Starship Asterisk*

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.>>

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.

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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