Chinese as well. No question they built a worthy civilization. Got there first, too.
IIRC, we had Chinese, Greek, Roman, Arab all before anything else really got started. The Romans were European, so you can point to that, but the rest of Europe, not so much as early starters.
But at this point, everyone who wants to play is either playing or trying to play (often with greedy and violent idiots doing their very best to hold them down.)
Whatever truth there is to "these (insert people) were first", it's all irrelevant now other than as historical data. It's over and done with. We are where we are -- and I have to say, thinking about every "advanced" variation on civilization on the planet I know of, we have a hell of a lot further to go, so bragging seems like a very stupid thing to do, frankly.
This comes down to personal liberty, or it should, if our legal system wasn't completely polluted by idiots.
He had to go to Belize to get this done. He couldn't just say "This is what I want, let's do this." What a travesty.
Sometimes I don't know why we let congress and its designated rule-spewers make rules at all. They amount to the very worst kind of helicopter parents -- and they're not even legitimately in the role.
Mod parent up. It is correct. Some i5's do have 2 cores. The original AC post near the top is also correct, which I notice the mods have knocked to -1 in the usual frenzy of "I disagree, although I am uninformed about the matter."
For a couple decades, "core" meant CPU. 4004, 1802, 8080, 6800, 6809, Z80, 68000... etc.
Then it meant CPU+MMU.
What's funny is that "core" now seems to mean CPU+MMU+FPU (which is great... I love me an FPU per core.) But some (often aimed at mobile or tablets or phones) also have GPUs.
So how long before we won't accept "core" except as a label for CPU+MMU+FPU+GPU?
Then it might be "Nah, that thing has no NPU (neural processing unit), that's not a "real core": CPU+MMU+FPU+GPU+NPU
Then perhaps it'll be "Nah, that thing has no QPU (quantum processing unit)", that's not a "real core": CPU+MMU+ FPU+GPU+NPU+QPU
Then... well, I have no idea. But I do think it'll be something. It's always something.:)
All true, but still not the same as "they have no competition" and "they don't need to care." If they care, they preserve and protect their business model, because it is a better business model. A better business model is also a stronger argument for the hedge fund manager or stockbroker.
What we're looking at here is simple incompetence with its basis in the trope "good enough, ship it."
That is equivalent to the following, just as you were told:
...and it is insurance will be cheaper
The correct usage for that sentence is:
...and its insurance will be cheaper
"its" is possessive. "it's" means "it is."
The mistake is usually made (and I make it as well, though I certainly know better) because in English, the general rule is that the apostrophe followed by "s" indicates possessive; but English is also riddled with exceptions. The "it's" / "its" issue is one of those exceptions. This particular one comes about because English also uses the apostrophe to create single words out of several:
o you will = you'll o I have = I've o she is = she's o it is = it's
The last one simply takes priority over the usage where the apostrophe indicates possession. Instead, it indicates the compounding of the two words. So while it is an exception to the possessive usage, it is fully in line with the compounding usage.
The "AI" we're talking about presently and in the near future is mostly "A" and almost no "I" at all.
The kind of thing marketroids and the naive are calling AI today, including the tech that's beginning to show up in vehicles, is so one-dimensional in its "intelligence" as to be on about the same level as a toaster that "knows" not to burn my toast, or a chess playing program that can kick my ass at chess. The toaster "AI" couldn't control a robot vacuum cleaner, and the chess "AI" can't even play checkers, much less deal with anything further out of it's 1D "I" zone of competence, including not burn my toast.
In order for a vehicle to be able to "know where it is" and "know what to do about it", it will have to be more than one dimensional; it will have to be able to read signs, it will have to know destinations as things other than map references and paths other than mapped roads (parking lots, unmarked roads, etc.), it will have to make decisions based on extremely vague inputs and be able to do things such as ask for, and locate sources for, directions and understand them in pretty much whatever form they are provided. It will have to deal with the various situations that come up when the maps don't match the roads, too. Judging by my GPS, that's a lot more common than one might otherwise assume. It changes over time in random, unpredictable ways, too.
A general intelligence system designed for service (by which I mean to imply not conscious... otherwise we're talking about slavery, and we should know better than that by now) is not that close as yet. Frankly -- and I'm speaking with my AI researcher hat on now -- I think we'll get to a conscious general purpose intelligence well before we get to an unconscious one. We have a great deal of experience with imparting information to consciousnesses and we have considerable information available to us about what comprises one in our study of the human brain, whereas we have almost none about building a general purpose non-conscious intelligence, other than stacking multiple one-dimensional intelligences one upon another, which approach is approximately equivalent to solving the problem of multiplying by a million by adding one to an initial value of zero a million times. In other words, it'll eventually get the answer, but it's not in any way efficient.
As far as AI goes, all we really have right now is AI research, and various (not insignificant) benefits from the various tech insights and advances that fall out of that process. We don't have AI at all, at least not in the sense that is even slightly worthy of the term. The way AI is being used today, you'd want to be very careful telling your kid they were "intelligent", because they're likely to take away the idea that you think you just told them they're about as bright as the toaster. Not to mention the fact that when an actual AI is finally brought to light, we're not going to have anything useful left to call it. At that point, "AI" would be an insult. Not a great way to start a conversation with a new entity, IMHO.
The whole "it's AI!" meme reminds me strongly of the whole "3D TV" debacle. Again, marketroids and the ignorant built and propagated that appellation as a supposedly appropriate designation for fixed-viewpoint stereo vision, where fixed-viewpoint stereo vision is constrained, even by a relatively coarse and generous measure using whole-number degrees, to about 2 and 1/64800D or 2.000015432...D, whichever notation you prefer, leaving the viewer with something that in very few ways indeed resembles an actual 3D perception. When trying to describe actual 3D imaging, one is left with no accurate terminology. Unlike AI, we even actually have some low-performance versions of real 3D imaging now, so the linguistic problem is already on the roost, so to speak.
Sure, language evolves, that's a legitimate and real thing, but language also devolves, and that's what we're seeing in both these cases. I'm going with it, but I'm going kicking and screaming about the word-crap the marketroids are leaving on my lawn. Goddamn kids and their unleashed word-mutts. Where'd I leave my shotgun, anyway?
I disagree. I disagree by virtue of spending very little time posting on Twitter and almost no time at all reading other Tweets. Instead, I share my between places where images can be posted in line and without censorship, comments can be longer than 140 characters, and actual intelligent conversations and interactions can be had. Twitter offers me almost nothing; and in the process, what they do offer, the offer badly. It's not compelling. Consequently they don't have me as any kind of enthusiastic customer. They don't get my eye-time and they don't get my content.
For keeping in touch with actual people of worth, I have yet to find anything better than slack. Inline media, good interaction, the same (except WAY better) ability to post status, images, animations, whatever media you like, additional ability to keep track of anything you care to code up, custom rooms, custom bots, post editing, apps for everything from the web to android and iOS... I keep slack open on my computer all the time. The app keeps me up to date when I'm roaming. Twitter is, indeed, no competition at all for slack.:)
But then again... I really don't give a flying fig what the Kardassians are doing today, so there's that...
Twitter should care because its customers will spend more time tweeting and enjoying the service, which is what Twitter monetizes. Pretty straight up. Same reason your car doors lock and your front end crumples instead of landing directly in your lap when you have an accident (also a "client problem.") Safety is a significant consumer motivator. Smart design sees to it that best practices are followed.
When you learn that car X has a crumple zone and locks, but car Y is an accordion waiting to happen and has no locks, but they cost you the same (even if that is nothing, as with Twitter), which car will you prefer to use every day?
I do. Once we can build industry and mine resources from the various rocks out there in near-zero gravity, there are two significant follow-ons: the first is less mining and considerably less environmental disruption here; the second is far greater availability of, as well as less costly, raw materials, with free delivery down here as, and if, needed. Power for all this will become free, as all the materials for solar panels are there for the taking, and robotics can do the work on a continuous unpaid basis. It's getting to orbit and away into interplanetary space that's the problem, but you asked about what comes after, so there you go.
he only place they're useful at all is on something like twitter where space is limited
...and that is (one of) the reason(s) why Twitter is pretty sorry. It could have easily been designed so that links were stored separate from the message, which would be a lot safer for its users. Lame design.
Yes, there was quite a bit of invalid hand waving in there. From assuming that problems ("conditions") like ISIS are impossible to remedy (right in the same paragraph with atomic weapons, which made me laugh) to the idea that we are unable to predict negative outcomes because "complexity" and that "no one knows what a killer robot will be." Well, pardon me for being so bold, but I think we can safely say it'll be a robot that kills, and not to put too fine a point on it, but kills people, no? Well of course. And such a tool in the hands of various parties will present a range of fairly easy to predict results, all of which will be very unpleasant for the people being killed, not to mention their relatives, etc. At the 3rd level, to use his terminology, that will be a fucking mess. And, Mr. Anderson, it is inevitable, in fact, it's here now -- what does he think those drones can do? How high a level of autonomy does he want before he reaches "oh shit"? Does the idea that some crazy ass human actually is the one that pulls the trigger today after the drone finds some body-temperature thing on the ground make him feel secure? It doesn't me, I can tell you that. I think there are paths where it might be better if the robot decided than some of the people I've met, frankly, but it all depends on the programming, no question about it.
It's really a pretty weak essay. Not without some nuggets of truth for certain, but it does seem to be without any particular notable worth in terms of originality.
We'd be better off to read a range of good apocalyptic / post-scarcity positivist SF. Some considerably deeper thinking can be found there.
As for technology itself, the ability to put several different kinds of labs in anyone's basement, and the essentially universal free availability of the education you need to take advantage of same if you simply choose to do so and have the intellectual resources to grasp the material does put modern tech into an entirely new mode, speed and social penetration not comparable at all to railroads and automobiles.
Going back to SF authors. They have positively trampled this ground with very interesting speculations, sometimes almost incidentally to the story at hand. You name it: killer robots, overpopulation, theocracies, oligarchies, various forms of militarily structured societies, AI, no AI, space flight, no space flight, interstellar flight, no interstellar flight, future networking experiences, fusion, no fusion, solar satellites, nikes everywhere, nukes nowhere, WWIII, multiple universes, global warming, no climate change, global cooling, helper robots, robots that take over the military, aliens, no aliens, starvation, global plenty, societies fully at leisure and various consequences thereof, intelligent pets, genetic mods (I remember a genetically crafted fire-breathing dragon implanted in someone's shoulder... S. R. Delany?... always wanted one of those. Tattoos, hell. I want the dragon!
Anyway. We're slipping along on the technological ice, and we'll keep doing that, only more so, and faster, and there will be no effective coping mechanism. Read some SF. It's plenty thought-provoking. But it won't help. There's my essay.:)
You're clearly trying to spin this to match your narrative. Well, I'm here to tell you it's a spindly argument; you can't just serve stuff like that up on a platter, step by step, and expect everyone to nod their heads. Are you tracking me solidly now? Or are you still in a state?
Here's the problem with this idea: it assumes that the ten meters in front of the drone won't change. That's not how the real world works. For instance, someone could stand up five meters in front of a low-flying drone using this methodology and get a drone in the face.
It is very reasonable to assign an overriding quality metric to a collision avoidance methodology by how fast it can react. That is one of the factors that should determine the maximum usable velocity of the drone. This method is very poor quality in just that way; so it's hardly a justification for a drone to travel at higher speeds.
Actually, we should just move them all into padded rooms with speakers that repeat over and over "you're safe in here, please relax, everyone loves you and the world is bright, fluffy place. Be sure to report any offensive colors or angles to the volunteer asylum worker who serves you your conflict-free food."
I apologize for saying "national dateline" when clearly I should have said "international dateline." I am sorry for any consternation caused to nationalists, internationalists, jingoists, and timekeepers. In addition, I apologize to anyone I failed to mention. I will now enter into a voluntary two-week exclusion from mentioning time in any form. I also apologize for violating that two week exclusion with the previous sentence. Also, as "previous" is a timewise reference, I also apologize for that. I'm sorry. Truly sorry. Which is not to offend those of you who are more sorry about other things. I fully respect that, I swear. Not in an offensive way, of course.
Slashdot Mirror
Chinese as well. No question they built a worthy civilization. Got there first, too.
IIRC, we had Chinese, Greek, Roman, Arab all before anything else really got started. The Romans were European, so you can point to that, but the rest of Europe, not so much as early starters.
But at this point, everyone who wants to play is either playing or trying to play (often with greedy and violent idiots doing their very best to hold them down.)
Whatever truth there is to "these (insert people) were first", it's all irrelevant now other than as historical data. It's over and done with. We are where we are -- and I have to say, thinking about every "advanced" variation on civilization on the planet I know of, we have a hell of a lot further to go, so bragging seems like a very stupid thing to do, frankly.
That man is a hero. The FDA is the villian.
This comes down to personal liberty, or it should, if our legal system wasn't completely polluted by idiots.
He had to go to Belize to get this done. He couldn't just say "This is what I want, let's do this." What a travesty.
Sometimes I don't know why we let congress and its designated rule-spewers make rules at all. They amount to the very worst kind of helicopter parents -- and they're not even legitimately in the role.
Mod parent up. It is correct. Some i5's do have 2 cores. The original AC post near the top is also correct, which I notice the mods have knocked to -1 in the usual frenzy of "I disagree, although I am uninformed about the matter."
For a couple decades, "core" meant CPU. 4004, 1802, 8080, 6800, 6809, Z80, 68000... etc.
Then it meant CPU+MMU.
What's funny is that "core" now seems to mean CPU+MMU+FPU (which is great... I love me an FPU per core.) But some (often aimed at mobile or tablets or phones) also have GPUs.
So how long before we won't accept "core" except as a label for CPU+MMU+FPU+GPU?
Then it might be "Nah, that thing has no NPU (neural processing unit), that's not a "real core": CPU+MMU+FPU+GPU+NPU
Then perhaps it'll be "Nah, that thing has no QPU (quantum processing unit)", that's not a "real core": CPU+MMU+ FPU+GPU+NPU+QPU
Then... well, I have no idea. But I do think it'll be something. It's always something. :)
The false assumption you're making is that everyone knows what a pronoun is. :)
All true, but still not the same as "they have no competition" and "they don't need to care." If they care, they preserve and protect their business model, because it is a better business model. A better business model is also a stronger argument for the hedge fund manager or stockbroker.
What we're looking at here is simple incompetence with its basis in the trope "good enough, ship it."
No, it wasn't:
That is equivalent to the following, just as you were told:
The correct usage for that sentence is:
"its" is possessive. "it's" means "it is."
The mistake is usually made (and I make it as well, though I certainly know better) because in English, the general rule is that the apostrophe followed by "s" indicates possessive; but English is also riddled with exceptions. The "it's" / "its" issue is one of those exceptions. This particular one comes about because English also uses the apostrophe to create single words out of several:
o you will = you'll
o I have = I've
o she is = she's
o it is = it's
The last one simply takes priority over the usage where the apostrophe indicates possession. Instead, it indicates the compounding of the two words. So while it is an exception to the possessive usage, it is fully in line with the compounding usage.
We now return you to non-pedantic mode. :)
The "AI" we're talking about presently and in the near future is mostly "A" and almost no "I" at all.
The kind of thing marketroids and the naive are calling AI today, including the tech that's beginning to show up in vehicles, is so one-dimensional in its "intelligence" as to be on about the same level as a toaster that "knows" not to burn my toast, or a chess playing program that can kick my ass at chess. The toaster "AI" couldn't control a robot vacuum cleaner, and the chess "AI" can't even play checkers, much less deal with anything further out of it's 1D "I" zone of competence, including not burn my toast.
In order for a vehicle to be able to "know where it is" and "know what to do about it", it will have to be more than one dimensional; it will have to be able to read signs, it will have to know destinations as things other than map references and paths other than mapped roads (parking lots, unmarked roads, etc.), it will have to make decisions based on extremely vague inputs and be able to do things such as ask for, and locate sources for, directions and understand them in pretty much whatever form they are provided. It will have to deal with the various situations that come up when the maps don't match the roads, too. Judging by my GPS, that's a lot more common than one might otherwise assume. It changes over time in random, unpredictable ways, too.
A general intelligence system designed for service (by which I mean to imply not conscious... otherwise we're talking about slavery, and we should know better than that by now) is not that close as yet. Frankly -- and I'm speaking with my AI researcher hat on now -- I think we'll get to a conscious general purpose intelligence well before we get to an unconscious one. We have a great deal of experience with imparting information to consciousnesses and we have considerable information available to us about what comprises one in our study of the human brain, whereas we have almost none about building a general purpose non-conscious intelligence, other than stacking multiple one-dimensional intelligences one upon another, which approach is approximately equivalent to solving the problem of multiplying by a million by adding one to an initial value of zero a million times. In other words, it'll eventually get the answer, but it's not in any way efficient.
As far as AI goes, all we really have right now is AI research, and various (not insignificant) benefits from the various tech insights and advances that fall out of that process. We don't have AI at all, at least not in the sense that is even slightly worthy of the term. The way AI is being used today, you'd want to be very careful telling your kid they were "intelligent", because they're likely to take away the idea that you think you just told them they're about as bright as the toaster. Not to mention the fact that when an actual AI is finally brought to light, we're not going to have anything useful left to call it. At that point, "AI" would be an insult. Not a great way to start a conversation with a new entity, IMHO.
The whole "it's AI!" meme reminds me strongly of the whole "3D TV" debacle. Again, marketroids and the ignorant built and propagated that appellation as a supposedly appropriate designation for fixed-viewpoint stereo vision, where fixed-viewpoint stereo vision is constrained, even by a relatively coarse and generous measure using whole-number degrees, to about 2 and 1/64800D or 2.000015432...D, whichever notation you prefer, leaving the viewer with something that in very few ways indeed resembles an actual 3D perception. When trying to describe actual 3D imaging, one is left with no accurate terminology. Unlike AI, we even actually have some low-performance versions of real 3D imaging now, so the linguistic problem is already on the roost, so to speak.
Sure, language evolves, that's a legitimate and real thing, but language also devolves, and that's what we're seeing in both these cases. I'm going with it, but I'm going kicking and screaming about the word-crap the marketroids are leaving on my lawn. Goddamn kids and their unleashed word-mutts. Where'd I leave my shotgun, anyway?
I disagree. I disagree by virtue of spending very little time posting on Twitter and almost no time at all reading other Tweets. Instead, I share my between places where images can be posted in line and without censorship, comments can be longer than 140 characters, and actual intelligent conversations and interactions can be had. Twitter offers me almost nothing; and in the process, what they do offer, the offer badly. It's not compelling. Consequently they don't have me as any kind of enthusiastic customer. They don't get my eye-time and they don't get my content.
For keeping in touch with actual people of worth, I have yet to find anything better than slack. Inline media, good interaction, the same (except WAY better) ability to post status, images, animations, whatever media you like, additional ability to keep track of anything you care to code up, custom rooms, custom bots, post editing, apps for everything from the web to android and iOS... I keep slack open on my computer all the time. The app keeps me up to date when I'm roaming. Twitter is, indeed, no competition at all for slack. :)
But then again... I really don't give a flying fig what the Kardassians are doing today, so there's that...
Twitter should care because its customers will spend more time tweeting and enjoying the service, which is what Twitter monetizes. Pretty straight up. Same reason your car doors lock and your front end crumples instead of landing directly in your lap when you have an accident (also a "client problem.") Safety is a significant consumer motivator. Smart design sees to it that best practices are followed.
When you learn that car X has a crumple zone and locks, but car Y is an accordion waiting to happen and has no locks, but they cost you the same (even if that is nothing, as with Twitter), which car will you prefer to use every day?
I do. Once we can build industry and mine resources from the various rocks out there in near-zero gravity, there are two significant follow-ons: the first is less mining and considerably less environmental disruption here; the second is far greater availability of, as well as less costly, raw materials, with free delivery down here as, and if, needed. Power for all this will become free, as all the materials for solar panels are there for the taking, and robotics can do the work on a continuous unpaid basis. It's getting to orbit and away into interplanetary space that's the problem, but you asked about what comes after, so there you go.
You're a necrophiliac then? Okay.
What do an alcoholic and a necrophiliac have in common?
Tunnels, brother, tunnels. Or sister. Don't you think about tunnels? About every few seconds or so? If course it's about railroads...
And here we are, kindly trying to extract the hook from his soft palette...
Yes, there was quite a bit of invalid hand waving in there. From assuming that problems ("conditions") like ISIS are impossible to remedy (right in the same paragraph with atomic weapons, which made me laugh) to the idea that we are unable to predict negative outcomes because "complexity" and that "no one knows what a killer robot will be." Well, pardon me for being so bold, but I think we can safely say it'll be a robot that kills, and not to put too fine a point on it, but kills people, no? Well of course. And such a tool in the hands of various parties will present a range of fairly easy to predict results, all of which will be very unpleasant for the people being killed, not to mention their relatives, etc. At the 3rd level, to use his terminology, that will be a fucking mess. And, Mr. Anderson, it is inevitable, in fact, it's here now -- what does he think those drones can do? How high a level of autonomy does he want before he reaches "oh shit"? Does the idea that some crazy ass human actually is the one that pulls the trigger today after the drone finds some body-temperature thing on the ground make him feel secure? It doesn't me, I can tell you that. I think there are paths where it might be better if the robot decided than some of the people I've met, frankly, but it all depends on the programming, no question about it.
It's really a pretty weak essay. Not without some nuggets of truth for certain, but it does seem to be without any particular notable worth in terms of originality.
We'd be better off to read a range of good apocalyptic / post-scarcity positivist SF. Some considerably deeper thinking can be found there.
As for technology itself, the ability to put several different kinds of labs in anyone's basement, and the essentially universal free availability of the education you need to take advantage of same if you simply choose to do so and have the intellectual resources to grasp the material does put modern tech into an entirely new mode, speed and social penetration not comparable at all to railroads and automobiles.
Going back to SF authors. They have positively trampled this ground with very interesting speculations, sometimes almost incidentally to the story at hand. You name it: killer robots, overpopulation, theocracies, oligarchies, various forms of militarily structured societies, AI, no AI, space flight, no space flight, interstellar flight, no interstellar flight, future networking experiences, fusion, no fusion, solar satellites, nikes everywhere, nukes nowhere, WWIII, multiple universes, global warming, no climate change, global cooling, helper robots, robots that take over the military, aliens, no aliens, starvation, global plenty, societies fully at leisure and various consequences thereof, intelligent pets, genetic mods (I remember a genetically crafted fire-breathing dragon implanted in someone's shoulder... S. R. Delany?... always wanted one of those. Tattoos, hell. I want the dragon!
Anyway. We're slipping along on the technological ice, and we'll keep doing that, only more so, and faster, and there will be no effective coping mechanism. Read some SF. It's plenty thought-provoking. But it won't help. There's my essay. :)
You probably want to stop trying to screw that can of shellac, then.
Aren't you overdue for your wool combing?
If they were smart, they wouldn't be terrorists in the first place. Or TSA screeners, for that matter.
It's idiots against idiots, all the way down.
I'll add that to the version on my blog - very good. :)
African or European?
You're clearly trying to spin this to match your narrative. Well, I'm here to tell you it's a spindly argument; you can't just serve stuff like that up on a platter, step by step, and expect everyone to nod their heads. Are you tracking me solidly now? Or are you still in a state?
Here's the problem with this idea: it assumes that the ten meters in front of the drone won't change. That's not how the real world works. For instance, someone could stand up five meters in front of a low-flying drone using this methodology and get a drone in the face.
It is very reasonable to assign an overriding quality metric to a collision avoidance methodology by how fast it can react. That is one of the factors that should determine the maximum usable velocity of the drone. This method is very poor quality in just that way; so it's hardly a justification for a drone to travel at higher speeds.
Actually, we should just move them all into padded rooms with speakers that repeat over and over "you're safe in here, please relax, everyone loves you and the world is bright, fluffy place. Be sure to report any offensive colors or angles to the volunteer asylum worker who serves you your conflict-free food."
I heard there were strings attached, but no one could really get a grip on them.
I apologize for saying "national dateline" when clearly I should have said "international dateline." I am sorry for any consternation caused to nationalists, internationalists, jingoists, and timekeepers. In addition, I apologize to anyone I failed to mention. I will now enter into a voluntary two-week exclusion from mentioning time in any form. I also apologize for violating that two week exclusion with the previous sentence. Also, as "previous" is a timewise reference, I also apologize for that. I'm sorry. Truly sorry. Which is not to offend those of you who are more sorry about other things. I fully respect that, I swear. Not in an offensive way, of course.