Confusion
If anyone wants my opinion, sci-fi has done a disservice to science as reality, at least my field. If we ever initiate the Butlerian Jihad by making a machine in the likeness of the mind, people think it will be super-intelligent and somehow capable of outsmarting us. First of all, these idiots underestimate the difficulty--fucking! difficulty--of making any machine approximating a human intelligence. And I don't mean in terms of speed. Idiots think that AI automatically means a computer's speed plus a human's resourcefulness. The only reason our current computers are so fast is that we've done all the hard work of defining all their problems for them. All they have to do is crunch through teraflops of well-defined steps. This is nothing new.
Here's the deal: what will be the first symptom of an emerging intelligence? Not a theorem crunched out, not a chess-game played well, not the capacoty to control aircraft in some terrifying Skynet way. No: the first triumph of our upstart intelligence will be confusion. By confusion, of course, I don't mean some sort of breakdown, some sort of error message, or a stubborn failure to work through a problem. I mean a machine that notices something is amiss and strives to change that situation. It will almost certainly fail, but that little program's "well, that's odd!" should rank up there with thhe moon landing. How long until that happens? Don't count on it in our lifetimes.
Until robots mull, until they get fristrated, until they are girt in emotions to determine the value of objects in this world, until they dream, until they develop heuristics that might lead them astray, until some of them turn away from (artificial) life in "disgust", until they begin to ostracize each other, until they begin to experience cognitive dissonance, until they grow attached, until they experience rude awakenings they will not be close to intelligent. Idiots have made AI appear to be a discipline of transistors and relays. Somebody convinced an ignorant public bigger and better machines were the answer. Someone was a money-grubbing technocrat asshole.
Consider: "By the way, if anyone here is in advertising or marketing, kill yourself. Just a little thought. I'm just trying to plant seeds. Maybe one day, they'll take root. I don't know. You try. You do what you can. Kill yourself. Seriously, though. If you are, do. No, really. There's no rationalisation for what you do, and you are Satan's little helpers, okay? Kill yourself. Seriously. You are the ruiner of all things good, seriously. No, this is not a joke, if you're going: "There's going to be a joke coming." There's no fucking joke coming. You are Satan's spawn, filling the world with bile and garbage. You are fucked, and you are fucking us. Kill yourself, it's the only way to save your fucking soul. Kill yourself. Planting seeds. I know all the marketing people are going: "He's doing a joke." There's no joke here whatsoever. Suck a tail-pipe, fucking hang yourself, borrow a gun from a Yank friend – I don't care how you do it. Rid the world of your evil fucking machinations."
Here's the deal: what will be the first symptom of an emerging intelligence? Not a theorem crunched out, not a chess-game played well, not the capacoty to control aircraft in some terrifying Skynet way. No: the first triumph of our upstart intelligence will be confusion. By confusion, of course, I don't mean some sort of breakdown, some sort of error message, or a stubborn failure to work through a problem. I mean a machine that notices something is amiss and strives to change that situation. It will almost certainly fail, but that little program's "well, that's odd!" should rank up there with thhe moon landing. How long until that happens? Don't count on it in our lifetimes.
Until robots mull, until they get fristrated, until they are girt in emotions to determine the value of objects in this world, until they dream, until they develop heuristics that might lead them astray, until some of them turn away from (artificial) life in "disgust", until they begin to ostracize each other, until they begin to experience cognitive dissonance, until they grow attached, until they experience rude awakenings they will not be close to intelligent. Idiots have made AI appear to be a discipline of transistors and relays. Somebody convinced an ignorant public bigger and better machines were the answer. Someone was a money-grubbing technocrat asshole.
Consider: "By the way, if anyone here is in advertising or marketing, kill yourself. Just a little thought. I'm just trying to plant seeds. Maybe one day, they'll take root. I don't know. You try. You do what you can. Kill yourself. Seriously, though. If you are, do. No, really. There's no rationalisation for what you do, and you are Satan's little helpers, okay? Kill yourself. Seriously. You are the ruiner of all things good, seriously. No, this is not a joke, if you're going: "There's going to be a joke coming." There's no fucking joke coming. You are Satan's spawn, filling the world with bile and garbage. You are fucked, and you are fucking us. Kill yourself, it's the only way to save your fucking soul. Kill yourself. Planting seeds. I know all the marketing people are going: "He's doing a joke." There's no joke here whatsoever. Suck a tail-pipe, fucking hang yourself, borrow a gun from a Yank friend – I don't care how you do it. Rid the world of your evil fucking machinations."
posted by A. D. at 11:50 PM
2 Comments:
hey dude,
i was just wondering if you had in fact ever read "Dune"? i sort of stumbled upon it on wikipedia the other day, and was wondering if it was a good read... having recently conquered Moby Dick, i feel like i can now digest ANY book i choose!!!!
swig
Heh. I stalled half-way though Moby Dick. It's still mocking me from the night-shelf.
As for Dune, I'd recommend it to anybody. It owrks as pulp sci-fi, if you want it. But it's also a book that contains more thought than most po-faced works o literary seriousness.
My only complaint is that it bastardizes the Jungian colelctive unconscious. You'll see what I mean if you read it. I found it incredibly influential when I was a teenager, but that'll probably be different for you.
Cheers!
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