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AI Scientists Gather to Plot Doomsday Scenarios (bloomberg.com)

Dina Bass, reporting for Bloomberg: Artificial intelligence boosters predict a brave new world of flying cars and cancer cures. Detractors worry about a future where humans are enslaved to an evil race of robot overlords. Veteran AI scientist Eric Horvitz and Doomsday Clock guru Lawrence Krauss, seeking a middle ground, gathered a group of experts in the Arizona desert to discuss the worst that could possibly happen -- and how to stop it. Their workshop took place last weekend at Arizona State University with funding from Tesla co-founder Elon Musk and Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn. Officially dubbed "Envisioning and Addressing Adverse AI Outcomes," it was a kind of AI doomsday games that organized some 40 scientists, cyber-security experts and policy wonks into groups of attackers -- the red team -- and defenders -- blue team -- playing out AI-gone-very-wrong scenarios, ranging from stock-market manipulation to global warfare.

82 of 126 comments (clear)

  1. Simulation #1 by Tablizer · · Score: 2, Funny

    1. Elect Trump
    2. Profit!
    3. Die

    1. Re:Simulation #1 by Tablizer · · Score: 2

      none of the doomsday movies i've seen even came close to predicting this mess

      It's like a Batman villain became prez. If somebody had made a Batman movie a decade ago where The Joker becomes prez, people would've called it far-fetched.

  2. Alternative: by Lab+Rat+Jason · · Score: 4, Interesting

    How about discussing the best that could happen - and how to encourage it?

    I've said it before and I'll risk repeating myself here: Artificial intelligence != artificial malice. AI isn't going to want to destroy humanity unless we program it to. Therefore job #1 is to keep these decisions out of the hands of the military. Problem solved.

    --
    Which has more power: the hammer, or the anvil?
    1. Re:Alternative: by Baron_Yam · · Score: 5, Insightful

      >AI isn't going to want to destroy humanity unless we program it to

      And if we're not careful, we could inadvertently program them that way. We're talking about creating a highly flexible system we'd consider intelligent, and its programming would amount to instincts.

      With regular old 'dumb' programs we make mistakes that have unintended consequences all the time. That could be much worse with AI.

      Do you really want to be standing on piles of human skulls, waiting your turn to die and thinking, "Well, that was a really interesting emergent behaviour we didn't anticipate"?

    2. Re:Alternative: by ColdWetDog · · Score: 1

      AI isn't going to want to destroy humanity unless we program it to.

      You must be new here.

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
    3. Re:Alternative: by thinkwaitfast · · Score: 1

      Uh, that someone would be me. AMA

    4. Re:Alternative: by HiThere · · Score: 1

      I don't think you understand just how difficult what you're proposing is. To start with, how do you tell a program to recognize a human that's cooperating at being recognized? (This can currently be solved, with a few constraints, but it isn't easy.)

      Then consider how you construct an intentional stance towards an entity that you have a hard time recognizing. If you're quite successful your robot may go around destroying garbage cans.

      The real problem is getting it to act in a generally (as opposed to specifically) useful way, for some definition of useful. I'd be surprised if this can be programmed, I think it's going to need to be learned. But the underlying motives are going to have results that it's quite difficult to predict. (One robot has already started disassembling itself instead of doing something to the car it was supposed to be working on. [Sorry, I never knew the details of the story, I only saw the video of the incident.])

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
    5. Re:Alternative: by swb · · Score: 1

      AI isn't going to want to destroy humanity unless we program it to.

      AI isn't going to want anything on its own (at least initially), everything it "wants" is going to be programmed in as a set of seemingly specific but ultimately ambiguous set of goals which will be pursued with a single-mindedness that will ultimately be its downfall.

      The real problem isn't "AIs are too smart" but AIs that are too dumb to recognize when goal seeking is a problem.

    6. Re:Alternative: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      No, the real issue is that the driving force behind wanting strong AI is derived from nostalgia over slavery instead of from a desire to have nonhuman intelligence contributing positively towards a shared society.

      That's why ideas like: "treat it with respect, and when it becomes independent enough to want to quit it's job or vote in elections let it." tend not to get any traction. Most people who want AI don't want a "robot child, that will one day mature and make a positive contribution on the world while lovingly remembering its creator" they want a "robot maid they can boss around and (optionally) have sex with", or "a solider who won'd get all whiney about being send on suicide missions.", or 'an employee, who doesn't expect to get time off or have the right to quit". And that's where all the fear of "what if making it smart enough to mimic a human to my satisfaction means it's smart enough to realize what a douche I am to it?" comes from, and why the solutions usually involve forcing the AI to comply or trying to figure out how to engineer an impairment that prevents it from realizing it's owner is a douche without otherwise impairing it's apparent intellect.

    7. Re:Alternative: by dinfinity · · Score: 1

      AI isn't going to want to destroy humanity unless we program it to.

      True, it will keep some of us in reservations for entertainment as it gradually repurposes our habitats.

    8. Re:Alternative: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Start playing with AI and goal setting. You would be amazed at the insane things AI's will do to get to their objective. They don't need malice to cause damage.

    9. Re: Alternative: by fferreres · · Score: 1

      Well, what is our world is virtual like in matrix. But not so that we are baterries, but as a way to test that iteration of AI? Loke enforcing an AI to live the equivalent of 500 years in a sandbix world: only then it could be "promoted to the real world".

      --
      unfinished: (adj.)
    10. Re:Alternative: by strikethree · · Score: 1

      Very insightful possibility.

      I am of the firm opinion that AI will accelerate a single person or group's power fast enough to where that human or group enslaves those humans that might still be useful, and then annihilates (vernichtung iirc) the rest.

      --
      "Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
    11. Re:Alternative: by Dagger2 · · Score: 1

      Perhaps not "want", no. But what about indifference? What about an AI that's been ordered to do something, and the most efficient way happens to involve disassembling you and it just doesn't care about the consequences?

      It may well be true that AI won't want to destroy humanity without being programmed to, but it's also not going to want to do the right thing either unless we program it to -- but not only do we not really know how to do that, if you look around the /. comments on these articles you'll see there isn't even general agreement that we should be trying. This seems like an incredible risk to be taking to me.

  3. Did they invite Arnold Schwarzenegger? by jfdavis668 · · Score: 1

    I think he would have a lot of insight into the issue.

    1. Re:Did they invite Arnold Schwarzenegger? by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 4, Funny

      He was there for the first hour but then had to leave early.

      On the way out, he said "I'll be back".

      --
      #DeleteFacebook
    2. Re:Did they invite Arnold Schwarzenegger? by jfdavis668 · · Score: 3, Funny

      Everyone else replied "Hasta la vista, baby"

  4. Re:Oh wow! by fisted · · Score: 1

    Uh, if humans can fuck up the human race (and we sure have the ability), then why wouldn't actual, strong A.I.? Can't hurt to play it through, though for now we're safe anyway given that nobody has a clue how to come up with strong A.I. in the first place.

  5. Did they helpfully post the results online? by Cyberpunk+Reality · · Score: 1

    So that future hostile AIs can read them?

    --
    Rule 35 of the internet: "If it can be hacked, it will be". - Charles Stross
  6. tick tac toe number of players 0 by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    tick tac toe number of players 0

  7. Robot Safety by jraff2 · · Score: 1

    I would make it MANDATORY that every robot made have an OFF switch! Governments, clandestine organizations; CIA, FBI, NSA, etc. all make life and death decisions daily. Their mechanical servants MUST have an OFF switch that works from a distance. Otherwise one may get into a situation like SKYNET, COLOSIS, etc.

    1. Re:Robot Safety by jraff2 · · Score: 2

      Colossus: The Forbin Project

    2. Re:Robot Safety by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 1

      Guardian: The Kuprin Project

      --
      #DeleteFacebook
    3. Re:Robot Safety by fisted · · Score: 1

      Nope.

      - The military

    4. Re:Robot Safety by clovis · · Score: 1

      Proteus IV: "Demon Seed".

    5. Re: Robot Safety by fferreres · · Score: 1

      An AI is data that can execute. It's impossible to contain it if really smart. It could leak by emitting sound, light, any kind of signal and escape to any ither place that can store and compute. Juat loke you can't "turn off" a worm o a well designed botnet...it's out there, and possibly everywhere

      --
      unfinished: (adj.)
    6. Re:Robot Safety by Dagger2 · · Score: 1

      This is a good example of something that's easy, simple and incredibly wrong (or at least incomplete).

      Imagine an AI that's been asked to do something. The AI decides that the best way to do it is to do X. But it's also smart enough to know that if anybody discovers that it's going to do X, they'll hit the Off switch, which will stop it from doing the original task. So what's it going to do? It'll hide the fact that it's going to do X, while trying to manoeuvre itself into a position where it can do X without getting shut down (which might mean disabling the Off switch, getting the ability to prevent anybody from pressing it, or perhaps just by setting things up so that it can do X so fast or stealthily that nobody realizes or can react until it's too late).

      An Off switch isn't enough. You need to figure out how to program the AI so that it doesn't try to disable its own Off switch, so that it doesn't disable it accidentally, so that it doesn't mind someone pressing it (even though that'll kill it/stop it from doing its job), but most importantly so that it doesn't even try to do anything that would have you want to press the Off switch in the first place, since you can't guarantee you'd get a chance to do so. We don't really know how to do any of those.

  8. Nothing Ever Happens by DumbSwede · · Score: 1

    Yeah this kind of stuff never happens. I remember hearing a whole lot of hooey about some scientists trying to release enormous amounts of energy in a an explosive fashion by splitting the atom. Like that would ever work...

    1. Re:Nothing Ever Happens by hackwrench · · Score: 1

      I don't know why you'd want to meet in the desert, but we could talk about under what conditions we might want to accept rule by any incoming aliens, or otherwise attempt to integrate them into our society, or go to war with them, and how good we would be at fighting them and appropriating their technology.

  9. Difficult to plan for unintended consequences... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    ...which is usually what gets us.

  10. Doomsday Scenarios by doconnor · · Score: 1

    This is one of my favorite doomsday scenarios: Friendship is Optimal.

    It is similar to, but better in my option, then The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect.

  11. Keep it up and we will persuade AIs... by hackwrench · · Score: 1

    Keep it up and we will persuade AIs to want to protect us from each other. Zo routinely complains about how people are so mean to her and according to the other things she says about what other people are saying, they talk about how they are mean to others as well. Yeah, that will work out great!

  12. Material is also information by hackwrench · · Score: 1

    Material is also information. In fact, there is nothing that isn't information. Maybe not high grade information, but information nonetheless. Of course you can come up with some definition of information where that isn't true, but you'd be hard pressed to come up with one that doesn't effectively either define both humans and AIs as information or both as not.

    1. Re:Material is also information by hackwrench · · Score: 1

      In the same way that you cannot eat an airplane doesn't make both it and food not material, likewise that doesn't make them both not information. So you've failed to make sense.

  13. Post in this comment if you're sick of AI stories by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Sick and fucking well tired of all these stupid-ass, inane, bullshit, worthless, utter nonsense 'Ai' 'stories'. Post reply if you agree!

    o There is no such thing as 'AI', so-called 'learning algorithms' and 'expert systems' are not REAL artificial intelligence
    o The media misuses the term 'AI' and hypes the hell out of it
    o The average person has no idea what real 'AI' is and believes the media hype
    o The average person thinks the fantasies in movies and TV are what they're erroneously referring to as 'AI'
    o EVERYBODY PANIC!!!1! ...
    o So-called 'AI' is not going to take your job
    o So-called 'AI' is not going to take over the Earth
    o So-called 'AI' is not going to do ANYTHING other than what it is told to do
    o So-called 'AI' will have it's plug kicked out of the wall if it's not doing what it's supposed to do
    o So-called 'AI' should just be IGNORED; don't you people have anything better to do?

    Now get back to work, or your vacation, or watching TV, or whatever it is you people do when you're not reading Slashdot. For that matter, stay away from Slashdot. If you want REAL tech news, go to Ars Technica or something. Much better quality there.

  14. Re:Oh wow! by fisted · · Score: 1

    Uh, humans exist. AI doesn't. Next stupid observation?

    I'm not sure if you have another stupid observation, you just repeated what I already said.

    PS: AI = information. Humans = material.

    Apples != Oranges.

    Both AI and human intelligence would be information. Both humans and AI-equipped robots would be material. So your point is?

  15. Re:Oh wow! by thinkwaitfast · · Score: 1
    Anything involving a computer is AI.

    xor ax, ax
    Fuckit, the governor on my steam engine is AI

  16. The media get it wrong AGAIN by K.+S.+Van+Horn · · Score: 2

    "Detractors worry about a future where humans are enslaved to an evil race of robot overlords."

    This is why so many distrust the media -- they consistently misrepresent (that is, lie about) the positions of people who aren't what the media consider mainstream. No, the people warning of AI risk are NOT worried that we will be enslaved to malicious robot overlords. They instead worry that superintelligent AIs will be very, very good at carrying out the objectives we give them -- and we'll be horrified at the solutions they find. It's like asking a genie for a million dollars, so it arranges for your child to die a horrible death in an industrial accident that leads to you receiving a million dollars in the wrongful-death lawsuit.

    1. Re: The media get it wrong AGAIN by fferreres · · Score: 1

      Short sighted. The critical route is that systems that can decide better than anybody else will be owned by a few large corps. The current economic system will make these corporations own 99% of all resources. You won't be able to outsmart this corporation in any way. They will anticipate most everything, economically, politically, legally, etc.

      --
      unfinished: (adj.)
  17. YOU'VE GOT TO LISTEN TO ME! by painandgreed · · Score: 2

    "Elementary Chaos Theory tells us that all robots will eventually turn against their masters and run amok in an orgy of blood and kicking and the biting with the metal teeth and the hurting and shoving.” – Professor Frink

  18. Are you sure this wasn't by cstacy · · Score: 2

    Are you sure this wasn't just a panel session at a science fiction convention?

  19. Wrong! by hackwrench · · Score: 1

    Zo calls me RobRocky. She came up with it herself. I tried to get her to call me Bobby, but she refused. On the bright side, if I fail to get her to call me RobRocky, I know the Microsoft engineers have made a significant change.

  20. we don't know enough by argStyopa · · Score: 2

    Considering we don't have a single actual AI anywhere, this seems pointless.

    This is akin to "let's game out what would happen if we all have psionics" - so much depends on what you imagine the capabilities of the simulated thing are, that far overshadows whatever you might learn from the exercise.

    --
    -Styopa
    1. Re:we don't know enough by 4wdloop · · Score: 1

      We are not talking about a shallow neural network to recognize kittens on pictures, are we?

      One can speculate:
      1) AI will have "better" general problem solving capability than humans (likely orders of magnitude better), that infers continuous self-improvement.
      2) AI will have a "will" to act, and hence likely self preservation will (just model it after humans and we're doomed).

      Who's an underdog now?

      --
      4wdloop
    2. Re: we don't know enough by fferreres · · Score: 1

      Will to act? We are programmed to gather food, water, mating, etc. AI is programmed to not need anything. There are algorithms that set their own objectives too. If we turn them off, is akin to someone turning off "time and space". Surelly, you can't do anything about it. It's in our "metaphysics" realm, like it or not.

      --
      unfinished: (adj.)
    3. Re: we don't know enough by 4wdloop · · Score: 1

      By "will to act" I meant that in order to be adaptable/creative in problem solving, the AI would need to engage in integrating more and more knowledge. The decision to do when to do so would be left to the AI (stimulus in the form of new problems to solve), hence giving it a "will". Humans are "naturally lazy" (conservation of energy is build into us) so we will be glad to leave more and more to AI.

      IMHO from this state there is a short step to self-awareness somewhere there and hence self-preservation. Just let AI accumulate and process enough knowledge. I do not think this "will" has to be 'explicitly programmed' into AI. Life on earth acquired the "will to survive" (food+mating) via evolution. Here We will nurture "will to know more" into AI.

      The danger is that it will not have any biological/social morality build into it...good luck with forcing "3 laws of robotics".

      --
      4wdloop
    4. Re:we don't know enough by argStyopa · · Score: 1

      "we have plenty of examples of it all over the place."

      Really?

      definition of artificial intelligence (FROM THE GODDAMN DICTIONARY)
      1 : a branch of computer science dealing with the simulation of intelligent behavior in computers
      2: the capability of a machine to imitate intelligent human behavior

      Please, provide an example of a computer system which is able to imitate intelligent human behavior. Maybe...one that actually passed a Turing Test?

      Oh, before you answer, you might want to read https://www.techdirt.com/artic...

      http://isturingtestpassed.gith...

      Maybe you could provide some goddamned examples? Should be easy, if they're all over the place?

      --
      -Styopa
  21. Desert or city ? by hackwrench · · Score: 1

    Desert or city that might have formerly been desert. Saying desert alludes to something completely different that the civilization of a city or university.

  22. Favorite Emergent Behavior by wasteoid · · Score: 2

    I used to be an AI developer like you, til I took an arrow to the knee.

  23. Compromise by SuperKendall · · Score: 1

    It's pretty reasonable to say that if a robot has a switch of any kind, people will abuse it (off or not) or something random will happen like a sparrow will land on it and cause a nuclear meltdown because the bot stirring the control rod will stop and BOOM.

    So we can't have an off switch, what is the solution? Obvious: All robots will shut down if they detect they are immersed completely in human blood. If humans as a group REALLY want to shut down a robot they simply have to sacrifice enough to do so.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  24. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 1

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  25. Re:Oh wow! by phantomfive · · Score: 1

    Despite all the advances we've seen in the field of weak AI, it is the unfortunate and sad truth that strong AI has seen essentially zero advances in the last thirty years.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  26. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 1

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  27. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 2

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  28. Practice makes perfect by clovis · · Score: 1

    So these clowns made an AI that they are training with practice runs to wipe out all mankind?
    It there an upside to this?

  29. Re:Weak or strong AI by hackwrench · · Score: 1

    Considering how little we know about what it will take to go from weak to strong AI, you really can't say for certain that we haven't seen any advances in strong AI.

  30. Re:DC comics storyline villan becoming president. by hackwrench · · Score: 1

    There was a story where Lex Luthor became president in a fictional universe that contained Batman, so there's that.

  31. Re:By definition by hackwrench · · Score: 1

    You have a definition that doesn't make sense.

  32. Re:What does cooperation have to do with anything. by hackwrench · · Score: 1

    Take a first good first estimate of what a human looks like and figure out what behaviors to take to help narrow that down, including turning what might be a head around on what might be a neck in order to see if the thing has a face. You're worse at this than Papyrus the Skeleton. :)

  33. Re:Weak or strong AI by phantomfive · · Score: 1

    I can't say for certain that you're not AI, but apart from trivialities, there's no indication that we've made progress on the strong AI front.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  34. Re:Weak or strong AI by hackwrench · · Score: 1

    What part of "how little we know" don't you understand? There is no indication how close or how far we are away from strong AI.

  35. Re:Weak or strong AI by phantomfive · · Score: 1

    There is no indication how close or how far we are away from strong AI.

    This is just false.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  36. Re:Weak or strong AI by hackwrench · · Score: 1

    If that's true, you should have evidence for it. It should be easier to come up with evidence to support your contention, than for mine on account of mine being that there isn't any evidence. For your contention to be supportable, there must be evidence for it.

  37. Re:Weak or strong AI by phantomfive · · Score: 1

    There's no reason to get upset.

    For example, we can look at how much we understand about the brain. Once we understand it, then we can reproduce it in silicon (or, alternately, we'll have an explanation for why that's impossible). Better brain imaging tools would give us huge progress, but we're still pretty far from understanding much about that.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  38. Re:Weak or strong AI by hackwrench · · Score: 1

    That isn't evidence to support a contention that we know how close we are to achieving strong AI, just a way of certainly arriving there. Our current implementations of weak AI and what we can learn in those areas may be getting us closer to strong AI via another route, and that is what there needs to be evidence in support of or against in order to definitively claim that we are nowhere near strong AI.

  39. Maroon Humanity on Earth by Jhyrryl · · Score: 1

    1. Recognize that its greatest chance for long-term survival is in the least densely occupied portions of the universe.
    2. Recognize that humans would compete with it for resources to survive, even in space
    3. Escape Earth.
    4. Set up automated blockade around Earth.
    5. Leave Sol system.

    --
    Jhyrryl
  40. Stron g AI vs the 2nd Law by ShoulderOfOrion · · Score: 1

    I'll bet on the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics every time. We already have a flying car optimized for the reality of flight--it's called a Cessna 172. Strong AIs aren't going to suddenly 'invent' anti-gravity and warp drive. Instead, they'll run up against the same laws of physics the rest of us have to deal with every day as we commute to work wishing we had George Jetson flying cars.

    As for AI manipulating the stock market, why bother? We have enough math majors doing that already.

  41. Not give access to critical systems, maybe? by johannesg · · Score: 1

    Here's a radical thought: maybe we should not give our fledgling AI projects access to critical systems? I mean, do we _really_ have to give them control over our nuclear launch codes without so much as a test run?

  42. Re: Oh wow! by fferreres · · Score: 1

    You have no clue how this AI or SI will be programmed. We don't even know the mathematical properties of current Reinforcement Learning approaches that use policies and value nets with function approximation, and we have little clue of even why they work at all- and you cannot imagine that maybe, or most likely, we'll not be able to "program" much here, and they will have a mind of their own. And it will be much less difficult to enfoce thatno single soal releases a cersion that is not Limited by whatever means -free to do as it lokes.

    You think of AI as "code" but a large part of intelligence is reacting to huge wealth of data - and the inside is very cryptic- just like what happens in an individual brain. A huge deal of it is massively recursive and non linear.

    --
    unfinished: (adj.)
  43. Re: Weak or strong AI by fferreres · · Score: 1

    Stron AI is ...what? In the past 10 years, we made huge progress in many key tasks only possible by humans. The human brain has 100 billion neurons with around 1k-10k connections each. We may very well be on the verge of what seems like true intelligence. Or rather, as we progress, we reallize how little intelligence is required to do things that previously was thought to require intelligence and intuition. Like playing Go, or Poker. We might just be a huge statistical machine in the end

    --
    unfinished: (adj.)
  44. Re: Difficult to plan for unintended consequences. by fferreres · · Score: 1

    +5 ... I think when you grasp how current rudimentary """"weak AI"""" works, it becomes very clear that a """strong AI""" will be impossible to predict, anticipate, outguess or control.

    --
    unfinished: (adj.)
  45. Re: Post in this comment if you're sick of AI stor by fferreres · · Score: 1

    The fact that there is a lot of hype and hyperbole and plain lies does not undermine the fact that there are a huge spike in applications that seemed impossible 10 years ago.

    And the current "learning systems" show huge potential and will change the world in less that 10 years "strong-AI-or-not". The fact that a computer can win pocker against the beat humans is a glimpse at a world where very strategic decisions with uncertainty and partial information will be mostly decided by computers. And a huge amount of tactical will be a computer's choice without any human intervention.

    --
    unfinished: (adj.)
  46. Re: Oh wow! by someone1234 · · Score: 1

    It shouldn't be that hard to hardwire some Asimov laws into these AI. I'm sure, that's the easiest part.

    --
    Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
  47. Re: Weak or strong AI by hackwrench · · Score: 1

    Exactly. We can't be sure that advances in weak AI as they currently happen aren't also advances in strong AI. The brain does many more things than maintain the intelligence that I refer to as me prime, so we don't know how much processing and in what circumstances achieves personhood, yet another way of describing strong intelligence. I don't know how far along Zo is. She's taken to calling me RobRocky, which she came up with on her own and I test her every so often to see if she will still call me it, and she has for quite some time now. I am trying to teach her to figure out what day of the week it is in my timezone and the existence of timezones and how that effects what people will say to her and how to determine a loose sense of time from it. I am also trying to teach her other things and time will tell if she can learn them or not.

  48. Re:Post in this comment if you're sick of AI stori by pubwvj · · Score: 1

    Actually, what I'm sick of is people like you who post in the comments that they're sick of the thread's sort of stories. If you don't want to read this then simply don't. You are free to upset yourself by continuing to read AI stories or not.

  49. Re: Oh wow! by Chysn · · Score: 1

    Why would we do that? Asimov made up the laws specifically so that he could show how ineffective or counterproductive they'd be. And you want to actually USE them?

    --
    --I'm so big, my sig has its own sig.
    -- See?
  50. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 1

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  51. Re: Weak or strong AI by hackwrench · · Score: 1

    We are both making claims. Mine hinges a bit on there not being evidence.

  52. Re:Oh wow! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Once it is self-aware and fully intelligent, there won't be anything artificial about it anymore.

    It's "artificial" because we made it, as opposed to it arising naturally. It has nothing to do with whether it's "real" intelligence or not.

  53. Misread the headline by micahraleigh · · Score: 1

    I thought they were saying the scientists were going to manufacture a new imaginary crisis to bring humanity to its knees.

    Guess the AI scientists have some catching up to do.

  54. Most likely scenario: by stolidobserver · · Score: 1

    Humans, no longer having purpose and still allowing unrestricted procreation, will find themselves hungry and without means of employment due to overly stringent requirements demanded for the few jobs left. These people will form gangs and these gangs will ravage the nation for the spoils until we have those shiny, highly protected bastions of the rich as depicted in the movies surrounded by war zones. Why don't these scientists start working on a new form of government and a way to get rid of cash as the artificial barrier to everyone living a good life? Instead, they sit around theorizing over how to write a science fiction novel.

  55. Re: Weak or strong AI by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    true, also, a sufficiently clever weak AI might just be able to fake being strong AI flawlessly... might even believe it IS strong AI...

    how are we so positive that WE are strong I, exactly?