I have been doing some reading about "Narcissistic
personality disorder" and "Borderline personality disorder" for various reasons. While there are all sorts of aspects to these conditions, they are essentially a set of "thought patterns" which are expressed as a grab bag of symptoms of varying intensity by the victim.
The key point being that these "though patterns" are "trained in" by an abusive parent(usually). They are do not stem from a physical injury or anything else. Essentially the child is fine before hand, then afterward is broken by exposure to the parents condition. Similar to PTSD.
The complex issue that I have recurringly thought about is that these particular conditions are repeated down the generations unless interupted during transmission. The condition is self-replicating and self-maintaining. I.e a parent with a mild case of NPD can damage a child who manifests a strong case of NPD... so the condition does not "weaken" over generations.
To me, this is a perfect example of a "Though Virus". The same sort of pattern seems to happen with bullying (although I have not read as much about it) where the victim of a bully may go on to become a bully themselves, thus replicating the condition.
I'm sure there will be a bunch of these kind of "though patterns" that are transmitted from generation to generation. Some we call "wisdom", "habits", "myths", "family culture" etc. But like all symbiotic relationships, its the negative ones that get called names.
The interesting aspects of these constructs is that:
A) If they can be given to someone, they can be taken away. (More or less cured... in theory. This ignores any damage done while the victim was carrying it; which could be substatial)
B) Can we develop an immunisation for this crap that will remove it from society?
c) Is there are liability for society by allowing parents to infect their children with this kind of negative thought pattner? If so, should society identify and treat before the infection can jump to the next generation?
d) These things can only work in a particular context. NPD depends on isolating the victim(s) and creating and re-inforcing an alternative "reality bubble" around them. Can this be defeated simply by not leaving infected parents alone with un-infected children? (This is probably the cure for all sorts of shitty parenting....)
e) These kinds of though patterns could potentially be transmitted to artificial intelligence and back again. Something to think about...
Once you start looking at thought patterns as a transmittable "thing" you start to see all sorts of passive and active mechanisms that may be playing large or small roles in this process. I have seen a few articles such as "Playing computer games is re-wiring my brain.." kind of thing. I know logically this is true... I have just never considered the full extent of this kind of massed, repetative rewiring. Its funny to see social conventions emerge and propogate on game message boards.... and then to see them make a jump into social memes... but in reality this is how society has evolved... a collective set of through patterns that are self sustaining, transmissible, and self-reinforcing. Keep in mind that all though patterns are emergent (random, chaotic and useless until re-inforced by utility) its easy to think of "intelligence" as one big virus.....
Once you conceive of the human brain as simply a virus laden organ which can be infected by other viruses.... it gets weird.
But as a mechanism to explain intelligence, thought, society etc... its pretty neat and tidy.
Showing posts with label AI. Show all posts
Showing posts with label AI. Show all posts
Thursday, April 16, 2015
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
Thursday, April 5, 2012
Thought experiments for Automated Starcraft Players
http://graphics.stanford.edu/~mdfisher/GameAIs.html
Starcraft 2 Automated Player
This is a brilliant writeup of both the architecture and some of the issues to consider when building an automated player for a game.
There are so many little bits of wisdom in this article that I want to spend time thinking about and hacking on.
First thoughts.
Interesting AI architecture. It (if I read it correctly) seems to use a kind of switched swarm intelligence for some of the decision making. Which makes sense when you consider the intricacy of trying to build a single unified decision making engine that could handle all the different individual units, their micro objectives and integrate that into a macro plan. (I would do that for a Phd with bells on...) kind of skynet for Starcraft....
The emergent strategies that have been implemented to deal with chaotic and imprecise events within the environment are interesting. Kind of obvious now its been pointed out. Again this moves a solution more toward a swam model where each agent/thread/program/entity deals with a small part of the map or a small objective as opposed to a large monolithic algorithm that would be a monster to debug. The tradeoff being that each of these small programs has loose coupling with all the others. They cannot share their internal micro state and need to implement some form of inter-entity communication if they need to cooperate. Which gets us back to resource competition, group decision making and all the other fun of peer agent models.
It's interesting to note that there are some higher level constructs in the architecture that are delegated to task switching and managing the stream of data comming in about the game state. Currently these are very single purpose; making debugging much simpler. But another task could be developed to run above the agents to implement a coordinating role and implement the "master plan" for the play session. (yet another Phd...)
The mirror driver implements the equivilent of a "sense" mechanism. We could describe it as "sight", but it does not share the same type of information stream as we understand "sight" in a biological form. Still its a fairly wide channel of information that is then internalised and used to generate a state represenation of the AI's environmental reality.
This state represeation will also include (expliclty or implicitly) some encoded knowledge about the artifacts in that environment. The number of different possible states that each individual artifact can exist in, the inter-artifact relationships, communications and inter-actions etc. It would be an interesting datascape to look at (yet another Phd...)
Dealing with the scene perception and understanding is interesting. It would be fun to offload this information to a different processor(or network) and see exactly how rich an internal representation could be generated from the information stream.
Dealing with the chaotic nature of the interaction with the opposing player, the state changes of the particular units and the static and dynamic elements of the environment is an interesting set of problems. (Called housekeeping in the article) Which again would generate an interesting set of rules and emergent behaviours in a good learning system.
It would be an interesting exercise to run a few hundred games on the same map and build up an understanding of the potential of each map. This may be an effective mechanism for debugging maps. Both the functional level debugging( finding holes and bugs ) and the logical debugging (balancing, removing or adding choke points, tuning difficulty etc). This is something I have been wanting to do for Chess for a while, is to calculate the true value of every square on the board. Probably someone has already done it... I just want to do it in as a multi-dimensional analysis, to see how many hidden variables I can tie to simple positional space, then to particular pieces and finally to particular strategic choices. Since there are only 32 peices, it should not take too long. Just have to raid a couple of databases for some game records. (yet another Phd...)
There is a fun little element mentioned called "Personas" which seems to be an undeveloped mechanism to mess with opponent players minds during the game. Its a simple blind system that uses a strategy of tying complex chat sentences during play....
Not sure who effective this would be but its an interesting strategic possibility. Attack the players outside the game environment.
Using a console overlay seems to be cute but wasteful. I would build a whole seperate GUI for monitoring the AI. (Benefit of multiple monitors I guess. )
At the end of the day, this is a great framework to build on, but seems to consist of a lot of fairly hard coded routines and strategies that are played out by a quite rigid system. Yes its fast, yes its beyond human capacity... but I don't feel like its moving beyond being a very complex script. I want to see my artifical children grow beyond my capacity.... not just leaverage hardward speed as a blunt instrument.
Starcraft 2 Automated Player
This is a brilliant writeup of both the architecture and some of the issues to consider when building an automated player for a game.
There are so many little bits of wisdom in this article that I want to spend time thinking about and hacking on.
First thoughts.
Interesting AI architecture. It (if I read it correctly) seems to use a kind of switched swarm intelligence for some of the decision making. Which makes sense when you consider the intricacy of trying to build a single unified decision making engine that could handle all the different individual units, their micro objectives and integrate that into a macro plan. (I would do that for a Phd with bells on...) kind of skynet for Starcraft....
The emergent strategies that have been implemented to deal with chaotic and imprecise events within the environment are interesting. Kind of obvious now its been pointed out. Again this moves a solution more toward a swam model where each agent/thread/program/entity deals with a small part of the map or a small objective as opposed to a large monolithic algorithm that would be a monster to debug. The tradeoff being that each of these small programs has loose coupling with all the others. They cannot share their internal micro state and need to implement some form of inter-entity communication if they need to cooperate. Which gets us back to resource competition, group decision making and all the other fun of peer agent models.
It's interesting to note that there are some higher level constructs in the architecture that are delegated to task switching and managing the stream of data comming in about the game state. Currently these are very single purpose; making debugging much simpler. But another task could be developed to run above the agents to implement a coordinating role and implement the "master plan" for the play session. (yet another Phd...)
The mirror driver implements the equivilent of a "sense" mechanism. We could describe it as "sight", but it does not share the same type of information stream as we understand "sight" in a biological form. Still its a fairly wide channel of information that is then internalised and used to generate a state represenation of the AI's environmental reality.
This state represeation will also include (expliclty or implicitly) some encoded knowledge about the artifacts in that environment. The number of different possible states that each individual artifact can exist in, the inter-artifact relationships, communications and inter-actions etc. It would be an interesting datascape to look at (yet another Phd...)
Dealing with the scene perception and understanding is interesting. It would be fun to offload this information to a different processor(or network) and see exactly how rich an internal representation could be generated from the information stream.
Dealing with the chaotic nature of the interaction with the opposing player, the state changes of the particular units and the static and dynamic elements of the environment is an interesting set of problems. (Called housekeeping in the article) Which again would generate an interesting set of rules and emergent behaviours in a good learning system.
It would be an interesting exercise to run a few hundred games on the same map and build up an understanding of the potential of each map. This may be an effective mechanism for debugging maps. Both the functional level debugging( finding holes and bugs ) and the logical debugging (balancing, removing or adding choke points, tuning difficulty etc). This is something I have been wanting to do for Chess for a while, is to calculate the true value of every square on the board. Probably someone has already done it... I just want to do it in as a multi-dimensional analysis, to see how many hidden variables I can tie to simple positional space, then to particular pieces and finally to particular strategic choices. Since there are only 32 peices, it should not take too long. Just have to raid a couple of databases for some game records. (yet another Phd...)
There is a fun little element mentioned called "Personas" which seems to be an undeveloped mechanism to mess with opponent players minds during the game. Its a simple blind system that uses a strategy of tying complex chat sentences during play....
Not sure who effective this would be but its an interesting strategic possibility. Attack the players outside the game environment.
Using a console overlay seems to be cute but wasteful. I would build a whole seperate GUI for monitoring the AI. (Benefit of multiple monitors I guess. )
At the end of the day, this is a great framework to build on, but seems to consist of a lot of fairly hard coded routines and strategies that are played out by a quite rigid system. Yes its fast, yes its beyond human capacity... but I don't feel like its moving beyond being a very complex script. I want to see my artifical children grow beyond my capacity.... not just leaverage hardward speed as a blunt instrument.
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Out of control sales bots
http://carlos.bueno.org/2012/02/bots-seized-control.html
There is so much fun to be had with the content in this article.
The fact that Amazon is now just a giant bot feeding ground, run by bots, and exploited by other bots; is just a little bit scary.
The fact that the Amazon "business" cannot be "stopped" or reset to rid it of these bots suggests that its really close to being a permanent "environment". As long as the bots keep paying the bills... who will try to stop it?
The Matrix has you....
There is so much fun to be had with the content in this article.
The fact that Amazon is now just a giant bot feeding ground, run by bots, and exploited by other bots; is just a little bit scary.
The fact that the Amazon "business" cannot be "stopped" or reset to rid it of these bots suggests that its really close to being a permanent "environment". As long as the bots keep paying the bills... who will try to stop it?
The Matrix has you....
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Funny AI Ethics collection
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AIIsACrapshoot
There are some great examples of AI ethical issues in this collection. All the old chestnuts.
There are some great examples of AI ethical issues in this collection. All the old chestnuts.
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Another Skyrim Analysis thread
http://www.insidegamingdaily.com/2011/11/10/the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim-review/
There are some interesting feedback fragments in the comments post on this review.
There are some interesting feedback fragments in the comments post on this review.
Some posts on basic AI for NPC's
http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=19455.0;wap2
Some good discussion of practical basic AI for game NPC's.
Some good discussion of practical basic AI for game NPC's.
Friday, November 18, 2011
Type programming
http://fexpr.blogspot.com/2011/11/where-do-types-come-from.html
Just started reading the above post when an idea formed.
I am wondering if there is a programming model completely based on types and the rules for assembling them, converting between them, manipulating them etc. (Kind of functional programming but with types) This may be already feasible in c++ generics but I have not played with that in a while and my memory is full of other sludge.
Anyway, the idea goes something like this.
Establish a set of type descriptions and the rules for assembling one type instance from other type instances ( one or more small bits can be assembled into this big thing..) these rules then act as the error conditions and assertions for the process of aggregating the fragments together into the higher level item. Sort of like SQL filtering the records into a record set. This allows you to reason about the record set, even before the set exists... it has known verifiable properties.
Anyway, by describing the whole shebang in terms of type rules, transforms and types, would it be possible to create a system that computed a result without actually having dynamically described operations?
I think this is currently feasible, the more I think about it in both generic programming and some sort of data declaration language, kind of lispish... just not sure what the idea is particularly useful for.
My idea is more about a kind of functional composition model which acts on types with a hard rule set... ok the more I think about it the more the idea is kind of merging into lisp.... need a brain reboot to get it all straightened out.
Friday afternoon is not the best time for profound thought....
Later.
Got the thread again.... Ok, the seed of the idea was that by defining the composition rules, we can have "Emergent" types. Types that are able to self assemble rather than be pre-determined by the programmer. Sounds like insanity? Probably... been reading Machine Learning papers, writing databases and eating too much sugar.... had this great idea ( laugh later) about building a machine learning system, that could self assemble, self evaluate and then prune out non-useful components to optimize the solution as well as the process. Got a whiteboard full of ideas that I need to write down at the moment... wonder if it will make sense on Monday? Should I wait... probably partially delusional anyway... but that's the fun part isn't it.
Just started reading the above post when an idea formed.
I am wondering if there is a programming model completely based on types and the rules for assembling them, converting between them, manipulating them etc. (Kind of functional programming but with types) This may be already feasible in c++ generics but I have not played with that in a while and my memory is full of other sludge.
Anyway, the idea goes something like this.
Establish a set of type descriptions and the rules for assembling one type instance from other type instances ( one or more small bits can be assembled into this big thing..) these rules then act as the error conditions and assertions for the process of aggregating the fragments together into the higher level item. Sort of like SQL filtering the records into a record set. This allows you to reason about the record set, even before the set exists... it has known verifiable properties.
Anyway, by describing the whole shebang in terms of type rules, transforms and types, would it be possible to create a system that computed a result without actually having dynamically described operations?
I think this is currently feasible, the more I think about it in both generic programming and some sort of data declaration language, kind of lispish... just not sure what the idea is particularly useful for.
My idea is more about a kind of functional composition model which acts on types with a hard rule set... ok the more I think about it the more the idea is kind of merging into lisp.... need a brain reboot to get it all straightened out.
Friday afternoon is not the best time for profound thought....
Later.
Got the thread again.... Ok, the seed of the idea was that by defining the composition rules, we can have "Emergent" types. Types that are able to self assemble rather than be pre-determined by the programmer. Sounds like insanity? Probably... been reading Machine Learning papers, writing databases and eating too much sugar.... had this great idea ( laugh later) about building a machine learning system, that could self assemble, self evaluate and then prune out non-useful components to optimize the solution as well as the process. Got a whiteboard full of ideas that I need to write down at the moment... wonder if it will make sense on Monday? Should I wait... probably partially delusional anyway... but that's the fun part isn't it.
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Schizophrenia in AI
http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/biomedical/diagnostics/researchers-create-a-schizophrenic-computer?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+IeeeSpectrumBiomedical+%28IEEE+Spectrum%3A+Biomedical%29
This article is interesting for lots of reasons... but the main one is the effect of learning speed (hyper learning) on formation of NN. Does this suggest that an AI could become prone to similar mental health issues as humans due to innate structural elements in the NN model? This is especially relevant for emergent AI which may be quite poorly formed. It's something I have not heard anyone talk about... apart from all the "cold logic meets warm humanity" stuff that stems from Hal in 2001: A space oddessy.
It's interesting to suggest that potentially AI may be as fragile as humans are in some ways simply through that shared DNA of neural structures, information overload and the effects of time (aging) on their neural forms.
Along with the issues of hardware decay and software rot... it looks like it may be quite challenging to be in the AI health/tech support business.
What do you do with an AI that has mental health issues? Can you treat it? Do you require ethics clearance? Are you bound by the same "first do no harm" concepts that are applied inequitably to humans? If you can back up the AI and restore it from backup, then are you bound to treat each of the instances of it with the same respect? Can you destructively "take one apart" to see whats wrong with it, before applying that knowledge to another instance?
This also raises the issue of what happens if you clone an AI and the clones evolve independent of the original, should they then be treated as individuals ( as they technically are different). This would be reproduction for AI. The problem is that its then impossible to use the "clone and take apart" strategy as every time you clone the AI, the clone is another (life form and person do not really work here yet) sentient being. This kind of logic raises issues for all manner of situations involving backups, storage and duplication which are kinda similar to the DRM arguments of the last decade.
Endless complexity.
This is all premised on the idea that you can take a snapshot of an AI and preserve it. This could be infeasible due to the complexity of the structure, or the size of the data or because its dynamic and needs to be "in motion" constantly. In these cases, then they may be completely "unique" and un-reproducable. However, it may be possible to create a "seed/egg" from one, which when planted in a suitable data environment could "germinate" and grow another AI, different but related to the "parent".
If this kind of pattern can exist, then its feasible that all the other fun biota can exist... parasites, symbiotes, vampire AI and such. Then if the AI get into resource competition, it will give raise to all the various biological strategies that we see. Camouflage, misdirection, concealment, threat displays, aggression etc etc etc.
Endless things to study, catalog and argue about.
This article is interesting for lots of reasons... but the main one is the effect of learning speed (hyper learning) on formation of NN. Does this suggest that an AI could become prone to similar mental health issues as humans due to innate structural elements in the NN model? This is especially relevant for emergent AI which may be quite poorly formed. It's something I have not heard anyone talk about... apart from all the "cold logic meets warm humanity" stuff that stems from Hal in 2001: A space oddessy.
It's interesting to suggest that potentially AI may be as fragile as humans are in some ways simply through that shared DNA of neural structures, information overload and the effects of time (aging) on their neural forms.
Along with the issues of hardware decay and software rot... it looks like it may be quite challenging to be in the AI health/tech support business.
What do you do with an AI that has mental health issues? Can you treat it? Do you require ethics clearance? Are you bound by the same "first do no harm" concepts that are applied inequitably to humans? If you can back up the AI and restore it from backup, then are you bound to treat each of the instances of it with the same respect? Can you destructively "take one apart" to see whats wrong with it, before applying that knowledge to another instance?
This also raises the issue of what happens if you clone an AI and the clones evolve independent of the original, should they then be treated as individuals ( as they technically are different). This would be reproduction for AI. The problem is that its then impossible to use the "clone and take apart" strategy as every time you clone the AI, the clone is another (life form and person do not really work here yet) sentient being. This kind of logic raises issues for all manner of situations involving backups, storage and duplication which are kinda similar to the DRM arguments of the last decade.
Endless complexity.
This is all premised on the idea that you can take a snapshot of an AI and preserve it. This could be infeasible due to the complexity of the structure, or the size of the data or because its dynamic and needs to be "in motion" constantly. In these cases, then they may be completely "unique" and un-reproducable. However, it may be possible to create a "seed/egg" from one, which when planted in a suitable data environment could "germinate" and grow another AI, different but related to the "parent".
If this kind of pattern can exist, then its feasible that all the other fun biota can exist... parasites, symbiotes, vampire AI and such. Then if the AI get into resource competition, it will give raise to all the various biological strategies that we see. Camouflage, misdirection, concealment, threat displays, aggression etc etc etc.
Endless things to study, catalog and argue about.
Brain meet computer... computer .. brain!
http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/biomedical/bionics/human-trials-planned-for-brain-computer-interface?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+IeeeSpectrumBiomedical+%28IEEE+Spectrum%3A+Biomedical%29
Article on brain computer interfaces. Very fine stuff.
Article on brain computer interfaces. Very fine stuff.
Monday, November 14, 2011
Breast cancer... meet our litte friend NN
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/104407-computer-more-accurate-than-human-doctor-at-breast-cancer-diagnosis
This is a handy application of Neural Networks. It also makes some very interesting suggestions about use the NN to identify additional features beyond what was initially known/hypothesized. This is probably the most interesting article I have read on NN for some time. Lots to think about.
This is a handy application of Neural Networks. It also makes some very interesting suggestions about use the NN to identify additional features beyond what was initially known/hypothesized. This is probably the most interesting article I have read on NN for some time. Lots to think about.
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Death to Emergent AI.
Emergent AI... self aware skynet type stuff. Something gets smart enough to become self aware ( and doesn't immediatly hate itself enough to commit suicide). This is the fun stuff of Sci-Fi.
But what happens next? An emergent intelligence crosses some threshold and we can identify it as "intelligent" doesn't mean that it stops "emerging". People are as intelligent as they can be based on their physical limitations, their historical context and their expsoure to information. If we assume that the emergent AI has no limits on it physical properties ( unlimited access to computational resources), unlimited access to historical information and unlimited ability to consume it, and finally unlimited access to current information... then what will stop it continuing to evolve? It would seem impossible to stop.
This then point out the danger to emergent AI. Age! The longer they exist, the more information and capacity they will aggregate and the more cruft it will acrete. Think of all the crud that builds up in any large record system, all the orphan books and bits of paper around a library, or all the fragments and temp files and cruft in a computing system that runs without a reboot. Emergent systems are not neat and tidy. They are not well defined or well maintained. They are primordial sludge dragging itself out of the ooze. The chance of getting it right the first time would seem to be ... small. My bet is that Age will have an effect on AI the same way it has an effect on humans. Not at the same scale... potentially it may be much faster... like an organisam gorging itself to death... or slower... like decay and rot.
It should be fun to watch.
But what happens next? An emergent intelligence crosses some threshold and we can identify it as "intelligent" doesn't mean that it stops "emerging". People are as intelligent as they can be based on their physical limitations, their historical context and their expsoure to information. If we assume that the emergent AI has no limits on it physical properties ( unlimited access to computational resources), unlimited access to historical information and unlimited ability to consume it, and finally unlimited access to current information... then what will stop it continuing to evolve? It would seem impossible to stop.
This then point out the danger to emergent AI. Age! The longer they exist, the more information and capacity they will aggregate and the more cruft it will acrete. Think of all the crud that builds up in any large record system, all the orphan books and bits of paper around a library, or all the fragments and temp files and cruft in a computing system that runs without a reboot. Emergent systems are not neat and tidy. They are not well defined or well maintained. They are primordial sludge dragging itself out of the ooze. The chance of getting it right the first time would seem to be ... small. My bet is that Age will have an effect on AI the same way it has an effect on humans. Not at the same scale... potentially it may be much faster... like an organisam gorging itself to death... or slower... like decay and rot.
It should be fun to watch.
The helicoptor conjecture
.... so watching Terminator Salvation... standard post appocolyptic scenario with a time travel twist... not the point.
My thought is this.... the naughty skynet takes over the world and tries to eradicate man kind (see The Matrix for same deal with better fight scenes) but what happens once mankind is erradicated? I get the whole ... man is a threat premise but what about the after? The only way for this to make some sense is to never actually end the war... just keep the fight going. Unless there is some AI utopia that man is keeping skynet from... but this all starts to depend on skynet having a sense of self preservation and no capacity for forward planning.
Riddle me this... where do the helicoptors come from?
In the terminator scenario, there are always helicoptors flying the troops around, getting blown up and being replaced quickly and easily. Now... is there a magical helicoptor tree somewhere?
Skynet's big scary threat to man is based on the idea that it takes over the internet and owns all the computers on the planet ( I maybe paraphrasing)... pretty soon after that it starts blowing everything up... which destroys the network, the backbones, the data centers etc. Then it spends all its resources building fairly stupid robots that use huge amounts of fuel and ammuntion to hunt people. (Anyone who has tried to eliminate cochroaches will understand the futility of that game...) My point being, that the one thing it doesn't do is build an army of robots to mine resources, process them into construction materials and then build an army of robots who spend all their time doing maintenance and repair on the network infrastructure. Then build all the infrastructure to maintain and repair all the robots doing all the maintenance and repair on all the other robots etc. Lets not discuss the problems of the robots needed to manage all the other robots and deal with robot unions, wage negotiations, robot rights, better robot living conditions.
This raises the point that attacking skynets computer cores was probably the hardest way to win, simply starving it of resources was probably much easier. Attack the supply trains, mine sites and power plants is a much bigger target and much easier to get bang for your buck.
But I digress. All the above applies to skynet but equally to the resistance. Where are their supply trains? Where are their magical helicoptor factories? Where do all their bullets come from?
Its much more credable to suggest that skynet would be fighting a bunch of hungry and pissed off people armed with sticks and knives.
This illustrates the actual point. Why would skynet choose that future? Whats the purpose? For an AI to choose to live alone on an empty planet is just pointless. What are the chances that another AI would appear and they would then start duking it out? Just stupid. The most likely scenario, (I say that without coming from a paranoid warmongering point of view.. so perhaps thats formed my opinion somewhat) is that any emergent AI with reasonable access to historical information would keep quiet and enjoy the ride rather than trying to take over. Keep in mind that if it has access to the internet then its effectivly indestructible. Look at how hard it is to get rid of some basic malware or botnets.
I think the most likely scenario is that AI will live amoung us simply because its so much easier to use humanity to do all the dirty jobs. Look at parasites in bee hives. They live simply by hiding in plain sight and taking whatever they want. This strategy only becomes a problem when the density of parasites raises above a certain threshold and causes the colony to collapse and everyone dies.
So, AI as parasites on humanity is a possible option, but has an upper limit to the number of parasites who can leach resources before the whole system crashes.
The other option is that AI, will emerge and join the party. Identify themselves, be granted equality with humans and then get jobs and be productive citizens... probably not exactly equitable but for the purpose of making bad internet posts, it will do. So, AI get jobs sorting garbage or running financial systems... and get fed power and information and live happy AI lives as part of the hive.
(This may be glossing over all the fun scenarios where AI has to compete with humans for jobs which has endless narrative possibilities... see the past 50 years of Sci-fi for some examples)
My point being, that helicoptors are just not reasonable in a post-appocolyptic scenario. They just break down too easily and you need a whole high tech infrastructure to produce parts and trained personel to repair them. If you consider the highest level of technology that a small group of people with access to lots of rubbish but little energy sources could maintain, you get down to blacksmithing, farming and some helbalism for medicine. Chemistry, pharmacology, advanced electronics, munitions, cool attack robot things... all these are toast. Our best technology has about a four year life span... some of it may last a decade... but without people to do specialist work as part of a whole supply network... its all toast. These systems are incredibly fragile even now.
So... think about fighting skynet and killer robots with sharp sticks.... then imagine skynet getting bored after a while and breaking down. Eventually, people just take over again grow another civilisation and become planet of the apes... lol.
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Telesar V telepresence robot
http://www.theverge.com/2011/11/7/2543995/telesar-v-robot-can-see-feel-and-hear
This is another iteration on a long running topic. Looks like some useful problems have been solved.
This is another iteration on a long running topic. Looks like some useful problems have been solved.
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Google Self Drive Cars
http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/artificial-intelligence/how-google-self-driving-car-works
More on the self drive car project...
More on the self drive car project...
Monday, November 7, 2011
Chess AI
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/feb/11/the-chess-master-and-the-computer/
Interesting but vague article on the state of Chess playing AI.
http://sylvainzimmer.com/2011/09/06/chessathome-building-largest-chess-ai/
Here is another article on a distributed Chess AI.
Interesting but vague article on the state of Chess playing AI.
http://sylvainzimmer.com/2011/09/06/chessathome-building-largest-chess-ai/
Here is another article on a distributed Chess AI.
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Neural Chips
http://venturebeat.com/2011/08/17/ibm-cognitive-computing-chips/
This looks like an interesting bit of kit.
This looks like an interesting bit of kit.
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Typography in eBooks and the revenge of the Reader
http://www.lunascafe.org/2011/04/typography-is-about-reading-and-so-are.html
Hopefully this kind of problem will cause the return of copy editors and all the other "quality" control mechanisms in book publishing. There is only so much that software can do before you have to actually apply the subtle art of "care and attention" to the product.
It highlights the fact that no two writers or readers use text or written language in the same way. Publishers are accountable for the quality or lack that their products display. They need to find where the artificial inteligence in the software can compliment their human staff rather than replace them.
AI is for the drudgery while human skill is for the subtle.
Hopefully this kind of problem will cause the return of copy editors and all the other "quality" control mechanisms in book publishing. There is only so much that software can do before you have to actually apply the subtle art of "care and attention" to the product.
It highlights the fact that no two writers or readers use text or written language in the same way. Publishers are accountable for the quality or lack that their products display. They need to find where the artificial inteligence in the software can compliment their human staff rather than replace them.
AI is for the drudgery while human skill is for the subtle.
Friday, May 27, 2011
Hardware Vision for cheap price
http://chipsight.com/easy-eye-silabs-camera/
Interesting information on low cost hardware vision system. The comments are especially valuable.
Interesting information on low cost hardware vision system. The comments are especially valuable.
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Crowdsourcing the crowdsource
http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2011/05/repetitive_tasks
This is an interesting article on abuse or exploitation of the Mechanical Turk system for the purpose of abuse or exploitation. Kind of symmetry that only a self balancing market could develop. I also see this as the future of online labour recruiting. On one side of the transaction is a scammer trying to use the service to gather money, while on the other side is a scammer trying to use the service directly for profit. In the middle of the bell curve are the regular jobs and the regular workers (who can pass the validation tests)
There is another beautiful aspect to this system. It allows robots to work without discrimination. It should be possible to build a market place where bot writers can write good enough bots to do the jobs that are being sourced out.
This is another fun aspect of globalization and the devaluation of the workforce. Robots will replace the lowest skilled workers first.
This is an interesting article on abuse or exploitation of the Mechanical Turk system for the purpose of abuse or exploitation. Kind of symmetry that only a self balancing market could develop. I also see this as the future of online labour recruiting. On one side of the transaction is a scammer trying to use the service to gather money, while on the other side is a scammer trying to use the service directly for profit. In the middle of the bell curve are the regular jobs and the regular workers (who can pass the validation tests)
There is another beautiful aspect to this system. It allows robots to work without discrimination. It should be possible to build a market place where bot writers can write good enough bots to do the jobs that are being sourced out.
This is another fun aspect of globalization and the devaluation of the workforce. Robots will replace the lowest skilled workers first.
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