Robotics/AI

The Silver Surfer

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I follow the developments in these areas only occasionally, but i'm continuously amazed when I check up on them.
AI for instance is predicted to reach consciousness level sometime by 2030-40 and added to that quantum computing is taking steps forward everyday. Marry the 2 together and there is the potential to solve practically every problem as efficiently as possible. Just think, our tiny minds conduct experiments and test hypothesis with a goal in mind and we have achieved a huge amount over the last 200 years but AI could find a solution to conveniently remove co2 from the air, solve starvation by designing machines to create identically meat and other food products from the items going to landfill, design a limitless free energy solution etc etc. We could even conquer mortality.

Another thing to consider is how we control this AI, its laws of operation so we don't end up with a "Skynet" scenario.

It obviously would have the potential to create super humans/robots far superior to ourselves.

Is it scary or exciting? Or both?

I recommend this article on the subject, its a long read but well worth it.

http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolution-1.html

Here's a few videos showing just what the guys at Boston Dynamics have achieved in robotics.





 
It's going to kill our economy and force economic upheaval on a greater scale than the Industrial Revolution and it will happen in the next twenty years.
 
It's going to kill our economy and force economic upheaval on a greater scale than the Industrial Revolution and it will happen in the next twenty years.
With the right approach it can be a positive thing, for example introduce a nationwide universal basic income, remove the menial jobs that people do just to survive through automation, and suddenly lots of people have a lot more time and freedom to pursue more worthwhile activities and professions.

Of course it would take good governance, management, foresight and the political will so seems unlikely.
 
Destroy them before they take over, have none of you watched Transcendence, The Matrix or Terminator?
 
It's too late for that, we need to run for the hills now, today, immediately. It's our only hope.
I'm in the sticks now and they have internet here, it's hopeless, maybe a bigger version of Sealand?
 
And what precisely will consciousness manifest itself as in AI?
agent-smith-one-matrix.jpg
 
Yeah, this 'Ai will become conscious' stuff seems a bit silly to me. Another whole branch of ethics will need to be applied if that's the case. We don't even understand consciousness yet; we can't solve the hard problem or binding problem, yet some are predicting we can create it in an inorganic robot. I think this exponential Moore's Law growth gets people too giddy.

https://www.indy100.com/article/robots-artificial-intelligence-elon-musk-ai-development-ubi-7610956 To me, these types of headlines are sensationalist.
 
I'm into robotics and AI I have quite a few. I'm on the buyer list for Pepper the robot as well. I have no clue about robotic algoritms though.
 
Yeah, this 'Ai will become conscious' stuff seems a bit silly to me. Another whole branch of ethics will need to be applied if that's the case. We don't even understand consciousness yet; we can't solve the hard problem or binding problem, yet some are predicting we can create it in an inorganic robot. I think this exponential Moore's Law growth gets people too giddy.

https://www.indy100.com/article/robots-artificial-intelligence-elon-musk-ai-development-ubi-7610956 To me, these types of headlines are sensationalist.

AI will become sentient at some phase, it's the only possible progression of the march of technology. Whether that is in 50 years or 500 years is really the only question.

Personally I feel that we're an extremely long time away from any form of sentient AI, to the tune of hundreds of years. I actually think we're closer to fusion power as a viable part of the energy grid than we are general AI - at least with fusion we have prototypes and working models.

The biggest problem with creating sentience is exactly what you say - that we don't know what sentience is, how you'd define it, or how you'd go about recreating it. Any general AI would have to be created by mistake and that's putting your faith in random chance.

General AI and robotics are two different disciplines. The Robotics Revolution is already happening around us and will dominate our landscape within my lifetime and certainly my son's, forcing widescale changes of our economic models and some suggest our entire point of life. The AI revolution or the ability to digitise human life is still somewhat of a pipe dream.
 
AI will become sentient at some phase, it's the only possible progression of the march of technology. Whether that is in 50 years or 500 years is really the only question.

Personally I feel that we're an extremely long time away from any form of sentient AI, to the tune of hundreds of years. I actually think we're closer to fusion power as a viable part of the energy grid than we are general AI - at least with fusion we have prototypes and working models.

The biggest problem with creating sentience is exactly what you say - that we don't know what sentience is, how you'd define it, or how you'd go about recreating it. Any general AI would have to be created by mistake and that's putting your faith in random chance.

General AI and robotics are two different disciplines. The Robotics Revolution is already happening around us and will dominate our landscape within my lifetime and certainly my son's, forcing widescale changes of our economic models and some suggest our entire point of life. The AI revolution or the ability to digitise human life is still somewhat of a pipe dream.


Yeah, I agree about the 'robotics revolution' - I don't even think that's debatable. Whether or not Ai can by itself become sentient/conscious <- hard to properly define these words, isn't, in my opinion, inevitable. It could be 500 or more years away, but what is more likely, I think, is that the conscious Ai will be us, like an augmentation to the biological organism. Things like 'The paperclip mazimzer' worry can still be worried about, but whether or not a laptop is marginally sentient is I think is a silly question.
 
I'm sure jobs in Japan are increasingly becoming obsolete as they're getting robots to practically do everything!

Could pose a problem to be honest, how far does it go when robots will end up being able to manufacture robots? Humankind will be rendered useless!
 
It's going to kill our economy and force economic upheaval on a greater scale than the Industrial Revolution and it will happen in the next twenty years.

If so, many of us will have witnessed arguably four technological revolutions in our lifetimes. Space travel first, personal computers second and the Internet third. (Granted, space travel had less economic impact than the others.)
 
I think there'll be a backlash from humans, a modern day luddite rebellion if you like. My car is supposed to understand simple commands like "phone home", but can it understand my accent? Can it f*ck. If it had a physical presence, I'd punch it.
 
If so, many of us will have witnessed arguably four technological revolutions in our lifetimes. Space travel first, personal computers second and the Internet third. (Granted, space travel had less economic impact than the others.)

I think it's bigger than all of those. I think Robotics will be a social revolution of the size of only two others in terms of change - the Agricultural Revolution which essentially invented the concept of cities and the Industrial Revolution which invented the concept of mechanical labour. I see it as one of the major changes in human history.

Society progressed in many different ways across the world but the basics were pretty simple. Surplus food allowed specialisation which drove technological increase. Thousands of years ago most humans spent all day farming in order to generate the food to live. Better techniques meant that they had a bit more time so they started specialising in other things such as making better tools. Eventually when they started living together in cities, surplus food plus bartering systems meant that some people didn't have to farm to live any more and could just make/trade tools all day which led to more advancement, better farming, more food. Being sat in one place geographically rather than chasing herds around the world meant that we also had to begin to shape that place we lived in in order to better serve our needs.

So the entire social structure that we've invented relied on using human muscle (and animals) to produce food, goods and essentially the whole of society.

The industrial revolution brought about the idea that human muscle is inefficient in the production of goods and food, so instead we should have humans using mechanical muscles such as steam power and ironworks. I can lift a decent amount of weight but not in comparison to a crane. I can spin a wheel fast to churn something but not in comparison to a steam engine. The work of 100 people became the work of 10 people and a mechanical muscle.

And for better or worse this is pretty much where we've been for hundreds of years - the labour needed to produce goods lessens which allows greater specialisation of roles and it drives technological increase which lessens the labour needed to produce goods. The revolutions you mention about computing and the Internet are just a by-product of the social organisation.

The Robotics Revolution changes that game. There's no lessened labour leading to greater specialisation. Practically robots can almost every single job in the world and can do them better than humans can - almost every single one of them can be automated and require little oversight. Robots can and do build whole houses now from groundwork to completion. Robots build other robots. Robots can find programming and/or logic errors in programming code better than humans can. Robots are the main investors on the stock market and make a ton of money by making trades in milliseconds rather than minutes as humans do. Robots can do our shopping better than we can, they can drive cars better than we can (and the role of automated drivers in F1 is already becoming a bigger issue because they're quicker than us too), robots can diagnose illnesses at a VASTLY superior rate to humans and this will be a big deal soon (though it's already in operation in the US). I can walk into a store in the US, pick up a piece of fruit and walk out eating it and robots will make sure that it's all legal, paid for and restocked properly. Look at the rise of self service machines, at automated bartenders. This isn't lessened labour, this is eradicated labour.

And robotics is currently in the "computers the size of a whole room" phase of its technological growth while already achieving these things. Think of the difference in power and technology between the Bletchley Park computers that cracked the Enigma Code and the iPhone 7. The Bletchley Park computers didn't have the computing power necessary to display an icon, let alone run the operating system, let alone do all the mad things that the new iPhones or Android phones can do. That took 60 years, less than a lifetime. Think of where robotics will be in another 20 or 30.

We're about to undergo a monumental change in how we experience and organise life. A few years ago I talked about this on here and was concerned that nobody else seemed to be bother by the iceberg dead ahead but I'm happy to say that that's no longer the case. Universal Income might not be the right idea but at least it's an idea. There's committees and bi-partisan meetings in Westminster being held now about a post-robotics economy and what that would look like that's dragging in experts from wide fields. I've heard the idea that perhaps robotic workers should pay taxes (or essentially the company that owns them does every month) which again might not be the right idea but it's an idea. The world is beginning to wake up to the idea that a post-labour society is around the corner and perhaps a post-scarcity one too. Whether this means we'll see the same economic inequalities where corporations now make trillions rather than billions, or whether we'll see new models of wealth distribution is too far off for us to know but either way this is coming, it's coming soon and there's nothing anyone can do to stop it.
 

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