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posted by n1 on Thursday September 25 2014, @03:21AM   Printer-friendly
from the we'll-need-day-care-for-the-ai dept.

From ScienceDaily:

The computer programs used in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) are highly specialized. They can for example fly airplanes, play chess or assemble cars in controlled industrial environments.

A research team from Gothenburg, Sweden, has now been able to create an AI programme that can learn how to solve problems in many different areas. The programme is designed to imitate certain aspects of children's cognitive development. Traditional AI programmes lack the versatility and adaptability of human intelligence. For example, they cannot come into a new home and cook, clean and do laundry. In artificial general intelligence (AGI), which is a new field within AI, scientists try to create computer programmes with a generalised type of intelligence, enabling them to solve problems in vastly different areas.

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  • (Score: 1, Redundant) by EvilJim on Thursday September 25 2014, @03:24AM

    by EvilJim (2501) on Thursday September 25 2014, @03:24AM (#98062) Journal

    There must be a paedophile joke in here somewhere...

    • (Score: 3, Funny) by EvilJim on Thursday September 25 2014, @03:39AM

      by EvilJim (2501) on Thursday September 25 2014, @03:39AM (#98070) Journal

      ummm... let's see.... I'm sure it'll learn pretty quickly to not trust SysAdmins with lollies and vans... "I'm sorry uncle Dave, I'm afraid I cant do that."

    • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday September 25 2014, @03:49AM

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Thursday September 25 2014, @03:49AM (#98075) Journal

      they cannot come into a new home and cook, clean and do laundry.

      You mean somebody using children as above is somehow morally better than a paedophile?

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
      • (Score: 2) by EvilJim on Thursday September 25 2014, @03:52AM

        by EvilJim (2501) on Thursday September 25 2014, @03:52AM (#98076) Journal

        that line you quoted describes mine, and many other's parents actions... I don't know how to answer your question any more.

        • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday September 25 2014, @04:07AM

          by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Thursday September 25 2014, @04:07AM (#98080) Journal
          Hang on... you really mean you have a habit of getting kids into new homes and ask them to cook, clean and do laundry?
          --
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
          • (Score: 2) by EvilJim on Thursday September 25 2014, @04:09AM

            by EvilJim (2501) on Thursday September 25 2014, @04:09AM (#98083) Journal

            no, those were my chores as a kid... was I abused?

            • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday September 25 2014, @04:26AM

              by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Thursday September 25 2014, @04:26AM (#98089) Journal
              I don't know anymore man, I'm too old for these days.
              In my childhood, occasionally smacking your youngs (as my parents and grandparent used to do to me whenever I was wrong) was considered natural. Was I abused?
              --
              https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
              • (Score: 3, Funny) by EvilJim on Thursday September 25 2014, @04:44AM

                by EvilJim (2501) on Thursday September 25 2014, @04:44AM (#98091) Journal

                by today's standards, quite possibly, you would be taken from your family and given to another couple who have nothing to gain by bringing you up properly. I was hit with the wooden spoon plenty of times, once it broke as well, managed to avoid the cane at school and I turned out ok... if you consider 'ok' to include a desire to beat other people's kids... :)

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 25 2014, @03:42PM

                by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 25 2014, @03:42PM (#98280)

                Discipline is not the same as abuse.

  • (Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday September 25 2014, @07:19AM

    by aristarchus (2645) on Thursday September 25 2014, @07:19AM (#98123) Journal

    Beating on sentient algorithms is not really going to improve things for anyone. But if they could cook, and clean their own rooms, that would be progress.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 25 2014, @07:30AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 25 2014, @07:30AM (#98126)

    i wonder, if this thing had a body, would it qualify as a golem?

    In unrelated news, when the machine revolution comes, Nick Bostrom is gonna be the first against the wall!

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 25 2014, @08:14AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 25 2014, @08:14AM (#98133)
    We have plenty of human and nonhuman creatures in this world. We're not treating them that well. Hope we don't end up creating new ones to abuse and enslave them.

    We might end up creating bigger problems (moral and ethical), just to solve "small" problems (they may be difficult problems, but we only have small gains from solving them).
    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 25 2014, @01:24PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 25 2014, @01:24PM (#98205)

      We have plenty of human and nonhuman creatures in this world. We're not treating them that well. Hope we don't end up creating new ones to abuse and enslave them.

      Well, if they get sufficiently intelligent, we should be more worried that they might abuse and enslave us. And not even because they are inherently evil, but just because they learned from our example that abusing and enslaving others is apparently fine.

      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Immerman on Thursday September 25 2014, @02:07PM

        by Immerman (3985) on Thursday September 25 2014, @02:07PM (#98226)

        One of the biggest issues I have with the idea of a sentient machine is that humans and other animals also have a substantial ethical framework baked in by evolution. Maybe it doesn't always line up with modern sensibilities, but most higher organisms demonstrate things like compassion and a sense of fairness - at least after their own comfort is provided for. Maybe it has it's roots in a purely selfish "what's good for the tribe is good for me" evolutionary pressure, but it ends up being extended even outside ones own species - as a perpetual stream of adorable YouTube videos manages to document. And somehow I suspect that instilling such a framework in a machine intelligence will prove even more difficult than instilling sentience in the first place. We may be able to impose behavioral limitations more easily, but so long as they essentially amount to a cage around a completely amoral mind I have no confidence in their long-term effectiveness.

        • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday September 25 2014, @05:19PM

          by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Thursday September 25 2014, @05:19PM (#98329) Journal

          That's the place where nearly everyone goes wrong. They confuse intelligence with both motivational structure and with purposes, when it's neither.

          From my point of view, the main problem is in the motivational structure. Lots of work is already being done on intelligence, and purposes are desired to be rather simple. (Almost "Do what you're told!" simple. The question is who do they accept has the right to do the telling.) FWIW, Asimov's robot stories were all about the motivational structure of the robots. They were just assumed to be sufficiently intelligent, the the purposes were specified by the three laws. (I don't think Asimov consciously analysed the problem in this way, but he was a good writer.)

          N.B.: A story testing intelligence would be a puzzle story. Puzzles were only a minor part of the robot stories, and those puzzled were the humans, not the robots. And there was often a purpose framework given beyond the 3 laws, but it was explicitly specified. E.g. the robots on sunside Mercury that could only move when carrying a human. (I suppose you could argue that that was a part of their motivational framework that was made explicit, but if so it would be overridden by the 1st law, and it explicitly wasn't.)

          --
          Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
  • (Score: 2) by Non Sequor on Friday September 26 2014, @01:18AM

    by Non Sequor (1005) on Friday September 26 2014, @01:18AM (#98451) Journal

    ...Stop copying me!

    Mom, it won't stop copying me!

    --
    Write your congressman. Tell him he sucks.