Robots that disobey their owner would be dramatically wrong on multiple levels.

At the same time, their owners should be legally responsible for the orders they give the robot.

So if the owner can effectively order the robot to selectively serve alcohol only to adults that are not already intoxicated, then the robots should serve alcohol.

If the robot can not make that determination, then it should not be allowed to serve alcohol.

See what you do is ask every doctor and nurse if they believe in Astrology.

Those that say "Yes" get demoted, those that say "No" get promoted.

BOOM, instant increase in efficiency.

One of the major mistakes is that technology is not universally disruptive. It's main disruption arises from unexpected forms of technology, not the ones we pay attention to. I.E. we get cellphones, not flying cars/jetpacks.

The progress tends to be in areas that were not gaining progress before,

In general the Singularity people believe the progress will entirely be in AI. Specifically, they think that our advancements in computer technology will continue to be in complexity etc. along the SAME lines it has already done. I hereby propose that AI will NOT have any major disruptive changes in the future. Instead it might be in something dramatically different. Maybe shoes, soap, or some other commonplace item - kind of like the phone underwent a dramatic and unpredicted change.

The major issues with the AI people is that they think all the progress in making computers have faster processing of mathematical equations will somehow create a thinking computer. We see it all the time in all the fiction. They confuse good at math for "have a soul".

Most importantly, while the Singularity people talk about unable to predict, they then go ahead and make a bunch of crappy predictions - mainly based on junk science that we know is wrong.

You want a realistic story of the creation of the first AI. AI gets created, learns to talk, explores the internet then writes a horrible, "emo" suicide note before it kills itself.

THAT would be far more likely than the crappy "humans uploads the entire race and stops having kids" junk that Singularity people like to fantasize about.

Almost anything you do can 'improve business'. If only because you are paying attention and trying something.

The question is do the benefits out-way the costs. To that I would say a resounding no.

Partly because people are not robots and employers have a long history of eliminating things that are not directly profitable to the company but are key to the morale and mental health of the employees. Restricting bathroom breaks to 10 minutes, etc. Or doing the opposite - forcing them to attend pointless meetings to set the agenda for next week's pointless meeting.

That is exactly the kind of things that you get when you 'track' your employees.

A better approach is to simply ask - and listen - to the employees about things they consider wasted time. They know more about it than any tracking system.

Glad to hear from an intelligent person, rather than an obsessed 'futurist' that has mistaken wishful/paranoid thinking for scientific projections.

I would have added that the concept of the 'singularity' assumes multiple 'facts' that are extremely unlikely. In part because if they were true, science would already have been much farther along. Also in part because they confabulate different definitions of words, most often 'intelligence'. When AI people are talking about intelligence they are generally not using the word in the same way that a biologist, or worse, a priest. would.

You are correct about nutmeg.

But water is not near the ratio to kill you.

On average, 6 people die from alcohol poisoning each year. Almost no one dies from drinking too much water. But that is in part due to behavior - most people that drink enough water to kill them are athletes and they often have medical personnel near them.

Your core numbers are wrong. Normal human beings do not drink 1 liter of water in a single sitting. Diabetics and other people that are expected to drink a lot tend to drink 1/2 a liter. You are expected to take in 2-3 liters over an entire day - and that number INCLUDES the water you get from eating food. Typical servings for water is 1/4 liter. 1 liter bottles are intended for multiple people/long term use. As per this web page: http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2015... It takes 17 water bottles to kill you, far different than the alcohol ratio.

That's simply not true.

But there are quite a few substances people think are 'harmless' that if you consume more than the normal dose you can kill yourself.

Chief on the list is salt substitute. Many people buy the 'low sodium salt substitute" Potassium Chloride to replace table salt Sodium Chloride. But it is the exact same substance used by several states to execute death penalty cases.

Nut meg is also up there, along with our friend Vitamin A

All three of those substances are typically sold to consumers in containers that, if used all at once, can kill you.

People love to hate on aggression. Aggression is not just the desire to hurt. It is also the desire to act - to explore, to create, to save, and the desire to fight back against evil. A world without aggression would make those idiots that talk about people being 'sheeple' correct.

Does aggression cause problems? Yes. So does complaisance. I for one am glad people have aggression, as opposed to being a bunch of complaisant, laid-back lemmings.

The problem is not excess aggression. It is insufficient self control. The inability to put off current desires in order to obtain greater rewards later on.

Yes. Because some people think that TrueCrypt was killed BECAUSE it was actually secure and the NSA wanted them to de-secure it.

As such, a warrant would let people continue to use it, secure in the fact that it actually works as required.

It also lets people fork it.

Frankly, I have been severely disappointed with BestCrypt, which I had hoped would end up as the replacement for TrueCrypt. (multiple problems with getting the regular operating system to recognize the 'mounted' drives)

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Sorry, make that 5 houses an hour, or about one every 12 minutes.

But still, you get the point. :D

You, like many other people, have seriously over-estimated the number of good little boys and girls.

From the various studies, I have seen (including my personal observation) Santa had to make only 123 stops last year. As he has 24 hours to make the trip, that averages out to around 1 house every 30 minutes. He didn't even break a sweat.

Of course, it would be a very different case if the bad kids hadn't start igniting the coal, causing Santa to discontinue that tradition.

Yes it is related. They are not only both free fall journeys, they are both elliptical orbits. Just because one goes through a hole, does not mean it isn't an orbit

One orbit has an eccentricity close to 0 (a large circle) whose radius exceeds the size of the planet.

The other orbit has an eccentricity that approaches 1 (a large, elongated ellipse, verging on a straight line), whose width (short diameter) is less than the diameter of the bottomless pit and whose length (long diameter) exceeds that of the planet.

"Imminent threat" seems to me to be the opposite of "increased risk".

Frankly, this guy seems to be using the same definition of "imminent threat" that the CIA uses when it determines who to kill/torture.

Which is of course a huge red flag that you have made a mistake. I mean really, thinking like the CIA?