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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.
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.
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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?
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.
Good people go to bed earlier.
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.