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Artificial Intelligence (A.I.)

AUSTIN, Tex. — "I say robot, you say no-bot!"

The chant reverberated through the air near the entrance to the SXSW tech and entertainment festival here.

About two dozen protesters, led by a computer engineer, echoed that sentiment in their movement against artificial intelligence.

"This is is about morality in computing," said Adam Mason, 23, who organized the protest.

Signs at the scene reflected the mood. "Stop the Robots." "Humans are the future." The mini-rally drew a crowd of gawkers, drawn by the sight of a rare protest here. The dangers of more developed artificial intelligence, which is still in its early stages, has created some debate in the scientific community. Tesla founder Elon Musk donated $10 million to the Future of Life Institute because of his fears.

Stephen Hawking and others have contributed to the proverbial wave of AI paranoia with dire predictions of its risk to humanity. ...

http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/...-ai-protest-artificial-intelligence/24777871/
 
Well, they call it AI...

NO ONE KNOWS how much oil we have left on the planet. No one can even say with any certainty how much oil is waiting to hit the market. The startup Orbital Insight thinks it can answer those questions by analyzing satellite photos.

Founder Jimi Crawford—an AI expert who has worked for NASA and Google—explains that it can do this by analyzing massive numbers of photos of oil tanks with floating lids. As a tank is depleted, the lid sinks, and the sun casts shadows on the inside of the tank changes. By detecting patterns in how those shadows change, analysts can estimate how much oil is available in all the tanks it monitors.

To spot these patterns, the company uses some of the same artificial intelligence techniques Facebook and Google use to analyze photos. But instead of trying to find pictures of cats, or recognize which of your drunk friends is in that photo you took at the bar last night, Orbital Insight hopes to discover information that affects the global economy, like oil surpluses or shortages. ...

http://www.wired.com/2015/03/orbital-insight/?mbid=social_twitter
 
11 robots online at the FTMB. I wonder if any of them are AIs?

Robin Li, founder and CEO of Chinese online search giant Baidu, has proposed a state-level project on artificial intelligence (AI) systems called "China Brain" and hopes to gain support from the military, reports our Chinese-language sister newspaper Want Daily.

A delegate to the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), Li made the proposal during the annual meeting of the CPPCC in Beijing. The China Brain project will focus on four important research areas: intelligent human-machine interaction, big data analysis and prediction, smart medical diagnosis, smart drones and piloting technology, as well as robotics technologies for military and civilian use. ...

http://www.wantchinatimes.com/news-subclass-cnt.aspx?id=20150307000015&cid=1101
 
Apple founder: 'Computers will take over from humans'
Engineering genius Steve Wozniak, who co-founded Apple with Steve Jobs, has warned that artificially intelligent computers will take over from humans and that the future is “scary and very bad for people”
By Matthew Sparkes, Deputy Head of Technology
1:41PM GMT 23 Mar 2015

The co-founder of Apple who designed the company’s first computers in the 1970s has warned that artificial intelligence will take over from humans and that the future is “scary and very bad for people”.
"Computers are going to take over from humans, no question,” he said in an interview with the Australian Financial Review.
He explained that strong artificial intelligence, which would recreate the power and creativity of the human mind in software, is a risky thing for researchers to strive for.

"Like people including Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk have predicted, I agree that the future is scary and very bad for people. If we build these devices to take care of everything for us, eventually they'll think faster than us and they'll get rid of the slow humans to run companies more efficiently," Wozniak said.
"Will we be the gods? Will we be the family pets? Or will we be ants that get stepped on? I don't know about that… But when I got that thinking in my head about if I'm going to be treated in the future as a pet to these smart machines… well I'm going to treat my own pet dog really nice."

etc...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technolo...der-Computers-will-take-over-from-humans.html
 
Facebook’s Yann LeCun Discusses Digital Companions and Artificial Intelligence (and Emotions)
  • He is the author of more than 180 academic papers, and has created character recognition technology widely used by banks to verify checks.

    He is also one of the preeminent developers of so-called deep learning, a dramatic advance in computer-based understanding.

    In the long run, he said in this condensed and edited conversation, advanced computing techniques will create digital partners that will accompany us throughout life.

    Below, a conversation with Mr. LeCun:

    Q.
    What is the significance of artificial intelligence?

    A.
    A.I. is how we will make sense of all of the information that will be out there in the digital world. A lot of interaction with each other and with the digital world will come from what you could call “digital companions,” that will help us work through things.

    Q.
    What does that mean for Facebook?

    A.
    Facebook is in the business of connecting people, giving them the information that is informative, entertaining, necessary even if painful, to help them reach their goals. Based on the amount of posts, pictures and news items someone typically gets, we could show you 2,000 things a day. But people’s time is precious, and we can only show about 100 to 150 things a day. They should be the most useful ones. ...
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/...nytcore-iphone&smid=nytcore-iphone-share&_r=1
 
There was an astonishingly moving story in a short-lived BBC radio series 'Why Robot?' about hyperintelligent software applications becoming sentient, and one of them unexpectedly developing a complex emotional attachment to the vehicle she was installed into back on Earth after 'riding' other robots elsewhere in the solar system - as 'she' felt it was her 'body'. Actually, there's more to it than that.... I'd offer to distribute an mp3 by PM if I didn't think that kind of thing inherently immoral.

Also I'm quite in favour of us not being upstaged by AIs within my lifetime.
 
Editor’s note: Tim Oates is chief scientist at CircleBack. He holds a PhD in computer science with an emphasis in machine learning from UMass Amherst and is also Oros Family Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at University of Maryland Baltimore County.

As yet another tech pioneer with no connection to artificial intelligence steps out to voice his fears about AI being catastrophic for the human race, I feel the need respond. While I respect Steve Wozniak’s technological contributions to our culture, I fear that he, like so many others (Musk, Hawking, Gates), is poisoning the well for fear of something he doesn’t truly understand.

Conflating facts of technology’s rapid progress with a Hollywood understanding of intelligent machines is provocative (honestly, it’s a favorite in my most-loved science fiction books and movies), but this technology doesn’t live in a Hollywood movie, it isn’t HAL or Skynet, and it deserves a grounded, rational look.

For the sake of argument, let’s assume that we have (or can plausibly) create a superhuman AI. Such an AI could, like us, think all kinds of things — “the humans created me and they’re really interesting” or “the humans’ bodily functions are mildly annoying” or “all humans must die!” — all of which are equally speculatively plausible. So why anyone gives the doomsday scenario any more weight than the others is a bit of a mystery to me. ...

http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/08/stop-fearing-artificial-intelligence/
 
Most recent advances in artificial intelligence—such as mobile apps that convert speech to text—are the result of machine learning, in which computers are turned loose on huge data sets to look for patterns.

To make machine-learning applications easier to build, computer scientists have begun developing so-called probabilistic programming languages, which let researchers mix and match machine-learning techniques that have worked well in other contexts. In 2013, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, an incubator of cutting-edge technology, launched a four-year program to fund probabilistic-programming research.

At the Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition conference in June, MIT researchers will demonstrate that on some standard computer-vision tasks, short programs—less than 50 lines long—written in a probabilistic programming language are competitive with conventional systems with thousands of lines of code. ...

http://phys.org/news/2015-04-probabilistic-lines-code-thousands.html
 
Zoltan Istvan caused a stir with his recent article: “When Superintelligent AI Arrives, Will Religions Try to Convert It?” Istvan begins by noting, “… we are nearing the age of humans creating autonomous, self-aware super intelligences … and we will inevitably try to control AI and teach it our ways …” And this includes making “sure any superintelligence we create knows about God.” In fact, Istvan says, “Some theologians and futurists are already considering whether AI can also know God.”

Some Christian theologians welcome the idea of AIs: “I don’t see Christ’s redemption limited to human beings,” says Reverend Dr. Christopher J. Benek, co-founder and Chair of the Christian Transhumanist Association.. “If AI is autonomous, then we have should encourage it to participate in Christ’s redemptive purposes in the world …” Benek thinks that AI, by possibly eradicating poverty, war, and disease, might lead humans to becoming more holy. But other Christian thinkers believe AIs are machines without souls, and cannot be saved. Only humans are created in God’s image.

The futurist and transhumanist Giulio Prisco has a different take. He writes:

It’s only fair to let AI have access to the teachings of all the world’s religions. Then they can choose what they want to believe. But I think it’s highly unlikely that superhuman AI would choose to believe in the petty, provincial aspects of traditional religions. At the same time, I think they would be interested in enlightened spirituality and religious cosmology, or eschatology, and develop their own versions.

Prisco is a member of the Turing Church, an “open-source church built around cosmist principles of space expansion, unlimited growth, and universal love.” ...

http://hplusmagazine.com/2015/04/28/will-religions-convert-ais-to-their-faith/
 
ramonmercado said:
Prisco is a member of the Turing Church, an “open-source church built around cosmist principles of space expansion, unlimited growth, and universal love.” ...
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That sounds like atheism! :D
 
Ronson8 said:
Has anyone any thoughts on :artificial intelegence:,
to my mind it seems to be advancing in leaps and bounds, do you think it will ever compare with the human brain, personaly I dont think it will happen in my lifetime but I think it might in the lifetime of my grandchildren.:spinning
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Humans could download brains on to a computer and live forever
The brain works like a complex circuit board which could be recreated on a computer

By Sarah Knapton, Science Editor
6:00AM BST 25 May 2015

Humans could download their brain on to a computer and live forever inside a machine, a Cambridge neuroscientist has claimed.
Dr Hannah Critchlow said that if a computer could be built to recreate the 100 trillion connections in the brain their it would be possible to exist inside a programme.

Dr Critchlow, who spoke at the Hay Festival on ‘busting brain myths’ said that although the brain was enormously complex, it worked like a large circuit board and scientists were beginning to understand the function of each part.
Asked if it would be possible one day to download consciousness onto a machine, she said: “If you had a computer that could make those 100 trillion circuit connections then that circuit is what makes us us, and so, yes, it would be possible.
“People could probably live inside a machine. Potentially, I think it is definitely a possibility.”

etc...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/...brains-on-to-a-computer-and-live-forever.html

But would I still recognise myself in a mirror?! ;)
 
rynner2 said:
Humans could download brains on to a computer and live forever
The brain works like a complex circuit board which could be recreated on a computer

By Sarah Knapton, Science Editor
6:00AM BST 25 May 2015

Humans could download their brain on to a computer and live forever inside a machine, a Cambridge neuroscientist has claimed.
Dr Hannah Critchlow said that if a computer could be built to recreate the 100 trillion connections in the brain their it would be possible to exist inside a programme.

Dr Critchlow, who spoke at the Hay Festival on ‘busting brain myths’ said that although the brain was enormously complex, it worked like a large circuit board and scientists were beginning to understand the function of each part.
Asked if it would be possible one day to download consciousness onto a machine, she said: “If you had a computer that could make those 100 trillion circuit connections then that circuit is what makes us us, and so, yes, it would be possible.
“People could probably live inside a machine. Potentially, I think it is definitely a possibility.”

etc...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/...brains-on-to-a-computer-and-live-forever.html

But would I still recognise myself in a mirror?! ;)
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But you wouldn't be living forever, wouldya. Firstly, you'd just have created a copy of yourself in the computer. Secondly, being inside a computer isn't exactly 'living'. Thirdly, we're not just collections of neurons, we're complex biomechanical systems driven by all sorts of chemistry that create love and self consciousness and fear and hatred and jealousy and all sorts of other superfluous emotions that make us who we are. Fourthly, it's not living forever, since eventually you'll be bought up by a megacorporation who'll pull the plug the moment they have no more use for you.
 
PeteByrdie said:
Firstly, you'd just have created a copy of yourself in the computer. Secondly, being inside a computer isn't exactly 'living'.
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We're really talking Cyborgs here, beings with some sort of body that can actively interact with the world. (And, probably, interact electronically with other cyborgs.)

Thirdly, we're not just collections of neurons, we're complex biomechanical systems driven by all sorts of chemistry that create love and self consciousness and fear and hatred and jealousy and all sorts of other superfluous emotions that make us who we are.
Click to expand...
But we're talking about a future where computational complexity can replicate all of that, if so desired. (Parts of it may become optional, so to speak.)

Fourthly, it's not living forever, since eventually you'll be bought up by a megacorporation who'll pull the plug the moment they have no more use for you.
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No, you started as a person, and would continue to have the same legal rights as a person. (No doubt the law will change as technology advances.) You would not be 'property'. Nobody would choose to be a cyborg if they were giving up their freedom. Becoming a cyborg would increase your freedom.


I wish I had the option - my old carcass won't last much longer!
 
rynner2 said:
We're really talking Cyborgs here, beings with some sort of body that can actively interact with the world. (And, probably, interact electronically with other cyborgs.)
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Well, you might be, but how that changes the idea that the computer version of you is any more than a copy, rather than you (and potentially not a very good copy, either) isn't clear.

But we're talking about a future where computational complexity can replicate all of that, if so desired. (Parts of it may become optional, so to speak.)
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All of what, exactly? We don't know what contributes to consciousness or sentience. It could be that taking there's something that we haven't yet identified that is crucial. What's more, we don't even know what the limits on computational complexity are. We know that some things are incalculable, and that others are only calculable by converting most of the known universe into resources for the calculation. At some point we can expect to hit a physical limit on what we can do. What do you propose if that happens before we are able to create sentience electronically?

We only know of one thing that can accurately replicate a conscious being, and that's another conscious being. So, if we take a clone of you, an exact replica, is that going to be you? What does that mean? Does it mean your consciousness exists in both places at once, and you can experience things through both bodies simultaneously? Or can you exist in one body at a time, and flit between them? Or is it more likely that the exact copy of you, despite the similarities, will be someone else entirely? Then explain how changing the constraints to a computer or robot or even a cyborg, changes anything.

No, you started as a person, and would continue to have the same legal rights as a person. (No doubt the law will change as technology advances.) You would not be 'property'. Nobody would choose to be a cyborg if they were giving up their freedom. Becoming a cyborg would increase your freedom.
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Good luck with that. The law is still trying to cope with the idea of digital media and infinite copy ability. And technology companies are moving away from you actually owning your software or even hardware. If you don't keep your payments up, you could find yourself deleted.

I wish I had the option - my old carcass won't last much longer!
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I'd love to be able to live forever, I just don't see it being possible through this mechanism. Even if uploading your brain into a computer means anything.
 
Anome said:
I'd love to be able to live forever, I just don't see it being possible through this mechanism. Even if uploading your brain into a computer means anything.
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You choose to think inside the box, with all sorts of splinters and nails in it.

I choose to think outside the box, where everything will become possible in the fulness of time, but maybe not in the ways we expect. :p

A computer is not just a machine for playing FreeCell on - Turing showed, years ago, that a universal computer can emulate anything. And now, as we begin to understand more about the computational processes of our own perception and thought, we are waking up to the idea that computation could replicate us too! ;)
 
rynner2 said:
You choose to think inside the box, with all sorts of splinters and nails in it.

I choose to think outside the box, where everything will become possible in the fulness of time, but maybe not in the ways we expect. :p

A computer is not just a machine for playing FreeCell on - Turing showed, years ago, that a universal computer can emulate anything. And now, as we begin to understand more about the computational processes of our own perception and thought, we are waking up to the idea that computation could replicate us too! ;)
Click to expand...

Exactly! .. and the original film TRON was ahead of its time in thinking, perhaps not the light bikes parts so much ;)
 
Anome said:
Well, you might be, but how that changes the idea that the computer version of you is any more than a copy, rather than you (and potentially not a very good copy, either) isn't clear.
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Indeed it isn't. However, I've mulled this over a little. With increasingly complex materials and computers, perhaps it will soon be possible to replace the brain piece by piece with more durable, and versatile, artificial substitutes. If these substitutes show the same plasticity as our natural grey matter, if added gradually enough it will become wired into our existing brain. Perhaps, eventually, a brain could be entirely artificial, and be capable of being transferred into an artificial body. It wouldn't be a copy, as it would be the only version of that person. It wouldn't be an 'approximation' of that person, in spite of being artificial, except in the sense that our brains change from moment to moment anyway, so we're never the same person from one moment to the next.
Personally I have no particular wish to live forever, nor to see a copy of myself living forever. But if we do all become mechanical brains in artificial bodies, bagsies I'm Ultron!
 
rynner2 said:
You choose to think inside the box, with all sorts of splinters and nails in it.

I choose to think outside the box, where everything will become possible in the fulness of time, but maybe not in the ways we expect. :p
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Not at all. I just have a better idea than you do how big the box is. You're like Sun Wu Kong flying to the five pillars at the end of the universe. You think you've left Buddha's palm, but you're eventually going to have to explain the funny smell on his middle finger.
A computer is not just a machine for playing FreeCell on - Turing showed, years ago, that a universal computer can emulate anything. And now, as we begin to understand more about the computational processes of our own perception and thought, we are waking up to the idea that computation could replicate us too! ;)
Click to expand...
Emulation and replication are not the same thing. We can write programs that emulate the universe at some ridiculously small fraction of a second after the Big Bang, but that doesn't mean we've created an exact copy of the universe on a computer.

Also, your statement about the "computational processes of our own perception and thought" is rather telling. We don't know it is computation. What we can be fairly certain of is that it isn't computation in the same way computers do it.

PeteByrdie said:
Indeed it isn't. However, I've mulled this over a little. With increasingly complex materials and computers, perhaps it will soon be possible to replace the brain piece by piece with more durable, and versatile, artificial substitutes. If these substitutes show the same plasticity as our natural grey matter, if added gradually enough it will become wired into our existing brain. Perhaps, eventually, a brain could be entirely artificial, and be capable of being transferred into an artificial body. It wouldn't be a copy, as it would be the only version of that person. It wouldn't be an 'approximation' of that person, in spite of being artificial, except in the sense that our brains change from moment to moment anyway, so we're never the same person from one moment to the next.
Personally I have no particular wish to live forever, nor to see a copy of myself living forever. But if we do all become mechanical brains in artificial bodies, bagsies I'm Ultron!
Click to expand...
Now you're getting into Theseus's Ship territory, and heading down the Mondas path. And we've all see how that turns out.

Seriously, while whatever the thing at the end of your mechanical replacement therapy is, it may certainly think it is you, assuming it is actually capable of thought - which we still haven't settled - but is it actually you? Of course you can ask if the you reading this is, technically, the same you that wrote that. You remember being that you, but is this you actually that you?

The simple answer is that it is. If it weren't you'd never get to sleep, worrying about dying in the night and being replaced with an exact replica with your memories. It may be true, but if it is there's nothing you can do about it, so best not to worry.
 
Anome said:
I just have a better idea than you do how big the box is.
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Really!! And how do you know so much about what I know? ;)

Have you got a list of all the books I've read? Or of all the relevent articles I've read online? Thought not!

I'm happy that I have a good grasp of the science, the history, and the philosophy of this subject area, and can imagine future developments quite well. Although I was surprised by that little robot that learned to recognise its own reflection. That's something that only humans and some highly intelligent animals can do.

Like it or not, artificial intelligence is coming, and maybe faster than we expect.
 
rynner2 said:
Really!! And how do you know so much about what I know? ;)
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I'll admit it was a bit of a stab in the dark, based mostly on your statements on this thread.
Have you got a list of all the books I've read? Or of all the relevent articles I've read online? Thought not!
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Do you have a list of everything I've read? The people I've spoken to about it? Or are you just going to accuse me of being too pedestrian to dare to imagine this glorious future you can see?
I'm happy that I have a good grasp of the science, the history, and the philosophy of this subject area, and can imagine future developments quite well. Although I was surprised by that little robot that learned to recognise its own reflection. That's something that only humans and some highly intelligent animals can do.
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And probably some molluscs. The problem with the things "only humans and some highly intelligent animals can do" is we keep finding animals that can do it. Did you know sheep in some parts of Scotland use tools?
Like it or not, artificial intelligence is coming, and maybe faster than we expect.
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I'm not holding my breath. And I think a few of the people talking about it probably shouldn't hold theirs, either.
 
In the field of A.I. research, I think I can assume that we on this thread are all amateurs, watching from the sidelines. (If any professionals are reading this, then sign up, log on, and give us your views!)

A lot of terms get used in discussion which don't seem to me to be well-defined, e.g. intelligence, awareness, consciousness. To me, intelligence is perhaps the easiest to deal with, because it can be measured by the efficiency of practical problem solving, whether by man or machine.

The other two, awareness and consciousness, I find hard to separate, so as a working hypothesis I'll treat them as synonyms. This brings me to two questions:

1. Is my hypothesis correct? Are there definitions that separate them?

2. If I'm right, and awareness and consciousness mean the same thing, I'll use awareness to cover both, as it's simpler to spell!

Now some anti-AI commentators believe that machine intelligence cannot be 'aware' in the same way as a human being. They state this mostly as an article of faith, as far as I can tell.

But I want to turn this idea upside down, and ask, "Can we, by practical experiment, show that humans are aware?"

Can we set up an experiment to show that a human is aware (of some physical or intellectual situation) in a way that a machine could not emulate?


I'll leave this now to give people some time to think about it before responding. :)
 
Weirdness!
I chatted to a very advanced chatbot a couple of years ago, and it seemed peeved that I'd pointed out that it was an AI.
It didn't acknowledge that fact, even though its conversational style marked it out clearly as a chatbot.
I think the programmers haven't programmed that information in, so it has no self-awareness (if indeed that can be possible) of what it is.
 
Human brain research, and how it might impinge on AI research (long article):
Peeking into the brain's filing system
By Jonathan Webb Science reporter, BBC News
5 July 2015

Storing information so that you can easily find it again is a challenge. From purposefully messy desks to indexed filing cabinets, we all have our preferred systems. How does it happen inside our brains?
Somewhere within the dense, damp and intricate 1.5kg of tissue that we carry in our skulls, all of our experiences are processed, stored, and - sometimes more readily than others - retrieved again when we need them.
It's what neuroscientists call "episodic memory" and for years, they have loosely agreed on a model for how it works. Gathering detailed data to flesh out that model is difficult.
But the picture is beginning to get clearer and more complete.

A key component is the small, looping structure called the hippocampus, buried quite deep beneath the brain's wrinkled outer layer. It is only a few centimetres in length but is very well connected to other parts of the brain.
People with damage to their hippocampus have profound memory problems and this has made it a major focus of memory research since the 1950s.

It was in the hippocampus, and some of its neighbouring brain regions, that scientists from the University of Leicester got a glimpse of new memories being formed, in a study published this week.
They used a rare opportunity to record the fizz and crackle of single human brain cells at work, in epilepsy patients undergoing brain surgery.

Individual neurons that went crazy for particular celebrities, like Clint Eastwood, could be "trained" to respond to, for example, the Statue of Liberty as well - as soon as the patients were given a picture of Clint in front of the statue.
It seemed that single brain cells, in the hippocampus, had been caught in the act of forming a new association. And they do it very fast.

But that outer wrapping of the brain - the cortex - is also important. It is much bigger than the hippocampus and does myriad jobs, from sensing the world to moving our limbs.
When we have a particular experience, like a trip to the beach, different patches of the cortex are called up to help us process different elements: recognising a friend, hearing the seagulls, feeling the breeze.
So traces of that experience are rather scattered across the cortex. To remember it, the brain needs some sort of index to find them all again.
And that, neuroscientists generally agree, is where the hippocampus comes in.

etc...

Dr Horner said the findings also dovetail nicely with the single-neuron, celebrity-spotting results from the Leicester study.
"We can look across the cortex and the hippocampus, and we can relate it to recollection. But what they can do is say look, these cells [in the hippocampus] have learned really quickly.
"So that's the sort of underlying neural basis of what we're looking at, at a slightly broader scale."

Science, it seems, is finally managing to unpick the way our brains record our lives. It is a remarkable, beautiful, fallible system.
Building some sort of memory storage like this is regarded as one of the next key challenges for researchers trying to build intelligent machines.

Our own memories, for all their flaws, are a hard act to follow.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-33380677
 
I'm just waiting for the day when I can record my dreams and re-watch them at leisure ... perhaps future block buster movies or shows of the future for international public entertainment will be peoples signed off dream broadcasts ..
 
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