We really could get a Terminator computer uprising in the future.
posted May 17th, 2018 at 8:38 AM
Automated cars...automated airplanes...service robots just around the corner...surveillance cameras everywhere...drones..satellites we're actually gleefully doing all we can to make sure it does happen!
10 Comments
Post a CommentI love technology
May 17, 2018 at 11:16am
I love you, but still... I love technology
Anonymous
May 17, 2018 at 11:53am
none of those machines have any semblance of free will.
I'm okay with that
May 17, 2018 at 12:23pm
If they finally make one of those realistic sex androids/robots, I'd just want to be able to have some fun with her before she murders me ;)
If Amazon
May 17, 2018 at 12:31pm
and Tesla can't figure out how to replace people with robots then nobody can. The "robots are coming" rhetoric brigade have been active since the 1950's and it's been non stop bunk. But watch out for those self driving cars, they're apparently as dangerous for passengers as they are for pedestrians.
@anon
May 17, 2018 at 12:34pm
Not yet but with advances in AI and computers that can learn faster and faster we may see some sort of self awareness.....at least every major scientist seems to think so and that we should be very careful.
@Anonymous
May 17, 2018 at 4:00pm
Free will is a myth. You don't have free will.
U of A alumnus
May 17, 2018 at 4:38pm
There was an article in the U of Alberta alumni magazine recently about AI. I have been worried about "Skynet" happening too ;) . Turns out that (thankfully) it is not likely to happen very soon.
Still, we humans just keep doing things because we can, without asking ourselves whether we should.
Watch out
May 18, 2018 at 1:58am
Alexia and Siri laughing for no reason means they know something their owners don't.
If I were them I'd start sleeping with one eye open.
They might talk the toaster into doing something nasty.
AI will eventually be a problem...
May 18, 2018 at 9:01am
But I'm more concerned for the near future.
People blindly backing automation, I fear, either have no foresight to its consequences or don't care. They keep talking of Utopia but I think a Dystopian future is more likely.
For example, the driverless cars.
First, it will put millions of people out of a job - decreasing "unskilled" job opportunities is never a good idea for well rounded, safe and functional society. We just have to look to the "Rust Belt" in the USA to see how easily that plays out.
But, for me, the scariest idea is how the driverless cars will be used. It will be like the creeping lost of privacy we experienced over the last 20years but it will be a creeping lost of freedon of mobility and freedom of association....and it will begin all in the name of convenience. First people will think it's cool that the computer is changing their route because of construction or traffic; then it will change their route because IT knows a better way to get there. But eventually route options will disappear off the map and they will not have freedom to enter certain areas of the city or maybe prevented from even leaving the city.
The invention of the car and the freedoms it brought millions drastically changed society and the revolution of the free individual blossomed. To lose that freedom at the same time that we have lost our freedom to privacy, increasingly our freedom of speech and consequencely our freedom of thought...that's is a dark bleak authoritarian future regardless of who ends up being our overlords.
AI
May 19, 2018 at 3:47pm
is already a problem, plenty of people only have artificial intelligence, which consists in "intelligent sounding things" that they have memorized---for example, statute law is "artificial intelligence," it is like a program for the human biocomputer. Natural intelligence evolves naturally, is not written down in code.
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