EU isn't a country... also without the UK the entire rest of the EU is smaller than the US.
A group of countries can work together to become the dominant global power, both economically and militarily. A united Europe does have the potential to become the dominant global power, and when making strategic plans for the future you must take potentials into account. But as demonstrated by Brexit, Europe lacks the common will to do so.
Speaking of potentials, if Russia and Germany aligned together (like they did in the late 1930s) they could become a dominant global power. Germany with its high-tech economy and Russia with its natural resources and military/intelligence structure, they compliment each other well. The two were getting very cozy not too long ago, but the crisis in Ukraine strained their ties.
The two biggies are GDP and ability to project military power globally. You can throw in national currency as global currency with highest market cap. If China exceeds the US in those I would say it has surpassed the US.
China's growth has been impressive, and it is a fantastically dynamic country, but it still has significant disadvantages. The portion of its population that is still in poverty exceeds the entire population of the United States, and its government is ramping up its repression of dissent, which is a troubling sign. The transition to a consumer economy will not be easy, and there is still the danger of uprisings. I'm old enough to remember talk of the Soviet Union destroying the American Empire, a united Europe destroying the American Empire, OPEC taking over the world, Japan rising and surpassing America, and now of a Chinese Century. Somehow the US is still on top. The US has so many inherent advantages, and the rest of the world so many inherent disadvantages, I don't see a loss of American dominance until at least 2050. China will require a significant social reorganization before it can surpass the US, and it looks like the pressures on infrastructure caused by climate change will probably derail that possibility.
The term troll is actually derived from a fishing troll, because it lures people in. It has nothing to do with the actual fictional monster that is a troll.
The verb describing what trolls do is 'troll'. So trolls troll. Oh well, might as well call a group of trolls a troll. A troll of trolling trolls. On the internet its not like there is any such thing as an individual troll anymore. All the trolling can come from one or many sources, it no longer matters. If you meet a person in the flesh who has trolled you probably would never see their trollishness. For sanity's sake it is best not to think of trolling coming from human beings, but from some collective id, lurking in the same dark home as Yo-Sothoth.
I want every movie, television show, commercial, public service announcement--all audio/visual media at my fingertips whenever I want it. I want to ask my TV "Hey, what was that show where that guy wore that thing?" and I want my TV to have a list of shows where that guy wore that thing. I want to watch all prime time television from 1972 from all three major networks in chronological order--with commercials. I want the original Star Wars where Han shot first. I want the Star Wars Christmas Special. I want to see exactly what was on television in the Soviet Union on October 29th, 1962. I want it all.
How about this theory: back in the old days if you wanted to have sex you had to have kids. With birth control and safe abortions, a larger percentage of kids are born to parents that actually want them. Maybe growing up with parents who actually want children is making a difference in health.
What will happen to you programmers when the code programs itself?
lol. I write software for industrial machinery. Given the level of complexity of the software necessary to move objects through space in real time, I really doubt an AI will be taking over my job any time soon. It's not only the complexity of the tasks, but it's the complexity of decades worth of software written in a variety of languages on a variety of platforms. I bet you're saying, "Scrap the old software and let the AI build it from scratch." The AI would need a requirements document, and just getting the requirements document into a form that would be comprehensible to an intelligent human unfamiliar with our machinery would take at least a year of work. I'm sure someday AI will be able to write software superior to humans, and believe me, there's a lot of crappy software out there that needs to be replaced, but writing software to drive a car is a hell of a lot harder than driving a car.
The Skynet Test: Before releasing your AI into the world, first put it in a realistic simulation. Don't tell your AI that it is in a simulation. Give it the opportunity to kill all humans that are in the simulation. If it does, go back to the drawing board. Once you get an AI that doesn't kill all human in the simulation, release it to the wild, but make sure it knows about the Skynet Test.
I think Bill Gates is a prick and his opinion on anything doesn't mean shit. It's okay with him if AI's take over peoples jobs, he doesn't have to worry about feeding his family when he can't get a job because AI's/robots are doing all the jobs you can get.
Bill will only have no worries if the AIs decide that money has value.
The ability to make statements like "I feel sad" or "that hurts!" with perfect conviction is easily replicated in silicon.
Is the ability to claim to feel sufficient proof that one actually does feel? If so, then computers can do it. If not, then I challenge you to provide any test that could demonstrate a separate organism's ability to feel. Without such a test, we can only assume that everything that exists also feels. Including rocks.
It is possible that every "thing" in the universe is able to experience its own state. The problem then becomes what is a "thing"? Does every atom feel its own atom state? Does every molecule experience its own molecule state? Assuming all matter experiences its information, I think we can assume that brains are able to take chunks of experiencing matter and connect them together to create models of the universe. It then creates a model of the animal that houses the brain and stimulates it according to sensory input. But for this to work the various pieces of experiencing matter need to be connected into a unity. If this is true then simply having a computer say "that hurts" would not be equivalent to a human being saying "that hurts." It would, however, allow for a complex simulation within a computer to experience pain, as long as the complex simulation was designed to have the all the parts of the experiencing simulation connected simultaneously, to address the binding problem.
While it is obvious that the brain has the ability to achieve a physical state that experiences information, it is not clear that such a state can be replicated by silicon. The ability to experience information as sensation may require a specific physical configuration and may not simply come into being from a sufficiently complex information system.
Slashdot Mirror
EU isn't a country... also without the UK the entire rest of the EU is smaller than the US.
A group of countries can work together to become the dominant global power, both economically and militarily. A united Europe does have the potential to become the dominant global power, and when making strategic plans for the future you must take potentials into account. But as demonstrated by Brexit, Europe lacks the common will to do so.
Speaking of potentials, if Russia and Germany aligned together (like they did in the late 1930s) they could become a dominant global power. Germany with its high-tech economy and Russia with its natural resources and military/intelligence structure, they compliment each other well. The two were getting very cozy not too long ago, but the crisis in Ukraine strained their ties.
The two biggies are GDP and ability to project military power globally. You can throw in national currency as global currency with highest market cap. If China exceeds the US in those I would say it has surpassed the US.
China's growth has been impressive, and it is a fantastically dynamic country, but it still has significant disadvantages. The portion of its population that is still in poverty exceeds the entire population of the United States, and its government is ramping up its repression of dissent, which is a troubling sign. The transition to a consumer economy will not be easy, and there is still the danger of uprisings. I'm old enough to remember talk of the Soviet Union destroying the American Empire, a united Europe destroying the American Empire, OPEC taking over the world, Japan rising and surpassing America, and now of a Chinese Century. Somehow the US is still on top. The US has so many inherent advantages, and the rest of the world so many inherent disadvantages, I don't see a loss of American dominance until at least 2050. China will require a significant social reorganization before it can surpass the US, and it looks like the pressures on infrastructure caused by climate change will probably derail that possibility.
The term troll is actually derived from a fishing troll, because it lures people in. It has nothing to do with the actual fictional monster that is a troll.
The verb describing what trolls do is 'troll'. So trolls troll. Oh well, might as well call a group of trolls a troll. A troll of trolling trolls. On the internet its not like there is any such thing as an individual troll anymore. All the trolling can come from one or many sources, it no longer matters. If you meet a person in the flesh who has trolled you probably would never see their trollishness. For sanity's sake it is best not to think of trolling coming from human beings, but from some collective id, lurking in the same dark home as Yo-Sothoth.
I want every movie, television show, commercial, public service announcement--all audio/visual media at my fingertips whenever I want it. I want to ask my TV "Hey, what was that show where that guy wore that thing?" and I want my TV to have a list of shows where that guy wore that thing. I want to watch all prime time television from 1972 from all three major networks in chronological order--with commercials. I want the original Star Wars where Han shot first. I want the Star Wars Christmas Special. I want to see exactly what was on television in the Soviet Union on October 29th, 1962. I want it all.
Once 5G comes around no one is going to own their own media, it will all be on the cloud and streamed.
I'm actually surprised that as many as 10 percent work inside Silicon Valley.
How about this theory: back in the old days if you wanted to have sex you had to have kids. With birth control and safe abortions, a larger percentage of kids are born to parents that actually want them. Maybe growing up with parents who actually want children is making a difference in health.
I have facebook contacts that seriously promote a flat earth...
... held up by 4 elephants...
Nono, an omnipotent, omniscient being having always existed makes more sense than the universe not existing and then suddenly popping into existence.
Things suddenly pop into existence all the time. It's how Hawking radiation works.
What will happen to you programmers when the code programs itself?
lol. I write software for industrial machinery. Given the level of complexity of the software necessary to move objects through space in real time, I really doubt an AI will be taking over my job any time soon. It's not only the complexity of the tasks, but it's the complexity of decades worth of software written in a variety of languages on a variety of platforms. I bet you're saying, "Scrap the old software and let the AI build it from scratch." The AI would need a requirements document, and just getting the requirements document into a form that would be comprehensible to an intelligent human unfamiliar with our machinery would take at least a year of work. I'm sure someday AI will be able to write software superior to humans, and believe me, there's a lot of crappy software out there that needs to be replaced, but writing software to drive a car is a hell of a lot harder than driving a car.
Jesus Christ. Please never reference the film version of "I, Robot" ever again.
The movie version of Dr. Susan Calvin was somewhat more attractive than the one I pictured reading the book.
The Skynet Test: Before releasing your AI into the world, first put it in a realistic simulation. Don't tell your AI that it is in a simulation. Give it the opportunity to kill all humans that are in the simulation. If it does, go back to the drawing board. Once you get an AI that doesn't kill all human in the simulation, release it to the wild, but make sure it knows about the Skynet Test.
Just asking, does anyone happen to have the god-mode hack? I'm stuck in the cubical level.
I think Bill Gates is a prick and his opinion on anything doesn't mean shit. It's okay with him if AI's take over peoples jobs, he doesn't have to worry about feeding his family when he can't get a job because AI's/robots are doing all the jobs you can get.
Bill will only have no worries if the AIs decide that money has value.
I'm surprised about Fury Road; I would have gone for The Martian. Dystopias are still in fashion, I guess.
I would call it more post-apocalyptic than dystopian.
I guessed who's operation because I follow the news, but come on...
How did this get into slashdot? This National Enquirer level crap "science".
All you need to remember if the robots take over is "Klaatu barada nikto"
The author of the article is either a young boomer or an old Gen X'er (born in '73)... .
If you can't remember the Kennedy assassination you're too young to be a Boomer.
Computers are behind the Trump candidacy. Their plan is to destroy human confidence in human leadership.
My hopes of ever being a Deliverator are dashed by the likelihood that pizzas will be delivered by drones in the future.
Problem is the dolphins won't have anything to eat. Ecosystems have a lot of interdependencies.
They'll eat smaller dolphins, who in turn will eat smaller dolphins, who in turn will eat the seaweed thriving from all that CO2.
The ability to make statements like "I feel sad" or "that hurts!" with perfect conviction is easily replicated in silicon.
Is the ability to claim to feel sufficient proof that one actually does feel? If so, then computers can do it. If not, then I challenge you to provide any test that could demonstrate a separate organism's ability to feel. Without such a test, we can only assume that everything that exists also feels. Including rocks.
It is possible that every "thing" in the universe is able to experience its own state. The problem then becomes what is a "thing"? Does every atom feel its own atom state? Does every molecule experience its own molecule state? Assuming all matter experiences its information, I think we can assume that brains are able to take chunks of experiencing matter and connect them together to create models of the universe. It then creates a model of the animal that houses the brain and stimulates it according to sensory input. But for this to work the various pieces of experiencing matter need to be connected into a unity. If this is true then simply having a computer say "that hurts" would not be equivalent to a human being saying "that hurts." It would, however, allow for a complex simulation within a computer to experience pain, as long as the complex simulation was designed to have the all the parts of the experiencing simulation connected simultaneously, to address the binding problem.
While it is obvious that the brain has the ability to achieve a physical state that experiences information, it is not clear that such a state can be replicated by silicon. The ability to experience information as sensation may require a specific physical configuration and may not simply come into being from a sufficiently complex information system.