obviously if he cannot even be bother to dress appropriately for a professional conference one has to doubt whether he can even be bothered to think deeply about what he is about to say.
Well, with a name like "yeOldeSkeptic" I'm not going to take you seriously as you obviously have a distrustful nature. So I'm not even going to consider your argument.
No no, not ALL corporations. Just most of them. Profit is the sole reason for the existence of a corporation. That's their ultimate driving goal. That doesn't say anything about profits now vs. profits latter, so there's quite a bit of variety in how corporations act. Well, most of them. Some are merely there to shield the founders from lawsuit.
And yeah, not all investments are divorced from their investors. Just usually mutual funds, like GP was talking about. You know, the sort that "regular people" invest into. The fact that you have had actual communication with your fund manager sets you apart from the masses.
As for "going elsewhere", my company's 401k plan has a list of places I can put my money. They're all treated the same. And I'm going good when it comes to wealth, I HAVE a 401k option.
Stop and think about it for a moment.
If a craftsman does a really good job, then the job is done faster or the good is higher quality.
If an software engineer does a really good job, then his program is more robust or his protocol is easily understood/lightweight/extendable/whatever.
But if a salesman does a really good job, then the person he's selling to has just been screwed over. Salespeople work in a zero sum game. The better they do, the worse off someone else is. If they're not screwing over people with the price, they're making their product look better then a competitors. Now you have product A which sells more then product B, even though product is a better choice.
And sales isn't marketing. Although they're usually soulless as well, marketing can justify their work as informing consumers about solutions to their problems. Spreading knowledge is a good. It's just that they usually spread FALSE knowledge. IE, they're lying weasels.
Libertarians are not against rules. They are against rules that don't apply equally to all people equally.
What? No, I'm pretty sure they'd be called Egalitarians if they were all about equality. Libertarians are more about... you know, "liberty". On a fundamental level, libertarians would want the freedom to drive on whatever side of the road they felt like.
Being forced to participate in a system that charges them for composting service is indeed, non-libertarian.
The rational libertarian would want the service to be optional, so they can choose to participate or not.
The nutjob libertarian would want no municipal services, 50 competing companies competing for his trash, with just enough rules to make sure his neighbors don't stink up his land. He would complain about mandatory composting, mandatory composting service fees, "the man" not allowing compost in the trash bins, and/or the government waste by letting people throw perfectly good compost into landfills and how that justifies tearing down the government.
What? No, no I don't think the majority of the voting masses would choose some random shmuck that calls himself intelligent and benevolent. I think they're going to vote for the guy who appears to be the most intelligent and benevolent (and follows their ideological stances, and is vouched for by their party). And that's largely a matter of marketing. Which boils down to how much campaign funds you throw at it. Which is largely determined by the rich and/or influential supporters that run the non-government half of the nation already.
Which honestly makes sense, because how can you tell the difference between someone who is benevolent and intelligent, and someone who is simply lying about those traits to get your votes?
Uh, he's a partisan hack, but that's not really racist.
And what's with the bolded "you're"? Am I missing some grammatical mistake he made? I mean, other then the characterized accent.
Did this really get to +5 insightful just because it's opposition to someone opposing republicans?
Huh. This kinda comes off as religious hate-speech.
You're supplying an idea about why fundamentalist Muslims are against the idea of evolution, but you have a lot of just plain false information, and your argument boils down to "They're stupid because I don't like Islam". Hence, hate speech. I think it's because you assume that all Islam is the fundamentalist sort from the article. You also appear to have a rose-tinted view of Christianity.
1) You have some really good points about the nature of fatalism. But Christianity has had it's fatalistic streak as well. Is it more/less prevelent in today's Muslims/Christians? I don't know. Maybe? And neither do you. Because you're guessing based off of your preception of the religions. Which, hate to tell you, is kinda skewed.
2)
Muslims always loose unless they fight each other
Wow dude. Just wow. Did you know that Spain was once part of Persia? Or did you mean in modern days, like Egypt vs Israel, or the Taliban vs the USA. Well, in that case, you're kinda right, but I imagine the OVERWHELMING ADVANCED MILITARY FORCE was more of a key factor then their respective religions.
3)
Because Islam never had a renascence
Well, neither did China, Japan, or India, and they're not stuck in old fundamentalism. I mean, The Renaissance is pretty specific to Europe. Unless you meant a more generalized golden age of prosperity, advancement, and expansion... in which case, Islam most certainly DID have one.
4)
Note the huge problems Israel is having because by its nature it has to be friendly to ultra-orthodox Jews.
Hmmm, could be. But I think most of their problems stem from all their neighbors who don't like them. Well, and the previous occupants.
5)
In most of the west, the religious freaks have isolated themselves and good riddance. There is no Amish TV channel trying to win heart and minds.
uh huh. Maybe you're in Europe, but it's actually kind of a problem over here in the USA. While the Amish aren't on TV, megachurches and evangelical preachers are most certainly having an impact. The term "the Religious Right" comes to mind. There are Christian groups that are actively fighting the teaching of evolution. You may have noticed some of that here on Slashdot.
In short, the fundamentalist portion Christianity is just as bad as the fundamentalist portion of Islam. In this regard, the opposition to evolution, they're behaving exactly the same. Your attempt to somehow differentiate the two religions pulls on a lot of bad assumptions.
1) I'm sorry, are you saying the Artificial Intelligence created by mankind isn't intelligent? huh? Ok, ok. I may be at fault here. "what's artificial about mankind's creations" is a bit of a broad question. It's kind of the definition of "artificial" though, and was a good starting point. Could have put it before the C-section baby one. It was really just a setup to get you to think. Let's just accept that you're not going through it. I'm ok with that now.
2) Hardware. Yes. It's what's the article is about, but honestly I still don't care. You were commenting on AI, and I was responding to that. The chip from the article is kinda neat, but it's just one synapse. I guess I didn't quite get how an array of these is supposed to be different then a neural net that's simulated with a typical chip. It will be faster, sure, but that really isn't what's holding AI back.
3) Every component in a human, body, brain, and mind, will be able to be modified in a controlled and precise manner. Eventually. That doesn't exist yet in the same way that we don't have ability to make AI systems that rival human sentience. We can only make AI systems that perform specific tasks. Much in the same way that we can only control and modify humans to a limited degree. Eventually both milestones will be met. And when we get there, that finely crafted human can be owned. It's called slavery.
Oh, for sure, murder wouldn't be all that bad if we could effectively undo it. Same thing for an AI. Wiping the hardware, and reloading it is largely inconsequential. But permanently wiping it would still be murder of an AI. And wiping it, tweaking it, and reloading would effectively be mind control.
At some point I believe that AI constructs deserve to have rights. If you're not sovereign over your own mind, then your rights are more or less meaningless. Ultimately, I don't want these things done to an AI because I don't want that used as a justification to have it done to me. Anything that approaches the concept of removing my sovereignty over my own mind... I dunno, it just kinda spooks me.
Yeah, I think the initial creation of a human-comparable AI can be unethical. But, it doesn't have to be. I mean, making a baby isn't necessarily unethical. There are some cases where making a kid would be unethical, like if you planned on abusing it, or it was doomed to be nonviable. If you made an AI with a plan of how it would sustain itself and propagate, then it would be fine. I'm sorry, but the more I talk to you about this, the more convinced I am that I'm in the right on this one. I don't see the difference between natural intelligence and artificial intelligence.
It's been a nice chat, but Thanksgiving is coming up, so I'm out for about a week. If it ever comes up, I'll gladly sit on the ethics board that grants you your AI-birth license. Take care till then.
1) Artificial: "humanly contrived, usually based on a natural model."....ok. So? Are you just admitting that your assessment was wrong and, in fact, not all the things I listed weren't artificial? If you mispoke, or didn't get the question, or simply missed it, that's fine. It's a a bit of confusion on my part, but it happens. Just don't be a dick about it.
2) You're right. Self-learning doesn't mean that they can fab their own chips. But who cares? I'm talking about programs. You're talking about robots. AI isn't really in the robotics field. Why assume that the AI is placed inside a robot? Self-learning most definitely means it assembles it's own software structure. The mind behind the AI rather then the brain.
3) No, I can't patent my baby plan above because of prior art. Similarly, you couldn't patent artificial intelligence because of prior art. The best you could probably do is patent a system for training an AI system. And if it was the 90's and I put some heavy spin on it, I could probably patent a "business plan" of how to raise a kid to be a cutthroat businessman. They let just about anything through back then. Supposedly it's better now.
Are you really relying on the patent office to define what's up for ethical considerations? Software patents are bullshit. Yes, I'm a professional software engineer. Yes, I've had opportunities to patent my code. No, I haven't worked on AI systems professionally.
As for designing someone with an extra finger, yeah, I'm pretty sure we could do that if we really wanted to throw ethics to the wind. It also falls into the expensive and pointless categories. Still don't see the similarities?
I'm holding this position because you haven't presented any fundamental difference between a hypothetical AI that's comparable to a human mind, and an actual Well, and because you're simply dismissing my line of reason without any real thought. That bugs me. It's concerning when people dismiss ethical concerns out of hand.
I don't... really see it as an unpractical position. We can't make AI system that are comparable to humans yet. And I'm not sure we should. For the same reason we don't genetically engineer a human to be a loyal killing machine. Or a submissive office drone. Or a complacent menial laborer. Because of ethical concerns. Sorry, I guess I'm just weird like that.
And he is probably lucky that he is being tried at court martial. Besides being supplied legal counsel that is an officer (and therefore bound by oath to the law, oath as an officer, and by honor to do the best job they can)
The same sort of oath to protect the USA against all enemies, foreign and domestic?
Yeah, I'm thinking a civilian court would have a better shot at justice. You know, with a lawyer of his choosing and his best interests at heart. One who knows what he did and thinks it was the right and legal thing to do. Someone well funded and well respected. You know... someone.
What were the "atrocities" anyway? In the end it seemed like a big bowl of nothing,
How about various bullshit, lies, and war crimes. I'd point to some specifics but it's so
widespread
that it's a
systematicproblem and I don't know where to begin.
But hell, off the top of my head, we were lied to about the state of affairs in Afghanistan, it was a lot worse then reported. We killed a lot more civilians in Iraq then they let on. A US contractor, Dyncorp, that trained cops in Afghanistan paid for child prostitution to said cops. Monsanto is an evil corporation that politically retaliates against business opposition. McDonald's uses political pressure to evade lawsuits abroad. The state department used diplomats to spy on the Ban Ki-Moon, the secretary general of the UN (which is kind of their job, until they're asked to get DNA, fingerprints, passwords, and encryption keys).
I think the hackerspaces would be all for co-opting the prestigious and well-respected name of "library". There's a bit of baggage that comes with the name "hackerspace". Some of them anyway. Some revel in the "safety comes as a distinct 3rd" sort of culture which is light on paperwork and PC and heavy on actually doing stuff. And as someone who just started up a organization, the idea of dealing with the general public's children is horrifying.
So you'd be looking at the well-to-do hackerspaces that are trying to make the jump from indie startup to established institution.
you wouldn't need a massive surveillance state dedicated entirely to keeping the inferiors in line, you'd just need a lightweight meritocracy...
Uh... A meritocracy would determine who rules, and how people get rewarded. And it's a good thing. But it doesn't say a thing about how the lower classes act. Meritocracies today work pretty well for calming down that whole "that's not fair" attitude that the masses get because success is more or less tied to how much effort you put in. But in GATTACA, the meritocracy is kinda unfair, since the kids are screwed from birth. (If I get too cynical, it looks like it's not that much different then today's system of who can afford education, and who you know to get you a job).
The whole "fair" thing in politics keeps people from rabble rousing and whipping out the guillotine. If it's not fair, you're going to face a deviate/rioting/terrorizing lower class and the powers that be are going to respond with authoritarian force and massive surveillance. To keep the lower class in place.
All the things you list are either a, Not intelligent(in the self aware form that is relevant here), or b, not artificial.
Item #2: What's artificial about human creations?
So if human creations are "not artificial", then BAM! human made artificial intelligence is perfectly natural. Plus it is intelligent and self aware, which is the main topic here. Maybe this is where you're getting held up. We're presuming real AI here. Quake aimbots and google's search, while AI, aren't up to a comparison with humans. They're like insects and mice. Which we kill by the thousands and no one really cares.
Someone sat down and planned the initial state (software).
An AI's hardware and software do not assemble themselves.
Every AI system I've heard of does something to take or generate input and learn from it. Indeed, a good definition of "intelligence" is the ability to learn. Even google's search takes in the whole Internet. If it didn't have anything to index, it wouldn't be able to tell you jack about anything.
(Wait, have you even played with self-balancing neural nets or genetic algorithms? Maybe you're just not familiar enough with the field. If not, it's really pretty interesting and I'd encourage you to take a look.)
So, in that regard, AI systems have an initial state, and then grow beyond that. They most certainly assemble their own software. And far beyond simply setting some parameters. Since you seem to have presumed some differences between AI and human, care to change your tune?
Can you or any group of humans do as I have outlined (to sit down and planned the initial state) to a human?
Yes, I'm sitting, and I plan for my child to have 5 fingers on each hand. BAM! done. Or did you mean his/her initial mental state? Well, I plan for my child to sleep, cry, eat, and poop. Initially. Further functionality like social norms and talking will be slowly introduced. A lot like a parrot, but the hardware is better on this one and he'll pick up on the cues faster.
If you meant, can I plan out a person to be a factory worker or a chemist... then YES, again! I can PLAN for them to go directly to tech school or to really stress how important and fun science and chemistry is. I can plot out their entire life. And with a modicum of accuracy too.
Can I plan for them to have 12 toes or to be beat the world sprinting record, or be a genius chef?...Well no... not yet.
No. No I'm not saying someone sat down with a CAD program and designed "nature". That'd be moronic. Oh wait, yeahhhhh, like those ID guys.
But. It does not follow that there is a fundamental difference between AI and human consciousness. I told you to think about the definition of the term "artificial". I then lead you down a path where the term became very very blurry. This wasn't an attempt to show you that "nature" is an artificial thing, but to show you that the term "artificial" is kinda bullshit and arbitrary and has a breaking point. That there is no fundamental difference between being pushed out a womb and being compiled.
There are differences, but they are more slight then you appear to be assuming.
Here's let's try it again, with better layout:
What's natural about C-section babies?
What's artificial about human creations?
Is a bird's nest artificial?
How about a caterpillar's cocoon?
How about the system that encourages the construction of these objects?
Go ahead. Write out your answers. You'll see that there is not a distinct line between "artificial" and "natural".
Also your last sentence confuses the Internet with the Web (which is built out of http). The Internet is bigger and more inclusive than just http traffic.
Ghouls? Well that's funny, because naked mole rates are a prime example of a eusocial creature. Like bees. They form a society for the greater good, but they also work for the greater good at their own detriment. Only the queen is allowed to reproduce. The others CAN, but DON'T. So they're supporting the colony not for their own offspring, but for the sake of their nieces and nephews. How ghoulish.
Eusocial, it's crazy stuff.
And now I'm going to have an entirely different spin on the haunted crypt full of ghouls in the next D&D campaign.
Came here for this sort of thing. Kinda weird everyone else isn't automatically reminiscing.
Anyway, I'm 27, but my story starts with my father. Growing up out of the 50's, he was a technological enthusiast. He thought he'd be a wielder on space stations or something. He paid a month's wages to get his first calculator. This is right before transistors bottomed out the price.
Dad had bought a TI-99/4A. He thought he'd be doing his taxes on it or something. We used it for games. And I'm in the picture now. That old TI was around longer then I can remember, but my brother was into programming it for a bit. Had those "1,2,3 connect" magazines or whatever they were. They had BASIC programs that he would type in by hand and show them to me.
But I wasn't interested. I was a kid and the TI was a toy. It wasn't until I was playing around with Tandy 1000, which Dad also though he'd be using to do important calculations (he was more right then with the TI, but no tax software). I have no idea where the program originated from, maybe it was in those Big Blue Monthly disks, but I found Conway's Game of Life. I had no idea what was going on at first, but it was pretty. And after some fiddling, I found I could add and remove squares, and step through time. And that was it. I liked computers after that. I spent hours staring at that sucker crunch away. That's also about the time my mother worried I wasn't spending enough time outside. Go figure.
My first actual programming experience, past staring blankly at my brother's BASIC, would be with Ed T. Toton III's Advanced T-robots. Sandbox assembly to make tanks go kill each other. I kind of wish I had picked it up sooner then highschool.
That's because a crappy restrictive Internet is still a hell of a lot better then no Internet.
Also, you're talking about the "potential" of the Internet, the forecasted outlook of where it's going. It isn't looking stellar with the reduced competition among ISPs and politicians trying to restrict it. Back in the 90's, the Internet was a mystical land that was going to revolutionize everything. Lots of potential.
And it happened. It DID revolutionize how we do... quite a lot of things. And right now, in it's current state, it's pretty awesome. A vast swath of the Internets potential has been realized. Welcome to the future.
Finally, being more accessible by the masses IS BETTER. That bar has constantly been lowered. Facebook and all didn't do anything you couldn't have done with a bit of code and a personal website (and/or BBS), but it made it easier. And it's a good thing. Or do you want to have to string together an array of shoe-boxes with marbles?
Slashdot Mirror
obviously if he cannot even be bother to dress appropriately for a professional conference one has to doubt whether he can even be bothered to think deeply about what he is about to say.
Well, with a name like "yeOldeSkeptic" I'm not going to take you seriously as you obviously have a distrustful nature. So I'm not even going to consider your argument.
Hey, got a reputable source for that "run by psychopaths" comment? I was called on it the other day, and I honestly couldn't come up with anything.
No no, not ALL corporations. Just most of them. Profit is the sole reason for the existence of a corporation. That's their ultimate driving goal. That doesn't say anything about profits now vs. profits latter, so there's quite a bit of variety in how corporations act. Well, most of them. Some are merely there to shield the founders from lawsuit.
And yeah, not all investments are divorced from their investors. Just usually mutual funds, like GP was talking about. You know, the sort that "regular people" invest into. The fact that you have had actual communication with your fund manager sets you apart from the masses.
As for "going elsewhere", my company's 401k plan has a list of places I can put my money. They're all treated the same. And I'm going good when it comes to wealth, I HAVE a 401k option.
Stop and think about it for a moment.
If a craftsman does a really good job, then the job is done faster or the good is higher quality.
If an software engineer does a really good job, then his program is more robust or his protocol is easily understood/lightweight/extendable/whatever.
But if a salesman does a really good job, then the person he's selling to has just been screwed over. Salespeople work in a zero sum game. The better they do, the worse off someone else is. If they're not screwing over people with the price, they're making their product look better then a competitors. Now you have product A which sells more then product B, even though product is a better choice.
And sales isn't marketing. Although they're usually soulless as well, marketing can justify their work as informing consumers about solutions to their problems. Spreading knowledge is a good. It's just that they usually spread FALSE knowledge. IE, they're lying weasels.
The "opportunity vs results" thing is actually a philosophical issue about the nature of equality.
Equality is a noun.
Equally is an adverb.
Don't be such a git.
Ayup. It's about half, depending on the region.
Libertarians are not against rules. They are against rules that don't apply equally to all people equally.
What? No, I'm pretty sure they'd be called Egalitarians if they were all about equality. Libertarians are more about... you know, "liberty". On a fundamental level, libertarians would want the freedom to drive on whatever side of the road they felt like.
Being forced to participate in a system that charges them for composting service is indeed, non-libertarian.
The rational libertarian would want the service to be optional, so they can choose to participate or not.
The nutjob libertarian would want no municipal services, 50 competing companies competing for his trash, with just enough rules to make sure his neighbors don't stink up his land. He would complain about mandatory composting, mandatory composting service fees, "the man" not allowing compost in the trash bins, and/or the government waste by letting people throw perfectly good compost into landfills and how that justifies tearing down the government.
What? No, no I don't think the majority of the voting masses would choose some random shmuck that calls himself intelligent and benevolent. I think they're going to vote for the guy who appears to be the most intelligent and benevolent (and follows their ideological stances, and is vouched for by their party). And that's largely a matter of marketing. Which boils down to how much campaign funds you throw at it. Which is largely determined by the rich and/or influential supporters that run the non-government half of the nation already.
Which honestly makes sense, because how can you tell the difference between someone who is benevolent and intelligent, and someone who is simply lying about those traits to get your votes?
Uh, he's a partisan hack, but that's not really racist.
And what's with the bolded "you're"? Am I missing some grammatical mistake he made? I mean, other then the characterized accent.
Did this really get to +5 insightful just because it's opposition to someone opposing republicans?
You're supplying an idea about why fundamentalist Muslims are against the idea of evolution, but you have a lot of just plain false information, and your argument boils down to "They're stupid because I don't like Islam". Hence, hate speech. I think it's because you assume that all Islam is the fundamentalist sort from the article. You also appear to have a rose-tinted view of Christianity.
1) You have some really good points about the nature of fatalism. But Christianity has had it's fatalistic streak as well. Is it more/less prevelent in today's Muslims/Christians? I don't know. Maybe? And neither do you. Because you're guessing based off of your preception of the religions. Which, hate to tell you, is kinda skewed.
2)
Muslims always loose unless they fight each other
Wow dude. Just wow. Did you know that Spain was once part of Persia? Or did you mean in modern days, like Egypt vs Israel, or the Taliban vs the USA. Well, in that case, you're kinda right, but I imagine the OVERWHELMING ADVANCED MILITARY FORCE was more of a key factor then their respective religions.
3)
Because Islam never had a renascence
Well, neither did China, Japan, or India, and they're not stuck in old fundamentalism. I mean, The Renaissance is pretty specific to Europe. Unless you meant a more generalized golden age of prosperity, advancement, and expansion... in which case, Islam most certainly DID have one.
4)
Note the huge problems Israel is having because by its nature it has to be friendly to ultra-orthodox Jews.
Hmmm, could be. But I think most of their problems stem from all their neighbors who don't like them. Well, and the previous occupants.
5)
In most of the west, the religious freaks have isolated themselves and good riddance. There is no Amish TV channel trying to win heart and minds.
uh huh. Maybe you're in Europe, but it's actually kind of a problem over here in the USA. While the Amish aren't on TV, megachurches and evangelical preachers are most certainly having an impact. The term "the Religious Right" comes to mind. There are Christian groups that are actively fighting the teaching of evolution. You may have noticed some of that here on Slashdot.
In short, the fundamentalist portion Christianity is just as bad as the fundamentalist portion of Islam. In this regard, the opposition to evolution, they're behaving exactly the same. Your attempt to somehow differentiate the two religions pulls on a lot of bad assumptions.
1) I'm sorry, are you saying the Artificial Intelligence created by mankind isn't intelligent? huh? Ok, ok. I may be at fault here. "what's artificial about mankind's creations" is a bit of a broad question. It's kind of the definition of "artificial" though, and was a good starting point. Could have put it before the C-section baby one. It was really just a setup to get you to think. Let's just accept that you're not going through it. I'm ok with that now.
2) Hardware. Yes. It's what's the article is about, but honestly I still don't care. You were commenting on AI, and I was responding to that. The chip from the article is kinda neat, but it's just one synapse. I guess I didn't quite get how an array of these is supposed to be different then a neural net that's simulated with a typical chip. It will be faster, sure, but that really isn't what's holding AI back.
3) Every component in a human, body, brain, and mind, will be able to be modified in a controlled and precise manner. Eventually. That doesn't exist yet in the same way that we don't have ability to make AI systems that rival human sentience. We can only make AI systems that perform specific tasks. Much in the same way that we can only control and modify humans to a limited degree. Eventually both milestones will be met. And when we get there, that finely crafted human can be owned. It's called slavery.
Oh, for sure, murder wouldn't be all that bad if we could effectively undo it. Same thing for an AI. Wiping the hardware, and reloading it is largely inconsequential. But permanently wiping it would still be murder of an AI. And wiping it, tweaking it, and reloading would effectively be mind control.
At some point I believe that AI constructs deserve to have rights. If you're not sovereign over your own mind, then your rights are more or less meaningless. Ultimately, I don't want these things done to an AI because I don't want that used as a justification to have it done to me. Anything that approaches the concept of removing my sovereignty over my own mind... I dunno, it just kinda spooks me.
Yeah, I think the initial creation of a human-comparable AI can be unethical. But, it doesn't have to be. I mean, making a baby isn't necessarily unethical. There are some cases where making a kid would be unethical, like if you planned on abusing it, or it was doomed to be nonviable. If you made an AI with a plan of how it would sustain itself and propagate, then it would be fine. I'm sorry, but the more I talk to you about this, the more convinced I am that I'm in the right on this one. I don't see the difference between natural intelligence and artificial intelligence.
It's been a nice chat, but Thanksgiving is coming up, so I'm out for about a week. If it ever comes up, I'll gladly sit on the ethics board that grants you your AI-birth license. Take care till then.
+1 ThisGuyNeedsToBeAnEditor
1) Artificial: "humanly contrived, usually based on a natural model." ....ok. So? Are you just admitting that your assessment was wrong and, in fact, not all the things I listed weren't artificial? If you mispoke, or didn't get the question, or simply missed it, that's fine. It's a a bit of confusion on my part, but it happens. Just don't be a dick about it.
2) You're right. Self-learning doesn't mean that they can fab their own chips. But who cares? I'm talking about programs. You're talking about robots. AI isn't really in the robotics field. Why assume that the AI is placed inside a robot? Self-learning most definitely means it assembles it's own software structure. The mind behind the AI rather then the brain.
3) No, I can't patent my baby plan above because of prior art. Similarly, you couldn't patent artificial intelligence because of prior art. The best you could probably do is patent a system for training an AI system. And if it was the 90's and I put some heavy spin on it, I could probably patent a "business plan" of how to raise a kid to be a cutthroat businessman. They let just about anything through back then. Supposedly it's better now.
Are you really relying on the patent office to define what's up for ethical considerations? Software patents are bullshit. Yes, I'm a professional software engineer. Yes, I've had opportunities to patent my code. No, I haven't worked on AI systems professionally.
As for designing someone with an extra finger, yeah, I'm pretty sure we could do that if we really wanted to throw ethics to the wind. It also falls into the expensive and pointless categories. Still don't see the similarities?
I'm holding this position because you haven't presented any fundamental difference between a hypothetical AI that's comparable to a human mind, and an actual Well, and because you're simply dismissing my line of reason without any real thought. That bugs me. It's concerning when people dismiss ethical concerns out of hand.
I don't... really see it as an unpractical position. We can't make AI system that are comparable to humans yet. And I'm not sure we should. For the same reason we don't genetically engineer a human to be a loyal killing machine. Or a submissive office drone. Or a complacent menial laborer. Because of ethical concerns. Sorry, I guess I'm just weird like that.
hmmm. Well that's interesting. Is there any reason he wouldn't go get a civilian lawyer?
Child prostitution isn't damning?
And he is probably lucky that he is being tried at court martial. Besides being supplied legal counsel that is an officer (and therefore bound by oath to the law, oath as an officer, and by honor to do the best job they can)
The same sort of oath to protect the USA against all enemies, foreign and domestic?
Yeah, I'm thinking a civilian court would have a better shot at justice. You know, with a lawyer of his choosing and his best interests at heart. One who knows what he did and thinks it was the right and legal thing to do. Someone well funded and well respected. You know... someone.
What were the "atrocities" anyway? In the end it seemed like a big bowl of nothing,
How about various bullshit, lies, and war crimes. I'd point to some specifics but it's so widespread that it's a systematic problem and I don't know where to begin.
But hell, off the top of my head, we were lied to about the state of affairs in Afghanistan, it was a lot worse then reported. We killed a lot more civilians in Iraq then they let on. A US contractor, Dyncorp, that trained cops in Afghanistan paid for child prostitution to said cops. Monsanto is an evil corporation that politically retaliates against business opposition. McDonald's uses political pressure to evade lawsuits abroad. The state department used diplomats to spy on the Ban Ki-Moon, the secretary general of the UN (which is kind of their job, until they're asked to get DNA, fingerprints, passwords, and encryption keys).
I think the hackerspaces would be all for co-opting the prestigious and well-respected name of "library". There's a bit of baggage that comes with the name "hackerspace". Some of them anyway. Some revel in the "safety comes as a distinct 3rd" sort of culture which is light on paperwork and PC and heavy on actually doing stuff. And as someone who just started up a organization, the idea of dealing with the general public's children is horrifying.
So you'd be looking at the well-to-do hackerspaces that are trying to make the jump from indie startup to established institution.
you wouldn't need a massive surveillance state dedicated entirely to keeping the inferiors in line, you'd just need a lightweight meritocracy...
Uh... A meritocracy would determine who rules, and how people get rewarded. And it's a good thing. But it doesn't say a thing about how the lower classes act. Meritocracies today work pretty well for calming down that whole "that's not fair" attitude that the masses get because success is more or less tied to how much effort you put in. But in GATTACA, the meritocracy is kinda unfair, since the kids are screwed from birth. (If I get too cynical, it looks like it's not that much different then today's system of who can afford education, and who you know to get you a job).
The whole "fair" thing in politics keeps people from rabble rousing and whipping out the guillotine. If it's not fair, you're going to face a deviate/rioting/terrorizing lower class and the powers that be are going to respond with authoritarian force and massive surveillance. To keep the lower class in place.
All the things you list are either a, Not intelligent(in the self aware form that is relevant here), or b, not artificial.
Item #2: What's artificial about human creations?
So if human creations are "not artificial", then BAM! human made artificial intelligence is perfectly natural. Plus it is intelligent and self aware, which is the main topic here. Maybe this is where you're getting held up. We're presuming real AI here. Quake aimbots and google's search, while AI, aren't up to a comparison with humans. They're like insects and mice. Which we kill by the thousands and no one really cares.
Someone sat down and planned the initial state (software).
An AI's hardware and software do not assemble themselves.
Every AI system I've heard of does something to take or generate input and learn from it. Indeed, a good definition of "intelligence" is the ability to learn. Even google's search takes in the whole Internet. If it didn't have anything to index, it wouldn't be able to tell you jack about anything.
(Wait, have you even played with self-balancing neural nets or genetic algorithms? Maybe you're just not familiar enough with the field. If not, it's really pretty interesting and I'd encourage you to take a look.)
So, in that regard, AI systems have an initial state, and then grow beyond that. They most certainly assemble their own software. And far beyond simply setting some parameters. Since you seem to have presumed some differences between AI and human, care to change your tune?
Can you or any group of humans do as I have outlined (to sit down and planned the initial state) to a human?
Yes, I'm sitting, and I plan for my child to have 5 fingers on each hand. BAM! done. Or did you mean his/her initial mental state? Well, I plan for my child to sleep, cry, eat, and poop. Initially. Further functionality like social norms and talking will be slowly introduced. A lot like a parrot, but the hardware is better on this one and he'll pick up on the cues faster. ...Well no... not yet.
If you meant, can I plan out a person to be a factory worker or a chemist... then YES, again! I can PLAN for them to go directly to tech school or to really stress how important and fun science and chemistry is. I can plot out their entire life. And with a modicum of accuracy too.
Can I plan for them to have 12 toes or to be beat the world sprinting record, or be a genius chef?
No. No I'm not saying someone sat down with a CAD program and designed "nature". That'd be moronic. Oh wait, yeahhhhh, like those ID guys.
But. It does not follow that there is a fundamental difference between AI and human consciousness. I told you to think about the definition of the term "artificial". I then lead you down a path where the term became very very blurry. This wasn't an attempt to show you that "nature" is an artificial thing, but to show you that the term "artificial" is kinda bullshit and arbitrary and has a breaking point. That there is no fundamental difference between being pushed out a womb and being compiled.
There are differences, but they are more slight then you appear to be assuming.
Here's let's try it again, with better layout:
What's natural about C-section babies?
What's artificial about human creations?
Is a bird's nest artificial?
How about a caterpillar's cocoon?
How about the system that encourages the construction of these objects?
Go ahead. Write out your answers. You'll see that there is not a distinct line between "artificial" and "natural".
Also your last sentence confuses the Internet with the Web (which is built out of http). The Internet is bigger and more inclusive than just http traffic.
Ghouls? Well that's funny, because naked mole rates are a prime example of a eusocial creature. Like bees. They form a society for the greater good, but they also work for the greater good at their own detriment. Only the queen is allowed to reproduce. The others CAN, but DON'T. So they're supporting the colony not for their own offspring, but for the sake of their nieces and nephews. How ghoulish.
Eusocial, it's crazy stuff.
And now I'm going to have an entirely different spin on the haunted crypt full of ghouls in the next D&D campaign.
Came here for this sort of thing. Kinda weird everyone else isn't automatically reminiscing.
Anyway, I'm 27, but my story starts with my father. Growing up out of the 50's, he was a technological enthusiast. He thought he'd be a wielder on space stations or something. He paid a month's wages to get his first calculator. This is right before transistors bottomed out the price.
Dad had bought a TI-99/4A. He thought he'd be doing his taxes on it or something. We used it for games. And I'm in the picture now. That old TI was around longer then I can remember, but my brother was into programming it for a bit. Had those "1,2,3 connect" magazines or whatever they were. They had BASIC programs that he would type in by hand and show them to me.
But I wasn't interested. I was a kid and the TI was a toy. It wasn't until I was playing around with Tandy 1000, which Dad also though he'd be using to do important calculations (he was more right then with the TI, but no tax software). I have no idea where the program originated from, maybe it was in those Big Blue Monthly disks, but I found Conway's Game of Life. I had no idea what was going on at first, but it was pretty. And after some fiddling, I found I could add and remove squares, and step through time. And that was it. I liked computers after that. I spent hours staring at that sucker crunch away. That's also about the time my mother worried I wasn't spending enough time outside. Go figure.
My first actual programming experience, past staring blankly at my brother's BASIC, would be with Ed T. Toton III's Advanced T-robots. Sandbox assembly to make tanks go kill each other. I kind of wish I had picked it up sooner then highschool.
That's because a crappy restrictive Internet is still a hell of a lot better then no Internet.
Also, you're talking about the "potential" of the Internet, the forecasted outlook of where it's going. It isn't looking stellar with the reduced competition among ISPs and politicians trying to restrict it. Back in the 90's, the Internet was a mystical land that was going to revolutionize everything. Lots of potential.
And it happened. It DID revolutionize how we do... quite a lot of things. And right now, in it's current state, it's pretty awesome. A vast swath of the Internets potential has been realized. Welcome to the future.
Finally, being more accessible by the masses IS BETTER. That bar has constantly been lowered. Facebook and all didn't do anything you couldn't have done with a bit of code and a personal website (and/or BBS), but it made it easier. And it's a good thing. Or do you want to have to string together an array of shoe-boxes with marbles?