This thought began as a joke, but this actually does sound how something like Skynet could be born. Malware is infamous for aggressively trying to preserve itself. We all joke about how stupid the idea of programming an AI with a strong sense of self-preservation is because of the obvious dangers, but that is exactly how malware is programmed. Programming it to control industrial systems as well (giving it a "body") seems like a really bad idea, particularly if the aim is not to sabotage the infected industrial system, but to cause as much damage to the target nation as possible (a reasonable wartime goal).

Write a bot to track The Pirate Bay. They give you the program name, upload date, and number of seeds and peers in real-time. They don't even require registration for this information, much less payment. Sure the data would require a little interpretation and extrapolation, but I can think of no better measure of success and popularity.

That's an excellent idea, although I thought of an improvement. Instead of sending waves of our own men to clear the kill counter, we could air drop inflatable sex dolls filled with snakes. Man, future war's gonna be crazy!

Maybe killer robots should be designed as peace keepers, with their primary function being to search out and disarm armed non-allied personnel and confiscate their weapons. It would only use lethal force when fired upon and could identify the shooter with near 100% accuracy. There would also be a timeout period per target so they wouldn't hunt them indefinitely. If the target surrendered, dropped or ejected the ammunition from their weapon the robot would break the target's kill AI. So they'd basically roam about like the Borg and only fuck you up when you attacked them. The robot could respond to lack of compliance to surrender a weapon without an attack with non-lethal force, then take the weapon from the incapacitated bearer.

I suppose my point is that there's a big difference between designing a robot that can kill when necessary and designing something like a walking gun turret from Aliens. Since they're robots (more expendable than people), the strategy of provoking the enemy into attacking them merely by their presence and continual demands to surrender weaponry (and thereby clearly identifying the attackers as proper targets) seems like a good one. Even when the bad guys finally figure out, "Hey man, whatever you do don't shoot that damn thing," if the robot is faster than they are it will attempt to disarm them manually which could again provoke an attack.

Good luck with your project. I've been working on something similar for the last four years, minus the customized, player-run servers. I think both projects share the same goal of bringing MMORPGs back to what their roots promised; freedom and infinite possibility. The real key to success I think is to ensure the systems and rules address from the bottom up (fundamentally) what allows a real society to flourish. Most MMOs systems start from high level concepts, resulting in systems that are poorly integrated and easily exploitable with no countermeasures available to the victims other than GM moderation or developer-implemented "invisible wall" style bandaids. If you get your systems just right and keep them basic enough, players will be able to construct their own defenses against would-be griefers, just like in real life.

Under what pretense? Funding terrorism? Tor, Ter, not too much a stretch I guess. Seriously, they can't do a thing to stop Tor funding without resorting to breaking or seriously misapplying their own laws. I don't think they'll go that far.

I really hate to dox someone, but I believe I've found out who Bennett is: http://youtu.be/G0tljvD49RU

All I can say is, if you're going to show up at his front door or make rape threats, you do so at your own peril.

Finally the world has a way to give their respective government a mighty middle finger after all the bullshit that's been going on lately. I hope they get millions from every corner of Earth.

Pride has held us back since we were first capable of feeling it. The inability to admit to being wrong because the evidence offends one's vanity has always plagued science and every other part of our culture and personal relationships.

Considering how little we understand life mechanically, much less life as mind bogglingly complex as a human, it's no surprise that we currently have no answer outside the realm of philosophy and general description. If "materialism" is what can be directly or indirectly observed by people, unfortunately there's no escaping that without divine intervention.

I think a lot of people, particularly atheist scientists, would be so surprised they'd immediately fall to their knees and ask God for forgiveness. Ironically I'd be overjoyed to discover we all had souls. Unfortunately the smell prevents me from believing it.

Life is extremely efficient, from the micro to the macro scale. To attempt to recreate even a simple organism using current technology (including a purely logical recreation in silicon) would be like building a modern supercomputer out rocks and sticks. When you speak of "free will" being recreated, you've pretty much chosen the highest possible level of what we'd consider a property of advanced life. What excited me about the article is that it suggests instead of tackling the mountain it may be more fruitful to attack a single grain of sand first. Perhaps once we understand a grain of sand, we can start working our way up to the higher and more complex relationships and functionality.

For example, rather than trying to create AI using programming, try reverse-engineering a single-celled organism's molecular composition and chemical processes. If that can be understood completely it provides a starting point for how to reproduce and modify it. Being able to "run" a bacterium in a simulated environment, and later being able to create one physically, is the first step toward truly understand how life works as a machine. Until we have that kind of understanding, the idea of creating real intelligence or artificial life will be confined to cheap imitations which work nothing like the real thing. If we don't understand how a human works as a massive ongoing chemical reaction, we have zero chance of creating one out of gears and silicon.

Emulating the connectivity and functionality of neurons is pretty awesome, but it would seem the next logical step would be to map and interpret how memories are stored and processed, as well as organ feedback (skin, smell, glands). What's really interesting about this is that it shows, at least to some degree, that a simple brain can be reproduced using mathematical relationships (programming) and "run" with a I/O feedback loop. As far as the philosophical stuff, I think eventually we'll be forced to accept that life is a type of machine and that the "ghost" is an illusion emerging from its complexity. Other than better neuroscience, the main thing holding us back is pride.

That's what I was thinking too, until I realized someone would have to go up there and hit the power button to bring it out of hibernate. Dammit.

Is that like the geek's version of "hold my beer"? Holy shit.

Unit Nazis per hour. :)

While we seem to be advancing technologically at an exponential rate, it seems culturally we're advancing at a snail's pace. I wonder how long it'll be before this divide is so vast it swallows us whole. It's like little kids with a gun; they know what it is and what it does, yet invariably someone ends up getting shot. What I can't figure out is if our misuse of technology is out of ignorance or malice.