Cylon Reality?

[Cmdr JFarrington 0]

Thanks to time in the waiting room, I happened to pick up Time Magazine's February issue and read the title story: 2045:The Year Man Becomes Immortal by Lev Grossman. For the full story, you can Google Time Magazine, but in a nutshell it's the development of Cylons. Skin jobs. Right. Like I want to spend immortality as a skin job?

 

Partial article is quoted here.

 

On Feb. 15, 1965, a diffident but self-possessed high school student named Raymond Kurzweil appeared as a guest on a game show called I've Got a Secret. He was introduced by the host, Steve Allen, then he played a short musical composition on a piano. The idea was that Kurzweil was hiding an unusual fact and the panelists — they included a comedian and a former Miss America — had to guess what it was.

 

On the show, the beauty queen did a good job of grilling Kurzweil, but the comedian got the win: the music was composed by a computer. Kurzweil got $200.

 

Kurzweil then demonstrated the computer, which he built himself — a desk-size affair with loudly clacking relays, hooked up to a typewriter. The panelists were pretty blasé about it; they were more impressed by Kurzweil's age than by anything he'd actually done. [edited]

 

...Kurzweil would spend much of the rest of his career working out what his demonstration meant. Creating a work of art is one of those activities we reserve for humans and humans only. It's an act of self-expression; you're not supposed to be able to do it if you don't have a self. To see creativity, the exclusive domain of humans, usurped by a computer built by a 17-year-old is to watch a line blur that cannot be unblurred, the line between organic intelligence and artificial intelligence.

 

That was Kurzweil's real secret, and back in 1965 nobody guessed it. Maybe not even him, not yet. But now, 46 years later, Kurzweil believes that we're approaching a moment when computers will become intelligent, and not just intelligent but more intelligent than humans. When that happens, humanity — our bodies, our minds, our civilization — will be completely and irreversibly transformed. He believes that this moment is not only inevitable but imminent. According to his calculations, the end of human civilization as we know it is about 35 years away.

 

Computers are getting faster. Everybody knows that. Also, computers are getting faster faster — that is, the rate at which they're getting faster is increasing. True? True.

 

So if computers are getting so much faster, so incredibly fast, there might conceivably come a moment when they are capable of something comparable to human intelligence. Artificial intelligence. All that horsepower could be put in the service of emulating whatever it is our brains are doing when they create consciousness — not just doing arithmetic very quickly or composing piano music but also driving cars, writing books, making ethical decisions, appreciating fancy paintings, making witty observations at cocktail parties.

 

If you can swallow that idea, and Kurzweil and a lot of other very smart people can, then all bets are off. From that point on, there's no reason to think computers would stop getting more powerful. They would keep on developing until they were far more intelligent than we are. Their rate of development would also continue to increase, because they would take over their own development from their slower-thinking human creators. Imagine a computer scientist that was itself a super-intelligent computer. It would work incredibly quickly. It could draw on huge amounts of data effortlessly. It wouldn't even take breaks to play Farmville.

 

Probably. It's impossible to predict the behavior of these smarter-than-human intelligences with which (with whom?) we might one day share the planet, because if you could, you'd be as smart as they would be. But there are a lot of theories about it. Maybe we'll merge with them to become super-intelligent cyborgs, using computers to extend our intellectual abilities the same way that cars and planes extend our physical abilities. Maybe the artificial intelligences will help us treat the effects of old age and prolong our life spans indefinitely. Maybe we'll scan our consciousnesses into computers and live inside them as software, forever, virtually. Maybe the computers will turn on humanity and annihilate us. The one thing all these theories have in common is the transformation of our species into something that is no longer recognizable as such to humanity circa 2011. This transformation has a name: the Singularity.

[T'aral 0]

... because everyone in the scientific field believes faster ( and more importantly, more intelegent ) computers are a good idea. It does not occur to anyone despite several warnings within the Science Fiction realm that creating thinking machines is #1 on the universal list of Bad Ideas.

 

With all the problems we are facing, why are we putting so much brain power into making ourselves obsolete?

[will_marx 0]

... because everyone in the scientific field believes faster ( and more importantly, more intelegent ) computers are a good idea. It does not occur to anyone despite several warnings within the Science Fiction realm that creating thinking machines is #1 on the universal list of Bad Ideas.

 

With all the problems we are facing, why are we putting so much brain power into making ourselves obsolete?

 

 

Let me put it this way, Mr. Amor. The 9000 series is the most reliable computer ever made. No 9000 computer has ever made a mistake or distorted information. We are all, by any practical definition of the words, foolproof and incapable of error.

 

Look Dave, I can see you're really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over.

 

I know I've made some very poor decisions recently, but I can give you my complete assurance that my work will be back to normal. I've still got the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission. And I want to help you.

 

I'm thinking when a computer decides its infallible on a major newscast, suggests that you sit back, take a stress pill, think things over before you deactivated, and then plead with the "inferior" human to stay active, that should be considered a Bad Thing, and a lesson learned on *not* creating superior computers.

[Cptn_LoAmi 0]

I, for one, welcome our new supercomputer overlords.

[will_marx 0]

I, for one, welcome our new supercomputer overlords.

 

And if it turns out to be SkyNet, Lo?

[Atragon9 0]

Am I the only one disturbed by the recent Roomba commercials on TV? The company that makes them is iRobot and the ad's tag line is "it's time to let the robots do the work for you"

 

At worst, it's Skynet, at best, it's Wall-E!

[Cmdr JFarrington 0]

I, for one, welcome our new supercomputer overlords.

 

::melodramatic gasp, wondering if he's "one of them":::

[will_marx 0]

Let's just hope they figure out a way to program in the 3 Laws.

 

LAW I. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

LAW II. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

LAW III. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

[V'Roy 0]

But what if action would cause harm to some humans but inaction would cause harm to other humans? How would a robot make the decision of who to help and who to hurt?

Edited March 7, 2011 by V'Roy

[T'aral 0]

"The NS-4's program is just a difference-engine. It obviously computed that you had the better chance for survival."

 

Any system with a sufficiently complex difference engine, if put in a position where it *had* to choose, whould choose the path which would cause the least amount of harm to the fewest humans. Of course, this is not always the wisest path, but it will be the path which the robot's logic would take it.

 

Thus the entire plot of the "I-Robot" movie. Ultimately, VIKI's decision *would* result in the least amount of harm to the fewest humans. Once VIKI had enough information to acertain the threat, the action was made necessary by the Three Laws she was bound by.

 

This was a movie that I was rather pleased with. Despite the need for spectacle and eye-candy, someone must have read Asimov's original "I Robot" anthology and understood what Asimov was exploring. There was an earnest exploration into what it meant to say "Do Not Harm Human Beings Or Allow Humans To Come To Harm."

 

That, and thanks to shower scenes featuring Del Spooner and Susan Calvin - there was cheesecake for everybody! I like it when directors are fair to their *whole* audience.

Edited March 7, 2011 by T'aral

[Crash Calestorm 0]

Terminator. That's all I have to say on the matter.

 

And, those little round vacuum robotic things that supposedly vacuum for you and are smart enough to move around?

 

I'm never getting one, 'cause it would go straight for the cat, I just know it!

[T'aral 0]

Note to self ... de-activate automated cleaner in Lt. MrKath's quarters.