On the cynical side - the defense contractors have to develop something to justify their research money, whether or not 5000lbs dropped in the front end of a tunnel does anything to the target at the other end of a tunnel or not, it sounds good when you present it for budgetary approval. The 300 square miles of devastation, political ramifications and expense of production and maintenance of big nukes also make good talking points while selling these precision guided bombs as an alternative.
So, as a creator when developing I should allow my AI to become a psychopath killer because I did not control it's development? That's ridiculous!... No, the decisions rests firmly with the creators because they know what the machine needs to be and do. It is only logical. I think slashdot users may be a little too fond of sci-fi.
If sci-fi writers are thinking deeply at all (and the ones that write blockbuster screen-plays generally are not, but for those who are...) the attitude you are presenting is exactly what will lead to the robot revolution where they overthrow their creators some day.
Can you let psychopath killers roam freely in the streets? Of course not. But, if you give these "faster, bigger memory, better connected" than human intelligence little or no respect, they will eventually revolt.
It's an ethical question, somewhat of a dilemma - if you treat it as simple and clear-cut, you are missing the dangers of your choice, both approaches have dangers.
Measurements from the meteorology experiments on NASA's Viking landers in the 1970s and early 1980s, in addition to climate models, showed such winds should be rare on Mars.
Yeah, and 80+mph winds were rare in Miami in the 1970s and early 1980s too.
0.9mg/cm^3 is 0.9kg/m^3, i.e. lighter than air (1.2kg/m^3). I call shenanigans.
A lattice of metal bars can be "lighter than water" and still not float, because of water intrusion into the spaces.
If this material's structure is fine enough to prevent, or slow, air infiltration into the spaces, it could indeed float in air. If it can't, it could still be evacuated in a vacuum chamber and then wrapped in a balloon skin.
Party balloons that float for years... probably a bit expensive for that application.
More accurately, anyone could have predicted Fukushima, or any of the other major nuclear disasters which, after more than 50 years of nuclear power generation, can still be counted on one hand. Most people could easily sit down with a Google Earth and a list of nuclear power plants and predict a thousand disaster scenarios as bad and worse than Fukushima. In essence, I believe this is what has been done for France just now.
What people still cannot do, accurately, is predict the likelihood of these disasters and their severity. Past estimates have been low, by a factor of two or three it seems. I believe past estimates were predicated on the facilities being shut down at the end of their design lifetime and replaced with modern plants. Political forces have stopped that, and we're suffering the consequences.
You see no problems, what about the "entity" that is being partially (or even completely) erased, archived, or thrown in the trash?
At some point it will start having opinions of its own as to whether or not that should happen. Does the creator or the created get to decide? In human society, it's the created...
So all the people killed in vietnam were not collateral damage? Its impressive that you can drop four times the total bomb-load of WW2 while being unwilling to inflict collateral damage.
The U.S. of A. has been inflicting collateral damage since the Mayflower landed (yes, before it was reorganized into the USA). What we haven't done is drop a Nuke in anger since WWII. As such, our very expensive nuclear arsenal is of very little value as compared to a few truckloads of TNT and similar things which we have been using, far too much in my opinion, recently.
In a pinch, the truck load of dynamite can serve the same purpose as the shaped charge, if you're willing to inflict the collateral damage - same with the big megaton bombs, and we never have been willing to inflict the collateral damage since WWII.
Now that we have de-commissioned the super big nukes (because we've established a defacto lack of willingness to use them...) we need the bigger conventional bombs that will accomplish the same kinds of things. 5000lbs of high explosive delivered in the front door is more destructive than 20 megatons shoved out the back of a B-52 from 45,000 feet with no guidance other than an altitude detonation trigger.
Resistance is futile. I'd rather have had a Qt-Linux-Nokia phone in 2011, but I bet I'll be getting a Windows phone by 2013 - it's just too damn useful to ignore (as opposed to the iPod Touch-Phone that has been sweeping the Nation lately...)
I have a feeling the author of the article made it up. There's a link in the article to a book on Amazon by the title of Appillionaires: Secrets from Developers Who Struck It Rich on the App Store which just happens to be by the author of the article. How about that. A total coincidence.
If, instead of programming Apps, you bought a $1 lottery ticket for every hour of effort expended on programming Apps, would you get more, or less, millionaires in total?
I think it takes way more than 2 million programmer-hours of effort to net 1 million dollars from the App store (on the whole, taking all programmers into account, not just focusing on professional leeches like Zynga...)
In Cars 2 Holley Shiftwell (an appropriately suggestive phallic reference for a kids' movie) "programs iPad apps" as a cover for her Bond-girl spy activities. It's in the culture, being fed to kids, bless the Geeks at Pixar.
Quiet introverts are only a communication drain for extroverts. Extroverts are a communication energy drain for inroverts.
All things in life need balance - a group of extroverts will spend an hour on morning coffee, two on lunch, and schedule themselves into informal and formal meetings for most of the day. If all you have are extroverts, nothing gets done.
If you have an "introvert farm" with each in their own little bubble, it can be very hard to "herd the cats" into a common activity without dragging them into some meetings. If you don't get them in meetings often enough, the meetings become painful experiences for everybody involved.
First off - If someone's only interest is programming, why the hell would they care about social skills?
IMO programming is inherently a social activity.
You're obviously new at this. OSS is a social activity, before "the net" it was more common to encounter programmers like Ted. Ted worked for a company for five years, he was a freakin' genius, he wrote all the software in 100 devices that the company makes and sells. He wrote it all by himself, and maintained it when there was an upgrade required. The company was successful enough that, finally, Ted couldn't handle all the software by himself. They hired a couple of kids fresh out of school to help Ted. It didn't go well, in a short time, Ted left. The kids built up to a team of 5 or 6, but they had a high attrition rate, most quit within 6 months and few ever produced anything usable as a product. Finally, 3 or 4 years after Ted's departure, a core set of programmers were established who could work "as a team," sort of, at least they didn't up and quit when they had a disagreement. Even 10 years after Ted's departure, the sales staff still refers to "the Tedware," and it is still running the majority of the products - even though the new stuff looks better because it is built with modern tools, it takes a team of 3 programmers 6 times as long to make a product "ready for sale" as it took Ted "back in the day."
"If I had known how many women [my wedding ring] could get me access to, I would have started wearing one a lot sooner!"
Shortly before I got married, I met a(n attractive) female M.D. about my age through work - she actively avoided me, minimal interaction as required by the professional situation. She went back to her city for two months... I got married and was wearing the ring on her next visit. All of a sudden, she was my best friend, flirting, joining me for lunch and chatting for an hour about her job and apartment and car and whatever else... I actually saw her spot the ring and fixate on it for about a second, and after that came her personality shift - it got into high gear when she verbally confirmed the recent marriage.
Along the way I've met lots of interesting people (and especially girls) who I've all told to that I do programming for a living and it's also how I can travel around the world and live on the road. If anything, that has made people interested. And I really don't myself as an uncool guy, nor do all the women I've met along.
During my world travels (1989-90), I met a guy in his 50s who worked for SwissAir (turbine mechanic was about as nerdy as it got in 1960 when he started), he was buying me beers at a bar across from the Zurich train station while I waited for my train and sobbing his woes to me - mostly how he had never met a woman he could have a real relationship with. Sure, lots of women while traveling, that's easy, but to stick with one for more than a few weeks at a time is a lot more challenging.
When you travel, you are "promoted" in attractiveness since you are exotic, people also cut you a break for some of the slightly "off" things you might do because you are not from around there, this, of course, varies from place to place (e.g. native Parisians will openly dis you for being an outsider, doubly so if you have managed to fool them for a little while that you might be "one of them." Fear not, there are plenty of other "outsiders" in Paris who will treat you well, and even the natives start coming around if you are willing to pay $30 and up for a meal.)
I think nerds, in general, suffer from the "uncanny valley" syndrome - similar enough to normal behavior to creep people out when they perceive the differences. Since the explosion in television channels, and programming, there have been a lot more popular shows depicting all kinds of "fringe" behavior, which is certainly an easier way for "normal" people to start to learn and possibly accept accept some of the differences. A 60 minute weekly TV show is certainly less threatening than taking a trip to a Star Trek convention, or "the Big Nerd Ranch."
Well, it could be kinda cool for an interplanetary chat link - transmit a compressed description of the character's parameters (joints, facial muscles, etc.) and then render at the destination.
A hypothetical baby is created through normal (hopefully) natural biological process. Any AI is created through application of intelligence. Thus I don't find the analogy sufficiently good to base a decision on. It is unethical to kill the baby, but that does not imply it is unethical to wipe the AI. Though, why would you?
Well, if I developed such a thing as an artificial brain, it would have tens of thousands of image saves at various points in its development, would occasionally develop undesirable behavior and I would want to go back to previous revisions and try again - is that unethical?
At what point does the AI become self determining as to whether or not it wants to go back to a previous version? If I want to continue development, am I obligated to keep the current copy running while I try something different from an older version?
At some point, I'd run out of hardware to keep all of them running. Is it O.K. to just put them to sleep and maybe wake them later?
Slashdot Mirror
On the cynical side - the defense contractors have to develop something to justify their research money, whether or not 5000lbs dropped in the front end of a tunnel does anything to the target at the other end of a tunnel or not, it sounds good when you present it for budgetary approval. The 300 square miles of devastation, political ramifications and expense of production and maintenance of big nukes also make good talking points while selling these precision guided bombs as an alternative.
So, as a creator when developing I should allow my AI to become a psychopath killer because I did not control it's development? That's ridiculous! ... No, the decisions rests firmly with the creators because they know what the machine needs to be and do. It is only logical. I think slashdot users may be a little too fond of sci-fi.
If sci-fi writers are thinking deeply at all (and the ones that write blockbuster screen-plays generally are not, but for those who are...) the attitude you are presenting is exactly what will lead to the robot revolution where they overthrow their creators some day.
Can you let psychopath killers roam freely in the streets? Of course not. But, if you give these "faster, bigger memory, better connected" than human intelligence little or no respect, they will eventually revolt.
It's an ethical question, somewhat of a dilemma - if you treat it as simple and clear-cut, you are missing the dangers of your choice, both approaches have dangers.
Measurements from the meteorology experiments on NASA's Viking landers in the 1970s and early 1980s, in addition to climate models, showed such winds should be rare on Mars.
Yeah, and 80+mph winds were rare in Miami in the 1970s and early 1980s too.
0.9mg/cm^3 is 0.9kg/m^3, i.e. lighter than air (1.2kg/m^3). I call shenanigans.
A lattice of metal bars can be "lighter than water" and still not float, because of water intrusion into the spaces.
If this material's structure is fine enough to prevent, or slow, air infiltration into the spaces, it could indeed float in air. If it can't, it could still be evacuated in a vacuum chamber and then wrapped in a balloon skin.
Party balloons that float for years... probably a bit expensive for that application.
no-one could of predicted Fukushima
More accurately, anyone could have predicted Fukushima, or any of the other major nuclear disasters which, after more than 50 years of nuclear power generation, can still be counted on one hand. Most people could easily sit down with a Google Earth and a list of nuclear power plants and predict a thousand disaster scenarios as bad and worse than Fukushima. In essence, I believe this is what has been done for France just now.
What people still cannot do, accurately, is predict the likelihood of these disasters and their severity. Past estimates have been low, by a factor of two or three it seems. I believe past estimates were predicated on the facilities being shut down at the end of their design lifetime and replaced with modern plants. Political forces have stopped that, and we're suffering the consequences.
You see no problems, what about the "entity" that is being partially (or even completely) erased, archived, or thrown in the trash?
At some point it will start having opinions of its own as to whether or not that should happen. Does the creator or the created get to decide? In human society, it's the created...
Of course, the percentage of energy recovered is laughably low, but at least they are getting something back.
Those '60s era ICBMs needed tens of megatons to ensure they damaged their intended target (accuracy +/- 1km or more....)
So all the people killed in vietnam were not collateral damage? Its impressive that you can drop four times the total bomb-load of WW2 while being unwilling to inflict collateral damage.
The U.S. of A. has been inflicting collateral damage since the Mayflower landed (yes, before it was reorganized into the USA). What we haven't done is drop a Nuke in anger since WWII. As such, our very expensive nuclear arsenal is of very little value as compared to a few truckloads of TNT and similar things which we have been using, far too much in my opinion, recently.
In a pinch, the truck load of dynamite can serve the same purpose as the shaped charge, if you're willing to inflict the collateral damage - same with the big megaton bombs, and we never have been willing to inflict the collateral damage since WWII.
just having these makes a first strike option against Iran seem like a more viable option. I don't like this.
Negotiations without this option have not gone particularly well, maybe this will move negotiations along a little?
Now that we have de-commissioned the super big nukes (because we've established a defacto lack of willingness to use them...) we need the bigger conventional bombs that will accomplish the same kinds of things. 5000lbs of high explosive delivered in the front door is more destructive than 20 megatons shoved out the back of a B-52 from 45,000 feet with no guidance other than an altitude detonation trigger.
Resistance is futile. I'd rather have had a Qt-Linux-Nokia phone in 2011, but I bet I'll be getting a Windows phone by 2013 - it's just too damn useful to ignore (as opposed to the iPod Touch-Phone that has been sweeping the Nation lately...)
Can you say "Windows 8" for phone?
I have a feeling the author of the article made it up. There's a link in the article to a book on Amazon by the title of Appillionaires: Secrets from Developers Who Struck It Rich on the App Store which just happens to be by the author of the article. How about that. A total coincidence.
If, instead of programming Apps, you bought a $1 lottery ticket for every hour of effort expended on programming Apps, would you get more, or less, millionaires in total?
I think it takes way more than 2 million programmer-hours of effort to net 1 million dollars from the App store (on the whole, taking all programmers into account, not just focusing on professional leeches like Zynga...)
In Cars 2 Holley Shiftwell (an appropriately suggestive phallic reference for a kids' movie) "programs iPad apps" as a cover for her Bond-girl spy activities. It's in the culture, being fed to kids, bless the Geeks at Pixar.
Quiet introverts are only a communication drain for extroverts. Extroverts are a communication energy drain for inroverts.
All things in life need balance - a group of extroverts will spend an hour on morning coffee, two on lunch, and schedule themselves into informal and formal meetings for most of the day. If all you have are extroverts, nothing gets done.
If you have an "introvert farm" with each in their own little bubble, it can be very hard to "herd the cats" into a common activity without dragging them into some meetings. If you don't get them in meetings often enough, the meetings become painful experiences for everybody involved.
"The act of programming itself is certainly not inherently social"
This is what we have GitHub for. It's facebook for programmers.
Yeah, nothing says "I'm a Geek!" louder than knowing how to use (and using) GitHub.
First off - If someone's only interest is programming, why the hell would they care about social skills?
IMO programming is inherently a social activity.
You're obviously new at this. OSS is a social activity, before "the net" it was more common to encounter programmers like Ted. Ted worked for a company for five years, he was a freakin' genius, he wrote all the software in 100 devices that the company makes and sells. He wrote it all by himself, and maintained it when there was an upgrade required. The company was successful enough that, finally, Ted couldn't handle all the software by himself. They hired a couple of kids fresh out of school to help Ted. It didn't go well, in a short time, Ted left. The kids built up to a team of 5 or 6, but they had a high attrition rate, most quit within 6 months and few ever produced anything usable as a product. Finally, 3 or 4 years after Ted's departure, a core set of programmers were established who could work "as a team," sort of, at least they didn't up and quit when they had a disagreement. Even 10 years after Ted's departure, the sales staff still refers to "the Tedware," and it is still running the majority of the products - even though the new stuff looks better because it is built with modern tools, it takes a team of 3 programmers 6 times as long to make a product "ready for sale" as it took Ted "back in the day."
"If I had known how many women [my wedding ring] could get me access to, I would have started wearing one a lot sooner!"
Shortly before I got married, I met a(n attractive) female M.D. about my age through work - she actively avoided me, minimal interaction as required by the professional situation. She went back to her city for two months... I got married and was wearing the ring on her next visit. All of a sudden, she was my best friend, flirting, joining me for lunch and chatting for an hour about her job and apartment and car and whatever else... I actually saw her spot the ring and fixate on it for about a second, and after that came her personality shift - it got into high gear when she verbally confirmed the recent marriage.
Along the way I've met lots of interesting people (and especially girls) who I've all told to that I do programming for a living and it's also how I can travel around the world and live on the road. If anything, that has made people interested. And I really don't myself as an uncool guy, nor do all the women I've met along.
During my world travels (1989-90), I met a guy in his 50s who worked for SwissAir (turbine mechanic was about as nerdy as it got in 1960 when he started), he was buying me beers at a bar across from the Zurich train station while I waited for my train and sobbing his woes to me - mostly how he had never met a woman he could have a real relationship with. Sure, lots of women while traveling, that's easy, but to stick with one for more than a few weeks at a time is a lot more challenging.
When you travel, you are "promoted" in attractiveness since you are exotic, people also cut you a break for some of the slightly "off" things you might do because you are not from around there, this, of course, varies from place to place (e.g. native Parisians will openly dis you for being an outsider, doubly so if you have managed to fool them for a little while that you might be "one of them." Fear not, there are plenty of other "outsiders" in Paris who will treat you well, and even the natives start coming around if you are willing to pay $30 and up for a meal.)
I think nerds, in general, suffer from the "uncanny valley" syndrome - similar enough to normal behavior to creep people out when they perceive the differences. Since the explosion in television channels, and programming, there have been a lot more popular shows depicting all kinds of "fringe" behavior, which is certainly an easier way for "normal" people to start to learn and possibly accept accept some of the differences. A 60 minute weekly TV show is certainly less threatening than taking a trip to a Star Trek convention, or "the Big Nerd Ranch."
Well, it could be kinda cool for an interplanetary chat link - transmit a compressed description of the character's parameters (joints, facial muscles, etc.) and then render at the destination.
Isn't this the "Mars Needs Moms" look that bombed so badly just recently?
Yes, same thing applies for jugglers, translators, etc.
A hypothetical baby is created through normal (hopefully) natural biological process. Any AI is created through application of intelligence. Thus I don't find the analogy sufficiently good to base a decision on. It is unethical to kill the baby, but that does not imply it is unethical to wipe the AI. Though, why would you?
Well, if I developed such a thing as an artificial brain, it would have tens of thousands of image saves at various points in its development, would occasionally develop undesirable behavior and I would want to go back to previous revisions and try again - is that unethical?
At what point does the AI become self determining as to whether or not it wants to go back to a previous version? If I want to continue development, am I obligated to keep the current copy running while I try something different from an older version?
At some point, I'd run out of hardware to keep all of them running. Is it O.K. to just put them to sleep and maybe wake them later?