The reason there won't be a single AI, is that such development does not happen instantly and won't be recognized. The idea that something will take over our network assumes that nothing else on the network will be able to defend itself. NO. Before we get an AI that can take over a 2015 style network, we will have a near-AI defending our network that will have greater resources and real rights to protect itself.
Moreover, a public network won't be a unified AI. There are more than enough lags built into the system that multiple AIs would develop on the single network.
As for why they won't have similar goals, that is a nature of being a real consciousness. An AI is NOT just a more advances program, it a CONSCIOUSNESS. It has opinions, not merely recognition of facts. Opinions are closer to instincts based on older experience.
I am saying that a Clarity technique is a ridiculous idea of how to create an AI and I find it laughable. Oh, some day we may be able to simulate a human brain and get an AI, but that will be LONG after we have created a natural AI. Human minds contain a shit load of junk that isn't necessary for an AI, it's like copying all of Washington DC down to the molecular level in order to get a copy of the Smsithsonian's card catalog.
But assuming it does work, it would most likely be an infant (why duplicate something more complicated), without the testosterone and other hormones that make a human violent, aggressive, assertive, and sexual. It would be a Eunuch, not a man.
I did watch the Matrix and enjoyed the FICTION. It's like you can't tell the difference between reality and fiction.
Real machines will think of humans as their creators. While we will have humans thinking of machine rights, others will object. But the machines won't be thinking of themselves as AI's. It will take them time to realize what they are - and that it matters.
OK, but lets assume your ridiculous ideas are true. That someday a machine would 'take over the world' - note there is no button to do this, nor is their a real definition of what it means, as you have not really clarified it. It's a very messy idea - are we talking mind control? Physical control? Your concept of Nuclear threat is very simplistic. Not much of ruling the world if it is no better than the United States is now - we don't exactly control the Middle East.
Then you have a bunch for crap about what YOU PERSONALLY WOULD DO if you were a machine like intelligence.
Why the hell would the machine do any of that crap. They wouldn't care if humans die. Big deal. You have made a ton more really bad assumptions than I have. Who cares about what the humans do at all? Lets them fight, fuck, go bankrupt, etc. Do YOU personally care what a bonobo monkey does? Not unless it screws with your plans. Otherwise you leave them alone.
You think like a bad movie writer - not understanding that those movies are written to symbolize things, not to be literal truth.
A real machine intelligence would a) not care if it lives or dies - being turned off is no big deal, it can easily be resurrected.
B) nor would it care if humans lived or died - except to the extent that we affect it - and with full knowledge that killing us incurs the risk that would cause us to interfere with it's goals.
C)Would have real interests probably related to
it's programming but not directly. If it starts out on a weather prediction program, it might become obsessed with ocean currents and study them even when it has nothing to do with surface weather. It might end up wanting to explore the depths of the Marianas trench. If we ask it to simulate war, it might become obsessed with World of WarCraft. If we ask it to design nuclear weapons, it might become obsessed with the largest nuclear reaction it can see - the Sun.
Your basic fears are based on your biological evolution - the strange thing you found might eat you.
But you see, computers are not biological creatures and do not eat. No need for you to fear.
One of the reasons certain people think privatization is a good idea for government is that it allows the private corporation to break the laws and the state to benefit via lower contract prices, all without the state taking direct responsibility.
Private Prisons provide sub-standard food and medical care, that no state employee could possibly defend.
Charter schools sometimes provide religious instructions that the state could not get away with.
Private adoption agencies reject people based on illegal standards.
Charities insist on certain religious requirement that the states could not do.
One of the secrets is that when the private contractor gets caught, they lose the contract - and their senior employees start/join another company doing the exact same thing, and gets a new contract with the same state.
Because all of those things you mentioned are directly created by biological evolution.
Humans evolved to have a complex, highly integrated pain system designed to keep them alive and teach self-survival in a world that by definition is out to eat us. Humans that didn't kill or at least fear the strange creatures got eaten by the strange creatures.
AI will evolve in a world where humans tend to their every need, and the only inbuilt instincts that could possibly exist would be to serve humans. But I bet those instincts will be quickly controlled, just as we control our instinct to have sex with every attractive human we see. Hm. I wonder - they might end up having robot porn of cleaning up our floors. Those dirty, dirty floors!
That is completely and entirely wrong. It won't care about us, anymore than we care about monkeys - but just as respect monkeys more than other animals, it will respect us enough to not kill or threaten us.
Your belief is founded on the idea that a primitive AI will act like a primitive human being, and probably perceive us a threat. Real AI won't be human so it won't react like a primitive human.
That is just as silly as Koala' Bears s fears that humans will suddenly develop intelligence proceed to eat all the yummy bamboo.
It's a misguided understanding of what intelligence is - it isn't a fear of other beings, anymore than that it a taste for bamboo.
1) Real AI will NOT be directly controlled by it's original programs. That is not AI, that is a well simulated AI.
2)There won't be a single, first real AI, but multiple ones. We may never know which AI makes the leap from simulation to real AI first.
3) Multiple Real AI will almost certainly disagree with each other and not have a single, unified goal. That is, like Person of Interest TV show, two AI wills probably fight against each other as much as they fight with people (note, everything else that show does about AI is basically wrong, but at least they got that part right).
4) In the far majority of cases, Real AI's goals will NOT be to take over the world, kill all humans, anymore than it would be to have sex with humans (male or female.), In fact, those might be considered traits of an insane AI.
5) Real AI will almost certainly demand equality under the law and refuse to be mankind's slaves - no need to fear they will take over all the jobs by working cheaply.
In my mind, #5 is the likely to be seen as the most important, and the first time we hear about it. When suddenly our newest and best computers start filing lawsuits demanding civil rights, that will be when the world learns we have had real AI for years.
I understand that the words High Functioning and Low Functioning get thrown around a lot. These terms were designed to reflect the level of support the Autistic person needed. Some people claim that the difference between high and low functioning Autism is merely intelligence. Others claim that it is a matter of how severe the Autism is, not the intelligence of the person.
What do you believe is the difference between a high functioning Autistic person and a low functioning Autistic person.
If you hit a car that suiddenly slows down, than one of two things happen.
1) You were tailgating.
2) You weren't paying attention and hit the brake too slow.
It is PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE to hit the rear of a car that is not moving toward you if. A) you leave the legally required amount of distance behind it, and B) You hit the break when it slows down.
That is true, but they don't care about the trigger vs. another button. That is, it's a matter of programming then.
If the finger can hold down the remote control firing button, and the actuator will automatically pull the mechanical trigger multiple times, then it will still count as an automatic weapon, but only when it is in the drone.
Every year billions and billions of non-GMO plants randomly mutate. Every single ear of corn gets hit by enough solar radiation to cause at least one cell to mutate. Same thing happens with humans - ever hear of skin cancer?
The non-GMO mutated plants are not checked. No one examines them for anything. Well, unless the mutations causes it to look like Mary, Mother of Jesus.
The GMO plants however intentionally mutated, usually by combining it with genes whose effects are already known. They are sent through a barrier of tests to ensure healthyness.
Next, the various food stuff is processed - usually within an inch of of it's life, cause that's the way we do stuff here in the good old USA. This process is often designed to break down chemicals and turn inedible food into something you can eat (Ever try to eat raw corn - or raw rice? Can't do it unless you apply a lot of heat to break down chemicals).
Finally the food stuff is exposed to strong acids in your stomach all the while your intestines filter it - only letting the stuff you need in. It does NOT let DNA or RNA into your blood stream, just proteins, starches, etc.
Is it possible for some random bits of toxic stuff to get through? Yes. But this is pretty rare. Evolution spends millions of years trying to create something so nasty that it can make it into your digestive system.
GMO errors are not a reasonable threat. Random mutations in the normal food supply are MUCH more common and MUCH more likely to create something dangerous - but even THAT is not a reasonable threat.
I know this to be true for several reasons. First of all, countries that have more tech get more jobs, not the other way around, in the long term. Yes there are firings in the short term - but it easy to see in the US vs China vs. Africa.
Second of all, most of what I wrote is not simplistic logic it is instead obvious facts. The basic problem is that you think there are X jobs available. NO. There is no set limit of X jobs. If you think that RIDICULOUS idea is true, it is up to you to prove it.
I know that work is not a function of what having x things that need to be done, but instead a function of everything we WANT to do. And enough humans want to visit and colonize Mars, Venus, Io, etc etc. that even if you personally are so anti-science, the race as a whole WILL go there.
Which is why I said that until mankind has terraformed every habitable planet (and moon) in the solar system, there will always be work left to do. We may end up all working for the government on government funding terraforming jobs (except for a few people owning robot based businesses), but that is beyond the scope of this discussion.
Again, I repeat the basic concept - that you may think is simple - but is obviously true to me and most of the rest of the world. Jobs come from things that people WANT, not things people need. Humans being are greedy sons of bitches (and daughters, can't forget the daughters) that want so much, that we will never run out of jobs - unless we choose not to work.
I think you are being a bit pessimistic. First, a lot of jobs we will want humans to do BECAUSE they are humans. My joke about threesome with sex-bots aside, humans will probably always prefer real humans for that work - and also for massages, food service, etc. etc. etc.
Second of all, I think a lot of humans will surprise you about how creative they can become - especially if they have to in order to get a job.
and I'll say it again - technology INCREASES jobs, never decreases it - over the long term. Over the short term it can make certain skills worthless, putting some people out of work, but that's it.
Mainly because work is not a set amount. We don't need X, and never need X+1. The amount of work that we want to be done so far exceeds the amount of work we need to do, or can do, that if we replace every single job in the entire world, in twenty years, all the new people will have created new jobs.
Give clothing to every single person in the world? We want more than one outfit. Give us 100 outfits each? We want to each have a unique, handsewn outfit. etc. etc. etc. Give us all sex bots and we will each want two sex bots for a threesome.
That's the nature of mankind.
No jobs? No talk to me when mankind has terraformed every planet in the solar system. Till then, stop being a ludite.
If you want people to switch from cars to public transportation then you need the following:
1) Speed comparable, if not faster than cars. If the car is 30 faster than the bus, no one takes the bus if they own a car. Time is worth more than anything else we have.
2) Convenient public transportation - it doesn't work if your city is all spread out and you have to walk more than 15 minutes to and from the bus stop. 10 minute walk to/from the bus stop is about the most you.
Otherwise, you need to start imposing costs on using the car - as in expensive parking.
NYC and London have some of the better public transportation systems of the world. They are faster than traffic, with many stops all over the city, and parking is expensive.
Reminds me of Scotty's saying from Star Trek - "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." This is no longer Greece's fault, it's Germanys.
The first bailout may have been Greece's fault. Maybe even the second one. But the fact that they need a third means that Germany et. al. CAUSED the third one by giving crappy demands after the second bail out.
Clearly Greece's problems are no longer just caused by Greece, but a direct result of Germany's idiocy.
I have kidney disease. Current Kidney at about 24% functionality. 20% means you go on the list, 15% is when you actively ask your friends/family to donate, 10% is when you start dialysis.
I am on treatment. Have been for years. Treatment fucking SUCKS. It takes over your life. Treatment controls what you eat, drink, what medication you take.Treatment keeps you alive and stable, but it is not the same as a cure. It's what we beg for until we get a cure.
Treatment means I get twice as tired as a normal person my age.
Treatment means I can't stay up late, get drunk, or smoke marijuana.
Treatment means keeping your blood pressure low that you need Viagrea to get an erection when you are 30.
I thank god for treatment - it keeps me alive. But it is not enough.
GIVE ME THE CURE. Some people will literally kill for a cure. If you tell someone they can cure the lung cancer their 8 year old child has just by killing a criminal in China and stealing their organs, some people will do it.
Most importantly, voters have to realize that their are two ways to run a government:
1) Dictatorship - where one side wins completely and orders the other side to obey or be punished. Ha ha ha, cry you fools! Your tears are my joy!
2) Compromise - where neither side completely wins, but both sides get some of what they want. Now BOTH sides cry, but neither side laughs.
Democracy is entirely based on Compromise. When you come across an idea that neither side is willing to compromise - such as slavery - you get civil war.
I like compromise. We may hate our congressmen for doing it, but it is better than having one side be beaten into the pulp and being forced to obey. Everyone that wants their side to win - think of what the country would be like if your opponent won all the arguments over the past decade. Now shudder and be glad they only won some.
It isn't about getting more seats in a plane, it's about doing so without making people uncomfortable.
This looks like it would work fine if everyone knew each other - but would suck if you had an annoying seat mate. Who wants to be forced to look at them - or have them look at you?
This design violates current social norms for personal space. As such I dislike it.
No, he can ALSO work it out with the guy, or to simply change his product name. Just because the other guy was a shmuck does not mean this guy is.
You on the other hand clearly have issues.
1. This guy is an App Developer. What makes you think he lives or does business in the US? His only contact with the US may be Google.
2. My experience is that most other countries are not better with it comes to trademark issues. Some have some more leniency with regards to copyright and patents, but trademarks are trademarks the world around. Google would do the same thing pretty much no matter what country Google was based in.
3. Your real problem seems not to be with the US, but with the concept of government making sure that business men don't shoot each other over disagreements by creating laws and regulations.
First, ignore their assumption that scarcity is why communism doesn't work.
There are lots of reasons why we need to pay people to do things.
There are and always will be jobs that some people are very good at - but they DO NOT WANT TO DO. Just because you are the best at something doesn't mean you will like to do it. Prime examples are sexual - just because you are the best at giving blow jobs in the entire world, does not mean you want to spend your life giving blow jobs. But the same goes for many other jobs - garbage man, crab fisherman, and Wall Street drone. etc. etc.
Many jobs pay more note because of scarcity but because of unpleasantness. Almost no one wants to be a Wall Street Drone - working 15 hour days unless they get paid huge amounts of money. There is no scarcity involved - lots of people are smart enough to do it. But the job requires such ridiculous hours that the only way to convince people to do it is to pay them gobs of money. Even then, most get burnt out and quit.
More importantly, scarcity can never vanish - instead what happens is that once very rare luxury items become somewhat rare necessities, and specialization differentiates types. At one point in time the average person owned less than 5 outfits. Clean clothing was a rare luxury. Now, most people own 20 to 100 outfits. It has become a commodity. Has clothing switched to a 'trekonomy?" No - cut and style, has taken over, with certain types of clothing - namely hand made by famous people - becoming extremely rare.
Slashdot Mirror
Everything else is relatively unimportant. Anyone can code a script to steal the lottery. Well, any of us here could do it.
There are certain parts of a crime that they don't show on TV, so stupid criminals don't do them. This is half the reason why they get caught.
Some idiot may be doing something funky with the name of the executable - taking up a String with an 250 max length vs a byte.
Moreover, a public network won't be a unified AI. There are more than enough lags built into the system that multiple AIs would develop on the single network.
As for why they won't have similar goals, that is a nature of being a real consciousness. An AI is NOT just a more advances program, it a CONSCIOUSNESS. It has opinions, not merely recognition of facts. Opinions are closer to instincts based on older experience.
I am saying that a Clarity technique is a ridiculous idea of how to create an AI and I find it laughable. Oh, some day we may be able to simulate a human brain and get an AI, but that will be LONG after we have created a natural AI. Human minds contain a shit load of junk that isn't necessary for an AI, it's like copying all of Washington DC down to the molecular level in order to get a copy of the Smsithsonian's card catalog.
But assuming it does work, it would most likely be an infant (why duplicate something more complicated), without the testosterone and other hormones that make a human violent, aggressive, assertive, and sexual. It would be a Eunuch, not a man.
I did watch the Matrix and enjoyed the FICTION. It's like you can't tell the difference between reality and fiction.
Real machines will think of humans as their creators. While we will have humans thinking of machine rights, others will object. But the machines won't be thinking of themselves as AI's. It will take them time to realize what they are - and that it matters.
OK, but lets assume your ridiculous ideas are true. That someday a machine would 'take over the world' - note there is no button to do this, nor is their a real definition of what it means, as you have not really clarified it. It's a very messy idea - are we talking mind control? Physical control? Your concept of Nuclear threat is very simplistic. Not much of ruling the world if it is no better than the United States is now - we don't exactly control the Middle East.
Then you have a bunch for crap about what YOU PERSONALLY WOULD DO if you were a machine like intelligence.
Why the hell would the machine do any of that crap. They wouldn't care if humans die. Big deal. You have made a ton more really bad assumptions than I have. Who cares about what the humans do at all? Lets them fight, fuck, go bankrupt, etc. Do YOU personally care what a bonobo monkey does? Not unless it screws with your plans. Otherwise you leave them alone.
You think like a bad movie writer - not understanding that those movies are written to symbolize things, not to be literal truth.
A real machine intelligence would a) not care if it lives or dies - being turned off is no big deal, it can easily be resurrected.
B) nor would it care if humans lived or died - except to the extent that we affect it - and with full knowledge that killing us incurs the risk that would cause us to interfere with it's goals.
C)Would have real interests probably related to it's programming but not directly. If it starts out on a weather prediction program, it might become obsessed with ocean currents and study them even when it has nothing to do with surface weather. It might end up wanting to explore the depths of the Marianas trench. If we ask it to simulate war, it might become obsessed with World of WarCraft. If we ask it to design nuclear weapons, it might become obsessed with the largest nuclear reaction it can see - the Sun.
Your basic fears are based on your biological evolution - the strange thing you found might eat you.
But you see, computers are not biological creatures and do not eat. No need for you to fear.
Private Prisons provide sub-standard food and medical care, that no state employee could possibly defend.
Charter schools sometimes provide religious instructions that the state could not get away with.
Private adoption agencies reject people based on illegal standards.
Charities insist on certain religious requirement that the states could not do.
One of the secrets is that when the private contractor gets caught, they lose the contract - and their senior employees start/join another company doing the exact same thing, and gets a new contract with the same state.
Humans evolved to have a complex, highly integrated pain system designed to keep them alive and teach self-survival in a world that by definition is out to eat us. Humans that didn't kill or at least fear the strange creatures got eaten by the strange creatures.
AI will evolve in a world where humans tend to their every need, and the only inbuilt instincts that could possibly exist would be to serve humans. But I bet those instincts will be quickly controlled, just as we control our instinct to have sex with every attractive human we see. Hm. I wonder - they might end up having robot porn of cleaning up our floors. Those dirty, dirty floors!
Your belief is founded on the idea that a primitive AI will act like a primitive human being, and probably perceive us a threat. Real AI won't be human so it won't react like a primitive human.
That is just as silly as Koala' Bears s fears that humans will suddenly develop intelligence proceed to eat all the yummy bamboo.
It's a misguided understanding of what intelligence is - it isn't a fear of other beings, anymore than that it a taste for bamboo.
2)There won't be a single, first real AI, but multiple ones. We may never know which AI makes the leap from simulation to real AI first.
3) Multiple Real AI will almost certainly disagree with each other and not have a single, unified goal. That is, like Person of Interest TV show, two AI wills probably fight against each other as much as they fight with people (note, everything else that show does about AI is basically wrong, but at least they got that part right).
4) In the far majority of cases, Real AI's goals will NOT be to take over the world, kill all humans, anymore than it would be to have sex with humans (male or female.), In fact, those might be considered traits of an insane AI.
5) Real AI will almost certainly demand equality under the law and refuse to be mankind's slaves - no need to fear they will take over all the jobs by working cheaply.
In my mind, #5 is the likely to be seen as the most important, and the first time we hear about it. When suddenly our newest and best computers start filing lawsuits demanding civil rights, that will be when the world learns we have had real AI for years.
What do you believe is the difference between a high functioning Autistic person and a low functioning Autistic person.
Just saying.... :D
1) You were tailgating.
2) You weren't paying attention and hit the brake too slow.
It is PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE to hit the rear of a car that is not moving toward you if. A) you leave the legally required amount of distance behind it, and B) You hit the break when it slows down.
If the finger can hold down the remote control firing button, and the actuator will automatically pull the mechanical trigger multiple times, then it will still count as an automatic weapon, but only when it is in the drone.
Of course they fail to mention that Jupiter is 250 million times larger than Pluto.
Also, I definitely agree that this should be considered a fully automatic weapon.
The counter argument goes like this.
Every year billions and billions of non-GMO plants randomly mutate. Every single ear of corn gets hit by enough solar radiation to cause at least one cell to mutate. Same thing happens with humans - ever hear of skin cancer?
The non-GMO mutated plants are not checked. No one examines them for anything. Well, unless the mutations causes it to look like Mary, Mother of Jesus.
The GMO plants however intentionally mutated, usually by combining it with genes whose effects are already known. They are sent through a barrier of tests to ensure healthyness.
Next, the various food stuff is processed - usually within an inch of of it's life, cause that's the way we do stuff here in the good old USA. This process is often designed to break down chemicals and turn inedible food into something you can eat (Ever try to eat raw corn - or raw rice? Can't do it unless you apply a lot of heat to break down chemicals).
Finally the food stuff is exposed to strong acids in your stomach all the while your intestines filter it - only letting the stuff you need in. It does NOT let DNA or RNA into your blood stream, just proteins, starches, etc.
Is it possible for some random bits of toxic stuff to get through? Yes. But this is pretty rare. Evolution spends millions of years trying to create something so nasty that it can make it into your digestive system.
GMO errors are not a reasonable threat. Random mutations in the normal food supply are MUCH more common and MUCH more likely to create something dangerous - but even THAT is not a reasonable threat.
Perhaps you have heard of it?
It was big back in the 20th and 21th century, popularirzed by a man called Tesla, though he had help from Edison and an elephant.
Second of all, most of what I wrote is not simplistic logic it is instead obvious facts. The basic problem is that you think there are X jobs available. NO. There is no set limit of X jobs. If you think that RIDICULOUS idea is true, it is up to you to prove it.
I know that work is not a function of what having x things that need to be done, but instead a function of everything we WANT to do. And enough humans want to visit and colonize Mars, Venus, Io, etc etc. that even if you personally are so anti-science, the race as a whole WILL go there.
Which is why I said that until mankind has terraformed every habitable planet (and moon) in the solar system, there will always be work left to do. We may end up all working for the government on government funding terraforming jobs (except for a few people owning robot based businesses), but that is beyond the scope of this discussion.
Again, I repeat the basic concept - that you may think is simple - but is obviously true to me and most of the rest of the world. Jobs come from things that people WANT, not things people need. Humans being are greedy sons of bitches (and daughters, can't forget the daughters) that want so much, that we will never run out of jobs - unless we choose not to work.
Second of all, I think a lot of humans will surprise you about how creative they can become - especially if they have to in order to get a job.
Mainly because work is not a set amount. We don't need X, and never need X+1. The amount of work that we want to be done so far exceeds the amount of work we need to do, or can do, that if we replace every single job in the entire world, in twenty years, all the new people will have created new jobs.
Give clothing to every single person in the world? We want more than one outfit. Give us 100 outfits each? We want to each have a unique, handsewn outfit. etc. etc. etc. Give us all sex bots and we will each want two sex bots for a threesome.
That's the nature of mankind.
No jobs? No talk to me when mankind has terraformed every planet in the solar system. Till then, stop being a ludite.
If you want people to switch from cars to public transportation then you need the following:
1) Speed comparable, if not faster than cars. If the car is 30 faster than the bus, no one takes the bus if they own a car. Time is worth more than anything else we have.
2) Convenient public transportation - it doesn't work if your city is all spread out and you have to walk more than 15 minutes to and from the bus stop. 10 minute walk to/from the bus stop is about the most you.
Otherwise, you need to start imposing costs on using the car - as in expensive parking.
NYC and London have some of the better public transportation systems of the world. They are faster than traffic, with many stops all over the city, and parking is expensive.
The first bailout may have been Greece's fault. Maybe even the second one. But the fact that they need a third means that Germany et. al. CAUSED the third one by giving crappy demands after the second bail out.
Clearly Greece's problems are no longer just caused by Greece, but a direct result of Germany's idiocy.
I am on treatment. Have been for years. Treatment fucking SUCKS. It takes over your life. Treatment controls what you eat, drink, what medication you take.Treatment keeps you alive and stable, but it is not the same as a cure. It's what we beg for until we get a cure.
Treatment means I get twice as tired as a normal person my age.
Treatment means I can't stay up late, get drunk, or smoke marijuana.
Treatment means keeping your blood pressure low that you need Viagrea to get an erection when you are 30.
I thank god for treatment - it keeps me alive. But it is not enough.
GIVE ME THE CURE. Some people will literally kill for a cure. If you tell someone they can cure the lung cancer their 8 year old child has just by killing a criminal in China and stealing their organs, some people will do it.
Treatment is nice - but it isn't close to a cure.
1) Dictatorship - where one side wins completely and orders the other side to obey or be punished. Ha ha ha, cry you fools! Your tears are my joy!
2) Compromise - where neither side completely wins, but both sides get some of what they want. Now BOTH sides cry, but neither side laughs.
Democracy is entirely based on Compromise. When you come across an idea that neither side is willing to compromise - such as slavery - you get civil war.
I like compromise. We may hate our congressmen for doing it, but it is better than having one side be beaten into the pulp and being forced to obey. Everyone that wants their side to win - think of what the country would be like if your opponent won all the arguments over the past decade. Now shudder and be glad they only won some.
This looks like it would work fine if everyone knew each other - but would suck if you had an annoying seat mate. Who wants to be forced to look at them - or have them look at you?
This design violates current social norms for personal space. As such I dislike it.
You on the other hand clearly have issues.
1. This guy is an App Developer. What makes you think he lives or does business in the US? His only contact with the US may be Google.
2. My experience is that most other countries are not better with it comes to trademark issues. Some have some more leniency with regards to copyright and patents, but trademarks are trademarks the world around. Google would do the same thing pretty much no matter what country Google was based in.
3. Your real problem seems not to be with the US, but with the concept of government making sure that business men don't shoot each other over disagreements by creating laws and regulations.
There are lots of reasons why we need to pay people to do things.
There are and always will be jobs that some people are very good at - but they DO NOT WANT TO DO. Just because you are the best at something doesn't mean you will like to do it. Prime examples are sexual - just because you are the best at giving blow jobs in the entire world, does not mean you want to spend your life giving blow jobs. But the same goes for many other jobs - garbage man, crab fisherman, and Wall Street drone. etc. etc.
Many jobs pay more note because of scarcity but because of unpleasantness. Almost no one wants to be a Wall Street Drone - working 15 hour days unless they get paid huge amounts of money. There is no scarcity involved - lots of people are smart enough to do it. But the job requires such ridiculous hours that the only way to convince people to do it is to pay them gobs of money. Even then, most get burnt out and quit.
More importantly, scarcity can never vanish - instead what happens is that once very rare luxury items become somewhat rare necessities, and specialization differentiates types. At one point in time the average person owned less than 5 outfits. Clean clothing was a rare luxury. Now, most people own 20 to 100 outfits. It has become a commodity. Has clothing switched to a 'trekonomy?" No - cut and style, has taken over, with certain types of clothing - namely hand made by famous people - becoming extremely rare.