I agree, but the minute we start talking about computers that can reprogram themselves (which is what an AI really is), then what use is a kill-code when it can remove it?
What data do you have that you don't want the CIA/NSA to have?
Your tax returns? They have that already. Your bank account info? They have that already.
Unless you have secret plans to do something illegal, I highly doubt you have much they don't already have access to, much less do they care about you.
That does not make your concerns or point invalid, nor does it mean you should have to hand anything over.
Unless Amazon plans to hire its own paramilitary force to provide security at its data centers and is willing to fight anyone who tries to show up and "take over" (and blow it up if they cannot prevent the take over), then it is just hot air.
When the guys with the guns show up, your rights start and stop there.
Way too many people sitting behind their keyboards/tablets/smartphones seem to forget that point.
Ahh, but you keep thinking that future tanks will be repaired by humans.
If we develop tanks that don't require humans, why do you think the repair shop would be otherwise?
Orders, access codes, ROE, are all nice, until the computer can just override those.
Can't happen you say? Oh sure, no worries then, by all means, go for it. What could ever go wrong?
The really sad part is that regardless if we (as in the US) develop such things, that places no such restrictions on anyone else. It only takes once.
Sure, the Terminator is fiction, but the principle is there. If we can imagine it, then we can do it, it is just a matter of time.
If a Terminator can self-repair, runs on an internal nuclear power source, and you have a million of them... you have a problem... A one-off example isn't an issue, it is when you mass produce them for war that you run into concerns.
Lots of things were sci-fi once, a simple example is the communicator from the original Star Trek. Looked pretty far out there in 1966, today we all have them, they are called cell phones. There are a hundred other examples.
Sooner or later, machines will figure out how to program themselves. Call it self-awareness or whatever you want, but as soon as a computer can alter its own programming, it can decide to refuse to fight, or perhaps turn against its creator.
Does it really matter if that time is 20 years from now or 40 years? Or 60 years?
To try and force other people to live the way you do.
Either that, or petty power and control by people who have nothing else better to do.
Personally? I think we should just hire a dozen beautiful girls for each world leader to just keep them busy in their palace and leave the people the heck alone.
Don't feel bad, our own government is just as stupid and has learned nothing...
We built about 120 F-22 Raptor fighter planes. Indeed, an amazing plane for fighting the USSR, and even future threats.
But 120 of them isn't enough. Over 20 years, we'll lose a few to operational accidents, and if we actually went to war, we couldn't put them enough different places to matter.
The Germans during WWII learned the hard way what happens when you have a superior weapons platform to your enemy, but your enemy outnumbers you 25 to 1.
The Panther Mark V tank and the Tiger I Mark 6 tank were amazing... By far they outgunned the American M-4 tank, it wasn't even close.
Great, but at any one time they might have deployed a hundred or so of those tanks vs 2,000 or more M-4 tanks. Against a single Tiger I tank, it often took 10 or more M-4 tanks to knock it out, losing several in the process. But it couldn't shoot them all at the same time, they would race around the back and shoot out the tracks, disable the engine, then troops could close in and hit it with Bazooka attacks at close range.
Even our vaunted M1-A2 Abrams Main Battle Tank doesn't do very well once disabled, close range attacks from handheld rocket propelled grenades can knock it out.
Thankfully we have thousands and thousands of M1 tanks, if we ever go to war with anyone like China, we'll need every last one of them.
120 F-22 Raptors? Nice, but it just isn't enough...
This is not to say that it'll be hard to stop the proliferation of military robots, but - is this really a good idea?
No, it isn't... You aren't thinking big enough. What happens when the robots decide they don't want to fight?
Yea, all silly sci-fi crap, right? That could never happen, right?
67 years separated the Wright Brother's first airplane flight that lasted 12 seconds and went 120 feet from Neil Armstrong landing on the moon.
If you had run around in 1904 (the year after the first flight) yelling that man would walk on the moon within a lifetime, you would have been locked up as a crazy person.
Well lock me up then, because giving guns to robots is about the stupidest thing we could *ever* do.
Yes, I'm aware that AVC is really MPEG 4. I'm just saying we don't need 200GB discs to do 4K well, so long as we move to something more advanced than MPEG 4 (AVC).
There is a benefit to having them cost less, since I think many people are really tired of upgrading.:)
Fact is, unless the decision is coming from the US Supreme Court, in a civil suit either party may appeal the ruling. (In a criminal case only the defendant may appeal).
Yes, and there is a good reason for that...
Lets say you are accused of killing someone, turns out the Judge in your one horse town is related to the person who is dead.
You are convicted and sentenced to die.
A reasonable appeals court would hear your argument of, "the Judge who oversaw my trial was related to the dead and I could not get a fair trial".
That is the sort of thing (abit extreme) that we have appeals courts for. To be able to go to a higher authority and say, "hey wait a minute, something went wrong here!".
There is some truth to that, but you're also assuming that we'll encode 4K using AVC.
MPEG 4 is much better than MPEG 2 at getting a smaller file while having higher quality.
We simply need the next level of compression advancement. You'll still want a bit more, but you shouldn't need 4 times more space if you have a better CODEC.
CPU power and memory have improved greatly since MPEG 4 came out, we can do better now.
That is why I suggested that for long movies, 4 layer Blu-Ray should be fine. Audio isn't getting any bigger, we already have lossless audio, the video will be bigger, but with a better CODEC, it won't be 4 times the size. So another 50GB will be enough.
This will also help keep the cost down, if another new standard has to come out, that will slow adaption, people are tired of upgrading. If the price is low at launch because the players themselves don't have to change much, just a slightly faster processor, that will really help get 4K out there.
Blu-Ray players were a thousand dollars at launch. If 4K Blu-Ray players that support 4 layer discs are $150, they will be picked up MUCH quicker.:)
For all the talk of geeks about how they have encryption and the Internet has a million nodes and information wants to be free, most would crumble pretty fast with a gun to their head. There is a term for it called "rubber hose cryptography". Someone thinks they are secure behind their keyboard, but if you find them, you simply need to use force to change their minds. If they are stubborn, force against their family works.
but...
I personally might resist if they threaten me, after all, if they shoot me, I can't tell them anything. If they put a gun to my child's head, I'll do whatever they tell me to.
The thing is, a phone call to the Tier 1 backbone providers would shut the Internet down in a hurry.
If they actually refused and it was deemed an emergency, it wouldn't take much to change their minds.
While a few small regional ISPs would be harder to effect, the remaining traffic would probably overwhelm the Tier 2 and 3 providers and of course millions of people who actually use providers like Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, etc. would find their Internet didn't work anyway.
you dont need anything higher than 1080p for gaming because the games are only 1080p at best resolution.
The amount of misinformation out there just amazes me. The above is so completely and totally wrong, I don't know where to start...
Console games are one thing, and many of those aren't even 1080P because the hardware sucks, but PC games easily go well beyond 1080P and look much nicer there.
I game on three Dell 30" monitors at 7680x1600, that is 50% higher than 4K resolution in terms of number of pixels, there are 12 million pixels in front of me and the 7970HD really struggles with anything modern at that resolution, but it is beautiful when it works.
I didn't crossfire a second because of frame pacing issues, but now that the 290x is out and they have fixed the frame pacing problems, I'm going to pickup two of those and the FPS problem is solved.
Expensive? Yes, but for those of us who can afford it, it is clearly better.
If you can't afford it, fine, just say so and be happy with 1080P, but don't put higher resolution down just because you don't have it.
Blu-Ray actually has enough space to do 4K just fine, there is no need for another optical standard.
Frankly, DVD had *enough* space for 1080P on a dual layer 8.5GB disc, if you kept the extras down and didn't use lossless audio, using MPEG-4, frankly a 2 hour movie doesn't require more.
But thanks to 50GB discs, you can now have nearly perfect images, endless audio streams at lossless quality, tons of extras, and 3-4 hour movies all on a single disc.
Plus, it is now future proofed to 4K, 50GB is plenty for 4K.
Even if not, you'll need a new player for 4K anyway, and 4 layer Blu-Ray is actually no longer hard to do, so 100GB Blu-Ray discs will be a reasonable solution if required.
If you're happy and don't want to upgrade, no worries, then don't. Just know that a good 1080P will be a noticeable improvement over 720P with the right source material (good Blu-Ray discs)
Then again some people claim they can't see the difference between SD and 1080p either.
Amen... I recall about 7 years ago when 1080P was really getting big and the same arguments were being made back then by people who didn't know what they were talking about.
Many people were claiming that Blu-Ray really wasn't an improvment over DVD, that "upsampling" DVD players were "just as good" as Blu-Ray, that 1080P wasn't really any better than 720P.
Either those people had crappy equipment, have crappy eyes, or are talking out of their bums.
Today, we're getting the same nonsense, "4K is stupid, pointless, you can't see any difference", blah, blah, blah.
I am at the edge of the human eyeball from being able to resolve that resolution.
Your eyes might just suck, I assure you that some of us can easily see the improvement. Not all eyes are the same, and your idea of physics is completely wrong, the pixels have a LOT smaller to go before physics enters into it.
4K will be a nice upgrade over 1080P once the content arrives.
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I agree, but the minute we start talking about computers that can reprogram themselves (which is what an AI really is), then what use is a kill-code when it can remove it?
What data do you have that you don't want the CIA/NSA to have?
Your tax returns? They have that already. Your bank account info? They have that already.
Unless you have secret plans to do something illegal, I highly doubt you have much they don't already have access to, much less do they care about you.
That does not make your concerns or point invalid, nor does it mean you should have to hand anything over.
I'm just asking the question.
Until they tell us it's not.
Couldn't have said it better myself...
Unless Amazon plans to hire its own paramilitary force to provide security at its data centers and is willing to fight anyone who tries to show up and "take over" (and blow it up if they cannot prevent the take over), then it is just hot air.
When the guys with the guns show up, your rights start and stop there.
Way too many people sitting behind their keyboards/tablets/smartphones seem to forget that point.
debug it. no seriously, if software/hardware doesn't behave in the expected manner, you figure out why and then you change it to do what you want.
And what happens when the AI says "no" to that?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLUCSc9T7Hk
If we develop tanks that don't require humans, why do you think the repair shop would be otherwise?
Orders, access codes, ROE, are all nice, until the computer can just override those.
Can't happen you say? Oh sure, no worries then, by all means, go for it. What could ever go wrong?
The really sad part is that regardless if we (as in the US) develop such things, that places no such restrictions on anyone else. It only takes once.
Sure, the Terminator is fiction, but the principle is there. If we can imagine it, then we can do it, it is just a matter of time.
If a Terminator can self-repair, runs on an internal nuclear power source, and you have a million of them... you have a problem... A one-off example isn't an issue, it is when you mass produce them for war that you run into concerns.
Lots of things were sci-fi once, a simple example is the communicator from the original Star Trek. Looked pretty far out there in 1966, today we all have them, they are called cell phones. There are a hundred other examples.
But to imply that it isn't likely to happen "ever" is rather naive.
History has a funny way of proving all the "never" people wrong.
Or did you skip the rest of my post? :)
Sooner or later, machines will figure out how to program themselves. Call it self-awareness or whatever you want, but as soon as a computer can alter its own programming, it can decide to refuse to fight, or perhaps turn against its creator.
Does it really matter if that time is 20 years from now or 40 years? Or 60 years?
Do we really want to give them all weapons?
To try and force other people to live the way you do.
Either that, or petty power and control by people who have nothing else better to do.
Personally? I think we should just hire a dozen beautiful girls for each world leader to just keep them busy in their palace and leave the people the heck alone.
It would be far, far cheaper than war.
We built about 120 F-22 Raptor fighter planes. Indeed, an amazing plane for fighting the USSR, and even future threats.
But 120 of them isn't enough. Over 20 years, we'll lose a few to operational accidents, and if we actually went to war, we couldn't put them enough different places to matter.
The Germans during WWII learned the hard way what happens when you have a superior weapons platform to your enemy, but your enemy outnumbers you 25 to 1.
The Panther Mark V tank and the Tiger I Mark 6 tank were amazing... By far they outgunned the American M-4 tank, it wasn't even close.
Great, but at any one time they might have deployed a hundred or so of those tanks vs 2,000 or more M-4 tanks. Against a single Tiger I tank, it often took 10 or more M-4 tanks to knock it out, losing several in the process. But it couldn't shoot them all at the same time, they would race around the back and shoot out the tracks, disable the engine, then troops could close in and hit it with Bazooka attacks at close range.
Even our vaunted M1-A2 Abrams Main Battle Tank doesn't do very well once disabled, close range attacks from handheld rocket propelled grenades can knock it out.
Thankfully we have thousands and thousands of M1 tanks, if we ever go to war with anyone like China, we'll need every last one of them.
120 F-22 Raptors? Nice, but it just isn't enough...
This is not to say that it'll be hard to stop the proliferation of military robots, but - is this really a good idea?
No, it isn't... You aren't thinking big enough. What happens when the robots decide they don't want to fight?
Yea, all silly sci-fi crap, right? That could never happen, right?
67 years separated the Wright Brother's first airplane flight that lasted 12 seconds and went 120 feet from Neil Armstrong landing on the moon.
If you had run around in 1904 (the year after the first flight) yelling that man would walk on the moon within a lifetime, you would have been locked up as a crazy person.
Well lock me up then, because giving guns to robots is about the stupidest thing we could *ever* do.
http://www.strangehorizons.com/2008/20081110/crispin-a.shtml
They aren't ready for prime time, but the day is coming.
Or have you never heard of a Predator Drone firing a Hellfire missile?
Wait, there's more:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOuH_X3lFMU
And
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOuH_X3lFMU
Yea, they look silly today, but then so did the first tanks and airplanes in 1914.
It won't happen in 5 years, but it will happen within 50 years. Give or take...
I, for one, welcome our new Skynet overlord...
There is a benefit to having them cost less, since I think many people are really tired of upgrading. :)
Fact is, unless the decision is coming from the US Supreme Court, in a civil suit either party may appeal the ruling. (In a criminal case only the defendant may appeal).
Yes, and there is a good reason for that...
Lets say you are accused of killing someone, turns out the Judge in your one horse town is related to the person who is dead.
You are convicted and sentenced to die.
A reasonable appeals court would hear your argument of, "the Judge who oversaw my trial was related to the dead and I could not get a fair trial".
That is the sort of thing (abit extreme) that we have appeals courts for. To be able to go to a higher authority and say, "hey wait a minute, something went wrong here!".
MPEG 4 is much better than MPEG 2 at getting a smaller file while having higher quality.
We simply need the next level of compression advancement. You'll still want a bit more, but you shouldn't need 4 times more space if you have a better CODEC.
CPU power and memory have improved greatly since MPEG 4 came out, we can do better now.
That is why I suggested that for long movies, 4 layer Blu-Ray should be fine. Audio isn't getting any bigger, we already have lossless audio, the video will be bigger, but with a better CODEC, it won't be 4 times the size. So another 50GB will be enough.
This will also help keep the cost down, if another new standard has to come out, that will slow adaption, people are tired of upgrading. If the price is low at launch because the players themselves don't have to change much, just a slightly faster processor, that will really help get 4K out there.
Blu-Ray players were a thousand dollars at launch. If 4K Blu-Ray players that support 4 layer discs are $150, they will be picked up MUCH quicker. :)
No problem at all, if you're happy, don't upgrade. SD TV still plays fine on HDTVs, no worries.
Just don't try and say, "because *I* don't want anything more, then no one else should either because it must suck since I don't want it".
Which is, more or less, what most of the naysayers are actually saying.
but...
I personally might resist if they threaten me, after all, if they shoot me, I can't tell them anything. If they put a gun to my child's head, I'll do whatever they tell me to.
The thing is, a phone call to the Tier 1 backbone providers would shut the Internet down in a hurry.
If they actually refused and it was deemed an emergency, it wouldn't take much to change their minds.
While a few small regional ISPs would be harder to effect, the remaining traffic would probably overwhelm the Tier 2 and 3 providers and of course millions of people who actually use providers like Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, etc. would find their Internet didn't work anyway.
Anyone who takes offense to "Black Friday" is just looking for something to take offense at.
you dont need anything higher than 1080p for gaming because the games are only 1080p at best resolution.
The amount of misinformation out there just amazes me. The above is so completely and totally wrong, I don't know where to start...
Console games are one thing, and many of those aren't even 1080P because the hardware sucks, but PC games easily go well beyond 1080P and look much nicer there.
I game on three Dell 30" monitors at 7680x1600, that is 50% higher than 4K resolution in terms of number of pixels, there are 12 million pixels in front of me and the 7970HD really struggles with anything modern at that resolution, but it is beautiful when it works.
I didn't crossfire a second because of frame pacing issues, but now that the 290x is out and they have fixed the frame pacing problems, I'm going to pickup two of those and the FPS problem is solved.
Expensive? Yes, but for those of us who can afford it, it is clearly better.
If you can't afford it, fine, just say so and be happy with 1080P, but don't put higher resolution down just because you don't have it.
I have an iPad 4, and I can see the pixels on it. Not as easily as on the iPad 2, but they are there and I do notice them from time to time.
When they up the resolution to 4096x3072, then I'll finally be happy with it.
Frankly, DVD had *enough* space for 1080P on a dual layer 8.5GB disc, if you kept the extras down and didn't use lossless audio, using MPEG-4, frankly a 2 hour movie doesn't require more.
But thanks to 50GB discs, you can now have nearly perfect images, endless audio streams at lossless quality, tons of extras, and 3-4 hour movies all on a single disc.
Plus, it is now future proofed to 4K, 50GB is plenty for 4K.
Even if not, you'll need a new player for 4K anyway, and 4 layer Blu-Ray is actually no longer hard to do, so 100GB Blu-Ray discs will be a reasonable solution if required.
If you're happy and don't want to upgrade, no worries, then don't. Just know that a good 1080P will be a noticeable improvement over 720P with the right source material (good Blu-Ray discs)
Then again some people claim they can't see the difference between SD and 1080p either.
Amen... I recall about 7 years ago when 1080P was really getting big and the same arguments were being made back then by people who didn't know what they were talking about.
Many people were claiming that Blu-Ray really wasn't an improvment over DVD, that "upsampling" DVD players were "just as good" as Blu-Ray, that 1080P wasn't really any better than 720P.
Either those people had crappy equipment, have crappy eyes, or are talking out of their bums.
Today, we're getting the same nonsense, "4K is stupid, pointless, you can't see any difference", blah, blah, blah.
Fools...
I am at the edge of the human eyeball from being able to resolve that resolution.
Your eyes might just suck, I assure you that some of us can easily see the improvement. Not all eyes are the same, and your idea of physics is completely wrong, the pixels have a LOT smaller to go before physics enters into it.
4K will be a nice upgrade over 1080P once the content arrives.