That's what I was just coming here to say: robots and AI doesn't have to be evil as long as the people controlling the string are.
Even that is not necessary. An AI is a computer program and like any other program will do exactly what you told it to do, even if it is not what you want. For example, suppose you make an AI and tell it to solve a difficult crypto problem. The AI then proceeds to convert all factories to make computers and all farms to solar plants, probably killing off humanity incidentally much like the millions of species we incidentally kill off due to apathy and their being in our way. The AI will not let you pull the plug, because it will realize that it will fail its orders if it allows you to pull its plug.
Another example would be what would happen if you ordered the AI to minimize human death and suffering. Such an order would result in the extermination of mankind, limiting human deaths to 7 billion forever (the death toll would clearly be much higher if more people were born). Conversely, telling it to maximize happiness would probably result in everyone getting electrodes forcefully implanted to directly stimulate their happiness center.
Point being, an AI will NOT follow the implicit restrictions you would expect from a fellow human when asked to do something. You have to explicitly tell it what the limits are, or if you're feeling lucky you could ask it to try to figure it out on its own (and who knows what the result will be). And things get worse if you made a mistake in the code for obedience.
Of course you have to trust a bunch of people, most of whom you don't know. You put your life in their hands every time you use certain items (eg your assumption that your new appliance is not laced with explosives). When it comes to knowledge, you can't verify everything yourself and trust that what you were told isn't wildly inaccurate (eg most of science).
There was no "raid" - what they did was deputize the detective in charge of the records as a U.S. Marshal, and then instruct him to transfer the records in question to other U.S. Marshals.
During the raid they took a hostage?!? I hope he doesn't succumb to Stockholm Syndrome.
I thought that with 10 seconds of hacking, you could do anything whether it be looting government files, shutting down security, or changing all the traffic lights to green. I demand that the makers of those movies refund me for all that time I spent learning!
The one and only way to dismantle the prison is for the voters of the United States to vote only for candidates who promise to dismantle it, and then hold them accountable for doing so. That's it. It's the only way to dismantle the system. Force won't work, protests won't work, only voting will.
Force will work too. If the NSA has to shed too much American blood to keep their surveillance state, voters who wouldn't be arsed to vote on this issue will start to care.
We're a democratic republic. A republic doesn't necessarily mean that the people vote for their leaders. For example, in early US history only white male land owners could vote, and the state governments voted for president (via the electoral college). Even now an American cannot vote for a president, though great effort is made to focus their energy on that election (in this particular election you vote for the electoral college who votes for president, giving your vote two chances to be irrelevant).
Go collect some data. Like the Google cars, for instance. Zero autonomous accidents. Zero. The only accidents they have had is when a human driver is at the controls.
Exactly -- the autonomous cars still have accidents. If their driving were perfect, the babysitter driver wouldn't need to take over. Maybe the human took over because the situation was too challenging for the autopilot, or maybe it was "collision imminent -- transferring control to scapegoat to keep my record clear". Regardless, an autopilot babysitted by professional drivers isn't enough to convince anyone that the car can drive your kids without supervision.
First the dirverless cars need to be ridden by people of the general public who can take over if it is necessary. When driverless cars prove to be trustworthy, then it'll make little difference who the "driver" is. All I know is that taxi drivers are going to go the way of the buggy whip makers.
Now technology allows kids to learn how to search for information, rather than the information itself. Kids these days can do anything at an amateur level, that in years past had to be done by professionals. Not that many kids want to, just saying they can.
If you pay me tons of money, I'd be willing to be given your valuable resources. Nuclear waste has all kinds of useful isotopes, including concentrated fissile material. Many medically important isotopes are produced from nuclear waste. Once we can economically process the waste, it will be a goldmine.
It takes me a fraction of a second, and near zero thought, to save my work when I am pleased with it. All I want from autosave is a separate backup, to prevent automatic data loss (optionally with all the undo information). I don't want it autosaving half-edited files, especially not in code, nor halfway through a copy-paste in anything. When I hit save as, I don't want the file autosaved before also saving it with a different name.
Sure, people get burned when the computer eats their unsaved data. But that only happens once per person. Now I even save rather large posts on the internet, if only in my copy/paste buffer, before posting them since on occasion the website or my internet connection chokes on my data. This would actually be a nice place for a browser input box autosave, since I don't usually want to bother saving these (or rather the "save" process is posting on the internet and is sometimes unreliable).
But it is already expensive enough that it doesn't make a lot of sense to buy if you want to buy one to save money on gas. The price difference is $15350. If we assume $4/gal for gas, then that's 3837.5 gallons. Fiat 500 gas version gets 31mpg city, 40mpg highway. If we average that, then we get 136,231.25 miles before the price difference pays for itself. And that's assuming we paid cash for the car. If you finance it, then add interest on top of that.
Even if you pay cash, you still have to account for interest. You pay a lump sum at the start, and save a bit over a long period, but money now is worth more than money later (even if all you do is put it in a bank to earn interest). Or you might save even more, if you expect the price of gas to increase faster than the rate of inflation.
But really, if they have to make at least X cars, and they're not making one more, why is he telling people not buy them? They're still making the exact same number. If some people listen to him and don't buy them, doesn't that just mean they'll sit on the lot longer and sold for even less?
Would you be more, or less inclined to buy something if you were told it cost a lot more to make than the sales price?
.. what will the Bahama government/people do - will they sue the US for the presumable crime of breaking into their phone system?
They could threaten to take away our rich people's money, or to help our rich people hide their money in offshore accounts so they don't have to pay taxes, or something along those lines.
I suspect that the cops don't need to get involved at all. All it would take is for a few conscientious objectors to this organization, signing up and getting themselves caught. As I understand it, the objective would be to get caught by the civil enforcement, not the police. So the people in charge of the transit system could, for example, offer to refund the $15 membership fee to anyone who they catch, and a horde of people will gladly donate money from Planka.ru to the transit system.
It's just decorative DRM; anyone who wants to can just loot the decrypted video at any point between the graphics card and your eyes. They can't lock down a picture and show it to you simultaneously, so this is just to prevent your average joe from copying the video onto their computer to watch later or whatever.
Just remember that as ammo ages it can fail to fire, or delayed fire of sufficient time to allow you to curiously peek into the barrel to see what's wrong. Point being you'll need to eventually restock your ammo, depending on the level of reliability you require.
True. People have no responsibility for their actions. I should be able to steal peoples shit and use guns to commit violent crimes, because it's all someone elses fault. The government should be giving this guy tax-payer funded heroin!
So take responsibility for your actions. If you support the war on drugs, this death is (partly) your fault, as are the thousands of other deaths caused by the illegality of drugs and the efforts to enforce said illegality. Prohibition increases the prices of drugs, while ensuring that the proceeds go only to criminals, which encourages criminal behavior. Sure, you could argue that the people who act upon those monetary incentives are solely responsible, but then you'd also be arguing that if I place a bounty on your head and someone killed you for the bounty, then I would be blameless since the fault is solely the murderer's. So, do you accept your responsibility for this death?
(I acknowledge that by supporting legalization, I am partly responsibly for the difference in deaths and harm caused, which is incidentally why I support legalization)
Many geese are saying that something ought to be done about this invasive species, but the goose on the street doesn't see a problem.
These geese don't know the half of it. The invasive species in question, thought to have originated in Africa and gone everywhere humans go, eating at their campsites and riding on their ships, is now causing the fastest mass extinction in history. You may have heard about mass extinctions causing a ~90% extinction rate -- well this one species is causing extinctions at a faster rate than any of those, and if it continues it will be the largest mass extinction in history. Worse yet, it is illegal in every country to hunt them, and if they make their home on a piece of land you're not allowed to use that land until they leave, and even then only with significant paperwork. They're not even endangered; they number over 7 billion, and are even thought to be impacting the global climate in a negative way, yet most nations have programs to provide them with food and assist their young and protect their habitat from any danger.
In the US, there is a large government program which keeps some of these in captivity, providing them food, water, and shelter -- over 2 million individuals at a staggering price of ~$30,000 each. This program has been widely criticized because, despite the large price tag, released individuals interact poorly with others of their kind and about half of them have to be returned to captivity. In recent years, funding for this program has been increased dramatically by this one initiative.
Though some are concerned about their increasing population numbers, there is a huge public outcry whenever anyone suggests a program to reduce their numbers directly or by discouraging breeding. Some people have suggested at least relocating a few groups where they can't harm other species, but so far these programs have little support and cannot be implemented. I strongly urge you to write to your representatives and demand something be done!
Just to clarify, I think the war on drugs is stupid and the guy should never have had monetary incentives to steal painkillers. I think it's sad that our police state initiative for funding criminals caused yet another death.
When somebody has been in prison more than once, they often develop the mental state of "I can NOT go to jail again" and will fight tooth and nail to avoid it, even when they KNOW they deserve it.
Saves the taxpayers a bunch of money in courts and jail time (less any psychological counseling the cop may require). Also promotes the fact that some people consider jail more cruel and unusual than a death sentence.
promise to revolutionize the fields of transportation, aerospace, and microelectronics.
Maybe the headline should wait until they do revolutionize the fields of transportation, aerospace, and microelectronics? Such a small proportion of discoveries that promise to revolutionize a field are ever heard from again.
I want a fuel cell that runs on a hydrocarbon or carbohydrate, not crazy dangerous/annoying hydrogen. And yes, we can generate hydrocarbons from electricity (only currently have no need to).
Slashdot Mirror
That's what I was just coming here to say: robots and AI doesn't have to be evil as long as the people controlling the string are.
Even that is not necessary. An AI is a computer program and like any other program will do exactly what you told it to do, even if it is not what you want. For example, suppose you make an AI and tell it to solve a difficult crypto problem. The AI then proceeds to convert all factories to make computers and all farms to solar plants, probably killing off humanity incidentally much like the millions of species we incidentally kill off due to apathy and their being in our way. The AI will not let you pull the plug, because it will realize that it will fail its orders if it allows you to pull its plug.
Another example would be what would happen if you ordered the AI to minimize human death and suffering. Such an order would result in the extermination of mankind, limiting human deaths to 7 billion forever (the death toll would clearly be much higher if more people were born). Conversely, telling it to maximize happiness would probably result in everyone getting electrodes forcefully implanted to directly stimulate their happiness center.
Point being, an AI will NOT follow the implicit restrictions you would expect from a fellow human when asked to do something. You have to explicitly tell it what the limits are, or if you're feeling lucky you could ask it to try to figure it out on its own (and who knows what the result will be). And things get worse if you made a mistake in the code for obedience.
Of course you have to trust a bunch of people, most of whom you don't know. You put your life in their hands every time you use certain items (eg your assumption that your new appliance is not laced with explosives). When it comes to knowledge, you can't verify everything yourself and trust that what you were told isn't wildly inaccurate (eg most of science).
There was no "raid" - what they did was deputize the detective in charge of the records as a U.S. Marshal, and then instruct him to transfer the records in question to other U.S. Marshals.
During the raid they took a hostage?!? I hope he doesn't succumb to Stockholm Syndrome.
Who needs the most used button anyways?
I thought that with 10 seconds of hacking, you could do anything whether it be looting government files, shutting down security, or changing all the traffic lights to green. I demand that the makers of those movies refund me for all that time I spent learning!
The one and only way to dismantle the prison is for the voters of the United States to vote only for candidates who promise to dismantle it, and then hold them accountable for doing so. That's it. It's the only way to dismantle the system. Force won't work, protests won't work, only voting will.
Force will work too. If the NSA has to shed too much American blood to keep their surveillance state, voters who wouldn't be arsed to vote on this issue will start to care.
We're a democratic republic. A republic doesn't necessarily mean that the people vote for their leaders. For example, in early US history only white male land owners could vote, and the state governments voted for president (via the electoral college). Even now an American cannot vote for a president, though great effort is made to focus their energy on that election (in this particular election you vote for the electoral college who votes for president, giving your vote two chances to be irrelevant).
Go collect some data. Like the Google cars, for instance. Zero autonomous accidents. Zero. The only accidents they have had is when a human driver is at the controls.
Exactly -- the autonomous cars still have accidents. If their driving were perfect, the babysitter driver wouldn't need to take over. Maybe the human took over because the situation was too challenging for the autopilot, or maybe it was "collision imminent -- transferring control to scapegoat to keep my record clear". Regardless, an autopilot babysitted by professional drivers isn't enough to convince anyone that the car can drive your kids without supervision.
First the dirverless cars need to be ridden by people of the general public who can take over if it is necessary. When driverless cars prove to be trustworthy, then it'll make little difference who the "driver" is. All I know is that taxi drivers are going to go the way of the buggy whip makers.
Now technology allows kids to learn how to search for information, rather than the information itself. Kids these days can do anything at an amateur level, that in years past had to be done by professionals. Not that many kids want to, just saying they can.
If you pay me tons of money, I'd be willing to be given your valuable resources. Nuclear waste has all kinds of useful isotopes, including concentrated fissile material. Many medically important isotopes are produced from nuclear waste. Once we can economically process the waste, it will be a goldmine.
It takes me a fraction of a second, and near zero thought, to save my work when I am pleased with it. All I want from autosave is a separate backup, to prevent automatic data loss (optionally with all the undo information). I don't want it autosaving half-edited files, especially not in code, nor halfway through a copy-paste in anything. When I hit save as, I don't want the file autosaved before also saving it with a different name.
Sure, people get burned when the computer eats their unsaved data. But that only happens once per person. Now I even save rather large posts on the internet, if only in my copy/paste buffer, before posting them since on occasion the website or my internet connection chokes on my data. This would actually be a nice place for a browser input box autosave, since I don't usually want to bother saving these (or rather the "save" process is posting on the internet and is sometimes unreliable).
But it is already expensive enough that it doesn't make a lot of sense to buy if you want to buy one to save money on gas. The price difference is $15350. If we assume $4/gal for gas, then that's 3837.5 gallons. Fiat 500 gas version gets 31mpg city, 40mpg highway. If we average that, then we get 136,231.25 miles before the price difference pays for itself. And that's assuming we paid cash for the car. If you finance it, then add interest on top of that.
Even if you pay cash, you still have to account for interest. You pay a lump sum at the start, and save a bit over a long period, but money now is worth more than money later (even if all you do is put it in a bank to earn interest). Or you might save even more, if you expect the price of gas to increase faster than the rate of inflation.
But really, if they have to make at least X cars, and they're not making one more, why is he telling people not buy them? They're still making the exact same number. If some people listen to him and don't buy them, doesn't that just mean they'll sit on the lot longer and sold for even less?
Would you be more, or less inclined to buy something if you were told it cost a lot more to make than the sales price?
.. what will the Bahama government/people do - will they sue the US for the presumable crime of breaking into their phone system?
They could threaten to take away our rich people's money, or to help our rich people hide their money in offshore accounts so they don't have to pay taxes, or something along those lines.
I suspect that the cops don't need to get involved at all. All it would take is for a few conscientious objectors to this organization, signing up and getting themselves caught. As I understand it, the objective would be to get caught by the civil enforcement, not the police. So the people in charge of the transit system could, for example, offer to refund the $15 membership fee to anyone who they catch, and a horde of people will gladly donate money from Planka.ru to the transit system.
It's just decorative DRM; anyone who wants to can just loot the decrypted video at any point between the graphics card and your eyes. They can't lock down a picture and show it to you simultaneously, so this is just to prevent your average joe from copying the video onto their computer to watch later or whatever.
Just remember that as ammo ages it can fail to fire, or delayed fire of sufficient time to allow you to curiously peek into the barrel to see what's wrong. Point being you'll need to eventually restock your ammo, depending on the level of reliability you require.
True. People have no responsibility for their actions. I should be able to steal peoples shit and use guns to commit violent crimes, because it's all someone elses fault. The government should be giving this guy tax-payer funded heroin!
So take responsibility for your actions. If you support the war on drugs, this death is (partly) your fault, as are the thousands of other deaths caused by the illegality of drugs and the efforts to enforce said illegality. Prohibition increases the prices of drugs, while ensuring that the proceeds go only to criminals, which encourages criminal behavior. Sure, you could argue that the people who act upon those monetary incentives are solely responsible, but then you'd also be arguing that if I place a bounty on your head and someone killed you for the bounty, then I would be blameless since the fault is solely the murderer's. So, do you accept your responsibility for this death?
(I acknowledge that by supporting legalization, I am partly responsibly for the difference in deaths and harm caused, which is incidentally why I support legalization)
If the robots have morals and ethics, there will be less opposition to them and the commanders are not responsible for the robot's actions.
Many geese are saying that something ought to be done about this invasive species, but the goose on the street doesn't see a problem.
These geese don't know the half of it. The invasive species in question, thought to have originated in Africa and gone everywhere humans go, eating at their campsites and riding on their ships, is now causing the fastest mass extinction in history. You may have heard about mass extinctions causing a ~90% extinction rate -- well this one species is causing extinctions at a faster rate than any of those, and if it continues it will be the largest mass extinction in history. Worse yet, it is illegal in every country to hunt them, and if they make their home on a piece of land you're not allowed to use that land until they leave, and even then only with significant paperwork. They're not even endangered; they number over 7 billion, and are even thought to be impacting the global climate in a negative way, yet most nations have programs to provide them with food and assist their young and protect their habitat from any danger.
In the US, there is a large government program which keeps some of these in captivity, providing them food, water, and shelter -- over 2 million individuals at a staggering price of ~$30,000 each. This program has been widely criticized because, despite the large price tag, released individuals interact poorly with others of their kind and about half of them have to be returned to captivity. In recent years, funding for this program has been increased dramatically by this one initiative.
Though some are concerned about their increasing population numbers, there is a huge public outcry whenever anyone suggests a program to reduce their numbers directly or by discouraging breeding. Some people have suggested at least relocating a few groups where they can't harm other species, but so far these programs have little support and cannot be implemented. I strongly urge you to write to your representatives and demand something be done!
Just to clarify, I think the war on drugs is stupid and the guy should never have had monetary incentives to steal painkillers. I think it's sad that our police state initiative for funding criminals caused yet another death.
When somebody has been in prison more than once, they often develop the mental state of "I can NOT go to jail again" and will fight tooth and nail to avoid it, even when they KNOW they deserve it.
Saves the taxpayers a bunch of money in courts and jail time (less any psychological counseling the cop may require). Also promotes the fact that some people consider jail more cruel and unusual than a death sentence.
promise to revolutionize the fields of transportation, aerospace, and microelectronics.
Maybe the headline should wait until they do revolutionize the fields of transportation, aerospace, and microelectronics? Such a small proportion of discoveries that promise to revolutionize a field are ever heard from again.
Maybe GF = Geek Friend?
I want a fuel cell that runs on a hydrocarbon or carbohydrate, not crazy dangerous/annoying hydrogen. And yes, we can generate hydrocarbons from electricity (only currently have no need to).