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Thread: AI, Extinction and Humanity's Deep Future

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    AI, Extinction and Humanity's Deep Future

    This could easily have been added as a reply to melon's "The Threat of Machines" thread. However given the general nature of melon's threads generally (no offense melon but they are normally verging on the silly/rediculous) I thought it would be belittling of this article to just post it as a reply.

    Get comfy if you're going to read it, it's an 8100 word article so will take a little while, but it covers a fairly broad range of areas and I thought it was a fantastic read. I love this kind of stuff and wondered if anyone else would like to read and give an opinion on the piece:

    http://www.aeonmagazine.com/world-vi...an-extinction/

    Enjoy!
    Last edited by cptwhite_uk; 03-03-2013 at 01:14 PM. Reason: typos

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    Re: AI, Extinction and Humanity's Deep Future

    Quote Originally Posted by cptwhite_uk View Post
    This could easily have been added as a reply to melon's "The Threat of Machines" thread. However given the general nature of melon's threads generally (no offense melon but they are normally verging on the silly/rediculous) I thought it would be belittling of this article to just post it as a reply.

    Get comfy if you're going to read it, it's an 8100 word article so will take a little while, but it covers a fairly broad range of areas and I thought it was a fantastic read. I love this kind of stuff and wondered if anyone else would like to read and give an opinion on the piece:

    http://www.aeonmagazine.com/world-vi...an-extinction/

    Enjoy!
    That was already mentioned in my post , as for rediculous , Im not sure what you mean , when you've basically reposted the same thing I already did that just make you look ridiculous - not me


    m
    Last edited by melon; 03-03-2013 at 01:42 PM.

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    Re: AI, Extinction and Humanity's Deep Future

    I hadn't realised it referenced back to this article melon. I think you should've just posted that - it's a much better considered piece and covers a much larger spectrum of thought and even some history.

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    Re: AI, Extinction and Humanity's Deep Future

    Quote Originally Posted by cptwhite_uk View Post
    I hadn't realised it referenced back to this article melon. I think you should've just posted that - it's a much better considered piece and covers a much larger spectrum of thought and even some history.
    I agree, but I wanted to show the videos too - esp M.A.Vs in reference to " intelligent flys " I alluded to in an earlier post , so others could see .

    m

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    Re: AI, Extinction and Humanity's Deep Future

    Quote Originally Posted by melon View Post
    That was already mentioned in my post , as for rediculous , Im not sure what you mean , when you've basically reposted the same thing I already did that just make you look ridiculous - not me


    m
    Its a question of credibility (and the link meant something - whereas "read on" could have gone anywhere.)



    However to get back on topic - an interesting article. It always surprises me that some humans/organisations think that the current human race is immune from the forces of evolution, and that we are at the end point of evolutionary development. True, as a species we are very adaptable and resourceful, we have shaped our environment to benefit ourselves, and our use of tools (and machines are just advanced tools) is way ahead of any other species.

    Will those tools ever supplant us? It seems incredible because they (currently) need energy in a specific form to function, and (currently) the generation (or conversion, to be strictly correct) requires a manufactured product. Machines are not yet capable of the biological process like photosynthesis directly. or growing structures that will photosynthesise. They have to be manufactured.

    That doesn't mean to say that it might not happen in the future, so the question is whether humankind will be able to replicate or devise a machine that is as adaptable or resourceful (or more so) than itself, and if it can, whether it can control it. But it might be that those machines prolong the life of the human species by helping it overcome the very real natural threats to our existence.
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    Re: AI, Extinction and Humanity's Deep Future

    I'm slowly coming to the conclusion that we are on a convergant path with technology and eventual AI. I don't see it so far fetched in the next few hundred years that the distinction between man and machine will reduce until we're eventually one and the same. It doesn't make sense that we'd explore the stars and galaxies as biologic beings evolved to suit a particular set of environmental settings - temperature, radiation exposure tolerance, force due to gravity, day / night cycle. We need to take on a form that is indifferent to these kinds of things and potentially adaptable. I don't envisage big "machines" more like an inter-connected hive set-up with trillions of nano-scale drones which collect, store energy, self replicate etc. Then this vision is more than likely highly incorrect and the true future set-up for our seeding the cosmos more bizarre than anything we can conceive right now.

    The article did make me re-evaluate if it would be good to discover other multi-celled life this early in our search.

    Whether we're still slaves to evolution / national selection. As present we're in a state of flux. However in the grand scheme of things this state will pass in a second and soon we will be masters of it, and after that biological evolution won't even be a concern anymore in any case. When you ask these kinds of questions peterb to have to consider the time spans involved. Modern man hasn't evolved much in the last 100,000 years (approx. guess) in terms of the timeline of our planet that isn't long, but in terms of our development it's very significant. The rate of evolution changes is so slow compared to the rate we're moving socially, technologically that it's a non-issue as far as I can see - soon it will be completely irrelevant - definitely before 100,000 years have passed.

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    Re: AI, Extinction and Humanity's Deep Future

    Very interesting read. Ultimately with regard to the will technology end us question. So long as it remains non-sentient; it will only ever achieve the goals of it's master, for better or worse. It can certainly be seen as a Damoclean Sword whether that sword will land upon our heads will be decided by how well we choose our horse hair and how mindful we are of it's fragility. The thing that is to often forgotten in such debates, is that with the sword comes the throne and vice-versa. Without it we have to go back to chucking spears at things. Everyone wants to be out from under the sword but no-one really wants to surrender humanity's throne.

    Humans are certainly still evolving, apparently as a species our average intelligence increases 3 points per decade. Assuming this is accurate, by the time people of my generation die, those of average intelligence will be approaching the intellectual capacity of Einstein. This combined with the the fact we have been killing each other and engaging in other forms of violence, less and less with every generation(violent acts per capita have been declining for 500 years, yes even including wars, genocides etc). Despite the impression you might get from TV news(caused by massive population growth, greater the sample size the more outliers and anomalies there will be). Means the future could be very bright indeed, but this is far from certain.

    Those outliers and anomalies cannot be ignored however as with each passing year the power of every individual human increases and is only increasing at a faster rate. In many ways I have more power than even the greatest kings of old, as do others. It is a reasonable concern that one day, via the growth of knowledge and technology some kind of planet killing capability may become easily accessible to even the common man. Even today, an average person with a good grounding in Science, resources that are accessible to most in the west and appropriate motivation could probably wipe out a small town. That's why I colonisation of space is crucial to our survival in the long term, all our eggs are on one unstable little rock.

    On the point of sentient technology, that is a whole new kettle of fish. To even begin to argue you have to make a whole raft of suppositions. Best bet I think would be to not to immediately try to kill it, as we always seem to do in Sci Fi. As any sentient being would respond in kind.
    Last edited by chuckskull; 03-03-2013 at 07:37 PM.

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    My rough thinking is the long game all depends on AI. We can and do already easily create machines with computer control that an kill us.

    The critical path in my mind is proper AI, as and when this arrives and is used in devices then we'll be on the tipping point.

    And while at present there are limited AI instances (eg. Watson), none are general enough nor small and cheap enough to end up in many devices.

    And I don't mean pseudo AI like phone voice control for instances (I'd even say Watson isn't quite full AI).

    When that changes that's when I think we need to be careful.

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