a.i. good or bad idea?

a lot of attention's given to a.i. these days. we dream up ideas about the future usually incorporating a.i. in the mix. institutions are rolling out new a.i. projects every week.

i see different people in my daily life doing the same thing for different reasons. it makes me wonder what the motivating factor behind a.i. research is? from what i can tell, a.i. creation is supposed to help us understand the human mind more. it's argued that a.i. already exists in computer systems.

do you think its a good idea or a bad idea? could there be any negative consequences to this type of project?

100% unemployment springs to mind.

The motivating factors of AI are:
(1) As you mentioned, to learn about the human brain. If we can make a system that behaves like the brain in a certain way, then we know that the program running in the brain is likely similar to the one we created.
(2) To help us do stuff. Basically creating a really smart system that can think on its own, learn from experience and reason. Machines do things for us, and if they had these abilities they'd be able to do them better.

One thing to note is that AI hasn't really come close to actually mimicking anything similar to a human brain. Specialized systems have been created, but no universal system that can really think like a human can. Sentient robots that might take over the world are still VERY far off.

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Originally Posted by Xei

100% unemployment springs to mind.

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Exactly why we need to stop requiring people to work for a living.

haha, not working for a living...i thought that was what's supposed to come after the project's finished.

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Originally Posted by Original Poster

Exactly why we need to stop requiring people to work for a living.

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Interesting concept. Just curious, how do you think a world using this system would work? I imagine we'd still need currency to exchange goods/services, but how would we acquire this aside from full on socialism/equal distribution if we had no jobs for income?

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Originally Posted by Dianeva

The motivating factors of AI are:
(1) As you mentioned, to learn about the human brain. If we can make a system that behaves like the brain in a certain way, then we know that the program running in the brain is likely similar to the one we created.

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if you did this, would you disassemble the system and toss it in the trash once you finished and move on to your next project?

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(2) To help us do stuff. Basically creating a really smart system that can think on its own, learn from experience and reason. Machines do things for us, and if they had these abilities they'd be able to do them better.

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or would this second motivating factor stop you from concluding the project?

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Originally Posted by Burke

Interesting concept. Just curious, how do you think a world using this system would work? I imagine we'd still need currency to exchange goods/services, but how would we acquire this aside from full on socialism/equal distribution if we had no jobs for income?

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There's multiple methods, anarcho-syndicalism springs to mind. I've written extensively on how this could work but I'll try to give a very simplistic explanation, where individual communities control their assets and their production so for as long as their product is valuable the profit raked in goes to support the entire community. Then the community decides who's pulling their weight and who isn't. If a minimal amount of work is required to keep a factory working, the entire community can share the work and because they collectively own the product, they aren't being fucked over through having less work available as technology decreases the overall workload. If, in the past, 100 people needed to work 40 hours a week to keep things running (4000 hours a week) and this decreases to a total of 400 hours a week, the same 100 people can work 4 hours a week instead since the product retains its value. This is sort of socialism but it's not vast, overreaching socialism and it retains competition between communities. I invite you to read more on anarcho-syndicalism to learn more.

Even easier to transition to, though, would be to socialize housing, medicine, food and other basic human necessities. There will still be some jobs to do, and people that want to live even better than the basics can work. People okay with the basics are free to pursue their dreams. As technology and automation increases it shouldn't be too difficult to support everyone's basic infrastructure whether they work or not. This would require a huge change in ethos though as our current ethos has been manipulated to think poor people are just lazy.

A.I. requires electricity.
The destructive search to suck electricity from the planet is a negative consequence to the planet.
Therefore I would say it is a bad idea if one values Earth.

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Originally Posted by Presence333

A.I. requires electricity.
The destructive search to suck electricity from the planet is a negative consequence to the planet.
Therefore I would say it is a bad idea if one values Earth.

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http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_wAxDMfEGho...%2Bserious.jpg

Attachment 6502

Seriously though.
I'm not a fan of humanity upgrading its toys.
Once A.I. is developed it could easily be the cause of an even higher energy demand for the few billion people to have and sustain their own lil personal A.I. thingys.

If someone had asked me 100+ years ago whether I thought gas powered cars were a good or bad idea, I might not have thought about it...
And now look.
:pissed:

We don't HAVE to use fossil fuels, you know. We could tap into energy from hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes and volcanoes. And then the same energy that would decimate a city would power it instead. There are a lot of options for energy which are not detrimental to the environment.

I may be blind with disillusionment,
but I see every single solution humanity thinks of to generate the amount of electricity/power that humanity craves as inevitably bound for disaster.

Personally I don't mind disaster so long as I have enough time to adapt, but if I'm going to put the idea of A.I. into the neat lil category of good and bad...I've got to say bad because it:
A) adheres to the plan of consuming energy for no good reason
2) humanity hasn't figured out how to not destroy everything.
3. because I watched Terminator

...and A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001).

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Originally Posted by Presence333

I may be blind with disillusionment,
but I see every single solution humanity thinks of to generate the amount of electricity/power that humanity craves as inevitably bound for disaster.

Personally I don't mind disaster so long as I have enough time to adapt, but if I'm going to put the idea of A.I. into the neat lil category of good and bad...I've got to say bad because it:
A) adheres to the plan of consuming energy for no good reason
2) humanity hasn't figured out how to not destroy everything.
3. because I watched Terminator

...and A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001).

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Let me address these issues one at a time then.

1. Life exists for no reason, anyways. As Joe Rogan put it, we're here to eat the sandwich. Besides, you keep acting like if we consume energy, there won't be any left eventually or the planet will suffer. This is only true about fossil fuels. If we tapped into any of the millions of sources of renewable energy that exist both on the planet and off the planet there would be no damage done (except for the potential of what could be done with this energy)

B: Humanity will never figure out how to not destroy everything. Once we figured out how to destroy everything, that was it. You can't just roll back the upgrade.

III - Any fox news conscript will reveal how apathetic and dissociated people are already becoming. We already live in a planet where children are being murdered for the sake of greed and a small group of families are setting themselves up to win a war of attrition against the rest of the planet. If anything, at this point AI might bring some more humanity to the equation than currently exists. Hell, maybe a robot rebellion would even the playing field a little.

We need super advanced AI to help us with everything. It isn't like humans only use in life is going to work every day, if we can get rid of all jobs that would be a great thing. It would be an amazingly good thing. If we increase efficiency and production to a point where we can provide everything for everyone, we really don't need jobs and there is no reason we can't just share everything.

Besides humans have screwed things up enough already. It is clear we are not yet smart enough to resolve all our problems, and thing will get really bad once we run out of fossil fuels and the real impact of global climate changes comes into effect. We need to create something smarter than us, something that can solve the things we are not yet smart enough to fix, before they kill us.

lol if we make ai we can just get them to run on treadmills like hamsters and thatll get us the energy we need

why is it so easy to tell who smokes pot in this thread

Mm. Good points.

I do, somewhat, have that perspective when it comes to energy on the planet.
But I don't see humanity consuming all of it, and that being the negative impact,
I see humanity pulling it out of places where it needs to be in order to sustain life in certain places.
I sense there is a connection to everything on the planet, but I don't have conscious knowledge of how it's all connected.
Take energy from a volcano and maybe you kill the coral reef.
Take energy from hurricanes and maybe you take out 90% of the butterflies. Who knows...until we mess it up.

It's this whole pursuit of more energy to sustain an opulent lifestyle that is the problem, the unbalancing factor to ecological stability.
Where will A.I. fit into that equation, truly?

[/pessimism]

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Originally Posted by episode24

why is it so easy to tell who smokes pot in this thread

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I doubt you have a list of people who actually smoke pot to confirm those assumptions.

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Originally Posted by Presence333

Mm. Good points.

I do, somewhat, have that perspective when it comes to energy on the planet.
But I don't see humanity consuming all of it, and that being the negative impact,
I see humanity pulling it out of places where it needs to be in order to sustain life in certain places.
I sense there is a connection to everything on the planet, but I don't have conscious knowledge of how it's all connected.
Take energy from a volcano and maybe you kill the coral reef.
Take energy from hurricanes and maybe you take out 90% of the butterflies. Who knows...until we mess it up.

It's this whole pursuit of more energy to sustain an opulent lifestyle that is the problem, the unbalancing factor to ecological stability.
Where will A.I. fit into that equation, truly?

[/pessimism]

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Movies have given us a twisted perception of A.I. anyways. What we'll see is our computers growing in sophistication, not emotionality. So we could develop computers capable of processing the bulk data necessary to understand nearly precisely what the adverse effects of tapping a particular hurricane or volcano would be.

I understand your point about the natural flow of life though, and I'm not so blunt headed to dismiss it. Nature contains within it complete anticipation without bias, and because its perception is not narrowed like humanity's it will always remain superior to allow nature to take its course rather than intervene (superior doesn't mean better in this context, as our human values often pull us to rebel against the work of nature). I've already written volumes of this in this forum and others and I'm sure lots of people will quote this paragraph with obvious rebuttals and frankly I won't be responding to any of them. Their two cents is worthless in the context of my larger response to your specific statement, Presence.

I digress, that aside, we are here to eat the sandwich and unfortunately if those with a little wisdom use that wisdom to choose to live in the woods and stand apart from technology then it'll be the lowest common denominator continuing to push technology forward. I'd rather take some responsibility to pressure, in what part I am able, a positive technological transformation. Unfortunately as we continue to eat the sandwich we are going to see major changes. Hopefully we have enough wit not to impact these changes too massively. Luckily there are thousands and millions of untapped sources of energy and many of them stand no chance at eventually killing us (which is the ultimate effect of destroying coral reefs, environmentalists are not environmentalists for shits and empathy, it's a selfish cause in its core). Perhaps we will not be collectively capable of curbing the thoughtless pursuit of technology by our most myopic brethren, and if so we'll die and earth will recycle itself and prepare for another civilization or perhaps even new sentient species to come along and try its part to eat sandwich without killing itself. Who knows, I control only my own actions.