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> Almost nobody seems to be asking these inevitable questions Actually, I see these questions being asked more and more and more these days, and I find it hila

> Almost nobody seems to be asking these inevitable questions Actually, I see these questions being asked more and more and more these days, and I find it hilarious. What with the EU recently discussing robot rights and such. I mean, although I understand that these are interesting intellectual questions, I just get the impression that people are really having fun contemplating them, but realistically not admitting (as often as I'd like) how insanely far away we are from anything where any of this is even remotely relevant. Call me when a robot can tie his own shoelaces and we'll talk.

rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
Your conflation of motor skills with mental acuity is setting your face up for a healthy portion of egg. Stephen Hawking can't tie his shoelaces either. Even if we are, say, a century away from synthetic humans, we may be much much closer to a self-aware AI, even if it can only exist inside computer hardware. The future will come sooner than is convenient. None of America's founding fathers had a sustainable long-term answer to slavery. It took a civil war to sort that through and racism still plagues this nation. So what's there to lose by speculating before it's far too late?
- notahacker 10y ago
  > Your conflation of motor skills with mental acuity is setting your face up for a healthy portion of egg. Stephen Hawking can't tie his shoelaces either. I assume the OP's point is that in an era where we've struggled to program machines with sufficient ingenuity to master relatively simple motor skills (despite considerable financial incentives to do so) it's more than a little premature to conclude it's "inevitable" that we will end up creating machines with such sophisticated reasoning skills it can run a functioning business without losing out to human suppliers, contractors, customers and clients that all want to profit at its expense (despite no incentive to create a single machine that could do this, and considerable incentive not to grant it full self-ownership if such a single machine were nevertheless created).
  - rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
    I forget the name but there was a passive income post here a few months back about a neural network that created logos and earned the creator thousands of dollars a month. That seems like something an AI could run on its own, no? I'm not exactly saying it's a small step from that to managing a grocery chain.
    - notahacker 10y ago
      I'm not sure that every automated process that generates an output after evidence of payment is produced qualifies as a business. Otherwise I've got a box full of businesses (old shareware CDs) lying around somewhere Software might be able to cope with commerce to the extent of churning out logos based on a predefined input parameters in response to a payment received token, but it's rather less adept at finding new ways of reaching or serving customers or dealing with other day to day stuff like taxes or complaints[1]. Which is probably why LogoJoy, the project you're referring to, is hiring... [1]not to mention an AI without the ability to testify in court but with a direct line to a vault of cash being a magnet for crackers, hustlers and thieves
gnaritas 10y ago
Beyond the motor skills to intelligence conflation as was already pointed out; you're also wrongly assuming a machine AI need be intelligent the same way a human is. Much of what your brain does is centered around having a human body; just as a plane doesn't need to flap its wings, an AI won't need to think like a person to still be intelligent so there will likely always be things humans can do better but that in no way implies the machines can't be more intelligent than us even while not being able to do many of the things we do.

rm_-rf_slash 10y ago

Your conflation of motor skills with mental acuity is setting your face up for a healthy portion of egg. Stephen Hawking can't tie his shoelaces either. Even if we are, say, a century away from synthetic humans, we may be much much closer to a self-aware AI, even if it can only exist inside computer hardware. The future will come sooner than is convenient. None of America's founding fathers had a sustainable long-term answer to slavery. It took a civil war to sort that through and racism still plagues this nation. So what's there to lose by speculating before it's far too late?

notahacker 10y ago
> Your conflation of motor skills with mental acuity is setting your face up for a healthy portion of egg. Stephen Hawking can't tie his shoelaces either. I assume the OP's point is that in an era where we've struggled to program machines with sufficient ingenuity to master relatively simple motor skills (despite considerable financial incentives to do so) it's more than a little premature to conclude it's "inevitable" that we will end up creating machines with such sophisticated reasoning skills it can run a functioning business without losing out to human suppliers, contractors, customers and clients that all want to profit at its expense (despite no incentive to create a single machine that could do this, and considerable incentive not to grant it full self-ownership if such a single machine were nevertheless created).
- rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
  I forget the name but there was a passive income post here a few months back about a neural network that created logos and earned the creator thousands of dollars a month. That seems like something an AI could run on its own, no? I'm not exactly saying it's a small step from that to managing a grocery chain.
  - notahacker 10y ago
    I'm not sure that every automated process that generates an output after evidence of payment is produced qualifies as a business. Otherwise I've got a box full of businesses (old shareware CDs) lying around somewhere Software might be able to cope with commerce to the extent of churning out logos based on a predefined input parameters in response to a payment received token, but it's rather less adept at finding new ways of reaching or serving customers or dealing with other day to day stuff like taxes or complaints[1]. Which is probably why LogoJoy, the project you're referring to, is hiring... [1]not to mention an AI without the ability to testify in court but with a direct line to a vault of cash being a magnet for crackers, hustlers and thieves

gnaritas 10y ago

Beyond the motor skills to intelligence conflation as was already pointed out; you're also wrongly assuming a machine AI need be intelligent the same way a human is. Much of what your brain does is centered around having a human body; just as a plane doesn't need to flap its wings, an AI won't need to think like a person to still be intelligent so there will likely always be things humans can do better but that in no way implies the machines can't be more intelligent than us even while not being able to do many of the things we do.