A robot that can open doors and find electrical outlets to recharge itself. Computer viruses that no one can stop. Predator drones, which, though still controlled remotely by humans, come close to a machine that can kill autonomously.
Impressed and alarmed by advances in artificial intelligence, a group of computer scientists is debating whether there should be limits on research that might lead to loss of human control over computer-based systems that carry a growing share of society’s workload, from waging war to chatting with customers on the phone.
Their concern is that further advances could create profound social disruptions and even have dangerous consequences.
As examples, the scientists pointed to a number of technologies as diverse as experimental medical systems that interact with patients to simulate empathy, and computer worms and viruses that defy extermination and could thus be said to have reached a “cockroach” stage of machine intelligence.
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A couple of the links within the article are as interesting as the article itself…
I’m not too worried because, given our past record with such things, most likely the first artificial life form that we elect to be President of the World will be a model with impressive cleavage power rather than a smart one.
And we will name her ‘Sarah’
So beautifully executed, UV. Walked right into it.
At least the “Sarah” model will save us the trouble of having to integrate multiple levels of fail safe teleprompter circuitry into the design. Random bits of prerecorded nonsensical flowery speech patterns would apparently be enough to garner the lefty vote anyway.
The female protagonist in the first of the Terminator series was named Sarah… Coincidence?
Re #6, hopefully they get that coherence bug worked out so at least there’s something to critique.