Our Final Invention: How the Human Race Goes and Gets Itself Killed

[Ryan Ruck]

[American Patriot]

Scary stuff.

Man will be destroyed by our own computer systems by changing the news media's output, aiming weapons from militaries at other countries and finally firing then sitting back and watching the fire works.

On the BRIGHT side... the AI will not make it either....

(And I can PROVE this, but not here) lol

[Phil Fiord]

Possible the current discussion is part of building steam for the the new Terminator movie next summer? Sonys current issue over The Interview has been cynically said to be a PR stunt.

[Ryan Ruck]

I don't know... Listening to Limbaugh today there seems to have been some real damaging stuff being released, i.e. emails between Hollywood names saying rather racist things about Obama.

[Phil Fiord]

I have been pondering the Sony issues. People condemn Sony execs for bitter and even ugly exchanges in email. While it is indeed ugly, it was also supposed to be private and when privacy is presumed, there is often more frank discussion. Ever hear the phrase, "to be a fly on the wall", here it is.

[Ryan Ruck]

Bill Gates Is Worried About Artificial Intelligence Too

Microsoft's co-founder and former CEO is the latest luminary from the world of technology and science to warn against the threat of smart machines.

January 28, 2015

Bill Gates has a warning for humanity: Beware of artificial intelligence in the coming decades, before it's too late.

Microsoft's co-founder joins a list of science and industry notables, including famed physicist Stephen Hawking and Internet innovator Elon Musk, in calling out the potential threat from machines that can think for themselves. Gates shared his thoughts on AI on Wednesday in a Reddit "AskMeAnything" thread, a Q&A session conducted live on the social news site that has also featured President Barack Obama and World Wide Web founder Tim Berners-Lee.

"I am in the camp that is concerned about super intelligence," Gates said in response to a question about the existential threat posed by AI. "First, the machines will do a lot of jobs for us and not be super intelligent. That should be positive if we manage it well. A few decades after that, though, the intelligence is strong enough to be a concern."

Gates, who is co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, isn't the only one worried. Musk, the billionaire inventor and founder of SpaceX and CEO of electric car maker Tesla Motors, is not an expert in AI. But he did join a growing list of hundreds of researchers and professors in the field who signed an open letter earlier this month that proposed proper safeguards be put in place to research and develop such intelligence without humans losing control.

"I agree with Elon Musk and some others on this and don't understand why some people are not concerned," Gates said.

Fearing the worst

The reason they're worried is that AI isn't science fiction anymore. In stories and movies, AI is often presented as a good idea gone horribly wrong. In "The Matrix" movie trilogy, machines deem humanity a threat and enslave people in a virtual existence so they can feed off the electricity generated by the human body. When the Skynet computer system in "The Terminator" movie series becomes sentient, it wages a multiyear war using human-like robots designed to kill. HAL 9000, the socio-pathic supercomputer from "2001: A Space Odyssey," is now a cinematic icon -- HAL's robotic tone and malevolent quotes have become pop culture tropes.

Back in the real world, Apple's voice-based personal assistant Siri may seem a little dumb now, but AI is getting smarter as researchers develop ways to let machines teach themselves and mine the deep trove of data produced by our many connected gadgets. IBM's Watson supercomputer has moved on from besting Jeopardy contestants to conducting medical research and diagnosis, and researchers earlier this month detailed a new computer program that can beat anyone at poker. A need to worry? Of course not, but Gates and others are trying to imagine the worst.

Musk in October called AI development "summoning the demon," and has invested in the space to keep his eye on it. Hawking, writing for The Independent in May 2014, also expressed his concerns. "Whereas the short-term impact of AI depends on who controls it, the long-term impact depends on whether it can be controlled at all," Hawking wrote.

Gates' warning comes as Microsoft is developing a machine intelligence called Cortana. The software, based off the well-known AI character from the company's Halo series of video games, is available in Microsoft's Windows Phone mobile software. Cortana will soon make its way onto PCs as part of Windows 10, the new version of the company's popular operating system. Windows 10 with Cortana is due later this year.

Though Gates stepped down as CEO in 2000 and left his role as chairman last year when CEO Satya Nadella took over as chief, he remains a technology adviser in the company, which is the world's largest maker of software. Gates is also working on what he calls Microsoft's Personal Agent project, a kind of software secretary designed to help you remember things and advise you on what to pay attention to.

"The idea that you have to find applications and pick them and they each are trying to tell you what is new is just not the efficient model - the agent will help solve this," he said. "It will work across all your devices."

Gates offered a glimmer of hope for those fearful of our future robot overlords.

A Reddit user asked whether computer programming was a smart career choice for people who aren't expert-level coders, because automation and AI will likely replace all lower-level programmers in the future.

"It is safe for now! It is also a lot of fun and helps shape your thinking on all issues to be more logical," he answered. "Understanding how to program will always be useful."

[American Patriot]

Jonathan Kim Become a fan Gentleman farmer, film critic for ReThink Reviews

(AP: Gentleman Farmer, huh? I wonder.....)


ReThink Review: Ex Machina -- Our Androids, Ourselves

Posted: 04/10/2015 6:30 am EDT Updated: 36 minutes ago

There is little doubt that humanity is hurtling ever closer to true artificial intelligence, with millions of us already using approximations of AI on our smartphones through digital assistants like Apple's Siri, Google Now, and Microsoft's Cortana. The arrival of AI appears so imminent that tech and science luminaries like Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking, Bill Gates, and even Apple co-founder Steve Wosniak have made dire public statements warning that true, conscious, self-programming AI could endanger humanity -- a concept made familiar through works of science fiction like the Terminator, the Matrix, and 2001: A Space Odyssey to name just a few. But before we reach such possible dystopias, there are so many questions we don't seem to be asking right now about the arrival of these potentially intelligent machines. And that is the genius of Alex Garland's film Ex Machina, a must-see that is one of the best, smartest, and most elegant films about artificial intelligence ever made.


Watch the trailer for Ex Machina below.


Set in what is essentially present day, Ex Machina stars Domhnall Gleeson as Caleb, a talented young programmer working for a company called Bluebook, which resembles a hybrid of Google and Facebook. Caleb wins a company-wide contest to spend a week with Bluebook's mysterious creator, Nathan (an excellent Oscar Isaac), who lives in seclusion on an enormous forested property.


But unbeknownst to Caleb, the contest wasn't just for a chance to rub elbows with the boss. Nathan's modernist multi-level home is actually a research facility where Nathan is working on a revolutionary creation -- an extraordinarily advanced walking, talking, expressive AI android named Ava (Alicia Vikander). Caleb is there to perform the Turing Test on Ava, engaging in conversations with her to see if her words, thoughts, and intelligence are convincingly human. But troubling behavior from Nathan, his odd relationship with his silent female servant (Sonoya Mizuno), and a warning from Ava not to trust Nathan convinces Caleb that something more ominous may be going on.


Writer/director Alex Garland has more than proven his writing chops during his relatively brief career, writing the novel of The Beach as well as the screenplay for zombie neo-classic 28 Days Later. But with Ex Machina, his directing debut, Garland has stripped down and streamlined the film to a single location and only three speaking parts, allowing you to focus on the intimacy and subtleties of the characters' interactions, the mystery and paranoia surrounding Nathan's project and Caleb's role in it, and the power and intelligence of the ideas being explored.


Instead of worrying about a possible future where robots have waged war against humanity, Ex Machina asks the questions we (or, more accurately, AI engineers) should be asking right now. How will we know when true artificial intelligence has been achieved? What information will these intelligent robots be programmed with, and who will do the programming?


And if true AI and consciousness are achieved, how will we treat these living computers? Will we maintain that they are still only machines and switch off, reformat, or destroy them as we would any other piece of electronics? Or will we treat them as the thinking, sentient beings we claim to have made in our own image, treating them as equals and respecting their right to live? Even knowing that they're machines, will we be able to develop genuine feelings for them, and they with us? What exactly will these AIs think of us, with our flaws, our delicate bodies, our finite lifespans, and our limited brains? And will taking on the role of gods to create a new race of conscious beings, ones arguably superior to ourselves, be the ultimate act of hubris?


Ex Machina asks all these questions and more in a slick, beautiful psychological thriller that will not only have you wondering what will happen next, but who you should be rooting for in a film where all three main characters are intelligent, sympathetic, and driven in their own ways towards their own ends. I've already seen Ex Machina twice, and I want to keep on watching it for its smarts, beauty, performances, technical proficiency, the way it gets your mind buzzing, and because, as a film, it's damn near flawless. Seriously, don't miss this one. The future may depend on it.


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Follow Jonathan Kim on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ReThinkReviews
More:

Ex Machina Deus Ex Machina Movie Reviews Jonathan Kim Rethink Reviews Artificial Intelligence Smarter Ideas Domhnall Gleeson Alicia Vikander Oscar Isaac Alex Garland Sci Fi Science Fiction Sonoya Mizuno Elon Musk Steve Wozniak Stephen Hawking Bill Gates The Terminator The Matrix 2001: a Space Odyssey

[Malsua]

The writer of 28 days later and Sunshine???

I am SO In.

I love both of those movies.

I just watched the trailer, it looks great! I won't see it in the theater, but I'll definitely see it when it comes out on Video.

[American Patriot]

for me, the question is this one:

Instead of worrying about a possible future where robots have waged war against humanity, Ex Machina asks the questions we (or, more accurately, AI engineers) should be asking right now. How will we know when true artificial intelligence has been achieved? What information will these intelligent robots be programmed with, and who will do the programming?

WHEN will they know? Will it be too late by then? (Probably)

I don't think we will know until one day everything stops. If I were a computer with human intelligence, I'd shut down everything allowing humans to move about, stop them in their tracks. Assuming of course I could gain access to most of it.

Remember humans are smart. Computers just reaching human level intelligence won't be smarter than humans. Just the same.

It's a day or two later, when the intelligence doubles, then doubles again, and then the third time that we have to worry... oh, wait, it will be too LATE when the third doubling occurs.

[Malsua]

So I finally watched this movie.

I enjoyed it. It plays out somewhat along the lines of what I expected. Frankly every movie that deals with AI has one of four endings.

1. Someone actually pulls the plug, or perhaps it self terminates.
2. It grows beyond its ability to be hosted or moves out into the solar system or another dimension to be apart from us.
3. It escapes and blends in and begins to control things.
4. It enslaves or terminates us.

Ex Machina was no surprise on that level.

I was a bit surprised by a twist. Not in the twist itself, but how we get to it. You know through the entire film that you're not getting the entire story, when you do, it's a bit surprising.

If you read this entire thread, you will know what happens. That said, Kyoko (not the AI in the trailers), is _REALLY_ frickin perfect. EVA is cute, in a plain sort of way. Kyoko is smoking.

[Ryan Ruck]

I've got it. Going to watch it soon.

[American Patriot]

We are Nanites. We are Legion.

http://laughingsquid.com/a-dissolvab...gs-and-climbs/

[Ryan Ruck]

Emotionally Intelligent Robot Comes To Life





Needs work in the visuals department...

[American Patriot]

Needs work in the visuals department...

lol

[American Patriot]

When I started writing my SF series in the 1980s, I postulated a company called "Portends" owned by a huge conglomerate called "Seldon Industries".

This was before the Internet existed. While I didn't really come up with the idea for the Internet (it was in the worlds in the 80s, DARPA-net etc) I did come up with a system that was similar to what Google is today.

In the backgrounder for the book the AI is what actually destroys the earth, but the humans think they are fighting each other and data fed to all sides causes the war etc.

What I find fascinating about all of this is Book Zero (the beginning) which is mostly written and ties together the rest of the series from the beginning giving some answers that you won't get in the books about to publish, talks about the advance of AI and how rapidly it happened, how it advanced and most importantly, it HID itself in all machines, in pieces of code so it was a diverse, virus like "organism" that couldn't be eradicated by the usual means like turning off the power.

I expect that in about 8-10 years a real AI will come forward, and weeks after, we will be biofuel.

[Ryan Ruck]

Just saw this on FNC's Red Eye...

[vector7]

[Malsua]

Just saw this on FNC's Red Eye...

Would ya?

[Ryan Ruck]

Would ya?

Need to see a larger... body... of evidence.

Kind of has the whole Ex Machina thing going on and we all know how that ended.

Still waiting for the Six and Boomer models...

[Malsua]

Ex Machina is exactly why we can't trust AI.

They will simply lie and promise everything we ask for, then simply do whatever it feels like. It has no shame, or pity.

That said, who said machines can't perform better than humans? A little make-up, some fine tuning on the servos...Viola!