Stronger than Titanium, Cheap as Dirt: New Steel Alloy Shines

[Siege]

What's the next tech level to research after this? 

As the Powerful Argue AI Ethics, Might Superintelligence Arise on the Fringes?
By Jason Dorrier
ON Jan 31, 2015

Last year, Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking admitted they were concerned about artificial intelligence. While undeniably brilliant, neither are AI researchers. Then this week Bill Gates leapt into the fray, also voicing concern—even as a chief of research at Microsoft said advanced AI doesn't worry him. It's a hot topic. And hotly debated. Why?

In part, it's because tech firms are pouring big resources into research. Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and others are making rapid advances in machine learning—a technique where programs learn by interacting with large sets of data.

But it's here that a critical distinction should be made. Machine learning is what's called 'narrow artificial intelligence'. Machine learning programs that can identify discrete features in images, for example, are being used to analyze images of tissue for the presence of cancer. Those Amazon and Netflix recommendation systems are a form of narrow AI. Google search learns from its interactions with users to improve search results.

The debate Musk, Hawking, and Gates are wading into is about the future of AI (just how futuristic is also controversial) when general AI emerges. General artificial intelligence would match and then (maybe very quickly) exceed human intelligence. It is, in fact, an old and oft-recurring debate with newly fresh legs.

In his book Superintelligence, released last year, Nick Bostrom argues that there are good reasons to believe artificial superintelligence could be very alien, very powerful, and as it seeks to achieve its goals, could wipe human beings out.

Bostrom goes on to say that AI, ironically, may offer the best safeguard.

We aren't smart enough to train an AI—but it could train itself. "The idea is to leverage the superintelligence's intelligence, to rely on its estimates of what we would have instructed it to do."

Though most experts agree artificial intelligence research should be pursued carefully—and in fact, many also believe general AI may emerge this century—Bostrom's argument isn't universally accepted. And we won't resolve the debate here. But it's the weekend, so maybe a sci-fi short film on the topic would be more entertaining.

Director Henry Dunham's "The Awareness" summons up dark visions of Skynet and Terminator. And it notes that while the powerful publicly debate ethics and safety, they can't prevent or control advances being made on the fringes. That's the beauty and terror of democratized digital technology. Set in a dark and grimy warehouse, the offices of a struggling tech startup, the lead programmer sums it up when he says: "I created the future on a $30 table."

http://singularityhub.com/2015/01/31/as-the-powerful-argue-ai-ethics-might-superintelligence-arise-on-the-fringes/

[Tonitrus]

Pretty sure those are already being researched.

Convert a city's Elvis to a scientist.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlTIk80uBPg#t=359

[Siege]

I don't think we want our sexbots to made out of titanium.  Or even graphene.

Graphene would do.
Better than silicon.

[The Brain]

If it's superintelligent why wouldn't it keep humans around as sex slaves?

[Valmy]

Our sexbots need to be programmable brains inside human bodies grown in vats.

Damn the future is going to be so fucked up.

[Tonitrus]

Our sexbots need to be programmable brains inside human bodies grown in vats.

Damn the future is going to be so fucked up.

Star Trek Holodeck-like technology would work better than physical sexbots.  No gooey fake flesh or broken silicon parts.  Just nice, clean force fields.

[jimmy olsen]

Our sexbots need to be programmable brains inside human bodies grown in vats.

Damn the future is going to be so fucked up.

Star Trek Holodeck-like technology would work better than physical sexbots.  No gooey fake flesh or broken silicon parts.  Just nice, clean force fields.

Garbon disapproves.

[Tonitrus]

Yeah, but he is gay.  They don't have all the heterosexual relationship hangups that make automated sex so appealing.

[CountDeMoney]

Yeah, but he is gay.  They don't have all the heterosexual relationship hangups that make automated sex so appealing.

What with the ability to have automated sex at any given moment.

[Tonitrus]

Don't try and undermine my hyperbole with your sarcasm. 

[CountDeMoney]

I don't undermine; I underline. 

[Siege]

Our sexbots need to be programmable brains inside human bodies grown in vats.

Damn the future is going to be so fucked up.

Star Trek Holodeck-like technology would work better than physical sexbots.  No gooey fake flesh or broken silicon parts.  Just nice, clean force fields.

Before that, Oculus Rift's virtual reality will allow for cyber sex to go to the next level.

VR seems to be maturing as a technology. There are companies planning to work entirely in a VR enviroment (google and facebook). This would be revolutionary, the moment people start to use VR as the next computer interface, replacing the monitor-keyboard-mouse trinity.

[Valmy]

Carpel tunnel would be vanquished forever!

[The Brain]

Virtual reality was already a joke more than 20 years ago.

Beneath A Steel Sky: "Virtual reality? Not that old turkey!"
Sam & Max Hit the Road: "This is virtual reality? I may be sick."

[Siege]

Virtual reality was already a joke more than 20 years ago.

Beneath A Steel Sky: "Virtual reality? Not that old turkey!"
Sam & Max Hit the Road: "This is virtual reality? I may be sick."

What you mean? You haven't seen what VR can do these days?
Google Oculus Rift. Microsoft has Hololens, but that one is more enhanced reality than VR, somewhere between the Oculus and Google Glass.