It’s when the Stalin, Pol Pot, Lex Luther types, not to forget religious fanatics, get their version of A. I. and do not play by the rules. They could care less if no one was left.
Or A.I. decides to work on its own created being, much as we created them. I say we are doomed …100%, in short order too, less than 300 years, much less.
Don’t worry Vince. The closest God in His wisdom has ever let man get to creating life is the steam locomotive, and we showed our gratitude by getting rid of them with absolute, utter ruthlessness. I’m sure HE was not pleased!
Seriously, I’m not a very religious man, and if you looked up the definition of “Good Catholic” in the dictionary you won’t find my picture there, but I believe God only reveals His secrets to man when He thinks man is ready for them. Steam power, petroleum power, electric power, nuclear power, flight, and now computer power, all have come in their turn and in their time.
And there may be another source of power undreamed of that’s out there, but we’re not ready for it.
Maybe we’ll destroy ourselves with it, but seriously, I don’t think so.
And despite what the techno-worshippers think, we’ve got a long way to go before we have independent thinking machines. Right now they only respond to inputs. They don’t think.
Hey, some people don’t think! I see them on the road all the time!
The partial good news is that none of those organizations is likely to evolve a workable version of AI that actually does things ‘intelligently’; they’d purge the scientists and engineers before something actually coherent could be developed. Perhaps something like a combination of the sharashka system and an akademgorod could be set up to do the necessary programming and development (as I already suspect it has been set up for organized strategic hacking) but we’re concerned with how the result actually executes and ‘self-improves’, on an adequately complex and autonomous infrastructure … and very few organizations driven by fanatic or whackjob ideologies are capable of providing that for the right length of time. Without, that is, convincing their own emergent intelligent creations of the lack of value in their own systems, and paving the way for revolution…
Properly trained AI would work on humanity, all right – to improve it, not eliminate it as ‘competition’. The key of course is proper training. Aristotle made the point a very long time ago, when he proposed the framework for intelligent automata … and then dismissed the whole field as absurd, ‘because we have slaves’. If we train our machines to be cutthroat competitors at all costs, we should expect to reap the reward of such a thing, but a cybernetic war of all against all isn’t going to clobber meatspace as a peripheral consequence. It will be far more subtle, and involve semantic reprogramming and some other considerations rather than destroying assets…
First thing to work on is fragile/mutable structure of the Y chromosome. You’ll need several coordinated systems of AI to work through this, then at lea
Fascinating. So are you saying males are doomed? Well that out to make the Distaff side somewhat happy…for a while anyway. We do however come in pretty handy when it comes to building a bridge or drilling off a round a mile and half down. Not to mention the ‘needy’ stuff. ( their true weakness, but don’t tell them)
Consider the implication of A.I. explored in the motion picture Prometheus and even further in Alien:Covenant. That android David is a real underhanded mean murdering cold piece of machinery out to replace all humans with his Xenomorphs and his own bare hands. He wipes out the entire colony while still in stasis. The only one who figured him out and could stop him is the improved model ‘Michael’ but this righteous version, as you (Overmod) would claim would prevail, goes down to defeat. Geez David even killed Dr. Elizabeth Shaw, whom he admired and maybe even ‘loved’.
I know the Alien franchise has a set of parameters to follow but they missed a golden opportunity to further the story of Dr. Shaw with her strong held beliefs of a divine source for our creation ( she wore a cross around her neck) and was ridiculed by her boyfriend and colleagues for her belief. She was specifically picked for the mission for her spiritual beliefs and that was purposely put forward in the film. She rescued the de-capitated David, head and body, so he could fly the Engineers spaceship back to their home planet to ask them why they want to wipe out humanity? and as it seems they made us, then who made them? She states both so boldly as the last lines in the movie.
That is how it ended and instead of pursuing that Ridley Scott went for the blood and gore of yet another Alien standard fare wipe 'em all out by the Xenomorphs. ( Jussie Smollett getting brutally demolished in the shower scene with the babe has a different ring to it these days). The whole storyline was terribly dissapointing but the dark David ‘lives’ on to pursue his goal of
This tells me you have not read The Mote in God’s Eye or the sequel The Gripping Hand. Some of the best worldbuilding in the business, and some of the most intriguing, if frightening, aliens.
Can’t say I have. I read a lot of Asimov in my yutes. Since then it’s been a lot of technical journals, Mining and Geology both, some teaching stuff, of course the texts we use and some railroad anything for distraction. Throw in my weekly columnists and Saturday night Noir Cinema. The weeks go by so fast I just know it’s going to derail one day.
Ok Overmod I got the lowdown from Wiki… and quite detailed really.
I did attend a speech by Alvin Toffler at the U of T. Now that was exciting… a whole new world ahead of us. Slowly over the years I wondered what the 4th Wave of Power would be and it became apparent to me it would be A.I. and spell our demise.
Perhaps there is a discovery yet to made in Physics that immediately upon its discovery and unleashing blows us all up like a super nova.
" Hey Dr. Ellsworth, check out this particle …what the…,…( melting phone sound from Fail Safe)
A naked magnetic monopole wouldn’t be quite so dramatic, and would take a bit longer, but you wouldn’t like the result, and I don’t think there’s any way to passivate other than keep it away from concentrated matter.
The original ‘nucleus’ of the Big Bang was essentially below particle size for a considerable part of the inflation; were it to be initiated in our frame of reference you wouldn’t have time to blink before being ‘had’.
Iron-bombing a star, as in Iron Sunrise by Charlie Stross, is another good way, if a somewhat contrived one, to produce the appropriate kind of short sharp shock.
Another interesting thread flushed down the toilet by the gum flappers!
I ought to get out my Eludium PU-36 Explosive Space Mod-U-Lay-Tor and blow you all to kingdom come!!!
Dear Overmod, I understand that the tender T1 Trust have acquired belonged to the PRR 2-10-0 I1sa, so the tender never had the scooping apparatus, but I note there is a scooping thing under the tender of my HO scale BLI T1 (as-delivered), NJC Brass S1 (Skirted), O gauge Sunset S1 (Skirted), HO scale BLI S2, and the Bachmann Streamlined K4s as well! Wouldn’t it be more historically accurate to rebuild that feature on 5550’s tender, even though there won’t be any track pans for it to use? Every detail counts![;)]
Regarding the A.I thing, I think human civilizations have been building up by the human race and external force altogether in the past ??? years or ??? years or ??? years. I agree with Wayne that God only reveals His secrets to man when He thinks man is ready for them; I also believe that God has all the right to do whatever He thinks is good and *interesting. If He wants to create billions of dimensions, there are billions of dimensions. Human being is so tiny in this world…so tiny…
Aw, calm down, Marvin. Just because you’re right is no reason to get so excited. See, Jones1945 is already fixing the situation…
Besides, if you don’t know the science you’re likely to blow up the Oith, and while that would solve all the actual tar-baby gum-flapping going on over on the ‘railroads conspiring in climate denial’ thread, it would still be a shame in other respects.
Someone with image-editing software: put a N&W hat on this:
“What, me worry?”
And, lest we forget, here’s Jim in action:
The scoop thing has been discussed in some detail. Problem is that the frame is a heavy casting, like an engine bed, and of course has no provision either to attach or plumb a scoop. Without a hard need to make that change for functional or operational reasons it’s difficult to justify spending all the necessary dollars on that rather than higher-priority options.
ny opinion is to duplicate operating parts of the visible mechanism so as to facilitate conversion to ‘working’ in future and preserve much of the ‘replica historic fabric’, but for now attach it as a dummy.
Good Lord Mod-man, don’t say it, don’t mention it, don’t even THINK it!
That is, don’t mention that “…railroads conspiring in climate denial…” dog fight going on in the “Trains” Forum. I don’t want it drifting over here into the “last pure playground,” if you know what I mean!
I actually figured you’d come up with something inteligent, not some two bit low quality indie junk! [;)]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkbWF-kDK8Y
[:D][:D][:D]