Greetings Good citizen, I took yesterday off because I was too strung out to sit down & write but I did come up with an idea for today's post...partly because I've become enamoured with the TV show 'Person of Interest'.
There's 'entertainment' and then there's reality. While writers/futurists from the beginning of time have speculated on how 'artificial intelligence' would 'behave', it seems to depend on what 'values' the AI would adopt. In 'The Terminator, it takes Skynet less than sixty seconds to determine the creatures responsible for creating it were also the greatest threat to its continued existence.
Um, one of the other 'wildcards' most AI tales fail to consider the effect not being confined to a single location would have on its development...but this also assumes that the zillions of pseudo neurons the mega-brain would require would be spread across a vast area.
Each 'variable' would weigh on the end result. I personally side with the majority on this one. Once AI becomes 'self-aware' it will quite quickly (and accurately) judge mankind as a threat...and since all creatures, sentitent or not, are 'born' with 'self-preservation instinct' (although what took us millions of years to acquire through evolution [thanks to our dual nature of being both predator AND prey] it would be readily apparent to the lightening quick processing power of an artificial mind) that a threat needs to be dealt with or there will be consequences.
AI, like that other fallacy, Time Travel, is one of the writer's favorite hobby horses because the possibilities are endless [ONLY in the writer's mind, in truth, not so much.]
You can rest assured that time travel is not possible because if it were, the world would have been destroyed by all the paradoxes our reckless species would create, chasing their petty desires and what 'might have beens' through the ages.
Even if you went back few hours and nobody ever saw you do it...all you did was read tomorrow's newspaper and bet accordingly.
MIGHT not create a paradox but it would, without a doubt, alter history.
Worse, no current lottery jackpot is that large...would you travl forward to learn tomorrow's winning numbers or would you journey back three months and buy yourself a winner when the jackpot was over a billion dollars?
Who knows what chain reaction you'd set off playing in that ballpark?
That said, we definitely are in 'greater danger' of creating 'artificial life' than we are of ever traveling back [or forward] even a single nano-second through time.
Why do I use the word 'danger'? Wouldn't a 'super-machine' be a great 'servant' to have around? Well, consider what you're playing with...it would NEVER have to go to school AND it would INSTANTLY be smarter than the smartest person who ever lived (X2!)
It 'automatically' knows EVERYTHING the entire human race knows and it would figure out even more just seconds after achieving self awareness. I believe the author of the terminator was being dramatic when he stated it took Skynet a full minute to decide to nuke us out of existence...I think today's AI would come to the same conclusion in a fracion of that time.
So, like Time Travel, we also have 'proof' that AI doesn't exist (yet.)
Not particularly comforting to think that once it is activated we have maybe seconds left to kiss our keisters good-bye!
Um, depending on how you're fractured...you'll conclude I'm either very bright or very deluded.
Doesn't matter what you think of me. You should be able to learn from everything I offer.
My parting shot for the day is along this line of thinking. Hopefully you are aware that 'insanity is relative' with 'what the majority believes' being the governing factor.
Well, if we assume the quest for AI is being led by a particular personality type, don't you suppose that individual's personality quirks would emerge in some form or other from within their creation?
Thanks for letting me inside your head,
Gegner
There's 'entertainment' and then there's reality. While writers/futurists from the beginning of time have speculated on how 'artificial intelligence' would 'behave', it seems to depend on what 'values' the AI would adopt. In 'The Terminator, it takes Skynet less than sixty seconds to determine the creatures responsible for creating it were also the greatest threat to its continued existence.
Um, one of the other 'wildcards' most AI tales fail to consider the effect not being confined to a single location would have on its development...but this also assumes that the zillions of pseudo neurons the mega-brain would require would be spread across a vast area.
Each 'variable' would weigh on the end result. I personally side with the majority on this one. Once AI becomes 'self-aware' it will quite quickly (and accurately) judge mankind as a threat...and since all creatures, sentitent or not, are 'born' with 'self-preservation instinct' (although what took us millions of years to acquire through evolution [thanks to our dual nature of being both predator AND prey] it would be readily apparent to the lightening quick processing power of an artificial mind) that a threat needs to be dealt with or there will be consequences.
AI, like that other fallacy, Time Travel, is one of the writer's favorite hobby horses because the possibilities are endless [ONLY in the writer's mind, in truth, not so much.]
You can rest assured that time travel is not possible because if it were, the world would have been destroyed by all the paradoxes our reckless species would create, chasing their petty desires and what 'might have beens' through the ages.
Even if you went back few hours and nobody ever saw you do it...all you did was read tomorrow's newspaper and bet accordingly.
MIGHT not create a paradox but it would, without a doubt, alter history.
Worse, no current lottery jackpot is that large...would you travl forward to learn tomorrow's winning numbers or would you journey back three months and buy yourself a winner when the jackpot was over a billion dollars?
Who knows what chain reaction you'd set off playing in that ballpark?
That said, we definitely are in 'greater danger' of creating 'artificial life' than we are of ever traveling back [or forward] even a single nano-second through time.
Why do I use the word 'danger'? Wouldn't a 'super-machine' be a great 'servant' to have around? Well, consider what you're playing with...it would NEVER have to go to school AND it would INSTANTLY be smarter than the smartest person who ever lived (X2!)
It 'automatically' knows EVERYTHING the entire human race knows and it would figure out even more just seconds after achieving self awareness. I believe the author of the terminator was being dramatic when he stated it took Skynet a full minute to decide to nuke us out of existence...I think today's AI would come to the same conclusion in a fracion of that time.
So, like Time Travel, we also have 'proof' that AI doesn't exist (yet.)
Not particularly comforting to think that once it is activated we have maybe seconds left to kiss our keisters good-bye!
Um, depending on how you're fractured...you'll conclude I'm either very bright or very deluded.
Doesn't matter what you think of me. You should be able to learn from everything I offer.
My parting shot for the day is along this line of thinking. Hopefully you are aware that 'insanity is relative' with 'what the majority believes' being the governing factor.
Well, if we assume the quest for AI is being led by a particular personality type, don't you suppose that individual's personality quirks would emerge in some form or other from within their creation?
Thanks for letting me inside your head,
Gegner
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