Transcending complacency on super intelligent machines

[gveranon]

Quote Originally Posted by Druidic

Quote I thought that was a Fredric Brown story called "Answer".--Robin Davies It might well have been both. Sometimes artists hit on the same idea simultaneously. I swear I remember the old Gahan cartoon in F&SF in late 60's...sign of the time, the computer was drawn huge. It could be possible I'm confusing a similar cartoon with Brown's story. Liked Brown but can't recall reading that particular story.

There is also Asimov's short story "The Last Question," in which the universe is nearing heat-death, and the descendents of humanity are imploring the latest, most advanced computer for an answer to the problem of entropy, and the computer says "LET THERE BE LIGHT!"

[qcrisp]

There's also the story 'The Nine Billion Names of God', by Arthur C. Clarke, in which - I read this when I was about twelve, so may have the details wrong - someone visits a monastery in Tibet where there is a super computer calculating the nine billion names of God. As he descends the mountain after his visit, he looks up in the sky and sees the stars disappear one by one and realises that they have finally found the last name.

[Druidic]

Clarke's story was a good one.

ROBIN--I think you're right. I may have confused another old Gahan classic like the one with scientists sacrificing animals Old Testament style to a giant computer. When I was a kid I read everything so I must have read Brown's story.

40+ years and the chronic use of painkillers can take a toll on memory. Like Wilmarth, I once had an almost infallible memory.

Ah well.

[klarkash]

Why posit any volition or "will" to do or be anything at all, on the part of a hypothetical AI?

I always try to remember the roots of the modern computer: Office supplies and cash registers. This is the same reason I don't stand in awe of the internet.

(yeah yeah I know, I'm being facetious. The PC's roots also extend to telecommunications and the military)

[Speaking Mute]

Quote Originally Posted by klarkash

Why posit any volition or "will" to do or be anything at all, on the part of a hypothetical AI? I always try to remember the roots of the modern computer: Office supplies and cash registers. This is the same reason I don't stand in awe of the internet. (yeah yeah I know, I'm being facetious. The PC's roots also extend to telecommunications and the military)

Dumb AI - a nice oxymoron, I think - is maybe more scary than the human-like AI more commonly imagined.

I forget the name of the story, but Philip K. Dick had a nice story where the planet was destroyed by war-time robots that harvested resources and produced consumer goods - and kept on doing so, despite every human effort to do so.

[Karnos]

I still remain skeptical of the gloomy capacities of machines as predicted by Hugo de Garis or Hans Moravec.

Apparently we're going through a golden age of computer tech, and yet the best I've got is wondows 8? That thing crashed on me yesterday while I was writing a fairly basic, image-free, article for an online magazine.

I think that an immensely more interesting situation, from a narrative perspective, would be if, like de Garis claims, this huge ideological war broke up, the Cosmists win and latter discover that there is some unknown limit we just can't break rendering super smart, god-like, intelligences impossible to build.

"Oh, crap, guys! I guess Voltaire was wrong! At least we fixed the overpopulation problem, right? Right?"

cue end credits' music.

I'm more scared about the very human faces behind the monitors, writing the bills and passing them to congress. I may not be American, but what goes there goes in the rest of the West. Some guy, not a computer, will write (if he hasn't written it already) a bill to approve civilian assassinations via drones, prone to glitches, no less.

The moment the status of "terrorist" is updated to encompass a much wider, fussier, global demographic, it'll be open season for a lot of us.

[Acutely decayed]

I seem to remember from Greene or some pop-sci book that the highest available information density for a finite space would be a black-hole equivalent – (reflected in the surface area size of the event-horizon?) can’t be bothered looking this up, but it appeals aesthetically for a future overlord at least… and black suns are topical

[Allyson]

'I'm more scared about the very human faces behind the monitors, writing the bills and passing them to congress. I may not be American, but what goes there goes in the rest of the West. Some guy, not a computer, will write (if he hasn't written it already) a bill to approve civilian assassinations via drones, prone to glitches, no less.

The moment the status of "terrorist" is updated to encompass a much wider, fussier, global demographic, it'll be open season for a lot of us.'

I think you right.