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Everything old is new again. It's going to be some damn thing when everyone in the South takes your idea and they build up their civilization around free robot

Everything old is new again. It's going to be some damn thing when everyone in the South takes your idea and they build up their civilization around free robotic labor, and then when we hit AI sentience and start ensuring the civil rights of robots the entire South has to be burned to the ground again to free the sentient robots from their owners.

mcv 10y ago
You don't have to make machines sentient, you know. Some people seem to think the goal of AI and robotics should be to make more humans, but we already have plenty of humans. We should make machines that do our work more efficiently so we don't have to do it anymore. We can still do the fun stuff of course, like writing and art, and get famous and all that.
- padobson 10y ago
  I agree, I'm just not sure we'll be able to convince everyone with the capability of making sentient robots that they shouldn't make sentient robots before they make sentient robots. Human labor has solved a lot of problems. The obvious shortcut to solving lots of problems is mimicking human labor. Given the opportunity to take a shortcut to solve a problem (especially at a profit) some manager in some business will do it.
  - erikpukinskis 10y ago
    Zero people have the capability to make sentient robots at the moment. And zero people can even describe how a sentient robot could be constructed, even with theoretical future hardware. "We'll have as many flops as some models say a brain has, and programmers are creative" is about as far as anyone can get, but I don't think that qualifies as a plan. So, it's a fun thing to think about, but like all sci-fi it probably isn't the best basis for societal planning.
    - dwaltrip 10y ago
      The question is whether a silicon brain can acquire the capabilities of a human brain without picking up sentience along the way. In order to perform at or above human level (in a general fashion), the robot will need a firm, comprehensive understanding of the world. Won't this unavoidably involve an understanding of the self as well?
      - pdog 10y ago
        What self is there to understand? Does a computer chip know what it's processing?
        dwaltrip 10y ago
        The awareness of all sensory or data input, internal processes, as well as the system's dynamic conceptual models and their change over time. This includes an awareness of the system's conceptual model of itself. I don't think any chips today have awareness. But it seems to me that you couldn't have general, adaptable intelligence without it.
- Eridrus 10y ago
  It used to be a stupid question to me since how could rules have consciousness. But most modern AI is learnt from data, not programmed, how will we know if our AI in conscious? We're not there yet and may never be, but since we do not know what consciousness is or what leads to it, we may stumble into it...

mcv 10y ago

You don't have to make machines sentient, you know. Some people seem to think the goal of AI and robotics should be to make more humans, but we already have plenty of humans. We should make machines that do our work more efficiently so we don't have to do it anymore. We can still do the fun stuff of course, like writing and art, and get famous and all that.

padobson 10y ago
I agree, I'm just not sure we'll be able to convince everyone with the capability of making sentient robots that they shouldn't make sentient robots before they make sentient robots. Human labor has solved a lot of problems. The obvious shortcut to solving lots of problems is mimicking human labor. Given the opportunity to take a shortcut to solve a problem (especially at a profit) some manager in some business will do it.
- erikpukinskis 10y ago
  Zero people have the capability to make sentient robots at the moment. And zero people can even describe how a sentient robot could be constructed, even with theoretical future hardware. "We'll have as many flops as some models say a brain has, and programmers are creative" is about as far as anyone can get, but I don't think that qualifies as a plan. So, it's a fun thing to think about, but like all sci-fi it probably isn't the best basis for societal planning.
  - dwaltrip 10y ago
    The question is whether a silicon brain can acquire the capabilities of a human brain without picking up sentience along the way. In order to perform at or above human level (in a general fashion), the robot will need a firm, comprehensive understanding of the world. Won't this unavoidably involve an understanding of the self as well?
    - pdog 10y ago
      What self is there to understand? Does a computer chip know what it's processing?
      - dwaltrip 10y ago
        The awareness of all sensory or data input, internal processes, as well as the system's dynamic conceptual models and their change over time. This includes an awareness of the system's conceptual model of itself. I don't think any chips today have awareness. But it seems to me that you couldn't have general, adaptable intelligence without it.
Eridrus 10y ago
It used to be a stupid question to me since how could rules have consciousness. But most modern AI is learnt from data, not programmed, how will we know if our AI in conscious? We're not there yet and may never be, but since we do not know what consciousness is or what leads to it, we may stumble into it...