Robot Overlords

[Tunnelcat]

Will blame us, and possibly punish us, for not making the world a better place. Oooooh, my head hurts!

Roko's Basilisk

[Alter-Fox]

Ok, well, I'm going to 19th century London to eat Jack the Ripper. Y'know, to make sure he didn't kill more people. Cuz that's the moral thing to do. See ya.

And I'm back. That was fast.

There are two big problems with the... argument? prediction? bull★■◆●? For one thing, once the AI is created it can't change the past. There's no point in torturing the people who didn't help to create it because that won't cause it to have been created any earlier in time. In the context of the... BS -- it's the threat of being tortured in the future that's causing people to create it, not the torture itself. If it is a perfectly rational machine like the... BS... implies, it will threaten the torture (somehow, apparently, even though it hasn't been created yet) but it will be an empty threat; when the time comes it won't actually torture anyone because by the time it's capable of torturing them it's already achieved its goal of being created. If it was capable of torturing these hypothetical minotaurs before it was finished being created, which wasn't part of the thought-experiment, it still wouldn't do it because being tortured would hinder the hypothetical minotaurs' ability to create it.
If it's a malevolent AI like in the "misunderstanding" version (which is on Wikipedia), it will torture everybody regardless of what they didn't do -- the only difference is that here it's a promise of "not torturing you if you help create me" which is an empty promise. So don't build that guy.

This is what happens when you build an argument based on the reversal of cause-and-effect. You make just a couple small but really embarrassing mistakes and then you have a whole civilization of werewolves and supposedly rational people chasing your tail with shotguns because you said something without thinking and then dealt with one mass-murderer in your own way.

[Tunnelcat]

Not really related to the topic, but cool anyway. Self-assembling robots.

http://techcrunch.com/2014/08/14/watch- ... lp00000591

[Isaac]

If you're on reddit, you probably already saw this, but I thought it was really well done:

[youtube]7Pq-S557XQU[/youtube]

[roid]

is it a weird habit to bold the important keywords while writing? imma do that

i never really understood the horses argument from that vid Isaac. (didn't see on reddit, i've been subbed to his youtube for years )
Humans are the only things giving any sort of motivation to the system/economy the vid discusses. Every single thing in the video - every AI, every horse - is ultimately working for humans. The video never touched on an AI being able to replace our human "motivation" with it's own AI motivation, coz i guess the author figured that a discussion of true sentient AI was too far-out. Thus: the video never actually paints a picture of a world where humans are irrelevant. He just paints a picture of incredibly powerful (but still ultimately human controlled) tools. ie: not a particularly new concept, we've been on a steady march of progressing our technology/tools since even before homo-sapiens.

Don't we refer to anything that doesn't ultimately work for humans as "wild"? ie: wild horses, wild AI (debatably: viruses).
Wild things are (sorta) by definition separate from our economic system, and rarely compete with it (because their motivations are typically so different to ours), they can be captured and harvested though.
i'm ... actually not sure what my point was.


(ps: i finally joined reddit a few months back wooo!)

[vision]

i'm ... actually not sure what my point was.

I also think you are missing the main point of the film, which is, there will soon be a time when Bots can do most of the things people do and that time is approaching quicker than we can come up with ways to make ourselves more valuable and that will have dramatic effects on the global economy. Currently there are no economic models for this kind of future and this is why it is scary. The level of technological advancement is unprecedented.

[roid]

If the future of wage slavery is at risk, we may be forced to leave it behind and ALL go into business* for ourselves. Starting our own autonomous kingdoms, everyone having one in their backyard. Or perhaps just be a part of your local coop - likely run by your local government, coz hey if suddenly autonomous production methods can make universal welfare FREE FOR ALL for almost no cost to government, then why wouldn't they jump on that?
*or whatever the appropriate post-scarcity term is, "Go into production?" "Start a kingdom?"

Like Krom warned against in the other thread from E&C, i sure hope no-one tries to orchestrate any sort of resource-squeeze to keep all of us upstart peons from rising up to the upper levels.

Scary
and exciting
but also scary

[Alter-Fox]

Isn't this how PTMC started? XD

is it a weird habit to bold the important keywords while writing? imma do that

Only when being sarcastic. Otherwise the me thinks it's totally normal, if he has any idea what is normal... oh wait, he doesn't. Ignore him.

[Tunnelcat]

i'm ... actually not sure what my point was.

I also think you are missing the main point of the film, which is, there will soon be a time when Bots can do most of the things people do and that time is approaching quicker than we can come up with ways to make ourselves more valuable and that will have dramatic effects on the global economy. Currently there are no economic models for this kind of future and this is why it is scary. The level of technological advancement is unprecedented.

What would you think if we were to develop nanobots that could be injected into the body, that would 100% cure all sorts of diseases and cancer, even if they stayed inside your body forever as residents? Would you trust them remaining active inside yourself after they finished their original assignment?

[Alter-Fox]

If they were in your blood they probably would get filtered out by the kidneys eventually.

[Sirius]

One of the more practical solutions to the problem of robots replacing humans in every field of work is, bizarrely enough, communism. The inefficiency issue would have disappeared because robots don't need incentives to do their best work, and you can still ensure people's needs are met without requiring that they are able to do work of sufficient worth to equal those needs (because very little of what they can do will be worth anything appreciable).

[vision]

What would you think if we were to develop nanobots that could be injected into the body, that would 100% cure all sorts of diseases and cancer, even if they stayed inside your body forever as residents?

The way the future is looking we won't need nanobots to cure disease. We should be able to engineer disease-free bodies. However, nanobots would be very useful to help repair damage from accidents and other unexpected happenings, especially life-threatening ones. I can't say if I want them in my body or not for two reasons. The first is, this hypothetical situation is well outside any of our experiences. We don't have anything to relate internal nanobots to (yet). The second reason is that I can only make that decision when the dangers and benefits are before me. Also, none of this is likely to happen in my lifetime.

One of the more practical solutions to the problem of robots replacing humans in every field of work is, bizarrely enough, communism.

I think this is something a lot of people understand implicitly but have a hard to communicating because it is a taboo subject. People have been taught for centuries to value themselves in a way that doesn't fit into our inevitable future. It won't be communism, really, but something both different and similar. something that fits the zeitgeist.

[Top Gun]

I feel like I've said it before, but a true post-scarcity society like this seems pretty damn awesome. Being able to pursue whatever ventures you wish, without the need for people to perform grueling manual labor just to earn enough to scrape by? Definitely works for me.

[Spidey]

Yea, sounds great, but look out for that long period in between now and then.

[Alter-Fox]

The problem with that, Top Gun, is that in this future it will cost even more money to start up a business than it does now... and unless governments decide to chip in and help which is ultimately up to individual governments, it will be a lot harder to get that money so you can start.

[roid]

in this future it will cost even more money to start up a business than it does now

whys that?

also, are you sure it even need be registered as a "business"? i mean, neither my vegetable garden nor 3d printer are registered as "businesses", they just supply me.

[Isaac]

Alter-fox, you are definitely not Mexican, if you think it requires more than a pickup truck bed and a few goods to start a business.

[Alter-Fox]

There's inflation, and if you want to start a business like the ones Top Gun is thinking of there's the cost of all the robots.
It might not cost that much more than it does today, ok, but it will still be harder to get the money to start your robot empire if all the menial jobs are taken by robots. And if it doesn't catch on you'll need to earn that money again to try something else.
I'm saying it might open doors, but it also raises the bar for entry into those doors.

[Sirius]

I'm not sure he means businesses when he says "ventures" - but even if so, there are businesses that might not require a robot labor force to run. And if they did, well... manufacturing these robots is presumably mostly a question of materials and labor, the value of which would be deflated because robots, so I suspect they wouldn't actually be that expensive after all. You'd also probably be able to lease them - the cost of doing so couldn't possibly be more than hiring humans to do the job or the robots wouldn't be useful.

All of this is a moot point if you have no money at all because the unemployment rate is 80% and social security ran out, but here's hoping people see that coming. Canada will probably be fine, it's more the US I'm worried about