Technology, Our Down fall Or Uprising?

Wow I have to agree with you, man. I'm 14 and nobody gives answers that I'm looking for, they just ask "Who the hell is filling your head with that trash?!?" Everybody understimates us teenagers.

I also would like to say that your thoughts on technology and humans are completely right and understandable. I'm in boyscouts, and I love roughin' it. I'd take flint and steel over a lighter or matches any day! If the matches are wet, there worthless, and the lighter's empty, you're done for.

That's only one example of this, but I could go on and on.

Originally posted by Jazzerman

Some people seem to have the mentality that "if we dont stop it the machines will take over and kill us" type of scenario in their heads. Why would machines want to, or have the need to kill us..

I dont think there will be any Terminator like war were robots will destroy us. Humans as a organic lifefrom have only a finite time that we will be around and we have many limitations. Robotics on the other hand will not share any of our limitations. Its just really survival of the fittest a simple rule.

IMO this will not be a bad thing they will be worthy successors to mankind. In a way they will be created in our own image.

Human evolution is grounding to a halt. And human brains are reaching the maximum size that could pass through birth canals.We have our limits in many ways.

It is estimated that by 2020 computers will be approaching human brain levels of computing power. By 2050 a million times more powerful then humans. But all this power is pointless without true AI. Im not talking about intelligent behavior.

I build robots that have intelligent and life like behavior. They seek out their own food move around objects in their way even look for better real estate. They do this with what would equal a few brain cells. But they are not AI.

AI will be when a machine becomes self-aware. Self-awareness implies personal desires, purposes, ambitions. Someday we will creat machines that when we turn them on they wont allow us to turn them off.

This might not happen for hundreds perhaps thousands of years but it will happen sooner or later.

ShadowXIX
AI will be when a machine becomes self-aware. Self-awareness implies personal desires, purposes, ambitions.

I understand that, but the point is, how do you know that something is truly 'self-aware' and not just following a predetermined set of algorithms?
I'm a programmer and I know that it is possible (though very difficult) to simulate behaviours such as 'ambition' and 'purpose' in code - but that's all it is, a simulation.

Or is it? How do we know that our brains don't follow a predetermined 'program'? Do we really have free-will or are we making decisions based on internal variables modified by sensory input?

I've gotten off the point of the topic, so I better stop there.

Originally posted by Deckard_BR26354


I understand that, but the point is, how do you know that something is truly 'self-aware' and not just following a predetermined set of algorithms?
I'm a programmer and I know that it is possible (though very difficult) to simulate behaviours such as 'ambition' and 'purpose' in code - but that's all it is, a simulation.

Or is it? How do we know that our brains don't follow a predetermined 'program'? Do we really have free-will or are we making decisions based on internal variables modified by sensory input?

I've gotten off the point of the topic, so I better stop there.

I personally think AI will not emerge from a program we create to make AI but as a unseen result. Many people think of machines as nothing more than computer programs whose logic could be diagramed in flow charts.Computers are indeed good at doing what they�re told.

Some artificial-life studies in the 1980s and 1990s however showed unplanned, unpredicted actions arise spontaneously from complex systems. Such things are called emergent behaviours, and I think they are unavoidable and the key to AI.

Something like the equivalent of a natural mutation. This is just a theory I have though.

But how do we know true AI when we see thats a hard one. I wish it was as simple as "I think there for I am" but the entity that we identify as our "selves" is singularly subjective. We cant really study it objectively.

Our inability to observe selfawareness is a problem. One test we have to test for self awareness though not perfect is the "The suicide test" Only an entity that knows it exists can consider its nonexistence. Therefore, only a self-aware entity can contemplate or commit suicide.

ShadowXIX
I personally think AI will not emerge from a program we create to make AI but as a unseen result.

I agree. You raised some interesting points.

Like some have said on this topic, humans have made things a lot easier for themselves by creating other means of doing tasks. This could be so we have more time on our hands for ourselves ooor so that we have more time to focus on futher advancement, hopefully be way of good.

If taken a turn for the worse (not being a confirmed believer in fait) I would leave the outcome more up to fait given the lack of control to society. I mean, just look at the ratio of voters in the American election. People don't know whos right or wrong, as much as they would like to side. How can two man go up there and accuse their oppontent of everything in the book and claim for themselves to be saints, its so black and white. Humans are so gullible. And the world is set up today that even if one does have the intellect and wisdom to know better by no means will they have the capacity to make movement.

Myabe there should be some sort of sociatal organization where opinions get posted and organized with authorized representation, help put some things in perspective.

I think technology will be used for good If we eliminate governments. Think about it, they are the ones in control of the money, so they spend it on what they want to. Governments will always want the bigger weapon than the other country, which will eventually lead to something that will kill EVERYONE. Kinda depressing, eh?

Originally posted by Chocolate Cracker
I think technology will be used for good If we eliminate governments. Think about it, they are the ones in control of the money, so they spend it on what they want to. Governments will always want the bigger weapon than the other country, which will eventually lead to something that will kill EVERYONE. Kinda depressing, eh?

I totally disagree. I am 100% cool with the social contract theory.

Social Contract Theory, nearly as old as philosophy itself, is the view that persons’ moral and/or political obligations are dependent upon a contract or agreement between them to form society.

There will never be such a thing as society without government because that would be contradictory. We can have individual families living in the hills several miles apart from each other, self sufficient, answering to no one, sure. But that's not a society.

(n) an extended social group having a distinctive cultural and economic organization
(n) a formal association of people with similar interests; "he joined a golf club"; "they formed a small lunch society"; "men from the fraternal order will staff the soup kitchen today"

If the people from the hills get together even once a year to have a town hall type meeting, you can bet that decisions will be made about things, and people will be bound to the decisions made by other people, and this will be a government.

Gotta run but I want to talk more.

Zip

Technology creates a false sense of advancement. We only truly advance with culture and our spirituality. For instance, a few million years ago, our ancestors were thought to be clobbering people over the head with clubs; now we are shooting and bombing people.

A few centuries ago, people were ruled by the rich, were poor, and had no power or rights. What has changed? We are still ruled by the rich, we are poor and we have no power.

Ever since the invention of trade, people have been fighting with each other to have more goods, possessions. What has changed?

Our methods may have changed, but we are still doing pretty much the same thing, hurting each other, and power mongerings and obsesssing over materials. What good is technology, when our inner world, has not changed?

Life has always been, what it is today, wether man's greatest achievement was fire or nuclear energy. It may have changed costumes a few times, but nonetheless, the same.

Hey I suppose I'm the youngest here at 13! Technology could be either it just depends on how we wish to use and so far it doesn't look like technology will be used for the benefit of mankind. i mean sure we have computers and all this cool stuff but we're slowly killing ourselves with pollution, guns and the whole hussle and bussle of daily human life. Simply put: WE ARE DOOMED!