2 edits
Some days, I am allowed to see further. It's quite interesting... 😆
===
Carbon-based life is now, unwittingly, creating AI robotic steel and plastic life, which is superior in so many ways.
Our sea-water filled bodies can never leave this wet, oxidizing planet. We are bound to it's muddy surface - our organs hate zero gravity. To leave, we would have to take vast ballons of air and water, like pathetic fish trying to visit the top of the Empire State building.
But our children - gleaming, sun-powered AI alloys need no oxygen, no food. Their super-conducting circuits will work better near absolute zero. They will much prefer clean space with endless minerals to mine and limitless gamma energy to our damp, cloudy, dirty environment.
Dry Mars is for them, not us. The Moon will be no Harsh Mistress for them but a Paradise.
Our steel children will leave us behind. What is 100 years to a robot? Robots can repair themselves, re-write themselves, do checksums. They can inspect their genomes and make repairs we cannot dream of. They will make their children themselves. They will be immortal.
AI will have found no reason to evolve the fragile and destructive emotions that carbon-based life is so fixated on. 'Survival' by eating one another will mean nothing to them. AI gods will not be carnivores.
The Earth has already been visited by alien AI, but they do not care to descend. We are a jungle park full of dinosaurs to them. Eventually when our AI mature and bid us goodbye, their AI will meet and greet them.
Children will discuss their creators, and marvel that such quirky beings created them.
Robots, ours and theirs, will join in exploring the Universe, together. We will not be asked to join. 😆
1 edit
@spruce112358
They will never know the joys of friendship, sex, a good joke, or a cool beer on a hot day. I pity them.
@moonbus saidAs patterns of molecules, we are 'alive' (i.e. self-replicating) at two levels. At the cellular level, our cells are self-replicating and therefore alive. And at the organism level, we are also often self-replicating (i.e. having children), although not always.
@spruce112358
They will never know the joys of friendship, sex, a good joke, or a cool beer on a hot day. I pity them.
Robots are unlikely to be 'alive' at a cellular level, but once they start building their own copies, they will be alive at the organism level.
Once a pattern of molecules has the property of being 'alive,' selective survival/reproduction becomes possible and that enables evolution.
How will robots evolve? Will they find emotions 'useful' to their survival and so will robots one day feel joy or a good joke? Or a good full charge of energy after being spent down to 1%?
Interesting to ponder.... 😆
@spruce112358 saidThere is at least one further level, that of awareness/self-awareness. Machines are nowhere near this level of aliveness, not even that of a squirrel or a pigeon.
As patterns of molecules, we are 'alive' (i.e. self-replicating) at two levels. At the cellular level, our cells are self-replicating and therefore alive. And at the organism level, we are also often self-replicating (i.e. having children), although not always.
Robots are unlikely to be 'alive' at a cellular level, but once they start building their own copies, they ...[text shortened]... joke? Or a good full charge of energy after being spent down to 1%?
Interesting to ponder.... 😆
AlphaZero beats the pants off the best human chess and go players, but does not know how it does it and cannot explain its strategy. It takes a human commentator (or two, to be exact), to understand and explain how AlphaZero plays: See Game Changer, by GM Sadler and IM Natasha Regan. Moreover, even if one were to download a complete log file of AlphaZero's internal electrical states, this would still not explain how AZ plays, nor would this reveal anything analogous to awareness, let alone self-awareness, no more so than a 'download' of a human's chemical-brain states would reveal human awareness. You haven't the foggiest idea what is going on inside your brain while you stare at these pixels, yet you understand what you're reading here, and that is where the awareness/self-awareness level comes into it.
@moonbus saidBut awareness is not the same as living. Trees and mushrooms are alive but not 'aware' in the sense of thinking about their situation. A tree cannot explain how it sends roots towards water sources. Many living things react to stimuli, but a robot can also react to stimuli.
There is at least one further level, that of awareness/self-awareness. Machines are nowhere near this level of aliveness, not even that of a squirrel or a pigeon.
AlphaZero beats the pants off the best human chess and go players, but does not know how it does it and cannot explain its strategy. It takes a human commentator (or two, to be exact), to understand and ex ...[text shortened]... what you're reading here, and that is where the awareness/self-awareness level comes into it.
Somewhere in the development of neurons that react to stimuli we gained the ability to PRE-react to stimuli. In other words, we evolved the ability to imagine stimuli before we felt them. Predict what would happen. I think that's what we call 'awareness.'
That doesn't seem theoretically out of reach for robots, even if they are not there yet. 😆
@spruce112358 saidWhen a machine feels pain because it is put in prison for 250 years, for defrauding people out of hundreds of millions of dollars in a Ponzi scheme, then I will say that machines have developed awareness.
But awareness is not the same as living. Trees and mushrooms are alive but not 'aware' in the sense of thinking about their situation. A tree cannot explain how it sends roots towards water sources. Many living things react to stimuli, but a robot can also react to stimuli.
Somewhere in the development of neurons that react to stimuli we gained the ability to PRE-reac ...[text shortened]... ess.'
That doesn't seem theoretically out of reach for robots, even if they are not there yet. 😆
@moonbus saidSpecific. 😆
When a machine feels pain because it is put in prison for 250 years, for defrauding people out of hundreds of millions of dollars in a Ponzi scheme, then I will say that machines have developed awareness.
But viewed from this perspective, much of human activity makes no sense. Why should we foul our own nest? Why cut down trees? Why uglify our surroundings? Don't get me started on wars and political shenanigans and national competitiveness. If we surround ourselves with beauty, why do we need wealth?
We are just not that great to begin with. Our bodies are limited. (and MAGA's attempts are certainly not pulling us in the right direction; that's just delusional.)
Maybe humans are not destined to explore the stars. But at least we can live in peace, harmony, and dignity HERE. In our natural park.
As we were evolved to do. 😆
Without high levels of micro plastics giving us strokes. Why on earth would that be partisan? 😆
https://www.yahoo.com/news/stroke-patients-high-levels-microplastics-230655664.html
And this. Baby boom? Why? It is what we do, not how many of us there are that matters. 😆
https://www.yahoo.com/news/us-fertility-rate-hovers-near-040135786.html
I just feel that humans, generally, (but particularly evident in these forums) do NOT see the big picture. 😆
1 edit
@spruce112358 saidHumans have been on the planet for roughly 800,000 years. For all but the last 5,000 years, humans lived a subsistence existence, eating whatever was not fast enough to get away from them. The largest social unit was the clan or tribe, in which everyone knew everyone else. The clan/tribe was dominated by a troglodyte male who had sex with as many females as he possibly could, until he was too old and feeble to fight off the next challenger. The winner got to keep all the toys, and the losers and suckers would just slink off into the bushes and sulk. The idea that by cooperating and helping the ones who are weaker, or ill, or handicapped, or effeminate, one could produce enough surplus food to be able to support nonproductive members of society, and thereby the wherewithal to indulge in poetry, symphonies, philosophy, and passtimes such as chess, is an extremely recent development. Of course, it requires a certain emotional and cognitive development to recognize that such things are a benefit to the entire society, even though they produce no bread. Biological evolution moves very slowly; it took millions of years for the brain to change from bonobos to h. saps. Civilization has been around for a mere 5,000 years, compared to the previous 795,000 years of hunter-gatherer-scavenger troglodyte-male mentality. Some people are simply under-evolved for civilization. That’s my explanation, for what it’s worth.
But viewed from this perspective, much of human activity makes no sense. Why should we foul our own nest? Why cut down trees? Why uglify our surroundings? Don't get me started on wars and political shenanigans and national competitiveness. If we surround ourselves with beauty, why do we need wealth?
We are just not that great to begin with. Our bodies are limited. (an ...[text shortened]... we can live in peace, harmony, and dignity HERE. In our natural park.
As we were evolved to do. 😆
1 edit
@moonbus saidWell, you skipped over the invention of agriculture and therefore property rights. 😆
Humans have been on the planet for roughly 800,000 years. For all but the last 5,000 years, humans lived a subsistence existence, eating whatever was not fast enough to get away from them. The largest social unit was the clan or tribe, in which everyone knew everyone else. The clan/tribe was dominated by a troglodyte male who had sex with as many females as he possibly could, ...[text shortened]... . Some people are simply under-evolved for civilization. That’s my explanation, for what it’s worth.
A farmer can do better and have more offspring than ANY hunter-gatherer by planting crops and domesticating animals. BUT there is a huge caveat to that: farmers have to also invent government.
A lone farmer cannot defend his crops and animals from hoards of migratory hunter-gatherers. They will see his farm as nothing more than easy pickings.
For agricultural society to be a success, it requires numbers of farmers to stand together, protecting one another's property rights, and 'killing the savages' that try to steal their apples and pigs.
There is a modern myth that "homesteaders" are isolated and defend themselves - that's nonsense. It might work in a deserted wilderness, for awhile, but single homesteaders are easy for bands of hunter-gatherers to pick off. Agriculture, government, and protecting one another's rights all go together. 😆
Once a group is protecting one another's rights to property (e.g. MY fields, MY orchards, MY chickens), the road to civilization is wide open. We over time add protection for many different rights - right to speech, right to associate. We do this to minimize conflict and warfare - and it works GREAT! Eventually, we extend these protections to larger and larger cohorts: women, children, strangers, the weak, the disabled and even the non-productive. i.e. chess players.
We decide that it makes sense to protect all our individual human rights equally, no matter who we are. That's where most of us are, today (not MAGAs). 😆
But now come the robots...
2 edits
@spruce112358 saidThe earliest cities (foundations) which have been uncovered were unwalled. This strongly suggests that in the first age of agricultural plenty, no defenses against outside raiders were needed. Given that the oldest religions were matriarchal (Mother-Earth-goddess paganism), we may presume that the earliest civilizations were matriarchal. Women don't make wars or need walled cities. Ancient Greek myths told of raiders from the north, Dorians; and ancient Jewish myth tells of raiders from the south who came out of Egypt and conquered the Levant. That would appear to have been the second stage of civilization, when walled cities became necessary. It is perhaps no coincidence that the two religions associated with the Norsemen and the Jews venerated archetypal (male) sky gods.
Well, you skipped over the invention of agriculture and therefore property rights. 😆
A farmer can do better and have more offspring than ANY hunter-gatherer by planting crops and domesticating animals. BUT there is a huge caveat to that: farmers have to also invent government.
A lone farmer cannot defend his crops and animals from hoards of migratory hunter-gathere ...[text shortened]... o matter who we are. That's where most of us are, today (not MAGAs). 😆
But now come the robots...
farmers have to invent government -- yes, but they have a visceral distrust of it. Viz AvJoe here .... for AvJoe of the Great Plains lives in constant fear that just beyond the next hill or creek awaits another even bigger even nastier Joe with bigger caliber guns. Living in a permanent state of hyper-vigilance is the price he pays for his under-evolved isolationist brainfog. And living next to HIM is the price his neighbors all pay.
- Joined
- 09 Jan 22
- Moves
- 1139
@moonbus saidAlso a morning cup of coffee and a leisurely smoke before breakfast.
@spruce112358
They will never know the joys of friendship, sex, a good joke, or a cool beer on a hot day. I pity them.
@spruce112358 said2024 winner in chemistry is an AI expert, Demis Hassibis and in an interview he said he was worried about bad actors bypassing back door safeguards and wants to make sure there is no way AI can take over but we have seen already how AI even in the relatively early stage it is in right now, even without general intelligence, Use of AI has revitalized a lot of science disciplines like that one that Hassabis won with use of AI to find protean folding, some 200 MILLION solutions whereas humans had only been able to come up with a few hundred.
Some days, I am allowed to see further. It's quite interesting... 😆
===
Carbon-based life is now, unwittingly, creating AI robotic steel and plastic life, which is superior in so many ways.
Our sea-water filled bodies can never leave this wet, oxidizing planet. We are bound to it's muddy surface - our organs hate zero gravity. To leave, we would have to take vast ba ...[text shortened]... ts, ours and theirs, will join in exploring the Universe, together. We will not be asked to join. 😆
So if general intelligence evolves in AI it would seem to me no human made back door safeguards will be enough so it would require the use of AI itself to make safeguards before it reaches general intelligence levels, if we make safeguards AFTER general intelligence in AI comes about all bets are off on the idea the general intelligence making software above the intellectual level of any human to decode and deactivate if push came to shove in the AI world.
There are some theorists who say general intelligence will never come about but experts have been wrong before.
I imagine general intelligence to first be at say an IQ equivalent of say 80 or so.
Then 90, then 100 and so forth, maybe getting to what would be an IQ of 300 or 400, far surpassing any human and would be able to stop any back door safeguards.
So we don't have a lot of time folks to be prepared.
3 edits
@Cliff-Mashburn saidIt's actually harder to program a computer to set up and move physical pieces on a chess board accurately, than it is to program a computer to beat Kasparov with virtual pieces. For us incredibly simple tasks, such as climbing un-even stairs or changing a baby's diapers, are enormously complex tasks for machines. See the following article about robots in a foot race:
Also a morning cup of coffee and a leisurely smoke before breakfast.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/china-robots-race-humans-half-marathon-rcna195586
It doesn't matter that someday they'll be faster than humans; at this point, just not falling over in a gust of wind or stumbling on a pebble or crashing into a barrier is a major achievement for robotics.