Bay 12 Games Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  
Pages: 1 ... 34 35 [36] 37 38 ... 46

Author Topic: Transhumanism Discussion Thread  (Read 54267 times)

Mictlantecuhtli

  • Bay Watcher
  • Grinning God of Death
    • View Profile
Re: Transhumanism Discussion Thread
« Reply #525 on: January 17, 2014, 04:18:21 pm »

LeonardoIII:

Would it interest you to know that the notion that humans are required to produce innovations is demonstrably false, and that we are currently, right now, using machines to design and build machines?

Machines do not program machines to create machines. Robot machines, at this point in time, do not have the ability to self-replicate or learn aside from the predestined tasks at hand.

Quote
Would it interest you to know that the notion that humans are required to produce innovations is demonstrably false

As it is demonstrably false, you must have demonstrations, examples of robot-only innovation, and also the only example of a self-replicating/self repairing/self debugging AI.

Quote
For instance, the earlier mentioned "evolved antennas".  They work better than anything humans have made. They look very strange, but they are here, the techology that designed them already exists, and it is making newer, better ones even as I write this.

Is simply proof that humans are required to translate such ideas into technology.
« Last Edit: January 17, 2014, 04:20:41 pm by Mictlantecuhtli »
Logged
I am surrounded by flesh and bone, I am a temple of living. Maybe I'll maybe my life away.

Santorum leaves a bad taste in my mouth,
Card-carrying Liberaltarian

LeoLeonardoIII

  • Bay Watcher
  • Plump Helmet McWhiskey
    • View Profile
Re: Transhumanism Discussion Thread
« Reply #526 on: January 17, 2014, 04:27:47 pm »

@Hugo:

1 - Roboticization
I agree. I don't think it would ever get that far. Which is kinda why I posted it, because people like to talk about post-scarcity as if it happens suddenly. Instead you'd see a slow creep of more goods being produced by robots, until the point where you can put capital into a robot worker and it can be more profitable than using human workers. Then the self-interested companies all around the world want to each be most profitable, so they all transition to robots. People start getting laid off. Before we hit a slum economy there would still be a transition period where some companies use human workers. And people and governments would be able to see what's coming and do something to stop it.

I know that the docks in my hometown have resisted automation and mechanization because their union knows it would involve reducing man-hours. I think that's exactly what would happen on a larger scale. Not because the consumer refuses to buy robot-made goods, but because the workers resist the change.

2 - Advanced AI Teaching
It doesn't need to be advanced AI. You give me a book and I can learn from it. You make that book interactive and I can learn easier. At some point the book has so many tools and functions, and approaches to teaching, that it's just as easy to learn from as any college lecture. Eventually the book gets so good it's almost as good as one-on-one tutelage. That's the robot teacher I envision. I don't care about a robot making facial expressions.

I do agree on children though. I expect childrearing will be one of the last things mechanized.

3 - Social
Humans may value human contact, but if you could buy drinks at a bar without feeling the need to tip the bartender, and you get your drink pretty much immediately and always correct, and the drinks are the same price - you'll find a lot of people happier with that bar than a normal one.

//

Anyway, my overall point was, if because of economics we arrive at a point where technology is cheaper than hiring, and people have trouble finding employment, what will be the jobs that only people can do? We can disagree about why one field or another must be human, or whether the original mechanization shift will happen so completely.

I really think it will.

We had seamstresses complaining that sewing machines would reduce how many man-hours of seamstress work were needed - and it has. On the other hand movable type increased the consumption of printed material and probably more people were employed in printing than when it was a hand-illuminated manuscript. But at this point we're seeing printing go by the wayside with the advent of digital distribution. Are more people employed in digital information processing than were employed in paper information processing? Are there more database analysts than there were file clerks? Something tells me the workers are more educated and handle much more data but there are fewer of them.

Another example would be how offices used to have a secretarial pool for correspondence and dictation. Nowadays people do their own typing and, at most, will have one assistant who handles a lot of different work. A legal assistant in Washington for example can do everything a lawyer can short of appearing in court, representing a client, and giving legal advice. That means a lawyer should have a team of skilled legal assistants, personally oversee their work and make court appearances, and manage overall legal strategy. The lawyer doesn't have six secretaries - these are skilled legal workers who handle their own typing. The relationship is less like a secretarial pool and more like a team of "mini-lawyers" overseen by a more experienced manager.

EDIT: Antennas
That looks like a cool read. I'm still thinking it's a specific application so it acts more like a tool that produces and tests iterations until it sees improvement, then uses those to inform future iterations. Which is to say, definitely automated R&D, but you still need a human to produce the tool needed to invent the antenna.

That said, it could be baby steps toward R&D bots working on R&D bots.

I remember a programmable chip this guy had, that he wanted to get it to detect microwave radiation or something. It was a 64 bit chip and the bits could be flipped mechanically. The computer processed iterations until it got a chip that worked: when the stimulus was present it lit a light. It was also very efficient, much more than he could have done himself.

Problem was, the chip was set up very strangely. There was a section off to the side that wasn't even connected to the main logic area. Yet clearing those separate bits made it stop working. And copying the program to a second chip didn't work either. The computer was taking advantage of some manufacturing imperfections in the chip and the bits off to the side were actually communicating with the main block of bits through EM radiation. The program worked - but only on that chip.
« Last Edit: January 17, 2014, 04:35:07 pm by LeoLeonardoIII »
Logged
The Expedition Map
Basement Stuck
Treebanned
Haunter of Birthday Cakes, Bearded Hamburger, Intensely Off-Topic

wierd

  • Bay Watcher
  • I like to eat small children.
    • View Profile
Re: Transhumanism Discussion Thread
« Reply #527 on: January 17, 2014, 04:29:01 pm »

Education is not something that should stop when you leave the university.

Evolutionary robotics using goals oriented self-modifying code is a real thing, and real things, like the evolved antennas, have come from it.

This story is almost 10 years old.  The robots in question have been built and tested in real life. The software the generation algorithm created works. The robots it created work.  Fully human-free process is possible.
Logged

Mictlantecuhtli

  • Bay Watcher
  • Grinning God of Death
    • View Profile
Re: Transhumanism Discussion Thread
« Reply #528 on: January 17, 2014, 04:34:04 pm »

That is the same as arguing that a calculator is a self-learning robot because it can solve the problem it was programmed to accomplish.

Once you realize those robots need constant supervision during their demonstrations for the media, constant re-programming and re-rechecking to make sure the footpads work correctly, the 'humans aren't needed' spiel goes out of the window.
Logged
I am surrounded by flesh and bone, I am a temple of living. Maybe I'll maybe my life away.

Santorum leaves a bad taste in my mouth,
Card-carrying Liberaltarian

scrdest

  • Bay Watcher
  • Girlcat?/o_ o
    • View Profile
Re: Transhumanism Discussion Thread
« Reply #529 on: January 17, 2014, 04:35:47 pm »

That is the same as arguing that a calculator is a self-learning robot because it can solve the problem it was programmed to accomplish.

But technically, evolution - biological evolution, I mean - is the exact same thing! It's a self-modifying process optimizing towards maximizing the number of surviving offspring.
Logged
We are doomed. It's just that whatever is going to kill us all just happens to be, from a scientific standpoint, pretty frickin' awesome.

Mictlantecuhtli

  • Bay Watcher
  • Grinning God of Death
    • View Profile
Re: Transhumanism Discussion Thread
« Reply #530 on: January 17, 2014, 04:36:23 pm »

And yet, the driver of that evolution? Human innovation.
Logged
I am surrounded by flesh and bone, I am a temple of living. Maybe I'll maybe my life away.

Santorum leaves a bad taste in my mouth,
Card-carrying Liberaltarian

Dwarf4Explosives

  • Bay Watcher
  • Souls are tasty. Kinda like bacon.
    • View Profile
Re: Transhumanism Discussion Thread
« Reply #531 on: January 17, 2014, 04:36:58 pm »

Not if you program it to do what it sees as necessary to accomplish it's goal, including learning. All you need from there is to give the robot it's own system to identify and set up it's own goals, and it will be 99% human, with the remaining part being the fact that it's not "fleshy".
Logged
And yet another bit of proof that RNG is toying with us. We do 1984, it does animal farm
...why do your hydras have two more heads than mine? 
Does that mean male hydras... oh god dammit.

LeoLeonardoIII

  • Bay Watcher
  • Plump Helmet McWhiskey
    • View Profile
Re: Transhumanism Discussion Thread
« Reply #532 on: January 17, 2014, 04:38:55 pm »

And yet, the driver of that evolution? Human innovation.

Maybe the impetus. And the human input is making up for the lack of biological reproduction, which gives you SO MANY opportunities for failed attempts. It's why our robots aren't stuck in one iteration for millions of years.
Logged
The Expedition Map
Basement Stuck
Treebanned
Haunter of Birthday Cakes, Bearded Hamburger, Intensely Off-Topic

Mictlantecuhtli

  • Bay Watcher
  • Grinning God of Death
    • View Profile
Re: Transhumanism Discussion Thread
« Reply #533 on: January 17, 2014, 04:41:09 pm »

A self-learning AI will always have a quirk to fix. Programming cancer, as termed in this topic, will quickly take over any unregulated/non-human-maintained robo-maintenance-work circle despite claims that humans will become obsolete. There will always be the necessity for them, robo-janitors, so to speak.

Akin to that movie Oblivion, keeping humans around to simply maintain the parts it can't fix themselves itself[?] because humans have that innovation feat.
Logged
I am surrounded by flesh and bone, I am a temple of living. Maybe I'll maybe my life away.

Santorum leaves a bad taste in my mouth,
Card-carrying Liberaltarian

Helgoland

  • Bay Watcher
  • No man is an island.
    • View Profile
Re: Transhumanism Discussion Thread
« Reply #534 on: January 17, 2014, 04:44:29 pm »

Humans have quirks to fix too, ad that doesn't stop us. Once you discard the - quite frankly romantic - belief in a 'life force' or something of the kind, the conclusion that robots can in principle become functionally identical to humans follows immediately. As soon as you have sufficient robots, the quirks will be drowned in sheer numbers.
Logged
The Bay12 postcard club
Arguably he's already a progressive, just one in the style of an enlightened Kaiser.
I'm going to do the smart thing here and disengage. This isn't a hill I paticularly care to die on.

LeoLeonardoIII

  • Bay Watcher
  • Plump Helmet McWhiskey
    • View Profile
Re: Transhumanism Discussion Thread
« Reply #535 on: January 17, 2014, 04:49:51 pm »

Or will outperform the quirks. If you have a quota for reproduction, let's say you need to produce 1000 gears with a 95% perfect rate to reproduce, the ones who produce a ton of shit will die and the ones who don't produce anything will die. The only ones to continue will be the ones who can make the cut and presumably their offspring will too. If you have no survivors you randomize the variables and start a new generation.

Throw in bonuses - say, if you produce 1000 gears with a 99% perfect rate you get to breed three times instead of one. And you get a breeding opportunity every time you produce 1000 gears - so if you're very fast but still accurate you can reproduce a whole lot.
Logged
The Expedition Map
Basement Stuck
Treebanned
Haunter of Birthday Cakes, Bearded Hamburger, Intensely Off-Topic

WillowLuman

  • Bay Watcher
  • They/Them Life is weird
    • View Profile
Re: Transhumanism Discussion Thread
« Reply #536 on: January 17, 2014, 04:51:34 pm »

If, as argued, robots will replace ALL jobs, then people won't need jobs any more. It's not humans that become obsolete, it's the system of employment. Humans don't become obsolete, ever. If you're going to argue that robots will do everything, and absolutely EVERYTHING better than humans, and thus that humans will not do those things, than why not just save ourselves some time and have everyone simultaneously commit suicide?
Logged
Dwarf Souls: Prepare to Mine
Keep Me Safe - A Girl and Her Computer (Illustrated Game)
Darkest Garden - Illustrated game. - What mysteries lie in the abandoned dark?

10ebbor10

  • Bay Watcher
  • DON'T PANIC
    • View Profile
Re: Transhumanism Discussion Thread
« Reply #537 on: January 17, 2014, 04:58:43 pm »

Or will outperform the quirks. If you have a quota for reproduction, let's say you need to produce 1000 gears with a 95% perfect rate to reproduce, the ones who produce a ton of shit will die and the ones who don't produce anything will die. The only ones to continue will be the ones who can make the cut and presumably their offspring will too. If you have no survivors you randomize the variables and start a new generation.

Throw in bonuses - say, if you produce 1000 gears with a 99% perfect rate you get to breed three times instead of one. And you get a breeding opportunity every time you produce 1000 gears - so if you're very fast but still accurate you can reproduce a whole lot.
Technically, humans are still in the loop there. You won't be talking about the "Origin of robots through natural selection", but the "Origin of robots through artificial selection". We're the judge, we're the environment in which the robots need to survive.

If we wanted too, we could probably make a robotic system that can live without us. (We can program stuff like that already ...); but there really is no point in doing so. Point of evolutionary programming is to make things go easier for us, after all.

A self-learning AI will always have a quirk to fix. Programming cancer, as termed in this topic, will quickly take over any unregulated/non-human-maintained robo-maintenance-work circle despite claims that humans will become obsolete. There will always be the necessity for them, robo-janitors, so to speak.

Akin to that movie Oblivion, keeping humans around to simply maintain the parts it can't fix themselves itself[?] because humans have that innovation feat.
Are you arguing that all intelligence/live/whatever needs an intelligent creator?

Or just that humans are very special snowflakes?
« Last Edit: January 17, 2014, 05:02:26 pm by 10ebbor10 »
Logged

LeoLeonardoIII

  • Bay Watcher
  • Plump Helmet McWhiskey
    • View Profile
Re: Transhumanism Discussion Thread
« Reply #538 on: January 17, 2014, 05:01:33 pm »

That's not the point - it's that some people will still own that stuff and almost everyone else won't. Meaning the have-nots will not have access to those goods. Right now there's enough food production capability in the world yet people starve to death. It's a matter of ownership, distribution, and politics.

Saying that the world will transition to post-scarcity and immediately change to communism is a nice thought but unlikely, and if it does happen then the discussion was pointless because there's no conflict.

RE: 10ebbor10
I used the example of gears as a simplification of the pressures of natural selection. You could just as easily plop a million little randomized robots who can produce copies of themselves, made of iron, on an iron-rich planet, and tell them to get to it. When you get back in a million years there'll be a lot less iron in the planet, and the robots will have done something interesting.

Probably figured out they can attack each other to harvest iron easily.
Logged
The Expedition Map
Basement Stuck
Treebanned
Haunter of Birthday Cakes, Bearded Hamburger, Intensely Off-Topic

wierd

  • Bay Watcher
  • I like to eat small children.
    • View Profile
Re: Transhumanism Discussion Thread
« Reply #539 on: January 17, 2014, 05:05:19 pm »

If, as argued, robots will replace ALL jobs, then people won't need jobs any more. It's not humans that become obsolete, it's the system of employment. Humans don't become obsolete, ever. If you're going to argue that robots will do everything, and absolutely EVERYTHING better than humans, and thus that humans will not do those things, than why not just save ourselves some time and have everyone simultaneously commit suicide?

Because there is more to life than work.
Logged
Pages: 1 ... 34 35 [36] 37 38 ... 46