7 ms·

I fundamentally disagree with this article. Automation hits some places earlier than others, but I think "marketing" isn't as far away as they think. We're star

I fundamentally disagree with this article. Automation hits some places earlier than others, but I think "marketing" isn't as far away as they think. We're starting to develop bots that can make puns, text to speech that sounds human, etc. What happens when bots can pass the Turing Test? When they know everything about the trends you follow, finances you have, products you've bought, shows you watch, places you go, jokes you enjoy? Marketing will start becoming "personalised", and I don't think humans will be behind the controls for long after that. Humans won't be marketing, they will be marketed. Humans will be a novelty, like a hand-carved chair or a horse-drawn carriage. Probably worse than the human-free product, but worth paying a bit extra for the idea of it.

echelon 9y ago
> Humans will be a novelty, like a hand-carved chair or a horse-drawn carriage. This is the good outcome. In a post-intelligence world, humans will be cute zoo animals. We might have freedom, but I can't imagine us having any measure of real control. Even if modern society continues, it will be a cordoned off bubble, a "human preserve". If we're unruly and give the robots too much trouble, they could just dispense with us. Or dumb us down and make us tame--domesticate us, like animals.
- EdSharkey 9y ago
  Since around 2004, seemingly all additional compute the human race had developed for itself has been put towards gathering and processing telemetry for the purposes of marketing and control. AI as a technology is simply more horsepower and automation for surveillance. I see your comment as a strange mix of optimism about humanity's creative abilities and fatalism about the end of the world coming soon. Not like this is news, but the end of world has always been right around the corner - most everything is broken here and death is everywhere. The strangest thing to me about comments like this is the assumption that a nefarious super-intelligence would stop at subjugating us. If a super-intelligence was evil and had power to act, it would just kill us all and sterilize the planet, given the chance. I just don't believe we have the ability to make a standalone computer super-intelligence - we universally suck at coding at-scale. Don't get me wrong, the AI and machine learning algorithms we have are amazing, but we're not going to get a being out of those experiments. What I'm worried about is humans: humans continuing to turn tech against other humans for surveillance and telemetry in support of totalitarianism. And, I'm worried about humans augmenting their brains with compute. If there ever will be an evil super-intelligence, I wager it will be a (meta-)man.
  - johnchristopher 9y ago
    > I see your comment as a strange mix of optimism about humanity's creative abilities and fatalism about the end of the world coming soon. There's a very large and vocal group on HN that believes in the advent of AI and regularly comments as is it was a done deal. Almost every robot/AI/ML thread gets hijacked with this idea/meme. In the meantime Google can't get my first language right, the windows 7/8/10 search is a joke and Facebook wants me to be friends with my SO's exes. And 2017's revolution ? Dial menus in messenger. I suppose when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
    - EdSharkey 9y ago
      Yeah, I think it's human nature to blow mysterious things all out of proportion. And then when we get together and tell ghost stories about the mysterious thing, and it starts to take on a life of its own. I was so convinced Y2K was going to crash society. I was all looted up, ready to bug out when the city started burning. Turns out, there was enough preparation (and money dumped on the problem), and like only one power station that didn't get the upgrades on the east coast went down for 15 minutes. I'm just as guilty of telling ghost stories and contributing to the disinformation. I remember writing a frantic, doomsday prediction email to my house rep in the lead up to Y2K and I swear based on some of his public comments that I was responsible for him quitting the house and heading for early retirement. I have no proof that was the case, but I'm still not proud of what I wrote.
- d1ffuz0r 9y ago
  I would love to see options for body enchantment. Becoming a cyborg is a very attractive thing, and no virtual worlds required. Can be real humans on real planets
  - mirimir 9y ago
    Yes, I would expect distinctions between human and machine to weaken. I mean, why would one stay stupid and weak?
    - bamboozled 9y ago
      You're hilarious
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - clentaminator 9y ago
      My humanity is a virtue. At least, that's what the Ghost in the Shell remake told me.
      - sgift 9y ago
        Maybe it is, maybe it isn't - that's kind of the point of GitS, thinking about the philosophical implications of merging human and machine.
        mirimir 9y ago
        Yes, that's what I meant. In a world with strong AI, old-school humans would be pathetic. Hybrids, however, could build synergistically on the strengths of all components.
      - mirimir 9y ago
        Yes, of course it is. But you obviously use computers, for example. Maybe even a smartphone. And use remote services to communicate, obtain information, and so on. Probably use vehicles to move faster and carry more stuff. So why not just integrate all those machines better?
- godzillabrennus 9y ago
  I think it's more likely we will evolve by enhancing our bodies with machine parts and characteristics. After all we are building machines in our own image. From how AI thinks to building sex robots. I think the transition will be more nuanced and peaceful.
  - javajosh 9y ago
    The surprising truth for a public weened on sci-fi is that human body is far more difficult to reproduce than the human mind. And indeed, with the exception of big, dumb, but very powerful weaponized bodies (tanks, fighters, drones) our bodies are far superior to any robot body. I predict that humans will always be vitally important for our dexterity at the 1m scale. We can (and do) use tools for smaller scales and larger scales, but we are truly excellent entities at this scale.
    - ryanwaggoner 9y ago
      How can you say that when we haven't done either?
      - jon_richards 9y ago
        Haven't we started using remote-controlled surgery machines?
      - javajosh 9y ago
        Intuition informed by the truth that it's far easier to program a chess-playing computer than to make a hand that can gently move the pieces of the chess-board.
      - javajosh 9y ago
        Intuition informed by the truth that it's far easier to program a chess-playing computer than to make a hand that can gently move the pieces of the chess-board.
analog31 9y ago
Here's something that's puzzled me: Why would robots want to do all of those things? What if robots became capable of taking over the world, but had no motivation to do so? Why would they make puns, or speech that sounds human? They could make speech that is more pleasant to robots if they didn't care about humans. I don't go around making speech that sounds dog-like.
- Drakim 9y ago
  Natural selection? The robots that want to multiply and control their surroundings will outcompete the robots that don't care.
  - Elissa343 9y ago
    My mothers neighbour is working part time and averaging $9000 a month. I'm a single mum and just got my first paycheck for $6546! I still can't believe it. I tried it out cause I got really desperate and now I couldn't be happier. Heres what I do, •••••••••>> http://www.joinmate2.com http://www.joinmate2.com
  - analog31 9y ago
    Natural selection in biology has a mechanism. And it took a few billion years to produce anything that wants. What's the mechanism for natural selection in robots?
    - stretchwithme 9y ago
      None. They don't reproduce, so there's no opportunity to evolve characteristics. And it is not our best interests to make an evolving robot, any more than it would be to accelerate evolution amongst animals. We want work performed in better cheaper ways. We don't want competition.
      - gottlos 9y ago
        Well... what if the form of reproduction is a lot more subtle than you would recognize? Meat people producing baby meat people is an outcome of evolution, but robots building more physical robots is the wrong way to think about it. Potentially, its more like github: the designs go out into the world and experience iterative improvement to the software. Sometimes, it forks. Sometimes, it rewrites because it has hit local maxima (aka legacy).
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
stretchwithme 9y ago
A novelty. Only 7 billion available.
awkwarddaturtle 9y ago
> Humans won't be marketing, they will be marketed. It all depends on the progress and advancement of automation/robots/bots/etc but if we reach a point of "generalized" AI which can pass the Turing Test, we might be at a stage where it wouldn't make to market towards humans. Marketing might be directed to the elite who controls AI but what incentive would be there to divert resources to the masses and if resources aren't directed to the masses, what incentive is there to market to them? Though I don't think we are anywhere near generalized AI, I am genuinely shocked at the progress being made. When I was taking AI class 10 years ago, I remember the professor saying we were quite a long ways ( 2 or more decades ) away from AI beating the best at Go, Jeopardy, etc. The same thing with AI language/translation, image recognition, etc. The idea was that the "space" of Go was just too large for AI to be effective in the near term. And that an AI could grasp the "puns/history/questions" of jeopardy, let alone answer it was something that wasn't reachable in the near future. But just few years after I graduated, all of these "difficult" AI problems were "solved". I'm not trying to sound cynical, but the elite control the world and the human masses are an asset/property which the elite use for their ends - production in modern capitalist times. If AI and robots serve the elites better than humans, what incentive is there for the elite to divert resources to humans?

echelon 9y ago

> Humans will be a novelty, like a hand-carved chair or a horse-drawn carriage. This is the good outcome. In a post-intelligence world, humans will be cute zoo animals. We might have freedom, but I can't imagine us having any measure of real control. Even if modern society continues, it will be a cordoned off bubble, a "human preserve". If we're unruly and give the robots too much trouble, they could just dispense with us. Or dumb us down and make us tame--domesticate us, like animals.

EdSharkey 9y ago
Since around 2004, seemingly all additional compute the human race had developed for itself has been put towards gathering and processing telemetry for the purposes of marketing and control. AI as a technology is simply more horsepower and automation for surveillance. I see your comment as a strange mix of optimism about humanity's creative abilities and fatalism about the end of the world coming soon. Not like this is news, but the end of world has always been right around the corner - most everything is broken here and death is everywhere. The strangest thing to me about comments like this is the assumption that a nefarious super-intelligence would stop at subjugating us. If a super-intelligence was evil and had power to act, it would just kill us all and sterilize the planet, given the chance. I just don't believe we have the ability to make a standalone computer super-intelligence - we universally suck at coding at-scale. Don't get me wrong, the AI and machine learning algorithms we have are amazing, but we're not going to get a being out of those experiments. What I'm worried about is humans: humans continuing to turn tech against other humans for surveillance and telemetry in support of totalitarianism. And, I'm worried about humans augmenting their brains with compute. If there ever will be an evil super-intelligence, I wager it will be a (meta-)man.
- johnchristopher 9y ago
  > I see your comment as a strange mix of optimism about humanity's creative abilities and fatalism about the end of the world coming soon. There's a very large and vocal group on HN that believes in the advent of AI and regularly comments as is it was a done deal. Almost every robot/AI/ML thread gets hijacked with this idea/meme. In the meantime Google can't get my first language right, the windows 7/8/10 search is a joke and Facebook wants me to be friends with my SO's exes. And 2017's revolution ? Dial menus in messenger. I suppose when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
  - EdSharkey 9y ago
    Yeah, I think it's human nature to blow mysterious things all out of proportion. And then when we get together and tell ghost stories about the mysterious thing, and it starts to take on a life of its own. I was so convinced Y2K was going to crash society. I was all looted up, ready to bug out when the city started burning. Turns out, there was enough preparation (and money dumped on the problem), and like only one power station that didn't get the upgrades on the east coast went down for 15 minutes. I'm just as guilty of telling ghost stories and contributing to the disinformation. I remember writing a frantic, doomsday prediction email to my house rep in the lead up to Y2K and I swear based on some of his public comments that I was responsible for him quitting the house and heading for early retirement. I have no proof that was the case, but I'm still not proud of what I wrote.
d1ffuz0r 9y ago
I would love to see options for body enchantment. Becoming a cyborg is a very attractive thing, and no virtual worlds required. Can be real humans on real planets
- mirimir 9y ago
  Yes, I would expect distinctions between human and machine to weaken. I mean, why would one stay stupid and weak?
  - bamboozled 9y ago
    You're hilarious
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - clentaminator 9y ago
    My humanity is a virtue. At least, that's what the Ghost in the Shell remake told me.
    - sgift 9y ago
      Maybe it is, maybe it isn't - that's kind of the point of GitS, thinking about the philosophical implications of merging human and machine.
      - mirimir 9y ago
        Yes, that's what I meant. In a world with strong AI, old-school humans would be pathetic. Hybrids, however, could build synergistically on the strengths of all components.
    - mirimir 9y ago
      Yes, of course it is. But you obviously use computers, for example. Maybe even a smartphone. And use remote services to communicate, obtain information, and so on. Probably use vehicles to move faster and carry more stuff. So why not just integrate all those machines better?
godzillabrennus 9y ago
I think it's more likely we will evolve by enhancing our bodies with machine parts and characteristics. After all we are building machines in our own image. From how AI thinks to building sex robots. I think the transition will be more nuanced and peaceful.
- javajosh 9y ago
  The surprising truth for a public weened on sci-fi is that human body is far more difficult to reproduce than the human mind. And indeed, with the exception of big, dumb, but very powerful weaponized bodies (tanks, fighters, drones) our bodies are far superior to any robot body. I predict that humans will always be vitally important for our dexterity at the 1m scale. We can (and do) use tools for smaller scales and larger scales, but we are truly excellent entities at this scale.
  - ryanwaggoner 9y ago
    How can you say that when we haven't done either?
    - jon_richards 9y ago
      Haven't we started using remote-controlled surgery machines?
    - javajosh 9y ago
      Intuition informed by the truth that it's far easier to program a chess-playing computer than to make a hand that can gently move the pieces of the chess-board.
    - javajosh 9y ago
      Intuition informed by the truth that it's far easier to program a chess-playing computer than to make a hand that can gently move the pieces of the chess-board.

analog31 9y ago

Here's something that's puzzled me: Why would robots want to do all of those things? What if robots became capable of taking over the world, but had no motivation to do so? Why would they make puns, or speech that sounds human? They could make speech that is more pleasant to robots if they didn't care about humans. I don't go around making speech that sounds dog-like.

Drakim 9y ago
Natural selection? The robots that want to multiply and control their surroundings will outcompete the robots that don't care.
- Elissa343 9y ago
  My mothers neighbour is working part time and averaging $9000 a month. I'm a single mum and just got my first paycheck for $6546! I still can't believe it. I tried it out cause I got really desperate and now I couldn't be happier. Heres what I do, •••••••••>> http://www.joinmate2.com http://www.joinmate2.com
- analog31 9y ago
  Natural selection in biology has a mechanism. And it took a few billion years to produce anything that wants. What's the mechanism for natural selection in robots?
  - stretchwithme 9y ago
    None. They don't reproduce, so there's no opportunity to evolve characteristics. And it is not our best interests to make an evolving robot, any more than it would be to accelerate evolution amongst animals. We want work performed in better cheaper ways. We don't want competition.
    - gottlos 9y ago
      Well... what if the form of reproduction is a lot more subtle than you would recognize? Meat people producing baby meat people is an outcome of evolution, but robots building more physical robots is the wrong way to think about it. Potentially, its more like github: the designs go out into the world and experience iterative improvement to the software. Sometimes, it forks. Sometimes, it rewrites because it has hit local maxima (aka legacy).

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

stretchwithme 9y ago

A novelty. Only 7 billion available.

awkwarddaturtle 9y ago

> Humans won't be marketing, they will be marketed. It all depends on the progress and advancement of automation/robots/bots/etc but if we reach a point of "generalized" AI which can pass the Turing Test, we might be at a stage where it wouldn't make to market towards humans. Marketing might be directed to the elite who controls AI but what incentive would be there to divert resources to the masses and if resources aren't directed to the masses, what incentive is there to market to them? Though I don't think we are anywhere near generalized AI, I am genuinely shocked at the progress being made. When I was taking AI class 10 years ago, I remember the professor saying we were quite a long ways ( 2 or more decades ) away from AI beating the best at Go, Jeopardy, etc. The same thing with AI language/translation, image recognition, etc. The idea was that the "space" of Go was just too large for AI to be effective in the near term. And that an AI could grasp the "puns/history/questions" of jeopardy, let alone answer it was something that wasn't reachable in the near future. But just few years after I graduated, all of these "difficult" AI problems were "solved". I'm not trying to sound cynical, but the elite control the world and the human masses are an asset/property which the elite use for their ends - production in modern capitalist times. If AI and robots serve the elites better than humans, what incentive is there for the elite to divert resources to humans?