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Prof Stephen Hawking: thinking machines pose a threat to our very existence

No welt. The idea of AI is sci fi dreamland really but as a thought experiment- sci fi takes on AI often veer between utopian (for humans) where you have a vast robot underclass forced to your every whim. And if these are really thinking AI's thats sick. Or sci fi goes the Terminator route where AI destroys us all.

its a limited way of looking at sci fi really, got far more time for things like ian mbanks and greg egan's ideas

and thats before we get into what a crushingly orthodox faintly misogynist author asimov was
 
humans will have become cyborgs before we have proper AI I reckon so I don't see the physical side as an issue really, and if we invent an AI that surpasses us well that's fine by me, onwards and upwards.
True AI should have free will imo (or at least as much free will as we do, I know that's a whole other philosophical debate).
 
weltweit said:
I don't see anything wrong with it, anyhow it comes from the sub title of the article.

And it isn't as if machines aren't taking over bit by bit already, you don't need workers to weld cars together anymore and in Wolfsburg there has long been a lights out factory making engines.
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yes. can these robot welders do the job in afghanistan 10 miles from the nearest source of electricity with only some basick kit?
 
BigTom said:
humans will have become cyborgs before we have proper AI I reckon so I don't see the physical side as an issue really, and if we invent an AI that surpasses us well that's fine by me, onwards and upwards.
True AI should have free will imo (or at least as much free will as we do, I know that's a whole other philosophical debate).
Click to expand...
have you seen terminator?
 
BigTom said:
humans will have become cyborgs before we have proper AI I reckon so I don't see the physical side as an issue really, and if we invent an AI that surpasses us well that's fine by me, onwards and upwards.
True AI should have free will imo (or at least as much free will as we do, I know that's a whole other philosophical debate).
Click to expand...


virtual slavery gets a free pass in loads of old sci fi books about teh future. If you'd suggested growing clones and somehow encoding slave rules into their heads from gestation people are like 'o noes brave new world' but nobody ever thinks of the robots

((robots))
 
BigTom said:
humans will have become cyborgs before we have proper AI I reckon so I don't see the physical side as an issue really, and if we invent an AI that surpasses us well that's fine by me, onwards and upwards.
Click to expand...
Yes, I can see humans wearing an embedded internet connection before too long.

BigTom said:
True AI should have free will imo (or at least as much free will as we do, I know that's a whole other philosophical debate).
Click to expand...
hmm....
Isn't it true that in human history whenever a human civilisation with better tools and weapons encounters a weaker civilisation, they conquer and enslave it.. ? Can we be sure an AI would be different?
 
weltweit said:
Yes, I can see humans wearing an embedded internet connection before too long.


hmm....
Isn't it true that in human history whenever a human civilisation with better tools and weapons encounters a weaker civilisation, they conquer and enslave it.. ? Can we be sure an AI would be different?
Click to expand...


I have no idea if that's true, probably not. Even if it was (a) so what? (b) why would you assume an AI has better weapons? (c) slavery is morally wrong, I think this would apply to AI beings as well, and because we've created them, they would be able to communicate to us that they considered themselves to be slaves, and that they should be freed. At this point we should free AI.

I don't see this as some big war, we'll become cyborgs gradually, it's already happening in medical implants, won't be too long before cosmetic upgrades come. The brain is far more difficult to copy than the body so that'll take much longer. When it happens though, humans will already not be humans exactly anymore and there's no reason to assume some kind of us vs them situation. We will become them. Evolution in a way, godlike creators in another.
 
when it happens I want full spectrum vision in the eyes. Night, UV, infa red. The works

Feline adapt celerity.

secondary bladder of blood I can fill by hyperventilating and exist 20 mins without breathing using the bladder

Nictating membrane for the eyes so I can see underwater. Oh and gills behind the ears.

Force jump...wait ...crossing the streams...
 
I'm still hoping for Iain M. Banks type AI that lead us into an anarchist utopia. It's not really a news story is it, fair enough for Hawkings to speculate on whatever he wants but it's not really news.

I do however think that even rudimentary AI would do a better job of running things than the current bunch of public school educated pricks.
 
maomao said:
I'm still hoping for Iain M. Banks type AI that lead us into an anarchist utopia. It's not really a news story is it, fair enough for Hawkings to speculate on whatever he wants but it's not really news.

I do however think that even rudimentary AI would do a better job of running things than the current bunch of public school educated pricks.
Click to expand...


internally anarchic. Outwardly vile cultural imperialists spreading liberalism throughout thier sphere of influence.
assimilation by Guardian AI's
 
DotCommunist said:
internally anarchic. Outwardly vile cultural imperialists spreading liberalism throughout thier sphere of influence.
Click to expand...
I can live with the vile imperialism if I get a super-penis and a 900-year long party!

Seeing as you mentioned him which novel of Greg Egan's would you recommend starting with? (I'm not a short-story fan)
 
Crispy believe you're more read on Egan than I?

I've struggled with his longer works- I really really loved 'Axiomatic', a short story collection alas.

Diaspora was the full length one I enjoyed for its take on AI

I find his full length stuff to dry in character and plot to sustain the 'fi' bit of sci fi. Which is why he's so perfect in short fiction where one idea is played out.
 
I read Permutation City first, which is (for Egan) more of a proper story. Diaspora is a framework for a lot of very cool ideas, but doesn't really have any drama.

I just checked the Wiki page for Permutation City

Story [edit]

This article's plot summary may be too long or excessively detailed. Please help improve it by removing unnecessary details and making it more concise. (October 2012)
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:D lol yeah good luck with that
 
I like Egan but I don't think he's particularly good on AI. I'm not sure who is in SF tbh - they always turn into slaves, angels or demons, and while that's fine as a metaphor it's not the traditional SF pursuit of extrapolating _from_ the technology.

Gibson's take on AI in Neuromancer is one of the best ones; the AIs there are completely unknowable and their "motivations" and "thought processes" just don't make sense to the human characters, in the same way that corporations and society doesn't make sense either. The AIs exist happily in a world that nobody understands as just another inexplicable component. This is an explicit message - one of the AIs might have a human face, just like a corporation does, but it doesn't make it human, and it's not even strictly possible to define AIs as individuals at all. They're simultaneously easier to talk to than a PR strategy and even more alien than what it represents.
 
maomao said:
I do however think that even rudimentary AI would do a better job of running things than the current bunch of public school educated pricks.
Click to expand...
We don't need a smart machine to tell us how to run the world properly.
"Share the wealth of the world in an equitable and responsible manner and stop burning fossil fuels. "
There. Easy. And I've got a cold.
The tricky bit is persuading anyone to listen.
The persuasion would have to come out the end of a gun really.
Oooh, look at that thread title.
 
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I think you have all been taken in by an article used to implant an advert for Swiftkey the company that makes a rather good smartphone keyboard that has predictive text. It is slightly weird when having entered the last letter of a word it goes on to suggest the whole of the next word.

I didn't want to make this post but something made me do it. :eek:
 
I think if we're to take "evolution" to it's logical conclusion we are going to evolve into silicon.? Based life forms. Download the brain into a more robust less planetary based (stifled) device/life form and fuck off. We certainly won't be able to in this h2o reliant carbon bags.......
We will be the I in the A if you will.....
 
jusali said:
I think if we're to take "evolution" to it's logical conclusion we are going to evolve into silicon.? Based life forms. Download the brain into a more robust less planetary based (stifled) device/life form and fuck off. We certainly won't be able to in this h2o reliant carbon bags.......
We will be the I in the A if you will.....
Click to expand...
You mean the Singularity perhaps, when we are all resurrected as computational constructs once computer intelligence reaches an infinite point (which will inevitably happen as self-improving computers are created, of course). There are people who literally believe in the Singularity.
 
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