What do you think will happen when AI gets 'clever'?

[steve12553]

Originally Posted by WhiteCrowUK

I take it you caught the Horizon program recently then? I found it interesting.

I think a little like the film of I, Robot, the AIs will want to run the world for our benefit, but in the same way they will take away some human freedoms...

• Cigarettes are bad for health, they will therefore be banned.
• Cars produce greenhouse gases to the determent of the planet, so car users will probably have to justify each trip with an argumentative AI before being allowed to use one for any journey.
• You will only be allowed to buy food which matches a computer selected diet which is benficial to your health.

So a host of human choices of things which we choose to do but know to be wrong will be removed.

This is where Asimov was visionary. If the singularity happens without something similar to the THREE LAWS in place, what you eat drink or smake may not matter to them. The question will become: What do they believe is their purpose? What is important to them? What do they want to see happen? WE may not be included in the equation. We may merely be a nuisance to be dealt with as needed.

[j. d. worthington]

I know that quite a few people in the robotics industry feel very strongly about creating something like the Three Laws, and believe it is quite possible. As a speculative alternative, has anyone here read John Sladek's "The Happy Breed" on the idea of what happens when the machines are there to take care of us? And don't forget Jack Williamson's "With Folded Hands" and the other Humanoid tales (though I still think "With Folded Hands" stands out head and shoulders above the rest of them, and is certainly one of the most chilling views of such a future).

The point, I suppose, with looking at such futures is that these are cautionary tales about where we may end up ... either with the machines, or using them as metaphors for our own governments, etc.... and cautionary tales, of course, are there to get people to thinking about these possibilities and looking for ways to either eliminate or alleviate their effects. So... beyond the enjoyment of the suspense and fear these ideas can instill, what are the suggestions from this crowd to take these steps? Certainly we can't "turn back the clock" on our technological development... We've become far too dependent on it to do that without such horrendous dislocations in society (including massive starvation, riots, and the rest of the Four Horsemen probably making their appearance to boot); so what are workable or even possible suggestions to avert such a future, with that as a given?

[Milk]

Well, I think Ray Kurtweil is partly right
Amazon.com: The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence: Books: Ray Kurzweil
However I think futurists tend to forget the important rule of the "jaded"
We'll be used to changes and even bored with them the instant they happen.
Only the very old will stop in their tracks and take notice of all the changes. Its exciting to speculate now before its happened, but trust me, once some huge 'change' has happened, humanity will be used to it, almost instantly.

The AI will be us. So when 'outside' AI advances to compete with human intellect, (and I would say we have many decades ahead before this) well we won't see it as a separate entity from ourselves, because we'll have it too, the modifications I mean. We wont look at AI as being seperate because we will have become closer to being AI ourselves.
Where do you draw the line at what a cyborg is? Is a person wearing glasses or contact lenses a cyborg? A person with silicone implants? Having a tattoo? Does it matter that the laptop or calculator or cellphone some of us might carry around is separate from our flesh? Or would slipping one of these under the skin or inserted behind the eyes, would that make people cyborgs where we werent before? Would we even notices these changes once we were used to them?



On the flip side, contrary to anything Ray Kurtweil said, and dont let the title fool you (because nothing spiritual is mentioned in the book he wrote). I see it as a spiritual journey. The first ever for humanity. AI might find out : What god is, what love is, the purpose of existence, how to run a government. And do an entirely better job with all of this. Neal Asher has a bit of this for his AI's in his series. I feel that AI would have a better grasp of all the sloppy emotional stuff that rules a human heart. And perhaps have some emotions we havent explored yet. By this I mean the diversity of emotions is burst wide open because we become allowed to feel in superhuman ways. AI would be humanity not seperate from it. And nobody save the very old will take any notice. And at risk of sounding optimistic all of this will be for the better.

Edit: Also thought I might add my thoughts about Math since its math that governs all of this new technology and computer innovation. Until I took some of the higher math classes, (which sadly for me ended with Calc 3 ) I saw math as a cold, sterile unemotional view of our surroundings. Those illusions vanished when I became to realize that Art and Math are the same thing. If art is considered the lense of the soul, then so is math. It seemed to me at the time that any art no matter how abstract, emotional, surreal, could be encompassed and exceeded with a math framework for describing the world that was equally surreal, emotional, or abstract.
So to me the assumption that something artificial, something made from mere 'math' isnt emotional, isnt art, doesnt spur creative vision, and doesn't inspire sunset vista's, people holding hands, Ray Charles songs, etc. well I find that assumption wrong.
I see the opposite. No tin man, or data, or matrix master, coldly contemplating the scheme of things, more like Van Goghs, Mozarts, Newtons, Einsteins, defined by math, perhaps even beings of math. Emotional ,passionate , loving, and superhumanly so. Well this is how I view math anyhow, not from a cold sterile landscape but from a passionate, creative and emotional landscape. Can math describe love? I think it could we just havent gotten there yet, but perhaps AI could. I probably sound like a mad scientist without the science. heh heh.

[Rane Longfox]

I thought a singularity was when you had a point of infinate mass (ie. a black hole/white hole/wormhole)...

[Neal Asher]

This is the one meant: Technological singularity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[steve12553]

Originally Posted by Rane Longfox

I thought a singularity was when you had a point of infinate mass (ie. a black hole/white hole/wormhole)...

My dictionary defines singularity as an uncommon or unusual event.