Re: The Future
- From: Howard Brazee <howard@xxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2007 10:38:05 -0600
On Tue, 17 Apr 2007 12:10:39 -0400, "Oliver Wong"
<owong@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Well, yes and no... Before we can build a machine which simulates
whatever quantum magic is going on in the brain, we'd have to first find
out what quantum magic exactly is going on in the brain. I mean, the
source code we provide to the quantum computer can't simply be:
The brain appears to act more like a group of computers that arrive at
a consensus decision. Sometimes a decision has lots of agreement,
sometimes it doesn't. This works well in a world where things don't
fit neatly into categories where there is one solution.
A recent poll asked people what they would do in two scenarios where
to save many lives, one person needed to be removed from a vehicle
that was teetering off a precipice. You could pull a lever and he
would fall out a trap door. Most people would do this. Or you
could push the guy off. Most people would not do this. Hooking
people up to instruments, they found that different parts of the brain
dominated in these decisions.
Con census type computers are quite possible. But what do we want to
use them for beyond hardware checks?
The whole idea of "The Singularity"
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity) is that you
*CANNOT* have some idea of what will happen once the technology is
implemented.
We can have ideas about it - just as we have ideas what happens within
a black hole.
And obviously, a lot of Sci-fi fiction play with this idea as well.
Not a lot. Post-singularity fiction isn't about us, and thus doesn't
make very interesting fiction.
If that last part confused you, consider this: Let's say you have the
ability to reprogram yourself. Would you decide to reprogram yourself so
that you could be a cold blooded killer, feeling no empathy, regret or
remorse for taking other people's life? Probably not. Why not? Because
society has brainwashed you into thinking that reprogramming yourself to
be a cold blooded killer is a "bad" thing.
Vernor Vinge - who popularized the Singularity idea, had a novel where
people were reprogrammed to be very effective (if narrow) thinkers. It
would be great if we could temporarily do this - but not many would
want to change altogether.
Heck, most of us want to be better liked - without becoming someone
else.
But even if we program the AIs to like humans, there's tons of sci-fi
fiction depicting bugs (either in the code, or even in the original
design/requirement specifications themselves) that let the AIs kill humans
anyway.
Those bugs are almost all sufficiently human the reader can understand
their motives - at least compared to post-singularity people.
Take Asimov's three laws of robotics, for example. The first one is
says that a robot may not allow a human to come to harm, even through
inaction. Obviously, this an impossible requirement, as humans are
continuously "coming to harm" (in the form of aging). So the AI might then
decide to reformulate the rule as "minimize the amount of harm that any
human will come to". From there, it may conclude that the best way to do
that is to kill all humans. You'll have a sudden spike in harm in the
immediate future, but then for the rest of eternity, you've guaranteed no
harm will ever come to a human ever again.
Some of the variations of Williamson's "With Folded Hands" might be
seen as worse.
.
- References:
- OT: The Future
- From: Charles Hottel
- Re: The Future
- From: tlmfru
- Re: The Future
- From: Charles Hottel
- Re: The Future
- From: Oliver Wong
- Re: The Future
- From: Charles Hottel
- Re: The Future
- From: Oliver Wong
- OT: The Future
- Prev by Date: Re: The Future
- Next by Date: Re: cobol to java
- Previous by thread: Re: The Future
- Next by thread: Re: The Future
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
