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[Putnam]

Also, gases are fluids.

[wierd]

Technically, the viral capsid is not exactly inert. It has active sites on the surface that it uses to dock with cellular receptors of the intended host. Once those dock, the changes in bond energy cause physical reconformation of the capsid, which is what either opens the capsid up on the surface of the cell, or injects the capsid's payload into the cell.

It's chemically reactive, just very very specifically.

[Bauglir]

Uses of the word "basically" and phrase "until they encounter" imply all that

[Scoops Novel]

For the record, i wish that AI article dwelled more on the effects of bridging technologies to AI. If we take the approach of emulating the human brain, what happens to all the people who look more and more like wetware?

[Evil Knievel]

The AI apocalypse is something that terrifies me since I heard of it the second time. The first time I heard of it, I did not think too deeply, maybe because I did not give the person explaining it enough credit and forgot it immediately, which is a shame.

But after another person just outlined some thoughts - especially the concept of self-improving AI - I went into a long strange mood, which, after repeated failures of finding the flaws to discard these crazy ideas, almost drove me off the margin of my mental stability. It is really creepy, so creepy that I almost cannot take it seriously and stay sane at the same time, because it is so plausible. I am not a computer scientist, but I have sufficient scientific education to form my own judgment about the seriousness of this idea - and I came to the conclusion that there is really no reason to discard it lightly.
 
Next, more a feeling than an argument, I have a rather gloomy and mechanistic view on modern day society, believing that it works exactly in such a way to produce such a catastrophe as swiftly and carelessly as possible. The major forces are (1) capital interests, which constantly fight any form of control and oversight because the doctrine is that exponential growth is at the heart of every ones well-being, especially their own and (2) governments, whose power hunger can also be measured by how powerful they currently already are. For both of these the vision of controlling the best AI must be an irresistible goal to pursue.

And only after that I started reading (like the letter by Hawking, the article by Tegmark, and even Bill Gates' statement on reddit)  etc etc.. and yep, they came up with much better phrased arguments than I could have. I am left shattered.

[Reelya]

What, you talking the latest one? An explanation that's probably overtly simple: the apparent viscosity of fluids gets higher as an object gets smaller. If one's the size of a virus, it's somewhat like trying to breathe pitch.

Surely they're breathing a gas not a fluid?

Fluids are gases, liquids and plasmas. Anything that flows.

[Sergarr]

The AI apocalypse is something that terrifies me since I heard of it the second time. The first time I heard of it, I did not think too deeply, maybe because I did not give the person explaining it enough credit and forgot it immediately, which is a shame.

But after another person just outlined some thoughts - especially the concept of self-improving AI - I went into a long strange mood, which, after repeated failures of finding the flaws to discard these crazy ideas, almost drove me off the margin of my mental stability. It is really creepy, so creepy that I almost cannot take it seriously and stay sane at the same time, because it is so plausible. I am not a computer scientist, but I have sufficient scientific education to form my own judgment about the seriousness of this idea - and I came to the conclusion that there is really no reason to discard it lightly.
 
Next, more a feeling than an argument, I have a rather gloomy and mechanistic view on modern day society, believing that it works exactly in such a way to produce such a catastrophe as swiftly and carelessly as possible. The major forces are (1) capital interests, which constantly fight any form of control and oversight because the doctrine is that exponential growth is at the heart of every ones well-being, especially their own and (2) governments, whose power hunger can also be measured by how powerful they currently already are. For both of these the vision of controlling the best AI must be an irresistible goal to pursue.

And only after that I started reading (like the letter by Hawking, the article by Tegmark, and even Bill Gates' statement on reddit)  etc etc.. and yep, they came up with much better phrased arguments than I could have. I am left shattered.

You should be in constant terror then, because most cultures, corporations and governments already function like artificial AI's. It can easily force a man to die for it's own interests. It runs on humans minds, but its ways of thinking is very unlike human one's.

And humanity is still not dead. In fact, it only managed to prosper by willingly constructing and complying with these AI's. A future-made artificial intelligence would not be worse than modern governments, and in fact, it would be better, since it would not be hindered by human weaknesses and power-hungryness, which corrupt and destroy modern wetware AI's. It also would be able to understand humans much better than we do ourselves, so it would be able to fix problems that plague our society in a much better way.

[Evil Knievel]

You should be in constant terror then, because most cultures, corporations and governments already function like artificial AI's. It can easily force a man to die for it's own interests. It runs on humans minds, but its ways of thinking is very unlike human one's.

This is a good and interesting point. But it is less terrifying for me (don't say that I like it), because the collective human mind still relies on humans, and is limited by them.

And humanity is still not dead. In fact, it only managed to prosper by willingly constructing and complying with these AI's. A future-made artificial intelligence would not be worse than modern governments, and in fact, it would be better, since it would not be hindered by human weaknesses and power-hungryness, which corrupt and destroy modern wetware AI's. It also would be able to understand humans much better than we do ourselves, so it would be able to fix problems that plague our society in a much better way.

Here I think you might turn out to be wrong. I don't see how an AI can safely be constructed to behave positive to humans at all times, also when it has become too smart to be influenced by humans. Especially since I don't see our efforts directed at that in any meaningful manner, compared to the efforts directed at creating such a thing in the first place.

On another layer: the feeling of being part of a collective mind (the society) still gives me the warm and fuzzy feeling of belonging, whereas an AI that evolves separately from humans to inconceivable levels and thus renders all our pursuits inferior and pointless, and maybe even solving all our problems, is a bit like abolishing the meaning of life.

[Sergarr]

I personally don't see how to construct humans to behave positive to humans at all times. Yet we don't preventively all go suicidal because of how every new human can potentially turn into a murderer.

The same could've been said of all human inventions, really. Fire can burn down the whole cities, nuclear technology can kill millions of people, but ultimately both these things, and many, many others, have made human world a better place. We certainly can't stop now on our road to constructing stable ecology, because otherwise we'll be living in pretty bad condition in the next century. And constructing stable ecology requires for us to make many, many inventions, both in technological and humanitarian spheres, and having dedicated research AI to help us with those problems would be really helpful.

Though I wonder - if an AI solves a mathematical "problem of a century", who gets the prize money - the AI or the creator of it?

[Lagslayer]

Difference is, most of our inventions can't actively think.

[i2amroy]

I'd like to note, once again, that even in the most radical estimates we still have something like 40 years before we reach the point of an AI being more intelligent than a human being. That's 40 years of sustained work to bug-fix any problems in AI's by people in laboratories that have been working with our most top-notch AI programs since the advent of the field. The first "super-intelligent" AI is not something that is going to be created in some guys basement, nor is it going to be some missile program that suddenly gains sentience. It's going to be created in a lab somewhere after decades of work tweaking and working on the project. I don't know about you, but I'd say that "develops an urge to extinguish the human race" is a definite bug to be fixed in beta testing.

The reason we haven't seen anyone doing much about trying to prevent the AI apocalypse? Let me ask you a question. Have you ever seen those snazzy smart phone apps that do things like look at a picture of a car and tell you what model it is? Or how about the ones that listen to a song and tell you what the title, artist, and publication date is? Or how about chatterbot? Those are some of our most advanced "true" AI's in existence right now. (As opposed to the AI's in games, which are for the most part just "fake" AI's, they don't ever actually "learn" anything). You don't see any work because we're probably looking at at least another 20 years before our top AI's begin to even approach the complexity that is needed for a thought like "I think we should kill all the humans".

I believe you are simply making a (disturbingly common) mistake where you jump straight from the idea of "computers today" to "skynet", without seeing the very long line that connects the two.

[Putnam]

The disturbing part is how quick the line starts going up once you have "bot what can program bots".

On the other hand, humans can't exactly program better humans, so that's a bit of a nebulous issue.

[Execute/Dumbo.exe]

I'm just going to send this out through most threads as general advice.
To block anyone, go to your own profile, mouse over modify profile, click on the Buddies/Ignore list, then type in the exact name of the person you want blocked.

[MaximumZero]

The disturbing part is how quick the line starts going up once you have "bot what can program bots".

On the other hand, humans can't exactly program better humans, so that's a bit of a nebulous issue.

Better human is kind of subjective, but I'm trying to make my kids better than me, so there's that.

[Sergarr]

I'm also somewhat pretty sure that there's some mathematical or physical limit that prevents the "bots to program other bots" from getting exponentially smarter.