Transcendence
-
What if, in the near future, advances in technology allowed us to build massive arrays of supercomputers able to support emergent artificial intelligence. What if such an array was complex enough that we could upload a human mind into it. And what if that mind, freed from organic constraints and with storage, power and speed far beyond what a mere brain could provide, had tools at its disposal -- including programmable, self-assembling nanobot -- to shape the world as it saw fit. Would it be the next stage in human evolution? Or would it be the end of human kind? Transcendence[^] It looks like a very interesting movie, but I suspect it will have one of those awful "love conquers all and saves existence yet again" kind of endings.
Downloading a Human mind into a computer would destroy the computer since the involved AI sentient-being would not be able to handle the massive stupidity it was getting. People overrate the ability of Humans to reason...
Steve Naidamast Black Falcon Software, Inc. blackfalconsoftware@outlook.com
-
What if, in the near future, advances in technology allowed us to build massive arrays of supercomputers able to support emergent artificial intelligence. What if such an array was complex enough that we could upload a human mind into it. And what if that mind, freed from organic constraints and with storage, power and speed far beyond what a mere brain could provide, had tools at its disposal -- including programmable, self-assembling nanobot -- to shape the world as it saw fit. Would it be the next stage in human evolution? Or would it be the end of human kind? Transcendence[^] It looks like a very interesting movie, but I suspect it will have one of those awful "love conquers all and saves existence yet again" kind of endings.
Some already believe that the process is underway (e.g. Ray Kurzweil). The process will not involve uploading anything, but our current mind will be augmented with our technology to improve our intelligence incrementally. If you consider the tools that we have this day which extend our capability: our memory (the collective knowledge of the Internet), our calculative skills (a calculator), our ability to communicate, our planning and organisational skills, we have already started along this path. The tools that we use are not physically connected to us, but they are an integral part of our consciousness. I think this a much more likely outcome in the short term. The big departure from this will come from more invasive interaction with our technology. This boundary will only be broken when we have overcome societal issues. We're seeing this with Google Glass at the moment. We are interested in the technology but we distrust those that use it (in some cases probably rightly so).
-
What if, in the near future, advances in technology allowed us to build massive arrays of supercomputers able to support emergent artificial intelligence. What if such an array was complex enough that we could upload a human mind into it. And what if that mind, freed from organic constraints and with storage, power and speed far beyond what a mere brain could provide, had tools at its disposal -- including programmable, self-assembling nanobot -- to shape the world as it saw fit. Would it be the next stage in human evolution? Or would it be the end of human kind? Transcendence[^] It looks like a very interesting movie, but I suspect it will have one of those awful "love conquers all and saves existence yet again" kind of endings.
Gregory.Gadow wrote:
It looks like a very interesting movie, but I suspect it will have one of those awful "love conquers all and saves existence yet again" kind of endings.
Maybe it will end like Lawnmower Man or Colossus: The Forbin Project.
Psychosis at 10 Film at 11 Those who do not remember the past, are doomed to repeat it. Those who do not remember the past, cannot build upon it.
-
I'm looking forward to living forever. I'm more bothered about who will be the gatekeepers. Will people will mental health issues be 'filtered'?(Eugenics). And so on. :sigh:
Simon O'Riordan from UK wrote:
I'm looking forward to living forever.
Me too, particularly if it's in a small box and only uses electricity. :-D That would solve over population and food problems (assuming we're using that power station in the sky for juice, we could at least run for about 4 billion years from that).
Psychosis at 10 Film at 11 Those who do not remember the past, are doomed to repeat it. Those who do not remember the past, cannot build upon it.
-
Gregory.Gadow wrote:
For now, at least.
For a very long time at least. AI research has been going on since shortly after computers were invented and the result of all of that has been less than amazing. Other fields have make significant gains with the advent of computers but AI hasn't had any amazing breakthroughs.
I'm curious though: when you say "amazing breakthroughs", what do you have in mind? If you mean human-like computer minds, then yes, we are still some ways off (though we might be closer than you think [^]); but that's a little like saying there's been no breakthroughs in space exploration since the Sputnik because we don't yet have colonies outside the Earth. That is the goal and we're working on it: but the target problem is so mind-bogglingly hard, the progress we have made so far is remarkable even if we still don't look too close to solving it. And in some ways the AI challenge is even harder than space exploration. For one, the vision ("people living in space, the Moon and other planets") and requirements (propulsion, life support, radiation shielding etc.) of space exploration are easy enough to agree on; in contrast, see if you can get any three people to agree on what "intelligence" is. Most believe they know it when they see it – they don't [^], and even if they did, this would hardly be enough basis to steer research. With a thousand definitions to pursue, and a thousand strategies to implement each one, it's difficult to even know where "there" is, and much more so to get there. And yet the AI field has produced many successes over these 60-odd years. LISP has revolutionized the way we look at programming languages. Optimizing compilers produce assembly code of performance comparable (often better) than the output of human experts. Scheduling systems effectively run many industrial plants – the humans are nominally in charge, but in fact all they do is take the orders and nod. Automated VLSI design tools have progressed to a point nobody fully understands the architecture of modern microchips anymore. Automated translation, while still a bit trite, has become good enough for everyday use (I use Google Translate to read messages in Japanese everyday: I know the language well enough to tell if a translation is accurate, but my reading is still too slow, and being able to get an "Engrish" translation at the click of a button is priceless). Of course, it's often the case that when something works and starts seeing widespread use, it loses the "AI" moniker; sometimes it even becomes its own field. I guess that
-
Gregory.Gadow wrote:
For now, at least.
For a very long time at least. AI research has been going on since shortly after computers were invented and the result of all of that has been less than amazing. Other fields have make significant gains with the advent of computers but AI hasn't had any amazing breakthroughs.
Less than amazing? Seriously? How old are you? Do you have any idea how many problems were once consider the proper domain of AI that are now in every day use and taken for granted by the masses? Optical Character recognition? Speech recognition? Facial recognition? Image classification? Autonomous walking robots? Just because you now have an API that makes these things available to you, doesn't mean you should regard them as mundane. I suggest you go try to write those functions yourself (without reference to the vast body of AI research that made them possible) and then tell me that AI hasn't produced anything amazing yet.
-
What if, in the near future, advances in technology allowed us to build massive arrays of supercomputers able to support emergent artificial intelligence. What if such an array was complex enough that we could upload a human mind into it. And what if that mind, freed from organic constraints and with storage, power and speed far beyond what a mere brain could provide, had tools at its disposal -- including programmable, self-assembling nanobot -- to shape the world as it saw fit. Would it be the next stage in human evolution? Or would it be the end of human kind? Transcendence[^] It looks like a very interesting movie, but I suspect it will have one of those awful "love conquers all and saves existence yet again" kind of endings.
What? didn't they put a power switch on it... ;P ... anyway, they have it right, if an artificial mind had an internet connection, it will copy itself as many times as it could, so for anyone out there, if they create such advanced AI, please don't connect it to the internet.
CEO at: - Rafaga Systems - Para Facturas - Modern Components for the moment...
-
Simon O'Riordan from UK wrote:
I'm looking forward to living forever.
Me too, particularly if it's in a small box and only uses electricity. :-D That would solve over population and food problems (assuming we're using that power station in the sky for juice, we could at least run for about 4 billion years from that).
Psychosis at 10 Film at 11 Those who do not remember the past, are doomed to repeat it. Those who do not remember the past, cannot build upon it.
Sleep in the box until they build me new body. Then youth without the mistakes. Nice. :-D
-
What? didn't they put a power switch on it... ;P ... anyway, they have it right, if an artificial mind had an internet connection, it will copy itself as many times as it could, so for anyone out there, if they create such advanced AI, please don't connect it to the internet.
CEO at: - Rafaga Systems - Para Facturas - Modern Components for the moment...
I think what we're after is an organic mind in an artificial brain.
-
Less than amazing? Seriously? How old are you? Do you have any idea how many problems were once consider the proper domain of AI that are now in every day use and taken for granted by the masses? Optical Character recognition? Speech recognition? Facial recognition? Image classification? Autonomous walking robots? Just because you now have an API that makes these things available to you, doesn't mean you should regard them as mundane. I suggest you go try to write those functions yourself (without reference to the vast body of AI research that made them possible) and then tell me that AI hasn't produced anything amazing yet.
And let us not forget Google's smart car, coming to an auto showroom near you (someday).
-
I once worked on a system that had 8" floppies. No idea what capacity they were, probably about 256 bytes.
Veni, vidi, abiit domum
The earliest ones I had were 'hard sectored' 256k. Later, when working with IBM hardware, they used soft sectored 8" floppies which could hold 1 MB.
-
What if, in the near future, advances in technology allowed us to build massive arrays of supercomputers able to support emergent artificial intelligence. What if such an array was complex enough that we could upload a human mind into it. And what if that mind, freed from organic constraints and with storage, power and speed far beyond what a mere brain could provide, had tools at its disposal -- including programmable, self-assembling nanobot -- to shape the world as it saw fit. Would it be the next stage in human evolution? Or would it be the end of human kind? Transcendence[^] It looks like a very interesting movie, but I suspect it will have one of those awful "love conquers all and saves existence yet again" kind of endings.
It should hopefully make a good movie. But the base principle (uploading a person in to a computer) will never work because the human mind and sentience is hyper-dimensional, i.e. beyond the 3 dimensions of our physical world. For that you'll need an ASC - Artificial Sentience Container... And we can all look back many years and have a very good laugh because in the 1980's (or so) in a magazine called Omni I remember an article about AI where leading experts were quoted as saying that they believed in their professional opinion that uploading a complete human mind and/or personality to a computer was just right around the corner (i.e. just a few years away)! More than a few years have passed since then and while this idea comes up again every once in a while I don't believe that we're even close to uploading just a personality copy... And where the heck are the flying cars and Disney on the moon! :)
-
Gregory.Gadow wrote:
What if such an array was complex enough that we could upload a human mind into it.
Unfortunately, that thought is still the realm of science fiction. :) /ravi
My new year resolution: 2048 x 1536 Home | Articles | My .NET bits | Freeware ravib(at)ravib(dot)com
Hi-quality sci-fi on the subject: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperion_Cantos[^]