Saying that the worry about AI started with Blade Runner is incredibly short sighted. You could even count Frankenstein if you want to.
OTOH, I'm not sure that fear of AIs is really separate from the fear of "Aliens". They are both "fear of the other", where "the other" is basically anything "different from they way things were when I was a kid".
That said, fear of AIs is at least more sensible than fear of "invaders from outer space", if that's what was meant by aliens. AIs are showing up and already costing people jobs. The promises about the coming golden age they will bring is a bit less than believable, and even if you happen to believe it, that doesn't tell you how to live through the intermediate period. Actually, my best guess (a real W.A.G.) is that AIs have about a 50% chance of ending humanity. The problem is, that's the better choice. Once the AIs appear, if we survive, we'll probably survive indefinitely. Without the AIs my guess is that human leaders have a 75% chance ending humanity within the century, probably through some form of all out warfare, and a 20% chance of ending civilization in some other way within an only slightly longer period of time.
Words are so inadequate, but I sure can't do this as a good model. The problem is, AI isn't a yes/no thing, it's graded. We've already got primitive AIs. They've been getting better every year. If fully general AIs don't show up it will be BECAUSE we've killed ourselves off or ended civilization in some other way. It's not a question of whether they are possible, we know they are possible. We also know that there are lots of tricky details. What we don't know is how much computational power they demand. We've got estimates, but they aren't based on anything solid. So we may end up with one giant computer (not necessarily geographically centralized) that is the sole AI on the planet. Or we could end up with millions of fairly mobile ones. Or we could start with one and move towards the other. But there will clearly be lots and lots of things that are more automated than they are today. That one variable yields a huge number of different social possibilities. Now compound that with all the different possible goal structures that the AIs could have...and wonder if they would all be the same.
So there's LOTS of reasons to be afraid of AIs, and space aliens are likely to never show up. But I'm more worried about human controlled governments. We've already come within 30 seconds of a civilization ending nuclear war at least once, and by some counts more frequently.
Yes? And so you should refer a biologist to the history page if you want them to see the info you were referring to? This doesn't really work well. And the permanent link page may have changed. So you really can't cite it, and even if you could, you can't cite an author.
Actually, I feel the tag should not be sarcasm, but rather astroturfer. I could be wrong, but given the number of similar posts to this story it would take a bit of actual evidence to convince me.
I disagree. I *do* believe they do an admirable job. That it's far from prefect is also true.
OTOH, I also tend to believe that evaluations like "true" or "false" are almost always oversimplifications. Boolean logic is a fine computational simplification, and in a large number of areas it works better than most alternatives...partially because of limitations on time and energy...but it's almost always an oversimplification if you look closely enough. You can't even say exactly where any particular electron is. There aren't any continuous edges, etc.
That said, true and false are generally useful simplifications. But any system can be gamed, and English might almost have been designed to be gamed.
Sorry, but while there are strong subjective elements, there are also strong objective elements. To say that a particular strategy is best is subjective, to say that it is likely to have certain particular specified effects is objective. It may well be wrong, but it's objective.
You can judge how reliable something is by the way that it accurately predicts objective facts and by which facts it fails to predict without considering whether or not you agree with their subjective evaluations.
E.g., I find that Snopes often doesn't consider alternative explanations...or at least doesn't publish anything about them. This results in their usually being correct, but occasionally ignoring plausible, or sometimes in my mind probable, explanations. As a result I tend to thing of them as conservative, in the sense of conventional. They'll *usually* be right.
I have less ability to directly evaluate Politifact, but what they *say* seems to mean that they have approximately about the same attitude...but, of course, with less experimental testing, and, presumably, more literature research.
Having been present at events that were also attended by local journalists, I have to say that you can't even trust those. At the ones I was at (a small sample, admittedly) there was an extremely strong bias in favor of making the story more interesting or entertaining (or, a couple of times, shocking). The phrase "making a mountain out of a molehill" might summarize the way they presented the stories.
That was certainly true a couple of years ago. But is it still true? I haven't heard any horror stories recently. Of course, it could be just that everyone gave up attempting to add things.
If you're going to use something as a reference, you want the reference to be simple to use. I.e. the place you link to. Linking to the history pages is...not especially desireable.
So it's basically unusable as a reference. And it was never intended to be a reference, it's more nearly a top level index.
It can actually be an appropriate metaphor, though it's not clear that it is being used in that way in this case.
One can say that a system can only provide so many computations, so if some application is consuming them to the detriment of other applications also trying to be computed, then it is appropriate to say the first application drained the system of it's power.
Or one can be talking about electrical power usage and figure that each computation consumes a certain amount of electrical power, so the application was draining the system of it's power (in this case the computer system is acting as a combination transformer and conduit).
So the headline could be appropriate. The summary, however, didn't seem to justify that particular use, and that jarred on me, also. But perhaps the original story *did* justify the use, so a harsh judgment is probably rather unwarranted.
Simpler, and probably as effective given modern attack vectors, don't let Javascript run in your browsers. If you must accept data over the web, use http commands, like post.
Actually, saying "it's the best browser" assumes a particular use case. I've tried Chromium, etc., and for my use case Firefox is still the best browser I've encountered, with Konqueror a distant second. This is even after the GUI changes that they've made in the last few years. (OTOH, I'm currently using version 52.6, and it's quite possible that they've made changes that would change my mind.)
But those are the only two browsers I've encountered that let me set up and nicely display a folder of nested folders of bookmarks while browsing. This is one of my "mandatory features". Some other browsers let me have a nicely displayed folder of bookmarks, but the part about nested folders is quite valuable to me.
Well, Chrome is not Chromium, but my guess is what he meant was that MSWindows has one application grab the entire screen, the way Gnome3 does. (I think I heard that Gnome3 copied that atrocious idea from MSWindows).
Well, up until now a value of zero wouldn't have surprised me, but not that Goldman Sachs has predicted it, I find myself dubious. To me they seem more manipulative than honest.
Oxford University sounds plausibly reliable, but I don't know British groups, so I don't really know whether this comes from a reliable source. I'm guessing it probably does...
OTOH, People who think of themselves as outsiders are more likely to trust sources that they think of as by outsiders ("in our group"). I remember during the 1960's I'd trust news from the Berkeley Barb before I'd trust news from the San Francisco Chronicle. Partially this is because in my mind they lied about different things, and the things I was interested in were the ones the Chronicle lied about "to support the man".
So I don't think they've analyzed the matter properly, even though I'd guess that their data, as organized, show what they say it shows. But it's not a matter of left or right, it's a matter of whether or not you trust those in the spokesman seat to fairly present your data.
Yes, you'd need at least two photos taken at right angles to give a good image, and that probably wouldn't suffice.
OTOH, a post above claimed that camera lenses systematically distort things sufficiently that that wouldn't even come close. The the processing needs to be tailored to fit the camera that took the photo. Whee! That sounds like it could be fixed by taking the photos standing against a grid. This is getting more and more complex. Now how do the customers get the standard grid, and how do you get them to position themselves in front of it in a standard way.
When I wore clothes that other people thought fit, I was quite uncomfortable. I like a loose fit, I hate ties, etc.
OTOH, this *is* highly dependent on the material. a good stretchy material that breathes well can fit as closely as it want...around most of my body. But not around my neck. So thermal underwear (in season) is comfortable. But when I bend, it stretches to fit. That makes a big difference. Something equally close fitting that confines movement is just unacceptable. Hell, even something fairly loose that happens to hang in a way the confines movement is unacceptable. The places I usually notice this most is at the shoulders and elbows.
Have they started building Fast Breeder Reactors then? Or the reactors that will "burn" "spent" fuel rods until they are nearly safe?
Nuclear has its own problems, and one of the big ones is disposal of spent fuel. The last I heard this had not yet actually been addressed, though there were proposals, as yet untested, to address it.
OTOH, if really inclement temperatures are a problem, the proper solution is really good insulation. The problem is that then you really need to start managing internal air quality, but that's a much less energy intensive approach. Which insulation is appropriate is a real consideration, but the capabilities of good insulation aren't. With good insulation you can pick up a beaker of liquid helium and not even feel chilled.
It does sound like that. OTOH, if you are going to doubt one party because they are biased towards one energy source, it is only justice to doubt another party because they are biased towards another energy source.
That said, your comment indicates that you've much more detailed knowledge of this interchange than I do. (I only know what I read on Slashdot.) But your argument needs to be improved.
I do find claims that a combination of wind and solar would suffice to be dubious, because even though rarely, occasionally both will stop at once. So you also need a good storage system. I have no idea how cost effective this would be, but it's worth remembering that both nuclear and petrochemical are heavily subsidized by the government when attempting to calculate relative costs. And by heavily I mean heavily when compared to solar/wind. (E.g., I could 3/4 of the military expenditures in the middle east as petrochemical subsidies.)
OTOH, there's the question of whether volume production of wind turbines is even possible. How dependent are they on rare materials? This question also comes up when contemplating electric cars. Are there ways around these dependencies? (This kind of problem shows up all over. LCD screens seem to be dependent on particular rare earths that are in short supply. Are there good substitutes?) Please note that most of the questions here probably don't currently yet have answers. But they are significantly important when assessing the off-shore wind power proposal.
Those were good questions to consider...then you switched to insulting, which made it hard to hear the rest of what you had said.
So: What's the ROI? How long until it pays for itself? Good questions, and I don't know the answers.
5000 jobs for how long? What's the long term job figure? More decent questions. Again I don't know the answers.
If you had stopped your post then, it would have been much better. Those are important questions to be considered when deciding on a choice of action. For some reason news stories don't tend to supply answers, either. Of course, any answer they could give would only be a biased estimate, but it would give some reasonable basis for making a decision.
Experiences in England have indicated that off shore wind and tide platforms have significant failure rates during storms. Of course, the New York and New Jersey coasts are not as frequently subject to really turbulent storms as Scotland, etc. so the problems may have been solved. Again, I don't know the answer, but it would have a significant impact on both ROI and long term jobs.
One thing that is clear is that the higher the ROI, the fewer permanent jobs. You can't get them both high.
From the US Constitution: Section 3. Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.
I don't think either the states or Trump fit this definition, but Trump is clearly closer to a fit. The states have not been shown to even be in correspondence with a foreign power. And it's not clear what the definition of enemies is, so Russia probably doesn't count, which lets Trump off the charge (of treason) no matter what secret deals are revealed.
Slashdot Mirror
Saying that the worry about AI started with Blade Runner is incredibly short sighted. You could even count Frankenstein if you want to.
OTOH, I'm not sure that fear of AIs is really separate from the fear of "Aliens". They are both "fear of the other", where "the other" is basically anything "different from they way things were when I was a kid".
That said, fear of AIs is at least more sensible than fear of "invaders from outer space", if that's what was meant by aliens. AIs are showing up and already costing people jobs. The promises about the coming golden age they will bring is a bit less than believable, and even if you happen to believe it, that doesn't tell you how to live through the intermediate period. Actually, my best guess (a real W.A.G.) is that AIs have about a 50% chance of ending humanity. The problem is, that's the better choice. Once the AIs appear, if we survive, we'll probably survive indefinitely. Without the AIs my guess is that human leaders have a 75% chance ending humanity within the century, probably through some form of all out warfare, and a 20% chance of ending civilization in some other way within an only slightly longer period of time.
Words are so inadequate, but I sure can't do this as a good model. The problem is, AI isn't a yes/no thing, it's graded. We've already got primitive AIs. They've been getting better every year. If fully general AIs don't show up it will be BECAUSE we've killed ourselves off or ended civilization in some other way. It's not a question of whether they are possible, we know they are possible. We also know that there are lots of tricky details. What we don't know is how much computational power they demand. We've got estimates, but they aren't based on anything solid. So we may end up with one giant computer (not necessarily geographically centralized) that is the sole AI on the planet. Or we could end up with millions of fairly mobile ones. Or we could start with one and move towards the other. But there will clearly be lots and lots of things that are more automated than they are today. That one variable yields a huge number of different social possibilities. Now compound that with all the different possible goal structures that the AIs could have...and wonder if they would all be the same.
So there's LOTS of reasons to be afraid of AIs, and space aliens are likely to never show up. But I'm more worried about human controlled governments. We've already come within 30 seconds of a civilization ending nuclear war at least once, and by some counts more frequently.
Yes? And so you should refer a biologist to the history page if you want them to see the info you were referring to? This doesn't really work well. And the permanent link page may have changed. So you really can't cite it, and even if you could, you can't cite an author.
Actually, I feel the tag should not be sarcasm, but rather astroturfer.
I could be wrong, but given the number of similar posts to this story it would take a bit of actual evidence to convince me.
Could you point to that research? Somehow I doubt its existence.
I disagree. I *do* believe they do an admirable job. That it's far from prefect is also true.
OTOH, I also tend to believe that evaluations like "true" or "false" are almost always oversimplifications. Boolean logic is a fine computational simplification, and in a large number of areas it works better than most alternatives...partially because of limitations on time and energy...but it's almost always an oversimplification if you look closely enough. You can't even say exactly where any particular electron is. There aren't any continuous edges, etc.
That said, true and false are generally useful simplifications. But any system can be gamed, and English might almost have been designed to be gamed.
Sorry, but while there are strong subjective elements, there are also strong objective elements. To say that a particular strategy is best is subjective, to say that it is likely to have certain particular specified effects is objective. It may well be wrong, but it's objective.
You can judge how reliable something is by the way that it accurately predicts objective facts and by which facts it fails to predict without considering whether or not you agree with their subjective evaluations.
E.g., I find that Snopes often doesn't consider alternative explanations...or at least doesn't publish anything about them. This results in their usually being correct, but occasionally ignoring plausible, or sometimes in my mind probable, explanations. As a result I tend to thing of them as conservative, in the sense of conventional. They'll *usually* be right.
I have less ability to directly evaluate Politifact, but what they *say* seems to mean that they have approximately about the same attitude...but, of course, with less experimental testing, and, presumably, more literature research.
Yes, but the rating should be presented as an opinion, not as a fact. An estimate of "believed" probability of correctness would also be useful.
Having been present at events that were also attended by local journalists, I have to say that you can't even trust those. At the ones I was at (a small sample, admittedly) there was an extremely strong bias in favor of making the story more interesting or entertaining (or, a couple of times, shocking). The phrase "making a mountain out of a molehill" might summarize the way they presented the stories.
That was certainly true a couple of years ago. But is it still true? I haven't heard any horror stories recently. Of course, it could be just that everyone gave up attempting to add things.
If you're going to use something as a reference, you want the reference to be simple to use. I.e. the place you link to. Linking to the history pages is...not especially desireable.
So it's basically unusable as a reference. And it was never intended to be a reference, it's more nearly a top level index.
You can't even cite it in your footnotes, because the contents aren't reliably stable. They could change completely before your work was published.
It can actually be an appropriate metaphor, though it's not clear that it is being used in that way in this case.
One can say that a system can only provide so many computations, so if some application is consuming them to the detriment of other applications also trying to be computed, then it is appropriate to say the first application drained the system of it's power.
Or one can be talking about electrical power usage and figure that each computation consumes a certain amount of electrical power, so the application was draining the system of it's power (in this case the computer system is acting as a combination transformer and conduit).
So the headline could be appropriate. The summary, however, didn't seem to justify that particular use, and that jarred on me, also. But perhaps the original story *did* justify the use, so a harsh judgment is probably rather unwarranted.
Simpler, and probably as effective given modern attack vectors, don't let Javascript run in your browsers. If you must accept data over the web, use http commands, like post.
Actually, saying "it's the best browser" assumes a particular use case. I've tried Chromium, etc., and for my use case Firefox is still the best browser I've encountered, with Konqueror a distant second. This is even after the GUI changes that they've made in the last few years. (OTOH, I'm currently using version 52.6, and it's quite possible that they've made changes that would change my mind.)
But those are the only two browsers I've encountered that let me set up and nicely display a folder of nested folders of bookmarks while browsing. This is one of my "mandatory features". Some other browsers let me have a nicely displayed folder of bookmarks, but the part about nested folders is quite valuable to me.
Well, Chrome is not Chromium, but my guess is what he meant was that MSWindows has one application grab the entire screen, the way Gnome3 does. (I think I heard that Gnome3 copied that atrocious idea from MSWindows).
So you're saying crypto-currencies are a cross between a ponzi scheme and gambling? I can accept that.
P.S.: I don't play the lotteries, either.
Well, up until now a value of zero wouldn't have surprised me, but not that Goldman Sachs has predicted it, I find myself dubious. To me they seem more manipulative than honest.
Oxford University sounds plausibly reliable, but I don't know British groups, so I don't really know whether this comes from a reliable source. I'm guessing it probably does...
OTOH,
People who think of themselves as outsiders are more likely to trust sources that they think of as by outsiders ("in our group"). I remember during the 1960's I'd trust news from the Berkeley Barb before I'd trust news from the San Francisco Chronicle. Partially this is because in my mind they lied about different things, and the things I was interested in were the ones the Chronicle lied about "to support the man".
So I don't think they've analyzed the matter properly, even though I'd guess that their data, as organized, show what they say it shows. But it's not a matter of left or right, it's a matter of whether or not you trust those in the spokesman seat to fairly present your data.
Yes, you'd need at least two photos taken at right angles to give a good image, and that probably wouldn't suffice.
OTOH, a post above claimed that camera lenses systematically distort things sufficiently that that wouldn't even come close. The the processing needs to be tailored to fit the camera that took the photo. Whee! That sounds like it could be fixed by taking the photos standing against a grid. This is getting more and more complex. Now how do the customers get the standard grid, and how do you get them to position themselves in front of it in a standard way.
When I wore clothes that other people thought fit, I was quite uncomfortable. I like a loose fit, I hate ties, etc.
OTOH, this *is* highly dependent on the material. a good stretchy material that breathes well can fit as closely as it want...around most of my body. But not around my neck. So thermal underwear (in season) is comfortable. But when I bend, it stretches to fit. That makes a big difference. Something equally close fitting that confines movement is just unacceptable. Hell, even something fairly loose that happens to hang in a way the confines movement is unacceptable. The places I usually notice this most is at the shoulders and elbows.
Have they started building Fast Breeder Reactors then? Or the reactors that will "burn" "spent" fuel rods until they are nearly safe?
Nuclear has its own problems, and one of the big ones is disposal of spent fuel. The last I heard this had not yet actually been addressed, though there were proposals, as yet untested, to address it.
OTOH, if really inclement temperatures are a problem, the proper solution is really good insulation. The problem is that then you really need to start managing internal air quality, but that's a much less energy intensive approach. Which insulation is appropriate is a real consideration, but the capabilities of good insulation aren't. With good insulation you can pick up a beaker of liquid helium and not even feel chilled.
It does sound like that. OTOH, if you are going to doubt one party because they are biased towards one energy source, it is only justice to doubt another party because they are biased towards another energy source.
That said, your comment indicates that you've much more detailed knowledge of this interchange than I do. (I only know what I read on Slashdot.) But your argument needs to be improved.
I do find claims that a combination of wind and solar would suffice to be dubious, because even though rarely, occasionally both will stop at once. So you also need a good storage system. I have no idea how cost effective this would be, but it's worth remembering that both nuclear and petrochemical are heavily subsidized by the government when attempting to calculate relative costs. And by heavily I mean heavily when compared to solar/wind. (E.g., I could 3/4 of the military expenditures in the middle east as petrochemical subsidies.)
OTOH, there's the question of whether volume production of wind turbines is even possible. How dependent are they on rare materials? This question also comes up when contemplating electric cars. Are there ways around these dependencies? (This kind of problem shows up all over. LCD screens seem to be dependent on particular rare earths that are in short supply. Are there good substitutes?)
Please note that most of the questions here probably don't currently yet have answers. But they are significantly important when assessing the off-shore wind power proposal.
Those were good questions to consider...then you switched to insulting, which made it hard to hear the rest of what you had said.
So: What's the ROI? How long until it pays for itself?
Good questions, and I don't know the answers.
5000 jobs for how long? What's the long term job figure?
More decent questions. Again I don't know the answers.
If you had stopped your post then, it would have been much better. Those are important questions to be considered when deciding on a choice of action. For some reason news stories don't tend to supply answers, either. Of course, any answer they could give would only be a biased estimate, but it would give some reasonable basis for making a decision.
Experiences in England have indicated that off shore wind and tide platforms have significant failure rates during storms. Of course, the New York and New Jersey coasts are not as frequently subject to really turbulent storms as Scotland, etc. so the problems may have been solved. Again, I don't know the answer, but it would have a significant impact on both ROI and long term jobs.
One thing that is clear is that the higher the ROI, the fewer permanent jobs. You can't get them both high.
From the US Constitution:
Section 3. Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.
I don't think either the states or Trump fit this definition, but Trump is clearly closer to a fit. The states have not been shown to even be in correspondence with a foreign power. And it's not clear what the definition of enemies is, so Russia probably doesn't count, which lets Trump off the charge (of treason) no matter what secret deals are revealed.