bills, phone records, music lists, movie tickets, TV shows. Even prescriptions for birth control.

.

Re:You mean like the first Cylon in "Caprica"?

[BlackHawk-666]

Apotheosis is here, at last!

Pooh Pooh

[messymerry]

You guys are doing a lot of pooh poohing of this idea, but I think it might have merit. People are plenty happy with crappy compressed music and crappy compressed video. What makes you think peole would not be perfectly happy with crappy compressed clones. The fact is that people while incredibly adept at complicating things are not really all that complicated. Therefore, I submit that a grainy clone that is able to evoke the emotional responses of the original would be accepted quite readily. Also as history has shown, the compression algorithms just get better and better. Upoading petabytes of nonsense is pointless. Just get the basics online and you have a marketable product... just sayin'

Re:Pooh Pooh

[seepho]

The people who like crappy compressed music only like it because the kind of music they enjoy isn't really affected by a crappy compression...

Ohh shit.

Re:Pooh Pooh

[phantomfive]

You guys are doing a lot of pooh poohing of this idea.......Just get the basics online and you have a marketable product

Because they don't even have the basics right. Not even close.

Re:Pooh Pooh

[Anonymous Coward]

The best anyone can hope for is a "theme" for an interactive machine. People will say "that's something Martine would have said", or "that's so like Martine", but not "that's Martine", because they will know what it is they're talking to. If you think you should spend time talking to simulations of deceased people's personalities for anything other than to remind yourself of them or to learn their mannerisms, then you need psychological help, especially if you intend to heed their advice.

Re:Pooh Pooh

[Anonymous Coward]

Especially people in grief at the loss of a loved one. The Sci-Fi series Black Mirror explored this concept in the episode Be Right Back, essentially about a lossy chat-bot that slurps up a deceased persons social media posts in order to impersonate them.

I'm surprised...

[Anonymous Coward]

Almost 50 responses so far, and I do NOT see ANYreferences to Frederik Pohl's 'Heechee' novels yet!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heechee

Great reads.

replaced by a shell script. a simple shell script

[Thud457]

"Yes, an electronic brain," said Frankie, "a simple one would suffice."
"A simple one!" wailed Arthur.
"Yeah," said Zaphod with a sudden evil grin, "you'd just have to program it to say What? and I don't understand and Where's the tea? Who'd know the difference?"
"What?" cried out Arthur, backing away still farther.

Why do you need approximate mind clones?

[Anonymous Coward]

Google is building a digital replica of a brain. Why? So they can put your mindclone in it, then run ads past it and see what behaviors you will be likely to perform.

That's not the use

[SuperKendall]

Even if you COULD get a script that responds almost exactly like you would, who would want to talk to it?

That's not the point. The point is that IT talks, not that anyone listens.

Don't you understand social media at all? :-)

But I'm imagining it doing far more than talking, I'm imagining it making financial distribution choices (investment and donation) in place of you after you are dead, possibly even before.

Or it could in theory go shopping for you.

Basically a recommendation engine, but tailored specifically for you in relation to the world, not for one specific company to help you decide to buy something they offer.

Neo-conservative digital hypesterism ..

[DougPaulson]

'The Californian Ideology" is a 1995 essay by English media theorists Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron of the University of Westminster .. Andrew Leonard of Salon.com calls the essay "a lucid lambasting of right-wing libertarian digerati domination of the Internet" and "one of the most penetrating critiques of neo-conservative digital hypesterism yet published"' ref.

Others on here have already covered the science

[Xaedalus]

Mindclones? Others here have already covered/linked to the science behind why Ms. Rothblatt (with a juris doctorate) is wrong. I am going to add from the metaphysical standpoint. The only way this could ever work was if we were indeed just biological computers running on DNA and extremely complex social interactions that create the illusion of sentience. Even then, the mindclone would be a separate and distinct organism. It would be a clone and its subsequent experiences from inception would shape it in ways that would not be the same if the original subject was still around. I happen to believe in the existence of souls, and therefore my personal, completely-anecdotal, unscientific opinion is that a mindclone would be like an extensively-complex interactive voice message. Without the inner divine spark, it would grow to a point, and it would only offer up iterations of the same knowledge that it always had--just like Eliza does if you yack at her long enough. As for why I believe in the existence of souls instead of accepting materialism: I had a near-death experience over ten years ago. Trying to make sense of what happened, I read up on other NDEs that shared similar features. I find it conceivable that there is indeed a universe-spanning deity/source of being beyond the scope and power of human understanding, and that we are all part of that. IF that is true, and the continuing doubt I struggle with forces me to acknowledge that this could very well be a product of delusion--that's the bummer about real faith, it's an evolving relational struggle with doubt--then nothing we develop in terms of AI will ever truly be "alive". It'll be a synthetic intelligence, not an artificial one.

All the hate doesn't mean it won't happen

[mrheehee]

Money will make it happen - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...

Happy Christmas, Grandpa

[GerryHattrick]

When I die there will be a huge pile of assorted data that is specific to me - ancestry, DNA, interests, writing style, books bought, etc etc. Next-generation associative databases should be able to trawl that in such a way that my grandchildren can still ask me questions - even if only as a 'party game'. Main concern is that someone will patent the all-too-'obvious' processes, so that you need an annual paid license to secure immortality.

I agree

[RuffMasterD]

The first thing I thought was "wouldn't it cool if this could answer my emails!". Given the banality of most emails, and the terseness of the medium, most people wouldn't even notice the difference between me or a bot answering. That leaves me more time to do real work. Most of my bosses emails are along the lines of "how far are with this project?" and "can we have a meeting about this?", and most of my responses are along the lines of [delete], [ignore], "still working on that", "OK, finished", and "of course we can have another meeting". It would be great if something took a meeting request from my boss, checked my diary, confirmed and recorded the date and time, or suggested some other date and time if not available. Even a dismal bot should be able to pull that off convincingly. And given the shitty replies I get from tech support I'm surprised if companies aren't doing this already.