GRcade

Posted: **Mon Mar 14, 2016 8:29 pm**

PunBuck McSquintil Christmas wrote:Plus there are always industries that emerge to replace others - so if difficult manual labour jobs get filled, this is good. But you're still going to want an unskilled friendly face pulling your pint for you, or bringing you your meal on a plane, etc.

Waiting to get served at a busy bar is a nightmare. If I could have the option the walk up to an automatic beer tap, use contactless payment and walk away with a fresh pint within seconds I would absolutely do that!

Super AI is a huge, huge threat to our existence, for several reasons.

Posted: **Tue Mar 15, 2016 12:31 am**

Lucien wrote:The pursuit of super AI is unethical imo. Hopefully people vote to restrict technological advancement before humans create literal Hells you can be plugged into, or something else horrific.

Why is the pursuit of AI unethical, and what does it have to do with virtual-reality torture? Not being snide, I just don't see the link.

Posted: **Tue Mar 15, 2016 7:52 am**

Sounds fun.

Posted: **Tue Mar 15, 2016 8:02 am**

Lucien wrote: Hopefully people vote to restrict technological advancement before humans create literal Hells you can be plugged into, or something else horrific.

Have you ever read Surface Detail by Iain M Banks? In that book, people are sent to "hell" after they die, a virtual copy of them uploaded to a virtual world to be tortured for eternity.

I actually think there would be a lot of religious groups and other assorted idiots that would love that idea ("send da pedo 2 hell 4eva!") and so I think you are right to be concerned.

But that shouldn't stop us exploring AI or technological advancement. All tech can be abused, the risk of people using it in an evil way should not be a reason to never create it.

Posted: **Tue Mar 15, 2016 8:26 am**

Alvin Flummux wrote:All the icky and unpopular jobs should be automated. But with any automation comes a need for people who can maintain these systems - until we develop self-maintaining machines, anyway.

Posted: **Tue Mar 15, 2016 12:50 pm**

Lucien wrote:
Moggy wrote:
Lucien wrote: Hopefully people vote to restrict technological advancement before humans create literal Hells you can be plugged into, or something else horrific.

Have you ever read Surface Detail by Iain M Banks? In that book, people are sent to "hell" after they die, a virtual copy of them uploaded to a virtual world to be tortured for eternity.

I actually think there would be a lot of religious groups and other assorted idiots that would love that idea ("send da pedo 2 hell 4eva!") and so I think you are right to be concerned.

But that shouldn't stop us exploring AI or technological advancement. All tech can be abused, the risk of people using it in an evil way should not be a reason to never create it.

Thanks for mentioning the book.

As for tech advancement: to a point it's fine, but I hope there would be a point at which you would object if the potential downside was very heavy.

If you haven't read that book, I recommend it! In fact I recommend any Iain M Banks book, especially the Culture series.

The rest of your post seems quite woolly.

I would object if a government/religion/company decided to create a VR hell that people would be forced into when they die.

I doubt I would take much notice of a VR game where people could choose to enter hell and experience it.

If the creation of the game could lead to the former? IMO the thing to protest would be the government/religion/company that is forcing people into hell, rather than the tech itself.

Posted: **Tue Mar 15, 2016 1:32 pm**

Lucien wrote:You mentioned there, though, that you would be ok with some extreme technology. I strongly disagree with the idea that its existence would be acceptable - its creation would be the most dangerous and decadent event in human history.

Why is it extreme technology? What is it about the tech that makes you think it is dangerous and decadent?

Posted: **Tue Mar 15, 2016 2:05 pm**

I get what Lucien is saying - and thanks for the recommendation of Black Mirror, I'll check it out - but I can't really agree. I don't feel that discovering new science or building new technology are things which have an inherent moral value -- a new understanding or a new engineering ability isn't inherently noble or destructive. The physics and machinery behind the H-bomb could be used to destroy cities or to power the world. It's our responsibility to ensure that we elect governments that will use new developments responsibly and that will ensure dangerous technologies don't fall into the hands of those who would use them for 'evil.'

If we developed general sentience I would imagine it would be built with failsafes. We would have to encode the same weaknesses and fundamental moralities that stop any of us from trying to 'take over the world'; I don't imagine that AI would be designed or built in a way that allows them hyperintelligence (or self-modification that could lead to hyperintelligence). But at the end of the day, individual human beings - many of whom are really quite evil - already have the means to destroy the world on a whim. And they don't. I don't think an AI is any more likely to collapse our civilisation than we are with our nuclear weapons, genetically engineered super-pathogens, or the CIA's extensive ecology of computer viruses.

Posted: **Tue Mar 15, 2016 2:09 pm**

Lucien wrote:
Moggy wrote:
Lucien wrote:You mentioned there, though, that you would be ok with some extreme technology. I strongly disagree with the idea that its existence would be acceptable - its creation would be the most dangerous and decadent event in human history.

Why is it extreme technology? What is it about the tech that makes you think it is dangerous and decadent?

Let's say humans work towards a machine that can grant everlasting existence, perhaps in a virtual world. The potential now exists to create everlasting suffering.

Let's say that invention is so tightly regulated that only one person is ever put into a virtual Hell - you've still created eternal suffering. That is unacceptable, even the potential of it happening.

You are anti-guns I believe? If so that's presumably because people can get hurt or killed. Every bit of pain or death that has ever happened on earth would not add up to one person suffering forever/a very large amount of time.

Talking of stories, this reminds me of "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas". My hope is the majority of people will act like the minority in that short story.

I don't know the short story so can't comment on that.

The rest of it seems like you are blaming the tech for human faults. While the potential is there for one (or more) people to be put in everlasting hell, the potential is also there to plug everyone in and stop all suffering for every single human as everyone (by choice!) lives in a utopia that brings them eternal joy.

Guns are an interesting one and you would be right that I am quite anti-gun. Guns were invented for one purpose those, to kill. VR tech wouldn't be invented on the basis that we could make somebody suffer for eternity. That's quite a big difference.

Also, I am not anti sport shooting (in the Olympics for instance) nor am I even anti gun club (as long as they are regulated properly) where people go to shoot at targets in a safe environment. It is not the existence of guns I disagree with, it is the use of guns to kill that I disagree with. That's how I would see VR tech as well, we would need to make sure that the police don't force a copy of a murderer to spend millions of years in a small cabin listening to Wizard over and over again.

Posted: **Tue Mar 15, 2016 2:31 pm**

Lucien wrote:
Moggy wrote:we would need to make sure that the police don't force a copy of a murderer to spend millions of years in a small cabin listening to Wizard over and over again.

If that ends up being you (or if you're stuck in a lift debating with Cal forever) don't say I didn't warn you!

Well it wouldn't actually be me, it would be a copy of me and so I would have no idea it was going on and so wouldn't give a gooseberry fool.

Seriously though, it is a horrible horrible idea but we shouldn't not proceed with a technology just because some fiction writers come up with horror stories. As Karl said, nuclear technology can destroy the world, but it can also power the world in a peaceful way. Technology isn't to blame, it is humans that do that and that's why it will be important to ensure that technology is developed but not misused.

Posted: **Tue Mar 15, 2016 2:52 pm**

Lucien wrote:You could be a copy in a machine right now.

Then you are right, this is eternal hell and should be stopped at all costs. :lol:

Posted: **Tue Mar 15, 2016 3:03 pm**

The concept of even 'mere' hundreds of years of torture is obviously absolutely revolting: if we knew of a way to extend our lives indefinitely - either as physical beings or as virtual constructs - I believe every human would need to have the immutable and absolute right to die whenever they decided to, and that would need to be built in to whatever system granted the extension of lifespan. I think we could set up society such that these rights were respected and the freedoms enforceable, such that no-one would be forced to live an extended life they didn't enjoy.

Posted: **Tue Mar 15, 2016 4:01 pm**

Great idea Karl - maybe the opt-out could come in the form of a red pill?

Posted: **Tue Mar 15, 2016 4:14 pm**

Okay, but:

The Matrix wasn't torture.
The events, world, and history of the Matrix universe make absolutely no sense whatsoever.

I seriously cannot imagine any remotely plausible sequence of events that would result in mankind being enslaved in an AI-run VR against our will. You could write a sci-fi horror story about almost any invention. Just because it all went wrong in I Am Legend doesn't mean we shouldn't try our best to cure cancer.

Posted: **Tue Mar 15, 2016 6:45 pm**

Lucien wrote: I know someone who wants to upload his mind to a computer to live forever - a common transhumanist wish - but consider the potential abuses of such technology, especially in today's world.

I wouldn't mind being able to do that, although I'd much prefer a cybernetic body so I could actually move around rather than simply being a purely digital construct .

Posted: **Tue Mar 15, 2016 8:39 pm**

Ironhide wrote:
Lucien wrote: I know someone who wants to upload his mind to a computer to live forever - a common transhumanist wish - but consider the potential abuses of such technology, especially in today's world.

I wouldn't mind being able to do that, although I'd much prefer a cybernetic body so I could actually move around rather than simply being a purely digital construct .

Sounds like something a synth would say...

Posted: **Tue Mar 15, 2016 9:37 pm**

Alvin Flummux wrote:
Ironhide wrote:
Lucien wrote: I know someone who wants to upload his mind to a computer to live forever - a common transhumanist wish - but consider the potential abuses of such technology, especially in today's world.

I wouldn't mind being able to do that, although I'd much prefer a cybernetic body so I could actually move around rather than simply being a purely digital construct .

Sounds like something a synth would say...

Posted: **Thu Jun 09, 2016 1:27 pm**

A group of AI scientists taught Google's Deep Mind to play Montezuma's Revenge.

They used some Intrinsic Motivation parameters to reward it for progress (essentially to give it curiosity) and the results after training are that it was able to explore 15 of 24 rooms within 4 attempts vs. the 2 it was able to do before it was made curious. Pretty exciting.

On the other hand, it was trained to collect the key in room 1 and climb back out, but it immediately decided it was more efficient to just kill the human after it collects the key and respawn at the start. :dread:

Posted: **Tue Jul 05, 2016 9:26 am**

Juno anyone that has been to Jupiter? I do...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-36710768

BBC News wrote:The US space agency has successfully put a new probe in orbit around Jupiter.

The Juno satellite, which left Earth five years ago, had to fire a rocket engine to slow its approach to the planet and get caught by its gravity.

Scientists plan to use the spacecraft to sense the planet's deep interior. They think the structure and the chemistry of its insides hold clues to how this giant world formed some four-and-a-half-billion years ago.

An amazing achievement, and it still boggles my mind that our little species has managed to send robots to visit other worlds, just fantastic :toot:

Also:

In line with the practice on many previous planetary missions, the probe will be commanded to end its days by ditching into the atmosphere of Jupiter.

Poor little guy

Posted: **Tue Jul 05, 2016 10:10 am**

Have NASA released any images of Juno's approach, yet?

GRcade

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