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Who Will Command the Robot Armies?
- Pica_soO 10y agoThe guy who flashes them at the end of the production-line in the cheapest country available.
- Teever 10y agoWell it's obvious that we need to eliminate that possibility. We'll just have the robots build themselves. Problem eliminated and no other unintended consequences as far as I can see.
- icomefromreddit 10y agoA self-sustaining civilization of robots. Humans are gone, but generations and generations of robots evolve and, eventually, incorporating organic compounds, they become cyborgs.
- akovaski 10y agoHowever, the robots were doomed by their limited intelligence and their fervor to produce additional robots. The robots eventually depleted all available resources, thus making the planet uninhabitable for themselves.
- drawkbox 10y agoUntil they learned to explore the cosmos and do this on planet after planet leading to the Grey Goo[1]. Or the flipside, in that they create a Big Bang to reverse it like the multivac did in Asimov's The Last Question when they finally have sufficient information to process it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_goo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_goo
- Pica_soO 10y agoIf you would assume technology to another biology- then a error is a mutation, thus robots would divide into predators and hunted animals, resulting in a new wildlife.
- icomefromreddit 10y agoOr a class conflict, once they become conscious, class-conscious.
- anotheryou 10y agothat guy is a robot
- Pica_soO 10y agoWho flashes the flash-man 9000?
- TeMPOraL 10y agoRelevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/898/ https://xkcd.com/898/.
- lossolo 10y agoWhat I am worried about is that in future AI swarm military robots will enable something that wasn't seen yet in history. Now to make dictatorship state you need support of military/rebels/people behind it, you can't make it on your own. Without humans in equation who will stop some oligarch with enough money to take over some nation in for example Africa or Middle East? You wouldn't need hundreds of thousands/millions people supporting you anymore.
- elefanten 10y agoYes, this is why humans still need to work out some of the age old problems, like governance and ethics. Otherwise it's going to be kind of a dice roll--what are the values of the first team to achieve the governance-eclipsing technology.
- 77pt77 10y ago> Otherwise it's going to be kind of a dice roll--what are the values of the first team to achieve the governance-eclipsing technology. So like all history until now. The winners dictate morality. Nothing will change.
- elorant 10y agoAn oligarch with enough money could simply corrupt the government. They don't need a swarm of robots to take over.
- 10y ago
- Frenchgeek 10y agoBob. Turn out Youtube didn't manage to stop him.
- eth0up 10y agoNot trying to be pedantic, but might you have been referring to a: J. R. "Bob" Dobbs? If so, pardon my intrusion, and abundant slack to you.
- Frenchgeek 10y agohttp://knowyourmeme.com/memes/this-is-bob http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/this-is-bob
- cryptozeus 10y agoGreat read...how about media ? They are playing larger and larger role in how our elections are run. One big media comapny could have indirect affect on how people will feel and behave including governments, armies and nations.
- makomk 10y agoObviously only evil Trump supporters who hate democracy would distrust the media, though. I mean, haven't you read the news? (Also, one of the complaints in this talk is that Facebook and Twitter don't use their power to control how people feel and behave, so the author likely thinks of the media using this power as a good thing.)
- username223 10y ago> They are playing larger and larger role in how our elections are run. What?! How many news outlets endorsed Trump? How many fired people because they're making less money? Unless Macedonian Facebook spammers count as "media" these days, "the media" has less money, less reach, and less influence every year.
- maxerickson 10y agoTrump played the media like a theremin.
- georgeecollins 10y agoThis is genius in that it starts by seeming to be a portentous talk about the evil other and turns the tables to show that the enemy may be us: How do we let ourselves be robots? Do we really like social control? Why do we expect the technology that got us into these problems to get us out of it. I don't think we are really in a terrible place. In so many ways the world is better than it was. But we are kind of blind to the problems we are creating. Read this.
- psyc 10y agoThere's no "we" about it. Broadly, there are people who like having social control, people who like feeling that others are under control, and people who don't like control.
- PakG1 10y agoThere is a fourth set: people who like being under control if their lives are acceptably happy, comfortable, and secure.
- olewhalehunter 10y agoThat's just the second group. The standards and perceptions of what is deemed comfortable, secure, or happy is itself a determinate of social control.
- PakG1 10y agoTo be technical, that'd be the second group if it was phrased as "people who like feeling that others are in control", using the word "in" instead of "under".
- helloasdfasdf 10y agoI believe there is another group: People who like control, when everyone involved understands and agrees with it. It can be very hard, and it involves a consistent questioning of authority. Including the authority of ourselves, and the authority we hold over others. We can have modern medicine, but we have to trust the people researching it. We can have modern robots, but we have to trust the people building them. Fear is a great way to prevent people from questioning. But if we learn to question our fear itself, it can be useful to have been afraid.
- everyone 10y agoMy take on the reason for the US's endless warfare is that it is simply a way to transfer billions of dollars of tax money every year to arms manufacturers and their political allies.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- sehr 10y agoThat isn't your take so much as the take people use to inconsiderately explain it all away on the daily.
- adt2bt 10y agoWhat's your take? You're not offering an alternative here.
- Retra 10y agoHopefully it's something that can actually be used to make decisions and not some pandering fluff designed to appease the norms of their own thoughtless and cynical in-group. On the other hand, maybe it's actually ok to not pretend to have all the answers.
- everyone 10y agoWell, I want to understand why people would actively engage in and promote something so awful and also, on the surface, so illogical and wasteful. This explanation makes sense at least to me. You cant improve things without first understanding them.
- tomaskafka 10y agoThe purpose of a system is what it does https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_what_it_does https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_w...
- zo1 10y ago
- devoply 10y agoThere will be a time in the near future where a CEO of a large company similar to Google will have the ability to control a billion robots, Google has over a billion android phones that it could subvert if it wanted to. Such level of power would effectively allow such a company or CEO to take over the world.
- Brakenshire 10y agoThe final victory of capital over labour!
- devoply 10y agoAt the end though, such a CEO might think of him or herself as being totally altruistic and saving the world from its idiotic leadership. US is already headed towards tyranny. The political climate could be just rife in 30-40 years for that sort of thing to be justified by a well-meaning person.
- jjoonathan 10y agoTrickle-down tyranny?
- golergka 10y agoIdealist make the worst mass murderers and dictators.
- abandonliberty 10y agoAlso the best.
- itsnotlupus 10y agoHe'll only do that if the political environment becomes an active impediment to building a city on Mars, since taking over the world is a fairly major distraction.
- morgante 10y ago
- mtgx 10y agoRelevant talk from Daniel Suarez that I recommend everyone watches: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMYYx_im5QI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMYYx_im5QI
- mdpopescu 10y agoThat video could be called "the democratization of military power".
- Brakenshire 10y agohttps://www.stopkillerrobots.org/ https://www.stopkillerrobots.org/
- icomefromreddit 10y agoA Russian hacker (or a state-sponsored team of hackers).
- Jerry2 10y agoYou've been fed too much propaganda. Do a detox.
- icomefromreddit 10y agoWikileaks is propaganda, NPR is not: http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2016/08/19/490515026/in-leak-of-democratic-emails-questions-about-russias-role http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2016/08/19/490515026/i... Edit. Another source (of many): http://edition.cnn.com/2016/10/13/politics/russia-us-election/ http://edition.cnn.com/2016/10/13/politics/russia-us-electio...
- Jerry2 10y agoNPR is definitely propaganda. And don't even get me started on CNN.. they're not even a legitimate news source anymore. They qualify as fake news now. The amount of anti-russian nonsense coming from DNC/Clintons and liberal is off the charts. And please point out when WikiLeaks was wrong. Go ahead, I'll wait.
- nyolfen 10y agowikileaks publishes leaked documents. they're propaganda in the sense that they present information under an ethos meant to serve an ideological purpose, but that's a meaning so broad that cnn and npr also easily fall under it. if you take issue with the veracity of what they've published, make a case, but otherwise, calling something 'propaganda' and thinking that alone is somehow a knock to its value or truth is meaningless. i'm totally willing to believe that russia obtained the emails and gave them to wikileaks -- it's far from proven, at least on the public side of discourse, but it makes sense and doesn't seem impossible or bullshitty to me. but that doesn't mean that the emails aren't real. it's foolish to cover your ears and ignore things just because someone you don't like said it. wikileaks has also published much, much more than the dnc/podesta emails, from a very wide variety of sources.
- swayvil 10y agoRich people within fortresses will command the robot army. Root passwords will be handed down eldest son to eldest son.
- coldcode 10y agoThis is a pretty brilliant talk, frightening and funny at the same time; in the end I take refuge in the fact that the robotic future will likely not involve humans as no sentient technology can be as stupid as we are and will likely eliminate us at the first opportunity.
- RangerScience 10y agoWait... You're saying that you're hopeful that something we make can fix the mess from us fucking up making things because it'll be less fucked up? I'd find some agreement with you that logically we're the dumbest possible intelligence, because the trend is up and we're at the beginning, except we're not at the beginning, people like the Sumerians were. Except they're not the beginning, either...
- visarga 10y ago> we're the dumbest possible intelligence Collectively, yes. But individually, not so much, considering how hard it is to replicate human abilities in AI.
- tropicalmug 10y ago"One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide stupidity there ain't nothing can beat teamwork." Seldom Smith, from The Monkey-Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey.
- s_kilk 10y ago"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals" -- Agent Kay (Men in Black)
- olliej 10y agowebcams will.
- CM30 10y agoI suspect the answer (perhaps unfortunately) will be 'anyone with the money to afford the technology'. I can see an actual industry appearing around robotics and AI controlled weapons systems, and a fair few companies willing to sell to special interests outside of the police or military. So I suspect we'll get a situation where everyone from the police and military to political groups, companies (mostly larger ones), richer/more tech obsessed civilians and criminals have access to military grade robots. Like a more expensive version of firearms in the US.
- panic 10y agoConsider Pokémon Go, which when it was initially released required full access to your Gmail account. To play America's most popular game, you practically had to give it power of attorney. To nitpick this totally inconsequential point: you could use a Pokémon Trainer Club account instead of a Google account if you wanted to. Most people still chose the convenience of logging into their existing account instead of creating a new one, though.
- GuiA 10y agoThe Pokémon Trainer Club registration was down for days and days. Most people had no choice if they wanted to play.
- StavrosK 10y agoAlso, apps that request Google Account access can't actually read your mail, can they... It's just a verification that you own that email address.
- tonyarkles 10y agoWhen you request account access, there's a scope parameter to specify which aspects you want. They had inadvertently set that to "all" instead of "user info". Those oauth tokens would have been keys to the kingdom.
- StavrosK 10y agoOh, oops. Good thing I never use Google login, then (I don't want services to know my email address).
- hogrammer 10y agoThose wonderful people of Yemen! They kicked my parents out of the country in 1950, after we were living there for 1,000 years.
- choonway 10y agoIt's the cat. In other words, it would seem like the robots are pandering to our desires, but in reality they're using us as their toy launcher. We would be amused into slavery.
- ap22213 10y agoWhy do we even have armed forces and the police? There are a lot of different reasons, but the big one is to defend property. And, who owns most of the property? And, who will own most of the robots? Fewer and fewer people as time goes on. The other day, I heard a guy joke (in very bad taste), that when there are no more jobs left, there will always be prostitution and slavery. It's a sick thought, but how far off is it?
- a3n 10y ago> Who Will Command the Robot Armies? PID 1.
- megous 10y agosystemd?
- macawfish 10y agoDid you see all those ridiculous IoT devices? So those things are allowed to connect P2P but people aren't? Why are people wasting time on this stuff? The "free market"?
- panic 10y agoI think there's a widespread lack of imagination about what the future ought to be like. It's been 50 years, we need another Star Trek!
- TeMPOraL 10y agoFree market is definitely not helping here at the moment. To get Star Trek (sans transporters and warp drive), what we need to do is to make all our existing tech interoperable. Which is exactly the thing businesses are icentivized against. Hence the utter bullshit mobile ecosystem is, not to even start on IoT...
- bbarn 10y ago"The Expanse" gives what I consider a much more realistic view of the future.
- nom 10y agoProbably a teen from a basement in rural Russia.
- Sevii 10y agobugs better keep your programmers happy
- koga-ninja 10y agoAn extensively researched talk. I hope people like Boredom and ennui. What are you going to do when Most labour is done by robots, and you sit at home Collecting a monthly cheque from the government. I know this is provocative, but many occupations Are simply busywork. I do think robot armies can be hacked, so try not to Centralize everything.
- scott_karana 10y agoHiking, reading, writing, walking, talking, singing, loving, painting, cooking, eating, competing... Everything that people say "I wish I did more..." on their deathbeds.
- zapzamx 10y ago> Who Will Command the Robot Armies? Ender Wiggin
- JBiserkov 10y agoGeneral Grievous. But actually Count Dooku. But actually senator Palpatine. Who has recently been elected Supreme Chancellor. But actually Darth Sidious.
- lowglow 10y agoHey, we're working on building those neato robot armies over at Asteria (https://getasteria.com https://getasteria.com). We'd really like to share the (less grim?) vision of how cool that future might be. If you're interested in something that's exciting, and could potentially be very life changing, come check out what we're working on. Full disclosure: I'm one of the founders. [edit] We're also looking to hire and work with interested. Just hit up /careers and check out what we're looking for. Also, I appreciate just working with hackers, so if you don't see something there that suits you, hit me up and let's chat. :)
- exergy 10y agoAre you fucking serious? Did you even bother with the article at all? What you're making is no different than what Maciej talks about, and just as naff. More connectedness is not more good. I explicitly would NOT want a no-name company having ALL of my data and seeing everything that I'm seeing. It's bad enough that Google knows everything about me. Maciej has another excellent talk about how the half-life of data is basically infinite. So while YOU may think you're a benevolent public benefactor, when (not if) you resell my data to the next guy, he may not be. Also, what possible benefit does it bring to my life? Book appointments? Tell me the weather? Why can't I do these things the dumb way? Progress for the sake of progress is the ideology of s cancer cell.
- lowglow 10y agoIf you're in San Francisco I'd love to meet up and perhaps allay some of your fears. :) I'll respond in-line to your comments: > Are you fucking serious? Yes > Did you even bother with the article at all? Yes > What you're making is no different than what Maciej talks about, and just as naff. Why should it be different? > More connectedness is not more good. Why? > I explicitly would NOT want a no-name company having ALL of my data and seeing everything that I'm seeing. Every company was a no-name company before they had a name. > It's bad enough that Google knows everything about me. But you continue to invest in that dataset? Help build a company of trust. :) > Maciej has another excellent talk about how the half-life of data is basically infinite. I'm well aware that data on the internet is indelible. I myself have some cringe worthy usenet posts from when I was a kid. :) > So while YOU may think you're a benevolent public benefactor, when (not if) you resell my data to the next guy, he may not be. I think the old model of reselling data is gone, building insights through models is really the future, and that better helps serve everyone. You're arguing against the local max we've stumbled into. That's not what we're working towards. In addition I'm slowly working on creating a way to participate in personal and generic model building and transactions without publicly identifying the agents involved. > Also, what possible benefit does it bring to my life? Who knows just yet. It's pretty easy to imagine that building a foundation of predictive models around your life might help better serve to help you acknowledge things previously your biases perhaps prohibited you from observing. Knowledge of self is the path to mastery of the self. :) > Book appointments? Tell me the weather? Why can't I do these things the dumb way? In the most naive cases, sure. You could still do these things the "dumb" way, but what is the "dumb" way to you has most definitely at one point been the "new" and "scary" way to the generation before you. > Progress for the sake of progress is the ideology of s cancer cell. I would implore you to read : http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/08/why-explore-space.html http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/08/why-explore-space.html My favorite quote being: "significant progress in the solutions of technical problems is frequently made not by a direct approach, but by first setting a goal of high challenge which offers a strong motivation for innovative work, which fires the imagination and spurs men to expend their best efforts, and which acts as a catalyst by including chains of other reactions."
- jameslk 10y agoAlso related: https://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_suarez_the_kill_decision_shouldn_t_belong_to_a_robot https://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_suarez_the_kill_decision_sh... This talk takes an interesting historical dive into how democracy arrived and how it may be destroyed by the machines and weapons we're building. Fun stuff!
- tangue 10y agoHN being HN I have to say that's this is how I like to read presentations on the Internet. Not on slideshare, not with a js library that add worthless transitions between slides but in a simple, readable text on one page.
- idlewords 10y agoHTML table tags, baby! Thank you!
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- lisper 10y agohttp://www.flownet.com/ron/css-rant.html http://www.flownet.com/ron/css-rant.html
- johnfjacobi 10y agoI've never read this before, but it offers a unique perspective that might have convinced me to be less damning of tables in place of CSS.
- tomjakubowski 10y agoWell hey, you could always get the best of both worlds and use "display: table" and friends. :)
- Drdrdrq 10y agoI never understood the point of this... If you want something to look like a table, why not just use a table? With html only content and design really matter...
- tomjakubowski 10y ago
- siavosh 10y agoIs it just me, or is the link to his home site in the top left a spam/phishing link? (has 2x .com's) Other than that, really enjoyed it.
- arama471 10y agoI think that's an advertisement, likely masquerading as a normal link. I initially thought so because I didn't see anything with an odd link in the top left with adblock on, but now even having turned it off I see no such link. Here is a picture of what I'm seeing: http://puu.sh/sodrS/17a88ea8b9.jpg http://puu.sh/sodrS/17a88ea8b9.jpg
- idlewords 10y agoNo, I just fixed the .com.com typo.
- alphanumeric0 10y agoThe Trade Federation, duh.
- tonyztan 10y agoVideo of talk: https://youtu.be/XY-Ktqhlloc https://youtu.be/XY-Ktqhlloc
- bramen 10y ago> Huggies tried to make a similar sensor to detect when the diaper is full of shit, but it proved impossible to distinguish from normal activity on Twitter. See this is why we need groundbreaking advancements in deep learning and we need them now.
- JumpCrisscross 10y agoRobots will change the relationship between populations and power. You needed populations to drive your economy and man your army. At the very least, no man ruled alone--your court could always overthrow you. A robot army could be built to obey only one. And a factory of robots can make wealth without people. Even assuming we solve the weak control problem, we are about to enable unprecedented capacity for absolute power.
- te_chris 10y agoBut in democratic states you still have one dispossessed person, one vote. So the robot controllers have all the power, until each election when all the angry people vote for unhinged assholes like trump (or not all, as the case may be).
- type0 10y ago> So the robot controllers have all the power, until each election when all the angry people vote for unhinged assholes like trump So the solution is to give robots the rights to vote?!
- JumpCrisscross 10y agoThis only holds if the democracy owns and controls a robot army bigger than potential usurpers' armies.
- summerdown2 10y agoThere's precedent for something like this in the UK, and it's not a happy one. There was a moment in history where landowners who had a lot of sitting tenants on land realised they could make more by converting them into large sheep farms and removing the tenants. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highland_Clearances https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highland_Clearances
- drvdevd 10y agoFrom the article: > We, on the other hand, didn't plan a thing. > We just built ourselves a powerful apparatus for social control with no sense of purpose or consensus about shared values. I strictly disagree. We must never forget that just because (perhaps) you and I reading this didn't contribute to this system with a sense of "purpose and ... shared values" that someone else didn't. And we must not forget that those values may not be in accordance with our own. What appears to be a disorganized mess on the surface may have a much larger design, it's just probably not your design.
- bhdz 10y ago"I imagine it asking you who you are in a heavy Slavic accent before firing its many weapons into your fleeing body." I find this ... part of a paragraph, highly unnecessary continuation of the previous sentence! And I {object (to this! it = Slavic}; my accent is (fine; (fuck you too = _Writer_; ... i ment...; ...; Nevermind! [:Reader])! Yeah... fuck your wars, I aint hating Americans for that, and I ain't "pulling out a gun" { missing word -> due to rising _(<<anger-ining>>)_ feelings or something...; Fuck you = _Reader_??!$!$> $T@$ @$) ) )!# _ }; fuck fuck fuck you!... edit: in-before: whatever: I don't care about points, and this is not a language, this is just a fuck off to the OW {Original Writer}; of the article; Fuck _off_; ... yeah.. fuck you... I'm fine... k... bye
- idlewords 10y agoIs this perl?
- bhdz 10y agoNo, this is jhet :) jhet is; A language utility; that I develop; . jhet is A language utility { that I develop }; . ~ jhet is A language utility that I { develop | create | screw around...} . ~ jhet is PROBABLY a language {Some Kind of English, but not the same... read -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bracket#Curly_brackets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bracket#Curly_brackets -> It's basically BRACKETs { of the ENGLIH lagn } that is/would be; !#@ %R whatever... I am showing it off right now may be for the first time.. ~ jhet is a language utility; (that would help you); (if it existed {but it's not}); with Languages; Kinda like DrRacket... So JHET would be (may be) some kind of SLANG for RACKET { in DrRacket };... yeah, complimentary to the Racket whatever { "it" may be}... Just __imagine__ YOU'RE INA STRING {of data} ~ The Language:: Language:: The language has a working name as Charm {as in SPELL-cast-ing | _goofy_ I know, but its a good name! yeh... } ~ Todo: jhet { "jhet" is just a word-hack right now... a w-rack if you will :P Term: To wrack IS To hack words. Word-Hack
- tptacek 10y agoI think you broke him, Maciej.
- helloasdfasdf 10y agoWho will collect data on our citizens using CCTVs, and the ability to compromise computers? I don't think our society's adversaries are passing laws by showing up to court themselves. I don't know where the line is between armed robots and CCTVs meant to control us, it feels very blurred to me.
- Gnarl 10y agoZorglub will be in charge
- Dowwie 10y agoThis blog post is a text version of the talk that Maciej Cegłowski gave last week: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Plwt3QSlBs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Plwt3QSlBs
- mrkgnao 10y agoI wonder if the images are all that's on his slides when he gives a talk. It would certainly require a great deal of facility with public speaking to be able to pull that off. Kudos to 'idlewords if that is indeed the case.
- cm2187 10y agoI like the "Chad and Brad". That's a good proxy for the average developper in a corporation who barely understand more what he is doing than a hobbyist. Inevitably, when the technology will have gone mainstream, programming a robot to do something will be done by a junior technician at some random anonymous supplier in a developping country who cannot even read the documentation because he doesn't speak a word of english. That's how you will end up with your cheap butler/cook robot purchased on amazon, chasing the house dog with a butcher knive shortly before dinner. If Internet of Things teaches us anything...
- tomaskafka 10y agoYes. And "Chad and Brad" tend to programming, because they subconsciously feel that by doing the work they are wielding power (even though they are not consciously aware of implications), while they'd be losers otherwise. Giving a feeling of power to the losers is a #1 step to creating an obedient army. Ask any dicator, populist, or army leader.
- chairleader 10y agoNicely done talk. Great presentation, fun enough to keep listeners engaged through a lot of horrifying details. I also agree that we, the people, have a (final?) say in how this all goes down. Let's run with the conclusion a bit - What would society be like for there to be a critical mass of critical thinkers, aware of new developments, in a position to act and motivated to speak up? The cynic in me sees that list and despairs. How can we expect the average parent of 2 to keep C-SPAN on throughout the day, calling their senators on lunch breaks, and boycotting products that would give them an extra hour back every week that could be spent playing with their children. That's how it would look, right? Instead of skimming political/technical news that entertains us while validating our viewpoint, we'd be parsing legalese like it's a pull request. Instead of binge watching Netflix, we might be driving to a store to buy something that could have arrived yesterday via Amazon Prime. It's all quite doable. It's just not immediately comfortable. It's also not a priority in our lives, since it's so easy to prioritize anything else with immediate feedback or gratification. However, humans are very good at internalizing and normalizing. When motivated, we can make virtually any behavior livable, or even comfortable. So that's the trick. How do we normalize critical thinking, due diligence, and active engagement?
- sebringj 10y agoThis reminds me of the paper clip analogy of AI maximizing making paper clips at the expense of human life by using more matter except this is real. The algorithm didn't take into account fact checking or ethics and just kept making paper clips. I love React but Facebook, this is shameful and has to be corrected.
- lucio 10y ago"Here is Huggies TweetPee, which is exactly what you're most afraid it will be. This moisture sensor clips to your baby's diaper and sends you a tweet when it is wet. Huggies tried to make a similar sensor to detect when the diaper is full of shit, but it proved impossible to distinguish from normal activity on Twitter. "
- grappler 10y agoChad and Brad are in a pretty shitty position right now as far as these things go. They have product owners breathing down their neck and are increasingly signed in as the pair chad+brad@company.com in their open-office chain gang, unable to take even a moment's solitary contemplation about what they're working on. They were not hired to do anything other than check off stories on a task board, their “velocity” tracked by the system described in Piketty's “Capital in the Twenty-First Century”. If one of them were to get too invested in the ideas described here, he'd be chastized by the other, or by a manager, or the rest of his team collectively, and potentially replaced. This is at least part of what people mean when they lament that software engineering isn't treated as a profession in the manner of doctors or lawyers. Many of us may be very smart and able to weigh issues like these, but these things are not encouraged or rewarded or respected by most of the employers.
- kelnos 10y ago> If one of them were to get too invested in the ideas described here, he'd be chastized by the other, or by a manager, or the rest of his team collectively, and potentially replaced. But at least they'd then be in the clear, ethically speaking, and their employer will be on notice that this is not cool, even if they do eventually find someone willing to carry out their unethical deeds. If no one stands up for what's right, the managers will just be reinforced in their belief that they can do whatever they want. Most developers are in a much better position to stand up for this sort of thing than people in industries with less worker demand. If my company asked me to do something unethical, I could quit on the spot and have a new, better job in under a week. No, not all developers are on such good footing, but there are many, many categories of job where employment security is so low that quitting over an ethical quandary would be unthinkable.
- andrei_says_ 10y agoSometimes all it takes is to point out the potential legal/moral issues in writing and request a clear order of execution, also in writing. When a paper trail eliminates the possibility for management to plead ignorance and shift blame later, management often happens to grow a conscience.
- 10y ago
- Razengan 10y agoHopefully an open-sourced A.I. government.
- Dove 10y agoI think the search for a suitable commander for the robot armies is a silly one. Asking "Who will command robots?" is like asking "who will run software?" Everyone will. What will they do? Whatever their creators and owners want them to. There are already a lot of robots in the world, just as there is already a lot of software. Indeed, Hollywood likes to depict robots by starting with a human mind and warping it, but a better intuition is formed by remembering that robots are software with physical outputs. They aren't going to spontaneously develop new abilities unless they have been created to. Some people are inclined to develop software carelessly. "Move fast and break things" is a sensible motto for someone at the center of building social media from nothing. That's only one engineering culture, though. Visit labs in heavy industrial R&D, in academia, in defense, listen to open source developers' chatter, and you will see plenty of people write books on whether a single line of code should say this or that. Cheer up. It isn't all maximum velocity startups. :) Software - and robots as instantiations of software - is not good and it's not evil and it's not careless and it's not careful. It can be any of these, because it is a reflection of its creators. Like all machines, it amplifies their will. I very much expect robotics to follow the same path that automation before it always has. In the beginning, industrial machinery was dangerous to the workers who used it, being first generation tech designed only to get a new job done. As the decades wore on, the machines became safer, quieter, smarter, more predictable. Best practices and required safety protections developed, and now industrial machinery maiming someone is a scandal. Machines of warfare were once indiscriminate. The buzz bombs and incendiary balloons of the second world war would be considered terrorist weapons today. The weapons that kill indiscriminately after a conflict ends - the land mines, the chemical weapons - banned now. Sure, they're still used by those who don't care about their moral reputation, but it's the sort of thing that makes the international community talk about putting together a coalition to overthrow your government. Nobody does it lightly. Would the militaries of the world make the same mistake with robots - not retaining control of every kill? Putting an experimental-ai long-lived robot behind a weapon where it might kill for all the wrong reasons after a conflict is over? I seriously doubt it. Too many people would see such a thing as a land mine, and rightly so. A military that didn't care about their moral reputation might do that, but that doesn't make responsibly developed military robots bad. Machines reflect their creators. I very much expect that whatever mistakes the militaries of the world make with robots will be new ones, not easily foreseen. And that as we get better at the technology, we'll correct those too, and ultimately - just like our industrial engineering, just like our software in general - they will be as safe, and as dangerous, and as predictable, and as smart, and as useful, and as directly controlled by humans, as we as a society want them to be. Mature technology doesn't look like Facebook. Never has, never will. It looks like Apache - something well-considered, controllable and safe, something which does a job so reasonably and so well that it's boring to everyone but the geeks who work on it. :) Robot armies will be controlled by everyone, and they will be as unremarkable as the robots I control now: my quad, my 3d printer, my washer and dryer, my car. Dangerous if misused or badly designed, but these things are are avoidable, and beyond that - safe, convenient, nice to have.
- tomaskafka 10y agoThe purpose of a system is what it does https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_what_it_does https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_w...
- kstenerud 10y agoFar more important is who will trigger the first robot rampage. Contrary to what tech philosophers have been spouting from their ivory towers, there will be no positronic brain, nor will the 3 laws help one iota once a robot has been hacked. All it takes is one deranged soul with a little know-how and a desire to see the world burn. Tweak the AI a bit, and now you have a robot that looks for signs of breathing, and then beats, shoots, stabs, and smothers until it stops breathing. Recharge, repeat.
- mdpopescu 10y agoTo me, the incredibly amazing thing is that there are very few such people in the world. My view of humanity is pretty abysmal and yet, out of seven billion people, nobody has created a really nasty disease, or blown up millions of people, or something. [By nobody I mean, of course, "nobody except for governments". Which maybe explains where these people migrate to.]
- squozzer 10y ago>Huggies tried to make a similar sensor to detect when the diaper is full of shit, but it proved impossible to distinguish from normal activity on Twitter. +1