update on the Singularity

[Soylent Brice]

Smart machines: What's the worst that could happen?



An invasion led by artificially intelligent machines. Conscious computers. A smartphone virus so smart that it can start mimicking you. You might think that such scenarios are laughably futuristic, but some of the world's leading artificial intelligence (AI) researchers are concerned enough about the potential impact of advances in AI that they have been discussing the risks over the past year. Now they have revealed their conclusions.

Until now, research in artificial intelligence has been mainly occupied by myriad basic challenges that have turned out to be very complex, such as teaching machines to distinguish between everyday objects. Human-level artificial intelligence or self-evolving machines were seen as long-term, abstract goals not yet ready for serious consideration.

Now, for the first time, a panel of 25 AI scientists, roboticists, and ethical and legal scholars has been convened to address these issues, under the auspices of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) in Menlo Park, California. It looked at the feasibility and ramifications of seemingly far-fetched ideas, such as the possibility of the internet becoming self-aware.

more: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17518-smart-machines-whats-the-worst-that-could-happen.html


it goes on to discuss the panel's findings, and "the idea of an AI 'singularity' – a runaway chain reaction of machines capable of building ever-better machines."

i have to admit, i long for this to happen. maybe the machines will give us universal health care.

[lumberjack_jeff]

1. It's all fun and games...

... until they come looking for a power supply.

[Soylent Brice]

4. call me copper top...

[lumberjack_jeff]

9. Good point. The red pill was f'ing overrated. n/t

[Soylent Brice]

15. lmao

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

2. The humans will give us the machines with which we will destroy them.

With apologies to V.I. Lenin

[chaplainM]

6. I, for one, welcome our new mechanical overlords

With apologies to Kent Brockman

[CrownPrinceBandar]

3. I always looked at "The Terminator" as a cautionary tale.........

Maybe that's crazy, but maybe its not...

[phantom power]

5. caution: "please do not ever elect this cyborg as governator"

[Javaman]

7. Personally, I welcome our new sentient robot overlords.

You laugh now, but when skynet goes global, we all will become robot food...hey, wait a second....

SOYLENT GREEN IS ROBOT FOOD!!!

Military Robot Could Eat Dead Bodies
http://www.livescience.com/technology/etc/090715-military-robot-could-eat-dead-bodies.html

A steam-powered robot is being designed to fuel itself by consuming organic material, from grass to furniture or even dead bodies, Fox News reports.

But c'mon, could the U.S. military really deploy something to do that without a global outcry? The 'bot, from Robotic Technology Inc., is called the Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot (EATR). It can "find, ingest, and extract energy from biomass."

[Soylent Brice]

8. yes, i remember, "SOYLENT GREEN is ROBOT POOP!!"

EATR tech has been around for the better part of this decade though, if i remember correctly. the story seems to re-surface every couple of years.

[Javaman]

11. It's always good for a laugh...

Soylent green is food for laughing. :)

:rofl:

cheers!

[Posteritatis]

10. Ahhh, the daily fear cascade.. (nt)

[Soylent Brice]

13. no fear.

appreciation for technology, especially AI.

easy subject to make wise-cracks at, that's all.

:hi:

[MilesColtrane]

12. "maybe the machines will give us universal health care."

Or, maybe they'll consider us a parasitic nuisance, like a bad case of the crabs.

[Soylent Brice]

14. nuisance, crabs, perhaps a virus...

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/09/cool-video-human-virus.php

lol

[Hugabear]

16. I don't think that robots or machines will ever attain humanity's intuition, curiosity, etc

It's the intangible things - intuition, curiosity, a thirst for knowledge - that drives mankind to discovering new frontiers, to better grasp the universe around us. It's this that allows us to continually build new and more advanced machines, including the advanced AI that may one day outmatch us. But while machines may eventually overtake us as far as sheer intelligence is concerned, I'm not sure if they'll have the same drive to expand their knowledge that we do.

That said, I do think that machines could someday pose a very serious risk to humanity. And it's possible that these machines may realize their own limitations, and will keep the smartest humans around to help them, possibly even fusing man & machine into real life cyborgs.

[Odin2005]

17. The brain is a machine.

There is no reason other than dualistic prejudices that a sapient AI could not match us in terms of curiosity and creativity.

[Hugabear]

20. That would assume we could discover exactly how our brain works, and program a machine similarly

Being able to produce a machine capable of learning new information and reproducing itself is one thing. Programming that machine to feel real emotions (not merely simulate them) is another thing.

[Odin2005]

21. Define "real emotions".

You seem set to fall into the dualistic prejudice I was talking about. The philosophers of mind that have succumbed to that prejudice have created an elaborate notion called the "Philosopher's Zombie", an individual that acts completely normal, but has no actual conscious awareness, no feeling, a notion I consider nonsensical. Emotions are not some special, magical thing, in fact they are the root of thought and motivation, signals of value. Something neuroscientist Antonio Damasio talks about in his excellent book Descartes' Error, Thought and Emotion cannot be separated. an AI would have to be programmed with motivating signals of value, of good and bad, that IS emotion.

[Hugabear]

22. Love, hate, happiness, sadness, greed, envy, pride, etc

I'm not a biologist or philosopher, but my layman's guess would be that emotions are something that animals developed over millions of years of evolution. We developed emotions to help us cope with the world around us, to advance our species, etc. As complex as AI may become, I think it would still be limited by man's own limitations, his ability or inability to fully understand his own internal mechanisms, what makes a person feel happiness, sadness, envy, hate, love, etc.

A machine might soon reach the point where it can think for itself, be able to make complex decisions on its own, replicate itself, etc. But can that machine actually feel an emotion? Or, is it still at its core an unfeeling machine, with no more emotion than the PC that I'm using now?

[Odin2005]

24. Well, as I said, to think and make complex decisions require emotions.

They come with the package. an AI must be programmed with AI versions of happiness, sadness, fear, hate, etc. in order to make the value judgments necessary for complex sapient behavior. And just because they are not identical to human emotions doesn't mean they are not emotions. As I said, the brain states that create value and motivation ARE emotions, whether they happen to be comparable to human emotions is not really relevant.

[Odin2005]

18. Sapient AI will be the death knell in dualistic belief in souls and similar nonsense

Unfortunately I fear people with those dualistic beliefs will perpetrate a new for of bigotry on such sapient AI, thinking they are non-persons because "machines can't have souls" or similar garbage.

[CrispyQ]

19. And we've already created the perfect vehicle for them to function within our society,

the corporate entity.

;)

[lumberjack_jeff]

23. I think there's an upper limit to computing power.

That upper limit is some fraction of the computing power of the computer which is running this simulation.

http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html