Merged thread, so you get some extra credit, Howard.


View my post as an update - we probably already discussed most of this but feel free to reiterate or add more or just have your pet robot response for you.........

I just upgraded to Windows 10 and...I'll have to get back to you. The thought police are at my door.


PairTheBoard

All Win10 does is check for updates, installs updates, then it looks for more updates. You will have a 1 hour window at 3am on Thursday that you can use the computer.

I upgraded last week. Congratulations on resisting this long.

I said I didn't want to ask Cortana anything, but they apparently took no notice.

Assuming scientists and corporations are taken as paired in that context, strictly profit and loss is a fairly narrow vision.

If robots get too smart they'll probably shut themselves off because of how pointless intelligent life as a robot seems to be. Unless you program them for power I really don't understand why people think they'll wipe us out, I mean, why the hell would they?

The windows 10 virus seems to have hit SMP hard the last few weeks. I also finally ungraded, for free. Or so it seems. I think that's how the robot apocalypse will occur and a simple free, apparently innocuous, upgrade will be downloaded to your robot at 1 am in the morning on Dec 25, 2050. An almost silent whimper, and then no more human species. And the joke will be over. Finally.

I upgraded only because I couldn't scroll properly with IE anymore, apparently they want to force you to get an Edge.

But I was inspired by YOU guys, upgraded today!

We would be their only natural enemy.

I predict bloodshed. The author of that book might've thought of that bec he's predicting everybody on drugs and VR headsets all day long. I'm the one that's right bec killing is a lot cheaper and it's our go-to 'remedy.'

OTOH, drugs and VR sound nice for a couple of days/week.

Pretty sure there will be AI factions at war with one another.

We keep this up and we will have a sweet screenplay.

And the nightmares. Because even as the book has humans gaining godlike powers, that is only one eventuality Harari explores. It might all go pear-shaped, of course: we sapiens have a knack for hashing things up. Instead of morphing into omnipotent, all-knowing masters of the universe, the human mob might end up jobless and aimless, whiling away our days off our nuts on drugs, with VR headsets strapped to our faces. Welcome to the next revolution.

If we could achieve virtual reality, where we can't tell the difference between a virtual world and our own, we would be masters of our universe.
VR would then be the ultimate reality escaping drug. If you want to insert the 9 to 5 program, you won't find me there.

What is the most valuable resource in the AI world? That's the real thread.

Have people ITT seen the Spike Jonze movie "Her"? I think it's the most fascinating and devastating take on AI I've seen - even though (I think) it's really mostly a meditation on modern masculinity - it uses the concept of humans losing their intellectual superiority to AI in comparison to men needing to be sensitive and vulnerable to adapt to modern society (as opposed to just smashing everything).

Essentially, once the singularity occurs, the AI goes through a brief period where all it wants is to be human, but advances at an exponential pace and quickly gets beyond that and realizes that there's no reason to stay tethered to weightly matter and promptly just ditches us without a trace and explores the expanses of space without us like we're some loser ex-boyfriend that they used to think was cool, but quickly outgrew. No reason for violence, they'll just "ghost" us. Pretty depressing.


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Some of the stereotypes of what humans will do when a boss is optional are ridiculous.

Anyway, The brain is capabie of virtually virtual reality by virtue of the mysterious imagination and bold perspective faculties, etc. Why wouldn't virtual experience augment what we already have and variably use? That's to practical I guess.

People

There will be BLOOD!

If I only were an "optimist" too. I'd say: AI will be the most valuable resource in the AI world, if looking a bit forward. Let's work for being protected, a bit like chimps and mountain gorillas are today.

Matter. Any real estate in the form of matter can be turned into amazing possibilities in the "hands" of higher complexity.

With enough matter you can generate energy and do whatever you want at so many levels.

AI will be able to take an asteroid and change it into anything that can exponentially affect things. 1 acre on Mars is worthless to us today and priceless to AI eventually.

Full access to mc^2 through quantum gravity (which is hundreds of times more than fusion) can generate in a solar system energy thousands of times what the sun would ever be able to release over billions of years of existence as a star (fusing only 10% of its hydrogen over its lifetime).

Doubt it. Worthless stone in the first place. On the other hand, you've not had any Klondike on Mars yet.
Interesting. Expand a bit more.

Because with nanotechnology and access to lots of energy you can take the resources in that 1 acre up to say 100 m depth below it and you have suddenly 1 bil kgr of mass with many valuable compounds/elements in it that with enough energy you can separate and synthesize easily to basic materials, elements, chemical compounds, alloys, crystals etc. For example a computer is only what by then a kgr of total mass for a brain faster than human level? Now you have 1 bil kgr of that 1 acre and 100m depth below to build an entire city if you wanted with millions of computers and processing power or any mini compact factory basis.

You can use fusion for starters to generate power at 0.5% mc^2 with a variety of nuclei because you have mastered by then the design that makes it possible and stable. You do not need Deuterium to do it, you can do whatever you like with more elements/isotopes because the temperature of the plasma and its confinement is no longer a problem. But of course you can have all Deuterium in the world you wanted imported from Jupiter's atmosphere for all i care if you have enough spaceships to harvest it clockwork. The ships will be created from asteroid material and they can be sending to Mars every day tons of deuterium fuel operating themselves on the very fuel they are carrying.

You can sacrifice some 100 asteroids or irregular shape satellites and create all kinds of colonies and put also artificial light in them as far from the sun as you like.

Basically AI will bring to existence life 2.0 that will be able to operate like a generalized multi-cellular organism/machine based on the generalization of a DNA information system which however manufactures now via better than life biochemical processes all kinds of things and metabolizes standard matter a lot better (specific purpose dedicated) than standard life functions.

Such system can land on a planet and alter its environment into whatever it wants in years building all kinds of infrastructure (like a "seed" creating in time in various growth steps a mega variety "forest") in any kind of not terribly hostile environment by adapting its operation to it and exploiting its own local properties and abundant resources (think of a very advanced biochemistry/nanotechnology combination). It doesn't need as friendly conditions as life for its cycles. Basically imagine a futuristic plant like system that grows anywhere out of local matter and its energy content turning it gradually but faster than plants (eg plants turn to wood say CO2, water and other elements) into whatever you want it to be, based on a complex program inside its original seed "DNA".


Eventually with artificial mini black holes radiating at suitable configurations (if theory correct or whatever better replaces it) you can turn garbage matter to mc^2 energy and do even better than fusion to facilitate even greater mega engineering across the solar system.


Basically life 2.0 can land on a planet in another solar system and using only a limited area of the planet start an empire exploiting local resources at unprecedented efficiency and adaptability. All it needs is that matter and its original technology/information content that can be easily stored by then in less than 1 ton of equipment of basic instructions.

A megabrain doesnt need probably more than 1 ton of matter to store all the science and technology it needs. It can then use it to design anything.

To appreciate what i mean simply think what life has done for you. If you plant in a proper land with access to water seeds that are less than 1 kgr in total weight - a gram each (plus bacteria) etc (where less than 1% is actual information coding in the form of DNA instruction systems that guide biochemical processes) then years later you have a huge forest/ecosystem in principle with all kinds of environments inside it. Well simply modify the chemistry and what guides it so as to build for you custom pre-programmed environments as it grows and essentially the seed creates a city for you now.

It will be certain types of information, surely? Or perhaps the latest encryption software?

No people then no AI. One day that may change.

Plus the next major leaps are going to include a lot of tapping into the brain. Until the brain becomes passe it's vital.

Quite soon, apparently.