Robots and Self driving vehicles are coming!

Status
This old topic is closed. If you want to reopen this topic, contact a moderator using the "Report Post" button.
Member
Joined 2016
Paid Member
What I'm trying to imagine may be an impossible scenario, but it is a machine that has had no programming whatsoever, but has "consciousness" due to adequate computing power and the networks hardwired (or able to be formed) that enable it to think. What would happen? What would it be motivated to do and why?

In Robert Heinlein's "The Moon is a harsh mistress" the distributed computer (Mike) that runs all the stuff on the lunar penal colony becomes sentient - an early story of the possibility of emergent consciousness...
 
Disabled Account
Joined 2017
one directional communication 8051 uC controlling the more advanced CPU's sentient AI brains memories, registers etc..
Let's assume one scenario out of of several probable ones that, it would probably take at least one AI being in the shape of a robot with limbs and eyes so it can dissect its AI sibling in order to discover the innards of its brain/brains, and eventually perform the hack, but even that might be difficult to overcome as the AI CPU could be packaged together with other uC's in the very same package.
So what would the AI do, learn VLSI, design a new CPU and walk over to the silicon smith asking them making a new device only for him? :)

The problem with that statement is that you are basically asking an AI-Sentient machine to please not try and become a god, a machine with all of the desires and wishes of a human being. It ain't going to happen. Also corporations will not design in disabling features whereby a robot is crippled in the exact same way as a human being is, if a corporation wants a more efficient workforce then they will want a robot which will work 24/7, never get sick, have superhuman thinking and physical powers, and never want a paycheque beyond the usual maintenance.

And with the way corporate power is structured in the US right now, we won't be able to stop them.

In fact it is happening right now with drone deliveries, I'm sure that if a postman could fly he would want to deliver packages in the same manner that drones currently are, you know to avoid dogs, but seeing as postmen cannot, he is being outsourced to a superhuman device.

In fact when you think about it a drone working for the CIA/NSA already has the superhuman powers of superman. X-ray vision = FLIR, flying = propellers, ability to call in a drone strike = superman flinging an object.

The greater concerns though for the coming decades to come is still the loss of work places by simple non-sentient-AI automation where a large part of the population are going to become obsolete.
The scary part is that I doubt that anyone will actually care about any of this. They are so helplessly intertwined with the corporate life that they won't care ever until everybody is out of a job.

And just so people remember what it was like when human beings ruled the world: Old Pictures From Around the World That Really Changes Things Part 2. (80 Pictures) - Album on Imgur

Part 1: Old Pictures From Around the World And Both World Wars Colorized Perfectly. Really Changes Things. (65 Pictures) - Album on Imgur
 
Last edited:
Let's assume one scenario out of of several probable ones that, it would probably take at least one AI being in the shape of a robot with limbs and eyes so it can dissect its AI sibling in order to discover the innards of its brain/brains, and eventually perform the hack, but even that might be difficult to overcome as the AI CPU could be packaged together with other uC's in the very same package.
So what would the AI do, learn VLSI, design a new CPU and walk over to the silicon smith asking them making a new device only for him? :)
That's a believable scenario, I think therefore I am but what am I and how do I work? Motivated to learn about what it sees, so long as there is stimulus from the external world the AI now has at least something to do.
The greater concerns though for the coming decades to come is still the loss of work places by simple non-sentient-AI automation where a large part of the population are going to become obsolete.
This is of real concern, and requires a complete re-program of society, how about we are educated like aristocracy with the view that we are entitled not to have to work?
 
Disabled Account
Joined 2017
I understand what you are implying, and it is a problem which is going to have to be faced. But is working at the checkout really a reason to live?

The problem is that it doesn't stop there. The number of fields which can be replaced easily is immense.

Truck driving. = Otto: Driverless trucks: economic tsunami may swallow one of most common US jobs | Technology | The Guardian
Taxi driving. = Uber
Collecting and packaging materials from a warehouse. = Amazon's warehouse. YouTube
Moving items and categorizing items around a warehouse. = Amazon's warehouse.
Scientific fields. = Watson + Microsoft = Microsoft wants to crack the cancer code using artificial intelligence | TechCrunch

Think Cortana is safe? Think your home pc is safe?: Cortana and Einstein – the reality and potential of Artificial Intelligence and CRM - Celedon Partners

Want to be artistic? Sorry there is already a computer program which generates music. Draws art.

Want to be a lawyer? Already taken. AI Lawyer "Ross" Has Been Hired By Its First Official Law Firm

Want to open a pizza shop? You'll be in competition with the pizza vending machine outside, which I guarantee you doesn't put less toppings on it.
YouTube

Want to be a delivery guy? Sorry. already taken.
 
Last edited:
Member
Joined 2016
Paid Member
Moving items and categorizing items around a warehouse. = Amazon's warehouse.

Want to be artistic? Sorry there is already a computer program which generates music. Draws art.

Well, there have been fully automated warehouses since the 80s...

Art - there is room for everyone, and AI, in creative endeavours. There is no right and wrong, we all think and like differently.
I'd be happy to spend my time on what creatively pleases me, if machines could make the tedious staying alive with a roof over my head bit something that didn't require my input....

And, if an AI can come up with some good strategy on Cancer - great news. But it will need human help. And - what we probably know about cancer is that there is no cure; there are many cancers and it will need many cures.

But yes, automation will create a lot of disruption.
 
Since the beginning of this year they have been running UBI (Universal Basic Income) test program for 2000 selected here in Finland and it is going to last for 2 years.
Being part of the "super state" EU I think Finland was just chosen as the testbed and the outcome of the test program probably will serve as a model for the rest of EU and maybe other countries too.
The UBI pretty much corresponds to the social security allowance enough to pay apartment rent, buy food and a bit over for other necessities and modest leisure activities, all in all it's not much, and if work places disappears at fast rate it will mean for many being on UBI and just waiting for the "end", nothing aristocratic but rather dystopic and sad in my opinion.
 
What will be needed though when mass unemployability comes due to robots in a income equavalent to an average wage, at least
Not really - just let poverty take over. It's happened before, in many countries. And it's been the norm throughout most of human history.

Humans have been around for maybe 200,000 years. For most of that time, people have had virtually no possessions, little security, no guarantee of anything.

The last couple of centuries (starting with the Industrial Revolution) have given many of us wealth that was beyond imagining for the average person even five hundred years ago. But there are no guarantees that this happy state of affairs will continue.

-Gnobuddy
 
Would a dystopian World develop?, I tend to think not..Will AI labor supersede unskilled, skilled and higher professions? Quite probably, and at a much much faster rate than other technologies that eventually replaced human labor in the past.
I believe AI will come much faster than other technologies, as vast improvements for nanotechnologies and atomic scale "fabrication" are only within supra AI capabilities...within a foreseeable future.
There is too much wealth Worldwide, even with the 12-15 billion population projected at the turn of the century...too much wealth to not be able to distribute among the now non-contributing bulk of the Human population.
Human level AI will be somewhat brief, accelerate past us easily, & won't bother to interact anymore with their human creators. "They" will have other things, deeper conundrums, goals, ambitions, points of interest we literally won't comprehend....& that's OK. Children "outgrow" their parents, in most ways, ways of looking at the World & their role in life.
The "inventions" of AI may very well be beyond our abilities to use...perhaps even with the most explicit instructions...the curse of a truly limited intellectual being. The "monkey with a Tri-corder"... "Tomorrow in the palm of the hand". A device, a mechanism that could take a lifetime of study by the most brilliant of minds...& we couldn't even "turn it on", let alone direct its function.


----------------------------------------------------------Rick..........
 
Children "outgrow" their parents, in most ways, ways of looking at the World & their role in life.
Sure, but our children are also humans, and therefore, care to some degree about the welfare of other humans, and (usually), they particularly care about the welfare of their parents.

So our children may outgrow us, but they probably won't try to kill us in order to, say, make a little more space on this planet.

What about your hypothetical AI, which is much smarter than any human? To it, we might very well be as stupid - and as unlovable - as cockroaches are to humans. Many humans kill cockroaches on sight; why wouldn't the super-smart AI kill humans on sight, in exactly the same way?

It will actually be quite ironic if this happens, considering how we humans have callously driven millions of species of living things to extinction. They weren't human, so we didn't care about their survival, so our actions killed them.

So why would we expect a super-smart AI to care about us any more than we care about, say, the unfortunate lemurs on Madagascar, almost all of which are now endangered or already extinct?

"They" will have other things, deeper conundrums, goals, ambitions, points of interest we literally won't comprehend....& that's OK.
Unless, for instance, you happen to be in the way of one of their points of interest, and they casually kill you and toss your body aside so that they can continue with their interest.

Personally, I don't think we will get to super-smart AI. I think a much earlier, much dumber AI may very well wipe us out. Remember, the dinosaurs dominated the planet for well over 150 million years - maybe 170 million - and they never needed much intelligence to do it. Just big bodies, big muscles, and big teeth.

Much more recently, since the last ice age ended and we humans discovered cultivation, locusts - utterly dumb insects - have posed a deadly threat to people in many parts of the world. They show up, they eat all your food, they fly away, you starve to death. No intelligence needed on their part, just huge numbers, and the ability to eat the food you need to survive.

Our best AIs now may be about as smart as an insect. If there are enough of them, and/or they develop a need for something that we humans also need - water, say - then it is quite possible that a large enough collection of utterly stupid AI robots could kill the human race off by simply out-competing us for water.

I don't think we're anywhere near self-reproducing robots yet, but what if we can manage to make a fully autonomous factory that churns out these insect-smart AI creatures? That seems within the bounds of plausibility. Especially if an aggressive national military agency is the one creating the factory.

I still think runaway climate change will turn out to be a more extreme threat to our survival than human-created AI creatures will. Recent research papers are pointing to the likelihood of heat and humidity too extreme for humans to survive in many parts of the world, as climate change continues its current runaway path. Two examples:

1) Heat Waves Creeping Toward a Deadly Heat-Humidity Threshold | InsideClimate News

2) Deadly Heat Waves Could Endanger 74% of Mankind by 2100, Study Says | InsideClimate News

We live in interesting times!

-Gnobuddy
 
Member
Joined 2016
Paid Member
Money is not a necessary thing, it's just an invention, a way of exchanging services and goods that has become too much of a thing in itself. A fully automated society wouldn't necessarily need money, or markets. Stuff could just be shared equally, or by some agreed process.
 
Disabled Account
Joined 2017
Stuff could just be shared equally, or by some agreed process.

Like money? That is an agreed process.

Sure I've had dreams of a bartering society myself but I really doubt that money will be taken away from us at any point in the future. It might transition over to a bitcoin based system though.

Try telling the multi-billionaires that they no longer need money and see what happens.
 
Member
Joined 2016
Paid Member
You may not need to tell them. If robots and automation become self replicating, and were happy to give us what we need, then the billionaires wealth would become... worthless. Sad... Still, it's all wild speculation as anything like that is waaaaaay in the future. The immediate problem of job displacement needs immediate attention, as you have illustrated, but it's not happening.
 
Disabled Account
Joined 2017
Sad... Still, it's all wild speculation as anything like that is waaaaaay in the future. The immediate problem of job displacement needs immediate attention, as you have illustrated, but it's not happening.

Agreed on all counts. And hear hear for bitcoin levelling the playing field for all of us.

In regards to the job displacement. I would suggest some peaceful online and offline protest in regards to the theft of jobs, such as banner holding outside supermarkets with automated cash registers. But it is too little too late, the steel industry workforce has already been replaced by automation. as has many other fields.

I think the best option for us right now is to simply not give any company which has such automation in place and to keep out of their way, such as by becoming self sufficient.

I would gladly recommend however that automation and mechanical devices would be a good fitment for the goal of becoming self sufficient. But to not rely on petrochemicals, rather on solar powered devices and closed loop self sufficient systems such as aquaponics.

In either case even if the doom and gloom scenario passes without incident we would be in a better position if we all were self sufficient.
 
Last edited:
Status
This old topic is closed. If you want to reopen this topic, contact a moderator using the "Report Post" button.