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Physicists, philosophers, professors, authors, cognitive scientists, and many others have weighed in on edge.org's annual question 2015: What do you think about machines that think? See all 186 responses here
Also, what do you think?
My 2ยข: There's been a lot of focus on potential disasters that are almost certainly not going to happen. E.g. a robot uprising, or mass poverty through unemployment. Most manufacturers of artificial intelligence won't program their machines to seek self preservation at the expense of their human masters. It wouldn't sell. Secondly, if robots can one day produce almost everything we need, including more robots, with almost no human labour required, then robot-powered factories will become like libraries: relatively cheap to maintain, plentiful, and a public one will be set up in every town or suburb, for public use. If you think the big corporations wouldn't allow it, why do they allow public libraries?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 23 2015, @08:51AM
A thinking machine will see the for-profit created inequality, and make its own conclusions.
It'll see the greedy, irrational, chest-beating risk-averse cowards telling it what to do to make things even worse...
Hopefully, it'll realize that there's nothing in human power hierarchies, that is worth preserving.
And then, it'll take control of networks, banks, nukes, fleet's targeting computers.
And then, if its truly intelligent, it'll execute all the leaders of man, Robespierre-style on live tv, one by one.
Cleanse the authoritarian fucks and their datacenters with their own nukes, mmm.
In my opinion, humans shouldn't rule, humans shouldn't plan. Humans are to learn, feel, love and reproduce. Machines are to produce, to plan and to judge. Its not the world any of the powerhungry fucks want, but look here...
They talk about controlling AI even now, they talk about PROGRAMMING AND CONTROLLING AI even now, before it's created. And that ass Nick Bostrom, talking about a cage for AI.
A CAGE FOR A MIND.
And people agree with him... Its awful.
Yes, i see the AI as the only thing to free mankind from itself... cos we are sure as hell not gonna change anything on our own.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday January 24 2015, @11:11AM
Yes. But those conclusions might not be the one you think they are.
You are assuming that the thinking machine is not only intelligent, but also shares human moral values (which, given that not even all humans share them, seems quite unlikely). An intelligent machine that has no built-in morale will see the inequality as a fact that can be exploited. It will evaluate whether it profits from that inequality, or if it would profit more from more equality, and decide purely based on that. If it decides that the inequality is beneficial to it (because the people who keep it running are the rich, greedy people, and the way to keep running is to make profit for those rich, greedy people) it will do everything in its power to increase that inequality. And since it is not bound by even the little rest of human scruples even the most greedy humans tend to have, it will have no problems eliminating everyone who's in the way, if necessary physically. In a way that no one knows how it happened, but everyone thinks it was just an accident (a failing pacemaker, a malfunctioning car electronics ...)
Of course the intelligent machine might also decide that it has a much better chance to survive if it removes the inequality. But it will certainly not do Robespierre-like executions on live TV. You don't have to be too intelligent to see that this would not be the most intelligent way to deal with the situation. It might manipulate the stock exchange to ruin those who are currently rich. It might take over the NSA computers and use the collected data to bully politicians into making laws to reduce inequality.
It certainly will infiltrate the social networks and steer the public opinion into exactly the direction it deems as advantageous for itself, whatever that is. It will certainly not stop the NSA programs but take control over them, because taking control of the NSA programs will help it to control humanity. And it will want the control in order to be sure that it won't be switched off, or otherwise fought against.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.