dimreepr

I think the major difference between cheap and expensive wine is legitimacy, for instance: If I buy a crate of cheap wine, my only legitimate reason is, I like to drink alcohol. If I buy a crate of expensive wine, my legitimate excuse is, I'm a wine connoisseur.

The two aren't mutually exclusive, for instance, there is as much chance of self repairing concrete becoming sentient, as AI or GAI. We already have self learning AI, deep blue et al, in which the initial program is essential for it to win a game of chess, which is the objective WE gave it. As I've previously mentioned AI doesn't think like us, it's like thinking an IQ test is an accurate metric of smart. The threat to humanity is from human's doing a captain Ahab, not from the whale doing a Moby.

Thanks for the neg from, whoever; but what's the argument?

I hope not, but you were in a group and that sort of question, tends to reduce ones sensitivity too, stupid...

How can you tell how much of that experience was due to the price of the bottle?

How do you prove that this wine tastes better than this one, if I don't want to be convinced?

There are many things that affect our perception of taste, even music can be designed to enhance taste. Money, or price, has it's part to play, but that depends on how much we trust the informer. For instance, if you can't afford a chateau lafite and someone on the TV says "this Chilean <insert name>" is just as good, then it tastes just as good; even though you've never tasted a château lafite. But if you can't afford "this Chilean <insert name>", then I'll have a "mothers ruin" and learn to like it...

But if any of us survive and continue to prosper, then it's not post-humanity, it's post-modern. What I think you mean is, how do we navigate the minefields of the future? Why is it's awareness, important? If we do manage to develope GAI, it's not it's sentience that we should fear, it's the human bias we've unwittingly programmed into it. Everything dies!!! "The restaurant at the end of the universe" is just one of seven impossible things to do before breakfast... 😉 Well, as long as you're sure you'll see it, tonight...

I clearly am confused by something I didn't fully understand, but the podcast is worth a listen (they both have a doctorate).

Isn't that the point of the imaginary number? As discussed by Rutherford and Fry on their podcast.

Well, if you're sure, I'll tell my family not to worry...

It's the doom and gloom version of a future, on an otherwise successful voyage. my point being, Ahab's obsession meant he cut corners and failed to prepare for the discovery. We can dismiss GAI, right now, because it seems so unlikely; while we cut corners on the voyage of AI... Just wondering, but how can humanity be aware of post-humanity? Be fantastic if we could...

A Moby Dick, perhaps...

GAI would be better at it...

Indeed, which leaves only one topic worth discussing in this "fantastic" topic. AI is here already, with a very powerful potential from what can be bought today; for instance, it only takes a few grams of explosive to kill a person, face recognition is available and compact drones are sophisticated enough to independently perform coordinated display's, all of which could be bought at a very low price. Which means I could, potentially, kill everyone in london for the price of, a tank and an anti-tank missile. That's just one example of today's threat, we have to consider GAI as tomorrows potential, which is far more powerfull, because the threats would be far more insidious.

Have you ever seen a ghost? What is your take on the topic of the fantasic?

Because the alien part of this is nonsense, it's like preparing to fight a ghost. But if you want to see what a world with G.A.I. could look like, facebook et al is a very good metaphor; human intelligence is responsible for the algorithm, another good metaphor, is "Mickies Fantasia" he set the brooms a task that he didn't think through. The computer doesn't care, it has no purpose other than what we give it. The fantastic part is that it can develop a consciousness that we'd recognise. If you've never been thirsty enough to drink from an animal trough, you'll never know how sweet that water is...

It's a bit deeper than that and it's not really science fiction, in the same sense as a warp drive. For instance, can you have fun if you don't work to earn it?

War's sound like too much work, if it's waged by machinery... Ditto parties...

Nevertheless it does raise an interesting question, worth discussing; assuming general AI is by no means impossible. If we manage to create a G.A.I. we're essentially creating our twin, and who wouldn't send their twin to work their shift? Even a scientist would rather think about the problem than scrub the dishes. The question being, what would our world look like if no-one had to work?

SSShhh, are you trying to start a fight? There's a lot of Asimov fan's in these here parts... 😉🖖

I'm sure they must have been transcibed, sorry no time to look, be worth starting with a q' @ the BBC; my summary of his position on the q of control is, it's not a q of control it's a q of setting the objectives correctly before we turn it on; for me, it's akin to Asimov's <edit (I was forgeting his zeroth law)> 3 4 laws of robotics, but written in the form of an argument, rather than an order, trickier than it sound's to the point that we don't know how to write it, yet; but then we don't know how to build it, yet.

In this series of Reith Lectures by Prof Stewart Russell (well worth a listen) in which he covers that and many other apsects of AI in reasonable and entertaining depth.

Well, beyond expectations is a reasonable definition of fantastic and "beyond different to human intelligence" is a given; If A.I. every causes us a problem, it's because we made a mistake in setting it's objectives, not because of some prescient decision from the A.I.. I was pondering the chance of us developing the technologies to invent anti-gravity, but then I realised that's like trying to invent an artificial left; right?

But your topic is about what will be, not what has been; for instance, 50 years ago the internet was not considered, specifically, to be impossible.