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Author Topic:   The Social Implications Of "The Singularity Moment"
dwise1
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Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 3 of 169 (604518)
02-12-2011 8:04 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by Phat
02-12-2011 10:39 AM


Have spent most of today going through the programs I DVR'd during the week. On a show from Monday, I got my first look at a car commercial for the newest iteration of a muscle car -- Camero?. The voice-over describes all kinds of new automotive technology in which the car is doing more and more of the driving for you. And next they're living off our bodies' energy ( la The Matrix). Finally, their slogan: "The Human Resistance starts now!"
This theme has been explored by science fiction for millennia -- with everything provided and done for us, will we become like the Lotus Eaters? In the Robot novels by Isaac Asimov, on the colony worlds that had embraced the robots and human longevity increased greatly, humans lived long boring pampered lives cut off from direct human contact (thanks to virtual reality comm links -- envisioned in the 1950's) and protected from all dangers by their ever-attentive robot servents (the movie misrepresented Asimov's vision), nobody took any kind of personal risks anymore. Or would that robotic service take the form of deciding that the entire human race is mentally incompetent and take all our decisions away form us, reducing us all to "wards of the state"? Even to the point of basically keeping us and caring for us as pets?
Of course, there's also the vision of that new self-aware cyber-intelligence seeing humans as a threat and treating us accordingly. In the earlier stages of that cyber-intelligence, that seems the more likely outcome; dedication to serving Man (in a purely non-culinary manner, of course) would be a later development, unless very explicitly programmed in at the most basic levels, IAW Asimov's Robotic Laws.
Speaking of which, I remember an NPR report from when either Clarke or Asimov died -- I think it was Clarke. The two of them had gone together to see the movie co-developed with Clarke's novel, 2001: A Space Odyssey. Coming out after the movie, Asimov complained that HAL had acted in violation of the Robotic Laws, in particular in the First Law of Robotics: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. In response, Clarke pointed out that most robots then in use (1968), namely guided missiles, were specifically designed to kill humans.

Those who fail to learn the lessons of science fiction are doomed to live them.

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dwise1
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Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 11 of 169 (604551)
02-13-2011 2:58 AM
Reply to: Message 10 by crashfrog
02-13-2011 2:14 AM


Re: Maybe read some of what Kurzweil writes?
What Kurzweil has written may be of some academic interest, but he is undoubtedly wrong. As anybody's attempt to predict the future would be.
Has any creator of a technology been able to predict its uses and effects? Computers, named "The Machine that Changed the World" in the PBS series of the same name, were deemed to be of such specialized use that its creators could envision the world as not needing any more than a dozen computers -- and bear in mind that any of those computers were outstripped by the "true Blue" IBM XT, which rated a Norton Index of only 1 (we have long since abandoned the Norton Index, so how many 10's or 100's or 1000's NIs would our current quad-core machines rate at?).
The creators of GPS thought that their creation would last so short a time that they only allowed for 10 bits (1024, AKA "1K(binary)") for the number of weeks that it would be in service (GPS time is given in week-numbers and seconds into the week). Before the much-feared "Y2K bug", we were faced with the "GPS1K bug" (term being my own personal invention) which hit on 22 Aug 1999, at which time any particular GPS receiver could have become terminally confused as to the date and time, and hence as to its location. Since then, we have gone on to define "GPS epochs" lasting 210 weeks each (1024 weeks, 19.69 years), and designed our receivers to properly determine which epoch is the current one.
The creators of the Internet envisioned such a limited use of the Internet that the limited addresses afforded by IPv4 was deemed to be far more than sufficient to satisfy any and all needs. Within the past month or two, we officially ran out of IPv4 addresses. Just as emerging and future technology and plans were for an exponential explosion of addresses needed. IPv6 and extended use of NAT (Network Address Translation, which has staved off the exhaustion of addresses for a couple decades so far) should satisfy that demand, but the Internet backbone needs to be upgraded.
Humans attempting reasoned and calculated predictions of how technology will affect future humans and human society will inevitable fall short. Science fiction writers will reach even further and will, very likely, over-reach. What will actually happen seems to lie somewhere in the middle, still difficult to predict. To be sure, our society is affected by technology, and the drive of developing new technology is affected by society. Until, possibly, technology is able to take off on its own and advance for its own purposes, which I would assume is supposed to be that "singularity moment".
Though still, science fiction cannot be ignored. One German name for science fiction was "Zukunftsromane" (future novels), while another was "Mglichkeitsfiction" (fiction about possibilities). Many different sicence fiction writers have thought about and written about where technology may eventually lead us.

The sole survivor of a pre-hyperspace sleeper ship wanders through the station's Zcalo, going increasingly into shock over the numbers and varieties of alien races in existence, until she come face-to-face with Narn ambassador G'Kar, who informs her:
The future isn't what it used to be.

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dwise1
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Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 13 of 169 (604555)
02-13-2011 4:10 AM
Reply to: Message 12 by Rrhain
02-13-2011 3:42 AM


That re-ignites an old Star Trek argument. I believe I first saw it presented by Dr. McCoy in an early novel (circa 1970) -- I no longer possess it, though I do remember several details about it. If the transporter scans you entirely and completely and disassemble you and reconstructs you at the target location, then it's not really you that had transported down, but rather a copy of you.
So how does a "copy of you" know differently than you yourself? For this, we may need to shift to"The Sixth Day, wherein the differences between the original and the copies lies in how many dots you see on your lower eyelid. The difference is that in the Star Trek universe, the "original" and the transported "copies" does not exist.

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dwise1
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Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 81 of 169 (604777)
02-14-2011 8:58 PM
Reply to: Message 80 by Tanypteryx
02-14-2011 8:04 PM


Re: "Absorb Technological Change" - Huh?
I don't see how this can happen as long as humans are creating and using the new technologies. Our society as a whole obviously does not understand all the principles of new technological innovations, but we still use them, and more importantly, buy them. The marketplace controls the rate of technological changes.
I think as long as technological advances are created by humans, and humans are willing to buy them, then we are going to be able to keep up.
If the time does come when computers, AIs, robots, etc. start creating technological innovations on their own, for their own purposes, without direction, input or control from humans, then we will probably not be able to keep up.
True. But I don't think that that technology we can't keep up with will consumer electronics. Rather, it would appear in the infra-structure which supports the design and manufacture and support operations for such tech as consumer electronics. When consumer electronics design gets to the point where all the engineers will be able to do anymore will be to describe what they want the new gadgets to do and the AI will work out how to do it.
We're kind of getting there in other areas. One day while checking out at Micro Center, the power went out. So the managers passed out hand-held calculators to the clerks and had them write the transactions down for inputting into the system later -- I think they also had some of those old onion-paper credit card swipe machines. The clerks looked at those calculators and asked, "How am I supposed to figure sales tax on this thing?"
OK, that's a case of old skills having been lost because the machines had taken over those tasks -- I remember back when each cash register had a card taped to it that gave the ranges of cents for each penny of sales tax. But because of those machines (eg, cash registers supporting point of sale inventory), those clerks were able to do so much more than they could before. Similarly, as engineers learn new more powerful design techniques with their new tools, they'll be able to accomplish so much more, while also losing some old skills (eg, how many engineers still know how to wield a slip-stick?).

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dwise1
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Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 87 of 169 (604799)
02-15-2011 12:09 AM
Reply to: Message 86 by jar
02-14-2011 10:09 PM


Re: Fantasy Machines
Oh, there will be other uses, likely unexpected ones that fall out from research, but the majority of the population will simply USE the products, accept any benefits, without thinking about them, understanding them or "absorbing" the technology.
That's almost always been the case.
True. When electronic pocket calculators hit the market shortly before 1970, my father said he knew exactly how they worked: "They've got chips!"
When I was a computer technician in the USAF, our training NCO's theory of how electronics works was that it's all FM (fracking magic -- yeah, they had "frak" in those days). An engineer at work says (admittedly jokingly) that electronic devices run on smoke, "If you let the smoke leak out, it no longer works."
In Isaac Asimov's first Foundation novel, the Foundation's rise to power was in exporting its technology, only they did it as a religion. They installed the tech and the local tech-priests they trained would operate it: to make it work you must say this particular prayer and then press the red button.
Gene Roddenberry's approach to explaining his technology to the audience was to not explain it, but rather just have the character use it and we'd see the results.
Stargate SG-1 had an even better approach. Carter would start to explain the science behind something and O'Neill would shut her up fast.

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dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 101 of 169 (604853)
02-15-2011 2:36 PM
Reply to: Message 93 by jar
02-15-2011 11:22 AM


Re: Fantasy Machines
The last two examples seem to mirror reality closely. Use it and why it works is irrelevant.
Well, in ex-cop Roddenberry's case, he used the analogy of a police show. When the officer draws and uses his weapon, he doesn't stop to explain the gun's mechanical mechanisms nor the chemical reactions of the ignited powder nor the physics of the expanding gases accelerating the projectile against the friction of the barrel nor the balistic flight of the bullet once it leaves the muzzle. He just uses it and we see that it works.
In COL O'Neill's case, he'd immediately shush Carter's scientific explanations because science gives him a headache. He also could never understand science fiction.
Edited by dwise1, : No reason given.

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dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 102 of 169 (604855)
02-15-2011 2:45 PM
Reply to: Message 83 by crashfrog
02-14-2011 9:49 PM


Re: "Absorb Technological Change" - Huh?
When we invent technology for inventing technology, though, that allows for the singularity. I suspect that's what leads Kurzweil to assume that the singularity is coincident with the dawn of Artificial General Intelligence.
It's already been played with in experiments I read about over a decade ago. Using genetic algorithms, researchers "evolved" a design for a balanced amplifier in a field-programmable gate array (FPGA). The design that evolved was both irreducibly complex and unlike anything that any intelligent designer would have designed, in that it made use of the electrical properties of a digital device. Nobody could even begin to understand how it worked, but it did work.

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