Socializing with friends and working on a long-term goal are not mutually exclusive. If your friend is also a doctor and also working on a cure for cancer, then socializing with them can significantly speed up your progress. Even if they're in a different field, discussing your ideas with them can bring new insights. I've gotten some good ideas from talking to people, sometimes even before they started speaking. Formulating my problems into words that an outsider could understand forces me to think about it in a different, easier-to-solve, way.
You're probably thinking of that one guy who used machine learning on a bunch of NES games. Frankly, there's not much intelligence in that. Games like Super Mario can be won by a carefully scripted series of moves executed at the exact right time. You don't even need to be looking at the screen. In other words, it's a search problem that can be brute forced (or solved with something similar to A* search).
People do fail at detecting sarcasm. But that's not the point. The point here is that people understand watching grass grow is boring even if they never tried it, and software doesn't. Likewise, the fact that you can argue about bringing in cars towards the end of the day means you have a mental model of how an auto shop works. You can see possibilities that I didn't see because your model is different from mine. The model can answer other questions too. For example, do auto shops have car jacks? Do they have WD-40? Do they use accounting software? Now how did you come up with the answers? Did someone tell you or did you infer it somehow?
The interesting thing is, even with just a few experiences with an auto shop, people can create this mental model and make reasonably accurate predictions about how it works. Computers don't do that.
Absolute is a rather strong word, just like never. There were definitely societies where rape was considered acceptable. Even now, spousal rape is not prosecuted throughout much of the world.
I think you're right as far as the cynics are concerned. People are worried that AI will somehow take over humanity. However, I think the examples you listed do not show (at least what I consider) true AI. But rather than argue whether a task falls into "true AI", let's see what tasks existing AI cannot do well, but we expect a reasonably intelligent human to do:
- It cannot perform new but similar tasks (AI that plays Connect 4 cannot play tic-tac-toe or gomoku)
- It does not understand sarcasm ("That was a really exciting game, almost as exciting as watching the grass grow")
- It does not perform fuzzy logic (auto shop closes at 5 PM, mechanics want to go home on time, therefore bringing the car in at 4 PM will lead to a faster oil change)
There are still major hurdles before these types of tasks can be done by a computer. The first requires extracting a basic principle (connecting), and reapplying it to similar problems. The second require knowledge (the AI needs to know what "grass", "growing" or "exciting" is), and the third requires constructing object representations of real-life phenomena (auto mechanic, car, oil change) and reasoning about their behavior (closing time, wanting to go home, working quickly). You'll note that this third one is very similar to what we call programming. So if this can be done, then we will have already achieved technical singularity.
I think all of the advances you listed are important and relevant, but they are still within the realms of pattern recognition, tree search, and classical programming (if (light.isRed() || objectAhead.isPedestrian()) { car.SlowToStop(); }). I strongly suspect mere recombinations of these techniques will not get us AI's that can solve more advanced problems. We need something new. And until we do, we do not have strong AI.
That's already in progress, see Abe's reinterpretation of the Japanese constitution. It doesn't work however. Japan can only remilitarize a little bit at a time, and even if it does get there eventually, there's no guarantee it'll have the result you intended. Why is remilitarization hard? Well first, there's strong political opposition from within Japan. The majority of people don't want the change, and we're not even talking about a real expansion of the military, just a self-imposed rule about when Japan can become involved in a military conflict. They simply don't see a reason for it.
Second, Japan is in a bad spot economically. Abenomics isn't working. The economic boost all that deficit spending was supposed to bring didn't appear and all it did was devalue the Yen. Now they've even lowered their interest rate into the negatives to hopefully generate more investments. They're already spending $40 billion a year on military, but to build something that could stand up to China, they'll need at least another $100 billion a year, possibly more since costs are higher in Japan than it is in China. Where would the money come from? Will the US subsidize them?
And finally, China is Japan's largest trade partner. Despite all the saber rattling over the Senkaku / Diaoyu islands, neither side did anything to hurt their economic ties, because neither side can afford to. As soon as the whole thing blew over, they went right back to talking trade deals. The Japanese government, however dependent on the US, is still held accountable by their electorate, and they can only go as far as the Japanese people (and their wallet) can go.
So even if all of those problems were solved. Even if Japan magically overcame their economic woes and remilitarizes. Is that beneficial to US interests? Well, first of all, the tension between China and Japan will be felt worldwide. Prices will rise, investments will stall, and unemployment would go up. All business that depend on Sino-Japanese trade, directly or indirectly, will be impacted. Given how much trade goes on between them and the US, the US would obviously feel those effects too.
And second, would remilitarization really cause China to invade North Korea? Well consider this: did ISIS's threats cause the US to pull out of the Middle East? No? Why not? Do Americans not realize they might be killed by terrorists if they keep messing with them? Of course they do, but people also have a sense of justice, and if you threaten them, they'll much sooner fight you than obey you. The Chinese aren't going to react all that differently from Americans. The nation's pride will be on the line, and if their government capitulates to the threat, they'll have a revolt on their hands. So rather than doing that, China will threaten to invade Japan instead. It worked for Taiwan after all.
So after all that work, you not only would have done nothing to depose of Kim Jung Un, you would've also damaged the global economy and replaced the threat of North Korean nukes with the threat of WWIII.
That system only covers a small fraction of the globe and it doesn't work in bad weather. So all it takes to get plausible deniability is to build in some maneuvering capability and wait for a cloudy day. Oh and leave a decoy where the warhead was supposed to be, that way you can claim the weapon is still there in orbit.
The point is, instead of 20 minutes of warning you get maybe 5 before the nuke lands on you, thereby rendering all of our anti-ballistic technology useless. Oh, and you'd have no idea who deorbited their nuke so you can't even retaliate properly.
That's a completely different field though. Humans are so far above the minimum capability for driving, they put on music or radio to fight the boredom. Some go as far as doing makeup, eating, texting or calling other people. If everyone concentrated completely on driving, the accident rate would be practically zero. We might even be able to raise the speed limit by 50%.
Software doesn't need to come close to human capability to be a great driver. It just need to be better than the 0.1% of the time when humans aren't even looking at the road. Being able to see twice as far at all angles, react instantly, never get distracted and never fall asleep gives self-driving cars a huge advantage. Yeah, it might not recognize the thing moving into it's path as a kid on a bicycle, but it doesn't need to. All it needs to do is see something blocking its way, then step on the brakes, and it can do that 100 times faster than a human.
Do they spend the money they're given to buy these Xbox's or does someone simply give it to them? Do they even know what to do with one?
The broken windows seems to be a law enforcement issue. If they don't bother investing time into policing their own community, then that's a cultural issue that would not apply to other western communities.
If my town had the same sort of vandalism problems and the police couldn't control it, I would vote to replace the police chief, possibly hiring a better one from elsewhere. And if that didn't fix the problem, I might volunteer my own time or join a vigilante group. But I think that's because I value my windows (or rather, security in my possessions) a lot more than these indigenous people, and I think that's true for most people.
I don't know about the rest of the world, but my version of utopia doesn't have everybody working 80-hour weeks. I might feel less accomplished having no work to do, but as long as I can enjoy the same quality of life, I would appreciate the extra free time.
Not everything with value has to be compensated for. There are plenty of thoughts and ideas we use everyday that we use for free. Consider this: Do you live in a democracy? If so, did you pay the Greeks for their invention? I see you're using English. Did you pay the English for their language? And how do you pay for things anyways? Is it through a bank? If so, did you give the Assyrians a cut? Or do you use paper bills? If so, the Chinese would like a share.
Why don't we pay for any of that? The answer is simple: Why should we?
The Supreme Court interprets the Privileges and Immunities Clause as states being forbidden from discriminating against citizens of other states. Assuming no federal laws prohibit it, California can ban the use of phones with non-backdoored encryption in the state, so long as the law applies to Californians just as much as it applies to visiting Texans.
I've been using two $10 USB foot pedals for control and meta. It's completely gotten rid of the pinky and thumb strains for me, at least while I'm coding.
And what makes you so sure that all of them are guilty? Would you be okay with the government catching you at the wrong place and the wrong time then locking you up at Gitmo with no trial?
Besides, even if we do acquit some of them, they can still be shipped back to wherever we caught them. Acquitting doesn't mean we have to give them residency in the US.
The DNC does not have that kind of power. If they shove Clinton through by stomping on Bernie, a lot of his supporters will simply not vote on election day, effectively handing the presidency to the Republicans.
Slashdot Mirror
Socializing with friends and working on a long-term goal are not mutually exclusive. If your friend is also a doctor and also working on a cure for cancer, then socializing with them can significantly speed up your progress. Even if they're in a different field, discussing your ideas with them can bring new insights. I've gotten some good ideas from talking to people, sometimes even before they started speaking. Formulating my problems into words that an outsider could understand forces me to think about it in a different, easier-to-solve, way.
In other words, get better friends.
You're probably thinking of that one guy who used machine learning on a bunch of NES games. Frankly, there's not much intelligence in that. Games like Super Mario can be won by a carefully scripted series of moves executed at the exact right time. You don't even need to be looking at the screen. In other words, it's a search problem that can be brute forced (or solved with something similar to A* search).
People do fail at detecting sarcasm. But that's not the point. The point here is that people understand watching grass grow is boring even if they never tried it, and software doesn't. Likewise, the fact that you can argue about bringing in cars towards the end of the day means you have a mental model of how an auto shop works. You can see possibilities that I didn't see because your model is different from mine. The model can answer other questions too. For example, do auto shops have car jacks? Do they have WD-40? Do they use accounting software? Now how did you come up with the answers? Did someone tell you or did you infer it somehow?
The interesting thing is, even with just a few experiences with an auto shop, people can create this mental model and make reasonably accurate predictions about how it works. Computers don't do that.
Absolute is a rather strong word, just like never. There were definitely societies where rape was considered acceptable. Even now, spousal rape is not prosecuted throughout much of the world.
I think you're right as far as the cynics are concerned. People are worried that AI will somehow take over humanity. However, I think the examples you listed do not show (at least what I consider) true AI. But rather than argue whether a task falls into "true AI", let's see what tasks existing AI cannot do well, but we expect a reasonably intelligent human to do:
There are still major hurdles before these types of tasks can be done by a computer. The first requires extracting a basic principle (connecting), and reapplying it to similar problems. The second require knowledge (the AI needs to know what "grass", "growing" or "exciting" is), and the third requires constructing object representations of real-life phenomena (auto mechanic, car, oil change) and reasoning about their behavior (closing time, wanting to go home, working quickly). You'll note that this third one is very similar to what we call programming. So if this can be done, then we will have already achieved technical singularity.
I think all of the advances you listed are important and relevant, but they are still within the realms of pattern recognition, tree search, and classical programming (if (light.isRed() || objectAhead.isPedestrian()) { car.SlowToStop(); }). I strongly suspect mere recombinations of these techniques will not get us AI's that can solve more advanced problems. We need something new. And until we do, we do not have strong AI.
That's already in progress, see Abe's reinterpretation of the Japanese constitution. It doesn't work however. Japan can only remilitarize a little bit at a time, and even if it does get there eventually, there's no guarantee it'll have the result you intended. Why is remilitarization hard? Well first, there's strong political opposition from within Japan. The majority of people don't want the change, and we're not even talking about a real expansion of the military, just a self-imposed rule about when Japan can become involved in a military conflict. They simply don't see a reason for it.
Second, Japan is in a bad spot economically. Abenomics isn't working. The economic boost all that deficit spending was supposed to bring didn't appear and all it did was devalue the Yen. Now they've even lowered their interest rate into the negatives to hopefully generate more investments. They're already spending $40 billion a year on military, but to build something that could stand up to China, they'll need at least another $100 billion a year, possibly more since costs are higher in Japan than it is in China. Where would the money come from? Will the US subsidize them?
And finally, China is Japan's largest trade partner. Despite all the saber rattling over the Senkaku / Diaoyu islands, neither side did anything to hurt their economic ties, because neither side can afford to. As soon as the whole thing blew over, they went right back to talking trade deals. The Japanese government, however dependent on the US, is still held accountable by their electorate, and they can only go as far as the Japanese people (and their wallet) can go.
So even if all of those problems were solved. Even if Japan magically overcame their economic woes and remilitarizes. Is that beneficial to US interests? Well, first of all, the tension between China and Japan will be felt worldwide. Prices will rise, investments will stall, and unemployment would go up. All business that depend on Sino-Japanese trade, directly or indirectly, will be impacted. Given how much trade goes on between them and the US, the US would obviously feel those effects too.
And second, would remilitarization really cause China to invade North Korea? Well consider this: did ISIS's threats cause the US to pull out of the Middle East? No? Why not? Do Americans not realize they might be killed by terrorists if they keep messing with them? Of course they do, but people also have a sense of justice, and if you threaten them, they'll much sooner fight you than obey you. The Chinese aren't going to react all that differently from Americans. The nation's pride will be on the line, and if their government capitulates to the threat, they'll have a revolt on their hands. So rather than doing that, China will threaten to invade Japan instead. It worked for Taiwan after all.
So after all that work, you not only would have done nothing to depose of Kim Jung Un, you would've also damaged the global economy and replaced the threat of North Korean nukes with the threat of WWIII.
That system only covers a small fraction of the globe and it doesn't work in bad weather. So all it takes to get plausible deniability is to build in some maneuvering capability and wait for a cloudy day. Oh and leave a decoy where the warhead was supposed to be, that way you can claim the weapon is still there in orbit.
The point is, instead of 20 minutes of warning you get maybe 5 before the nuke lands on you, thereby rendering all of our anti-ballistic technology useless. Oh, and you'd have no idea who deorbited their nuke so you can't even retaliate properly.
I have no problem with anyone owning a gun. I've shot them in the past
I see you have no problem with admitting murder either.
That's a completely different field though. Humans are so far above the minimum capability for driving, they put on music or radio to fight the boredom. Some go as far as doing makeup, eating, texting or calling other people. If everyone concentrated completely on driving, the accident rate would be practically zero. We might even be able to raise the speed limit by 50%.
Software doesn't need to come close to human capability to be a great driver. It just need to be better than the 0.1% of the time when humans aren't even looking at the road. Being able to see twice as far at all angles, react instantly, never get distracted and never fall asleep gives self-driving cars a huge advantage. Yeah, it might not recognize the thing moving into it's path as a kid on a bicycle, but it doesn't need to. All it needs to do is see something blocking its way, then step on the brakes, and it can do that 100 times faster than a human.
I see all of the photos in the article were taken with a conventional camera, complete with lens blur.
Do they spend the money they're given to buy these Xbox's or does someone simply give it to them? Do they even know what to do with one?
The broken windows seems to be a law enforcement issue. If they don't bother investing time into policing their own community, then that's a cultural issue that would not apply to other western communities.
If my town had the same sort of vandalism problems and the police couldn't control it, I would vote to replace the police chief, possibly hiring a better one from elsewhere. And if that didn't fix the problem, I might volunteer my own time or join a vigilante group. But I think that's because I value my windows (or rather, security in my possessions) a lot more than these indigenous people, and I think that's true for most people.
Do they know she was a TA? Maybe they see a line in front of you and assume you're the only TA there.
Or maybe, just maybe, it's an unthinkably minuscule possibility for sure, that gender not withstanding, you're better at explaining things.
I don't know about the rest of the world, but my version of utopia doesn't have everybody working 80-hour weeks. I might feel less accomplished having no work to do, but as long as I can enjoy the same quality of life, I would appreciate the extra free time.
Not everything with value has to be compensated for. There are plenty of thoughts and ideas we use everyday that we use for free. Consider this: Do you live in a democracy? If so, did you pay the Greeks for their invention? I see you're using English. Did you pay the English for their language? And how do you pay for things anyways? Is it through a bank? If so, did you give the Assyrians a cut? Or do you use paper bills? If so, the Chinese would like a share.
Why don't we pay for any of that? The answer is simple: Why should we?
10 or more solar masses of it to be exact.
The Supreme Court interprets the Privileges and Immunities Clause as states being forbidden from discriminating against citizens of other states. Assuming no federal laws prohibit it, California can ban the use of phones with non-backdoored encryption in the state, so long as the law applies to Californians just as much as it applies to visiting Texans.
I've been using two $10 USB foot pedals for control and meta. It's completely gotten rid of the pinky and thumb strains for me, at least while I'm coding.
Why even bother replacing the sensor? Just use the owners fingerprint to unlock the phone. The mythbusters did that a while back.
So in the time between their removing the sensor and the next OS update bricking it, they're free to pawn it?
And what makes you so sure that all of them are guilty? Would you be okay with the government catching you at the wrong place and the wrong time then locking you up at Gitmo with no trial?
Besides, even if we do acquit some of them, they can still be shipped back to wherever we caught them. Acquitting doesn't mean we have to give them residency in the US.
The DNC does not have that kind of power. If they shove Clinton through by stomping on Bernie, a lot of his supporters will simply not vote on election day, effectively handing the presidency to the Republicans.