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We spent so long asking if we could do it, that we never stopped to ask if we should.
by kaosjester 10y ago
We spent so long asking if we could do it, that we never stopped to ask if we should.
- daxfohl 10y agoPeople spend so much time talking about "the singularity" but billions of tiny dumb things seems much more like a danger.
- rzzzt 10y agoThe tinier, the worse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_goo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_goo
- daledavies 10y agoThat's pretty scary. We spend a lot of time talking about AI taking over (like in the Terminator films), but the grey goo scenario seems much more realistic!
- T0T0R0 10y agoSo, the T-1000 was not an apparatus made of grey goo?
- ThrustVectoring 10y agoI'm not particularly worried about grey goo. Biology is already really good at that particular niche, and is adaptive to boot.
- stephengillie 10y agoThe Internet of Tiny Dumb Things.
- T0T0R0 10y agoThat math term, "singularity", re-appropriated as a technology hype buzz word, is rooted in a fundamental concept, though, and used to have a specific meaning: unpredictability. In calculus, when you try to graph a function, and a curve forms a harsh sweep into a vertical line, up or down, if the domain of X is time, a vertical line indicates multiple events happening simultaneously, and we can no longer define the equation as a function, because its results are not predictable. With a singularity, given a particular input (a moment in time), multiple values are possible. In terms of Wired Magazine Kurzweil hype, it means multiple novel inventions are being introduced simultaneously (if you were making a graph of inventions over time), and so, because 2 or more new things are happening at the same time, it becomes very hard to predict how people will try to use them, all at once.