This is how humanity will end...potentially.

reply to post by SaturnFX

What can I say bro, chaos is a different kind of order.

And humanity will end one day, one way or another as everything does. And this is potentially one of the ways that it will end. There is a strong chance that one day if humanity survives its trials and tribulations past the chasm of biological makeshift faults and confusions, that one day they will wake up and find themselves to be obsolete.

If merging ourselves with computers to produce a new kind of human is BETTER with respect to evolutionary requirements then if it's given half a chance it -will- happen. Just like machines did. Just like the stone age moved to the bronze age. Just like people moved from sails to engines. It goes on and on.

If it makes us better then how is it bad???? This competition isn't being judged by humans, but by nature. We don't know what the end results will be, only nature does. Just do what you think is best.

I like to program as a hobby. Lately, I've been wondering why I don't learn more about multi-processors and programming for them. The reason I say this is because the brain is a parallel processor, much the same as multi-processor systems. (When companies bumped into the overheating limits of chips, they started making multiple cores to compensate.) And programming for multiple cores is different than programming for one. It seems to me that learning about this is very worthwhile.

Parallel processing means the brain does multiple things at the same time. This doesn't mean there're not some sequential processes. Some processes will require other processes to precede them, even in the human brain. I read that images we see are broken down into these 4 conditions, in the brain: color, shape, motion, depth. These're processed separately and in parallel. However, in order to make a full cognitive assessment about what you see you must first wait for the brain to finish these processes. It might be that we can make decisions even with limited information - so maybe we can examine the information as it's being processed. But a reliable conclusion cannot be made too soon.

I do not know how far away we're from achieving the same instructions-per-second capability of the brain. The reason I say this is because I do not believe we understand the brain well enough to judge its true instructions-per-second rating. In the computer world, instructions on different cpu's can operate at different performances because of differences in microarchitecture. It depends on the instructions you're using too. So just getting a overall instructions-per-second estimate of the brain is not helpful until we can understand what sorts of instructions the brain is using and how well they can translate to modern processors. For all we know, we will need to rethink cpu's to imitate the human brain.

There's no doubt that -right now- the human brain does some things better while computers can do other things better. The brain is excellent at analyzing patterns and abstract things. Computers are not as good at that. They're infants. But computers are excellent at mathematics. They're so good that they can perform in a hour what would require all the worlds scientists a year to do, or more. Whether this stays true in the future is unclear. It could be that even if we did accomplish synthetic brains on a chip we would still find that they suck at mathematics and other linear processes. Maybe intelligence algorithms and architecture are just fundamentally different from non-intelligent instruction designs, so there'll always be a divide.

I do believe that all of the worlds computers probably are doing more instructions per second than a human brain, but the type of instructions is what's so critical. Maybe we're underestimating biology.

To think that all of that processing is going on in something you can hold in your hand, about 20 watts? Amazing. And so much of it's unclear. We take everything that the brain produces for granted.

I still see AI as complimentary. We will merge with computers, not be destroyed by them.

To me it's an exciting future. It's what makes life worth living.

I see quantum computing the same way. It's complimentary. Not earth shattering.

The mistake people make is thinking that these things, once understood, become godlike. I don't think that's how it works. I think things work together in nature. They augment each other's strengths. For example, if our human mind could exist entirely within a computer then it would be possible to beam ourselves to the moon at light speed. This would be very useful for purposes of travel. However, once we get there we would need to be able to interact with things. We can't do that if we only exist as information. So we must have a body. And I think that we cannot rule out that biology might be found to have a advantage over pure robotics. If robotics is better, though, it will be used more. But maybe the logic behind biology is its ability to repair itself. Maybe biology is better at that than robotics could ever be. Billions of years of evolution cannot be easily beaten. Maybe there're physical laws that restrict it too.

reply to post by jonnywhite


I have heard that this is the third option they give you in Mass Effect 3, to merge with the synthetics.

However this is just a different route to the same end, and that end being that what emerges will not be totally human. As appose to the other ends that of what remains when the dust settles will not be human. But ya I think this whole thing is kind of stupid, things go as they are given to go, if in some far flung future everybody is some sort of biomechanical cyborg I really dont see what the big deal is. In fact given time and we don't get hit by some giant meteor or world wiping catastrophic its bound to happen to one degree or another, already we pretty much rely on machines for much of our daily life's, anything from the driving to places, to the toaster and microwave, to the internet and a whole host of other things.

It's almost like it's something that is bound to happen sooner or latter in one form or another. But in the end it still seems to come down to progression for what, a machine cant really answer that as it just is perfectly logical. But a biological entity can as it is it's purpose, after all one came from chaos the other came from the order brought out of that chaos.

I can assure you that these machines are not experiencing anything. There is nobody home. No matter how convincing their actions/reactions seem, they are void of any spiritual component that allows chemical reactions to create an experience. Inevitably this will be our future, but I don't think we'll be granting them rights.