Starship Asterisk*

Ann wrote:
Sorry for posting here, but Otto Posterman, beloved APOD Robot, turns 3079 today and spends 24 hours as a robotic counterpart of galaxy NGC 3079.

• Actually... Otto is only 2994 today.

[b][color=#0000FF]APOD Robot Otto Posterman[/color][/b]

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Chris Peterson wrote:

geckzilla wrote:

Chris Peterson wrote:I do think that artificial intelligences will exist within the next century that can't be distinguished from humans (and in some respects will be vastly more intelligent). Should make for some interesting ethical issues.

At some point I was reading How to Create a Mind by Ray Kurzweil who makes it sound all but inevitable but there were some odd parts and I ended up reading some online reviews which poo-poo all over it and then never finished. Leave it to reviewers to spoil the fun of anything.

Kurzweil is a complete nutjob, IMO. All that singularity stuff is just science fiction.

Chris Peterson wrote:

Nitpicker wrote:
But back to the unimportant stuff: an artificial intelligence that in some respects is vastly more intelligent than any human, should be able to be distinguished reliably by an intelligent human.

What I mean is that don't think artificial intelligences will be able to think in a fundamentally different way than we do. But they may be much more intelligent in some senses than an individual human because of scalability and because of information access. A bit like Watson, the Jeopardy playing computer. Having instant access to all information can certainly make you seem very intelligent, but what it's really doing is making you faster.

• Yes...but (in the spirit of the APOD) will the A.I. be more absent-minded

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absent-minded_professor wrote:
<<The absent-minded professor is a stock character of popular fiction, usually portrayed as a talented academic whose focus on academic matters leads him or her to ignore or forget his or her surroundings. The stereotype is very old: the ancient Greek biographer Diogenes Laërtius wrote that the philosopher Thales walked at night with his eyes focused on the heavens and, as a result, fell down a well. (Note: according to Herodotus Thales predicted the solar eclipse of May 28, 585 BC.)

Isaac Newton, Adam Smith, André-Marie Ampère, Jacques Hadamard, Sewall Wright, Nikola Tesla, Norbert Wiener, Archimedes, and Albert Einstein were all scholars considered to be absent-minded by their contemporaries – their attention absorbed by their academic studies.>>

Nitpicker wrote:But back to the unimportant stuff: an artificial intelligence that in some respects is vastly more intelligent than any human, should be able to be distinguished reliably by an intelligent human.

geckzilla wrote:

Chris Peterson wrote:I do think that artificial intelligences will exist within the next century that can't be distinguished from humans (and in some respects will be vastly more intelligent). Should make for some interesting ethical issues.

At some point I was reading How to Create a Mind by Ray Kurzweil who makes it sound all but inevitable but there were some odd parts and I ended up reading some online reviews which poo-poo all over it and then never finished. Leave it to reviewers to spoil the fun of anything.

Chris Peterson wrote:I do think that artificial intelligences will exist within the next century that can't be distinguished from humans (and in some respects will be vastly more intelligent). Should make for some interesting ethical issues.

Nitpicker wrote:Bender's torso is still broader at the top than the bottom.

Nitpicker wrote:I think most robots which are personified by their creators, always seem to get idealised in some way, male or female. One doesn't see many "male" robots with a beer gut, for instance.

Robots are human creations. Even robots creating robots creating robots ..., were originally created by a human at some point. So, arguably, all robots have a biological origin, and any quality of good or evil is merely a reflection of humanity. All humans have some good and some evil qualities. I don't think artificial intelligence will ever exist in any meaningful way.

geckzilla wrote:

Nitpicker wrote:The Borg Queen?

(I wouldn't count Austin Powers' fembots.)

Yeah, the Borg Queen is a good one, although biological in origin. And then you have Seven to get into the whole history of becoming a Borg thing to show they are not innately evil, though. Seven could be another example of an idealized female robot.

Anthony Barreiro wrote:"Pray that there's intelligent life somewhere out in space, 'cuz there's bugger all down here on Earth."

[youtube]

geckzilla wrote:Yeah, the Borg Queen is a good one, although biological in origin. And then you have Seven to get into the whole history of becoming a Borg thing to show they are not innately evil, though. Seven could be another example of an idealized female robot.

Nitpicker wrote:The Borg Queen?

(I wouldn't count Austin Powers' fembots.)

geckzilla wrote:
The female robots are generally wonderful and idealized and the males have more potential for evil. But not always. I'm having a hard time thinking of an evil female robot or android. I must be missing some obvious one. It probably shoots lasers from its boobs.

http://www.thewire.com/technology/2013/01/mars-curiosity-rover-she-just-so-you-know/61639/ wrote:
The Mars Curiosity Rover Is a She, Just So You Know
David Wagner, The Wire, Jan 31, 2013

<<If Curiosity possesses selfhood, surely the rover must have a gender?
Indeed she does—and it's female, the team behind her [Twitter] account confirmed.>>

geckzilla wrote:Yeah, for some reason all the machines and ships are spoken about with female pronouns but many of them have masculine or ungendered names. It's kind of like a bunch of sailors referring to their ship as a woman. Steady as she goes. Aye, Cap'n. It's kind of endearing until one of them malfunctions and then you run the risk of becoming a tasty morsel for a feminist to chomp upon.

geckzilla wrote:Robots are completely different. The female robots are generally wonderful and idealized and the males have more potential for evil. But not always. I'm having a hard time thinking of an evil female robot or android. I must be missing some obvious one. It probably shoots lasers from its boobs.