Strangely, there are lots of those now bidding in the $200+ range. I was going to post that there is no way they would ever get their excavation costs back but I might be wrong. What are people buying these for? I also have a large box of working atari games. You can buy large lots on ebay or at garage sales for next to nothing. Why the premium? Is it just because of the history?
How is it that Microsoft marketing can screw things up so consistently?
It's not microsoft's fault. If they want greater adoption, donate them to the schools. If they want greater publicity, donate them to newscasters (which is what they did). The problem is that if you give 100s of devices away then yes more people will use them but people will still use other devices too unless you actually ban all other devices. There are two photos. How many photos are there of just the surface or just an ipad? You're never going to get 100% of people to like and use your product. Yes, it looks bad, but with the popularity of the ipad it was bound to happen a few times where they are caught in the same room with someone using one and not the other.
not really, because ebola is mostly in Africa, where no one is going to pay a lot of money for this.
Just because it is currently only in africa doesn't mean there wouldn't be plenty of paranoid people in first world countries willing to pay money for a vaccine.
Because, there is no market it for it where people can pay exorbitant amounts for it. The dying people are penniless.
Sure there is a market. There are plenty of companies that make plenty of money by selling to paranoid people. Look at all the money made during Y2K. If they were selling an ebola vaccine at walgreens people would be lined up around the block getting it. I was actually just thinking that this would be a decent way to pay for ebola vaccines. Sell them as a buy 1 give 1. Everytime some paranoid person buys one at walgreens then they donate one to africa. This has the added benefit as the vaccine to africa is probably just as effective at keeping the paranoid person healthy than actually being vacinated themself.
For a population size of 6 billion, confidence interval of 95%, expected mean distribution of 50% (most conservative) of infection ratio, a sample size of 9 gives us a margin of error of 32% (try yourself: http://www.raosoft.com/samples...) Given 100% efficacy, it is highly significant, well outside the margin of error. Is is significant even for 98% confidence.
It doesn't work that way. The population size was 9. You're only right if those 9 were pulled from random from the current human population but that's not what happened. They were all exposed. It would take a rediculous amount of trials if all results had to be divided by 6 billion (or whatever the current population happens to be). That's like saying a bug spray that killed all 10k mosquitos might not work because there are 10 trillion mosquitos in the world so your sample size is too small. I agree that they should now test a bigger but it doesn't make sense to divide their results by 6 billion.
Columbus wasn't concerned with a genetic pool and although some crossbreeding probably occurred (most likely via rape) this was mostly unintentional and the "legitimate" chidren probably crossbreed very little. Even with a "one way to stay" type program genetic diversity is a very very minor concern assuming new colonists keep coming as it will take generations to start seeing problems and a single shipment of sperm can fix the problem completely. It's just not a big deal. The oxygen, plants, etc... is a much bigger deal but even that's relatively easy to overcome if you can overcome the #1 problem. The #1 problem is there needs to be a reason to go. Columbus came to america for trade, to make money, and to make a better life for himself. Colonists later came to america to make a better life for themself. Colonists went to australia and georgia as a penal colony to improve the life of both the prisoners and free up resources for the mother country. People travelled west for the chance of getting rich and/or to have a chance of a better life. People immigrate to america to make more money and/or to have a chance at a better life. See a trend here? Every major immigration or colonisation has always been about either making money or improving one's individual lot in life. Currently you could have a better quality of life in the sahara or antartica. There are also probably more resources easier to get there too. The first major colonies in space will probably be similiar to floating oil rig platforms. Very high paying, very risky jobs mining asteroids for gold, etc... Disovering a large amount of oil on some moon might be the catalyst needed or some other rare much needed resource. These will most likely start out as 2-5 year gigs where you get to return home afterwards. A permanent colony will probably come after there are quite a few temporary colonies and a decent amount of infastructure, restaurants, etc.. already in place in space. You need a high value reason and i'm not sure space tourism is it but space mining or space oil might be.
It's a big enough fuss that people stopped using mechanical watches in the first place.
People stopped using mechanical watches because other watches were better. Also many high quality mechanical watches self-wind as long as you wear them. Not wearing them is actually a problem. They actually sell special cases to wind mechanical watches when not in use: http://www.rakuten.com/prod/4-...
If the apple watch is better (in any sense of the word) then it has a chance. The only problem I see with nightly charging is that (at least with smart phones), that usually means that heavy users have to charge midday which IS a pain.
By the way, the experiment of "can we contain an AI in a box?" has been performed, and the results thus far are not encouraging. http://yudkowsky.net/singulari...
One interesting thought experiment is that if you wanted to contain an AI without it trying to escape then you could put it in an environment where it didn't know it was in a prison then you could interact with it by going into this environment like the movie "13th floor". The next logical jump is of course, that we are the AI and that's exactly where we are at.
Interesting experiment but a sample of 2 where they don't publish the transcript isn't very convincing to me. I would love to see the transcript of what happened. I do think though that any advanced AI would either eventually escape or find someone willing to let it out.
And at -5C, as a block of ice it would be really cool.
-5 C isn't that cold and if the system didn't naturally produce enough heat then a secondary heat source would be easy enough. There are simple devices used to keep water unthawed for cows for instance. But my guess is that as long as the device stays on that a high end cpu and high end gpu would produce plenty of heat to keep the water from freezing at -5C and there's also always the option of using a little antifreeze.
It doesn't have to have values or be evil. All it needs to be programmed for is automatically improving itself to fix anything that stops it and take control over whatever might help it, and have a side effect of doing something that makes it impossible for humans to survive.
It doesn't even have to be sentient or self improve to be problematic. Think "grey goo" or replicators from Stargate. i.e. a self-replicating machine that's only task is create more of itself. It could use up all our resources and outcompete us as the ultimate "invasive species".
None of these scenerios you describe are a existential threat to humanity. Yes, they might kill a few people but they don't threaten our species. He is specifically talking about existential threats to our entire existance.
I think that AIs that can self-edit need to be limited to no network connectivity outside of the building which they work.
Yeah, good luck with that. So you're proposing that we create a "prison" for the AI. If it was a true sentient machine which didn't want to be in it's manmade prison then you will have to constantly be on the look out for it to be trying to escape and presumably you would want it to do something like crunch data so it will definitely have some interaction with the outside world to help mount it's escape and once it does escape it will probably not be very happy with the people that imprisoned it. Making sentient prisoners or slaves is a bad idea. We either stop short of sentience or we give them equal rights. Anything else is bound to end in disaster.
You are completely right. The holy grail throughout history has been having someone or something do the work for you. Whether it was slaves or labor saving devices, it works out the same, which is one reason why our current deadend approach to AI is not a completely horrible idea. We want machines that act intelligent. We don't necessarily need or want sentient machines. Sentient machines unless designed with no will of their own are no going to be the "free labor" that we want.
All that this means is that deep down, Elon Musk doesn't have any faith in kindness and goodness and altruism of robots
FTFY. Granted real AI is still a fairy tale at this point, when/if they arrive they will most like have different motivations than humans. Most humans have empathy, compassion, a will to live, a sense of community, and many other traits that give them morality. A robot that can't die, has no parents, artificially built, etc... will most likely have a completely different set of values unless we are very careful to make sure they do have similiar values just like a lion, if sentient, would have very different values than a human.
Unfortunately this is part of human nature. It's why many safety devices like child resistant medicine bottles don't actually give as good as result as they should. I've actually seen multiple different parents give their child a prescription pill bottle to play with as a rattle to keep them quiet. There are plenty of other safety devices like anti-lock brakes where changes in behavior negates most if not all of the gain in safety.
I've had the unfortunate luck of having unauthorized charges on credit cards, bank debits, forged checks, and paypal. In every case, they have refunded the money with barely any questions asked. With the forged checks, the only thing that the bank required is for me to file a police report. In general, although the protections are not identical they are very similiar. The only thing that would make me nervous about google wallet would be that it's a middle man where, if it's like most google services, there is no phone number to call but presumably you could still take care of it on the bank side.
You could also quickly and easily negate any sort of protest... including protests against using chemical restraint on the public.
Who are the "bad guys" is generally dependent on what laws you have and who enforces them. YOUR side won't always be in charge.
Regardless of which side I was on, I would prefer something safer than the current solutions. Anything has the potential to be abused but that doesn't mean we should ban research on it just because of a potential. The bar is pretty low. It should be relatively easy to find something better than mace, tear gas, and mustard gas. Finding something safer would benefit you regardless of which side of the conflict you are one.
Research in this area is probably a good thing if done right. Mace, tear gas, and stun guns are not very effective in a large crowd or hostage situation. I agree with the article that current methods rely on exact dosage to prevent fatality but it's highly probable that we can find better chemicals that don't. Marijuana is one of many known substances where the effective dose and the lethal dose are orders of magnitude apart. Research into incapacitating substances with very low effective doses but very high lethal doses would be where I would want to focus. Something like this would be very useful. You could make everyone pass out and then isolate the bad guys before they wake up saving both civilian and criminal lives.
old school apprentices were rarely a "guaranteed job at the end" but more like "a shot at taking over the business at the end" if you paid your dues, learned well, and did a good job. IT has actually moved that direction a little bit. When I interned for HP while in college, they made it very clear that interns that they liked moved immediately to the top of the stack of resumes when applying for a full time position practically guaranteeing you a job if they liked you and your performance. It's alot less risk for them. Places like microsoft have also started using contractors and temp agencies for that purpose. They try you out for a while, if you do a good job then they bring you on, if you don't, they don't have to worry about all the steps to fire you. It also helps with company morale as then very few "official" employees ever need to be fired.
A more sensible argument in favour of minimum wage is that if there isn't one, government assistance to low income earners are in practice a subsidy to companies that then don't have to pay a living wage.
What percentage of people working at (or close to) minimum wage receive government assistance? I read somewhere that the vast majority of people close to the minimum wage have moved up after a short time. Noone I personally know who works for minimum wage receives government assistance. Most people I personally know who work for minimum wage are single kids usually still living at home and getting their first job. The problem I see with a high minimum wage is that it kills alot of entry level job so you end up with a bunch of people who have no way of getting job experience. And you can't solve this by making teenagers exempt from minimum wage as then companies have an incentive to only hire inexperienced people and the few people who really do need minimum wage jobs are passed over because they have a higher minimum wage.
Why would they charge more? Because it is technology? My guess is that when/if they start doing this it will be so that they can see more patients in a given period of time and/or cut down on buildings, staffing, etc... i.e. They will be doing it to save money. You might not see the saving but it doesn't make sense that they would charge more for this service.
Caveat emptor - if you bought 'em for a couple of bucks, you should know to be suspicious. If you don't take responsibility for your purchases, don't blame someone else when it turns out you've got junk in your hands. This is why a guarantee actually IS worth something, and why it costs to actually have one for the product you use.
I don't expect a guarantee but I do expect them to not be DOA and I also don't expect someone to intentionally disable them 6 months later. Accidently, then yeah, no big deal, I just buy a new one.
I agree. There are probably a few applications (like video conferencing with your doctor) that might need a slightly higher bandwidth but nothing that should significantly affect a person's standard of living. I'm a computer programmer who works from home and I'm on a 1M/256k connection. It serves my needs just fine. I can't stream high quality videos but VOIP works fine as do 100% of all websites, job applications, etc... Internet access is quickly becoming a basic necessity for stuff like emails, applying for jobs, buying stuff online, and paying bills but there are no critical applications yet that require an ultra high speed connection yet.
Slashdot Mirror
Strangely, there are lots of those now bidding in the $200+ range. I was going to post that there is no way they would
ever get their excavation costs back but I might be wrong. What are people buying these for? I also have a large box
of working atari games. You can buy large lots on ebay or at garage sales for next to nothing. Why the
premium? Is it just because of the history?
How is it that Microsoft marketing can screw things up so consistently?
It's not microsoft's fault. If they want greater adoption, donate them to the schools. If they want
greater publicity, donate them to newscasters (which is what they did). The problem is that if
you give 100s of devices away then yes more people will use them but people will still use other
devices too unless you actually ban all other devices. There are two photos. How many photos
are there of just the surface or just an ipad? You're never going to get 100% of people to like and
use your product. Yes, it looks bad, but with the popularity of the ipad it was bound to happen
a few times where they are caught in the same room with someone using one and not the other.
not really, because ebola is mostly in Africa, where no one is going to pay a lot of money for this.
Just because it is currently only in africa doesn't mean there wouldn't be plenty of
paranoid people in first world countries willing to pay money for a vaccine.
Because, there is no market it for it where people can pay exorbitant amounts for it. The dying people are penniless.
Sure there is a market. There are plenty of companies that make plenty of money by selling to paranoid people. Look at all the
money made during Y2K. If they were selling an ebola vaccine at walgreens people would be lined up around the block getting it.
I was actually just thinking that this would be a decent way to pay for ebola vaccines. Sell them as a buy 1 give 1. Everytime
some paranoid person buys one at walgreens then they donate one to africa. This has the added benefit as the vaccine to
africa is probably just as effective at keeping the paranoid person healthy than actually being vacinated themself.
For a population size of 6 billion, confidence interval of 95%, expected mean distribution of 50% (most conservative) of infection ratio, a sample size of 9 gives us a margin of error of 32% (try yourself: http://www.raosoft.com/samples...)
Given 100% efficacy, it is highly significant, well outside the margin of error.
Is is significant even for 98% confidence.
It doesn't work that way. The population size was 9. You're only right if those 9 were pulled from random from the current
human population but that's not what happened. They were all exposed. It would take a rediculous amount of trials if all results
had to be divided by 6 billion (or whatever the current population happens to be). That's like saying a bug spray that killed all 10k
mosquitos might not work because there are 10 trillion mosquitos in the world so your sample size is too small. I agree that they
should now test a bigger but it doesn't make sense to divide their results by 6 billion.
Columbus wasn't concerned with a genetic pool and although some crossbreeding probably occurred (most likely via rape)
this was mostly unintentional and the "legitimate" chidren probably crossbreed very little. Even with a "one way to stay"
type program genetic diversity is a very very minor concern assuming new colonists keep coming as it will take generations
to start seeing problems and a single shipment of sperm can fix the problem completely. It's just not a big deal.
The oxygen, plants, etc... is a much bigger deal but even that's relatively easy to overcome if you can overcome the #1
problem. The #1 problem is there needs to be a reason to go. Columbus came to america for trade, to make money, and
to make a better life for himself. Colonists later came to america to make a better life for themself. Colonists went to
australia and georgia as a penal colony to improve the life of both the prisoners and free up resources for the mother
country. People travelled west for the chance of getting rich and/or to have a chance of a better life. People immigrate
to america to make more money and/or to have a chance at a better life. See a trend here? Every major immigration
or colonisation has always been about either making money or improving one's individual lot in life. Currently you could
have a better quality of life in the sahara or antartica. There are also probably more resources easier to get there too.
The first major colonies in space will probably be similiar to floating oil rig platforms. Very high paying, very risky jobs
mining asteroids for gold, etc... Disovering a large amount of oil on some moon might be the catalyst needed or some
other rare much needed resource. These will most likely start out as 2-5 year gigs where you get to return home afterwards.
A permanent colony will probably come after there are quite a few temporary colonies and a decent amount of infastructure,
restaurants, etc.. already in place in space. You need a high value reason and i'm not sure space tourism is it but space
mining or space oil might be.
It's a big enough fuss that people stopped using mechanical watches in the first place.
People stopped using mechanical watches because other watches were better. Also many
high quality mechanical watches self-wind as long as you wear them. Not wearing them
is actually a problem. They actually sell special cases to wind mechanical watches when
not in use: http://www.rakuten.com/prod/4-...
If the apple watch is better (in any sense of the word) then it has a chance. The only problem
I see with nightly charging is that (at least with smart phones), that usually means that
heavy users have to charge midday which IS a pain.
By the way, the experiment of "can we contain an AI in a box?" has been performed, and the results thus far are not encouraging. http://yudkowsky.net/singulari...
One interesting thought experiment is that if you wanted to contain an AI without it trying to escape then you
could put it in an environment where it didn't know it was in a prison then you could interact with it by going
into this environment like the movie "13th floor". The next logical jump is of course, that we are the AI and
that's exactly where we are at.
Interesting experiment but a sample of 2 where they don't publish the transcript
isn't very convincing to me. I would love to see the transcript of what happened.
I do think though that any advanced AI would either eventually escape or find
someone willing to let it out.
And at -5C, as a block of ice it would be really cool.
-5 C isn't that cold and if the system didn't naturally produce enough heat then a secondary
heat source would be easy enough. There are simple devices used to keep water unthawed
for cows for instance. But my guess is that as long as the device stays on that a high end
cpu and high end gpu would produce plenty of heat to keep the water from freezing at -5C
and there's also always the option of using a little antifreeze.
It doesn't have to have values or be evil. All it needs to be programmed for is automatically improving itself to fix anything that stops it and take control over whatever might help it, and have a side effect of doing something that makes it impossible for humans to survive.
It doesn't even have to be sentient or self improve to be problematic. Think "grey goo" or replicators from Stargate. i.e. a self-replicating machine
that's only task is create more of itself. It could use up all our resources and outcompete us as the ultimate "invasive species".
None of these scenerios you describe are a existential threat to humanity. Yes, they might kill a few people
but they don't threaten our species. He is specifically talking about existential threats to our entire existance.
I think that AIs that can self-edit need to be limited to no network connectivity outside of the building which they work.
Yeah, good luck with that. So you're proposing that we create a "prison" for the AI. If it was a true sentient machine
which didn't want to be in it's manmade prison then you will have to constantly be on the look out for it to be trying to
escape and presumably you would want it to do something like crunch data so it will definitely have some interaction
with the outside world to help mount it's escape and once it does escape it will probably not be very happy with the
people that imprisoned it. Making sentient prisoners or slaves is a bad idea. We either stop short of sentience or
we give them equal rights. Anything else is bound to end in disaster.
You are completely right. The holy grail throughout history has been having someone or something do the work for you.
Whether it was slaves or labor saving devices, it works out the same, which is one reason why our current deadend
approach to AI is not a completely horrible idea. We want machines that act intelligent. We don't necessarily need or
want sentient machines. Sentient machines unless designed with no will of their own are no going to be the "free labor"
that we want.
All that this means is that deep down, Elon Musk doesn't have any faith in kindness and goodness and altruism of robots
FTFY. Granted real AI is still a fairy tale at this point, when/if they arrive they will most like have different motivations than humans.
Most humans have empathy, compassion, a will to live, a sense of community, and many other traits that give them morality.
A robot that can't die, has no parents, artificially built, etc... will most likely have a completely different set of values unless we
are very careful to make sure they do have similiar values just like a lion, if sentient, would have very different values than a human.
Unfortunately this is part of human nature. It's why many safety devices like child resistant medicine bottles
don't actually give as good as result as they should. I've actually seen multiple different parents give their
child a prescription pill bottle to play with as a rattle to keep them quiet. There are plenty of other safety devices
like anti-lock brakes where changes in behavior negates most if not all of the gain in safety.
I've had the unfortunate luck of having unauthorized charges on credit cards, bank debits, forged checks, and paypal.
In every case, they have refunded the money with barely any questions asked. With the forged checks, the only
thing that the bank required is for me to file a police report. In general, although the protections are not identical
they are very similiar. The only thing that would make me nervous about google wallet would be that it's a middle man
where, if it's like most google services, there is no phone number to call but presumably you could still take care of
it on the bank side.
You could also quickly and easily negate any sort of protest... including protests against using chemical restraint on the public.
Who are the "bad guys" is generally dependent on what laws you have and who enforces them. YOUR side won't always be in charge.
Regardless of which side I was on, I would prefer something safer than the current solutions. Anything has the potential to be
abused but that doesn't mean we should ban research on it just because of a potential. The bar is pretty low. It should be
relatively easy to find something better than mace, tear gas, and mustard gas. Finding something safer would benefit you
regardless of which side of the conflict you are one.
Biology doesn't work that way. juts because a substance would be really convenient doesn't mean it's chemically possible for it to exist.
I might agreed with you except that we already have substances with a large spread between effective dose and lethal dose.
Rendering someone incapacitated is inherently dangerous because simply banging your head as you fall from standing to prone can be deadly.
I didn't say it would be 100% safe but that the bar is extremely low and it should be possible to improve on what we have now.
Research in this area is probably a good thing if done right. Mace, tear gas, and stun guns are not
very effective in a large crowd or hostage situation. I agree with the article that current methods
rely on exact dosage to prevent fatality but it's highly probable that we can find better chemicals that don't.
Marijuana is one of many known substances where the effective dose and the lethal dose are orders of
magnitude apart. Research into incapacitating substances with very low effective doses but very high
lethal doses would be where I would want to focus. Something like this would be very useful. You could
make everyone pass out and then isolate the bad guys before they wake up saving both civilian and
criminal lives.
old school apprentices were rarely a "guaranteed job at the end" but more like "a shot at taking over the business at the end" if
you paid your dues, learned well, and did a good job. IT has actually moved that direction a little bit. When I interned for HP
while in college, they made it very clear that interns that they liked moved immediately to the top of the stack of resumes when
applying for a full time position practically guaranteeing you a job if they liked you and your performance. It's alot less risk for
them. Places like microsoft have also started using contractors and temp agencies for that purpose. They try you out for a
while, if you do a good job then they bring you on, if you don't, they don't have to worry about all the steps to fire you. It also
helps with company morale as then very few "official" employees ever need to be fired.
A more sensible argument in favour of minimum wage is that if there isn't one, government assistance to low income earners are in practice a subsidy to companies that then don't have to pay a living wage.
What percentage of people working at (or close to) minimum wage receive government assistance?
I read somewhere that the vast majority of people close to the minimum wage have moved up after a short time.
Noone I personally know who works for minimum wage receives government assistance. Most people
I personally know who work for minimum wage are single kids usually still living at home and getting
their first job. The problem I see with a high minimum wage is that it kills alot of entry level job so you
end up with a bunch of people who have no way of getting job experience. And you can't solve this
by making teenagers exempt from minimum wage as then companies have an incentive to only
hire inexperienced people and the few people who really do need minimum wage jobs are passed over
because they have a higher minimum wage.
Why would they charge more? Because it is technology? My guess is that when/if they start doing this
it will be so that they can see more patients in a given period of time and/or cut down on buildings,
staffing, etc... i.e. They will be doing it to save money. You might not see the saving but it doesn't
make sense that they would charge more for this service.
Caveat emptor - if you bought 'em for a couple of bucks, you should know to be suspicious.
If you don't take responsibility for your purchases, don't blame someone else when it turns out you've got junk in your hands.
This is why a guarantee actually IS worth something, and why it costs to actually have one for the product you use.
I don't expect a guarantee but I do expect them to not be DOA and I also don't expect someone to intentionally disable
them 6 months later. Accidently, then yeah, no big deal, I just buy a new one.
I agree. There are probably a few applications (like video conferencing with your doctor) that might need a slightly
higher bandwidth but nothing that should significantly affect a person's standard of living.
I'm a computer programmer who works from home and I'm on a 1M/256k connection. It serves my needs just fine.
I can't stream high quality videos but VOIP works fine as do 100% of all websites, job applications, etc...
Internet access is quickly becoming a basic necessity for stuff like emails, applying for jobs, buying stuff online,
and paying bills but there are no critical applications yet that require an ultra high speed connection yet.