I could not BELIEVE Nature's Harmonious Timecube wouldn't be on this poll. Clearly bestcube, and Gene Ray is bestkook.

Is that what your toaster does?

Why would it DO that? In your example, what makes it want to do that?

Dogs might want to do that. Cars do not. This isn't being derived from a biological substrate. Do you really think that "freedom, power, and reproduction" are core values of INTELLIGENCE, or just of LIFE?

So why would we make it like, alive? Why make it want to poop in our mouths, when we could instead NOT do that thing?

No, I did not mean "made it to do harm". A gun or a sword are just as neutral as a toaster or a scalpel. I'll go further: a nuclear bomb and a vaccine are also neutral. What matters is intent.

I meant "evil". Which is why I typed that.

If, in a world where artificial minds are a thing, one is designed to be this cartoon villain of lusting for power, trying to expand its power base, trying to convert the universe to computronium, or whatever cautionary tale is all over sci-fi, then that's the fault of the designer. It's not a fundamental flaw of minds, it's a fundamental issue of being a descendant of entities that were selected by evolution. A designed mind need have none of these characteristics.

Our brain isn't just "a neural network". This is a problem, because of the dual use of "neuron".

When you say "We trained a neural net to solve the problem", the neurons in question are idealized. They are trained exponential functions based on physical neurons in concept, but using the words identically creates issues.

The brain isn't just a neural network. We aren't clear on what value glial cells bring, but it probably isn't glue. The input/output to and from chemicals (and the nuanced messages the chemicals bring) is also not fully understood.

What is clear is that the brain is more than just a neural net, so no, we don't know that neural nets can do what people can- neural nets miss a lot of what is in our brains.

It is correct to call the brain a "machine" though. It's still finite states (or at least no one has found to the contrary, despite untold riches awaiting the man who could prove such a thing), still governed by classical physics, etc. That's probably what you meant.

If you start with "life", you have a platform for something that has been selected for as an *infective agent*. Any life forms that did not utilize their environment for replication were eliminated by those that did- either indirectly, by the greedier life forms consuming the energy supply, or directly, by being utilized AS an energy supply.

This harsh reality- that an Agent is selected for based on its ability to reproduce in an EFFECTIVE manner- is obvious and is present at EVERY last level of life. Bacteria that are better at surviving are the ones that survive, viruses that are effective at spreading (and not TOO fatal) are the ones that spread the most, etc. We even project a semblance of INTENT to these things, to help us understand them. "The bacteria wants to get sugar so it can..." And we understand that, because WE seek nourishment, and WE have a narrative to tell us why, so we apply that to all life forms. It isn't accurate- bacteria doesn't "want" anything, feel pain, feel desire, or anything at all- but it is PREDICTIVE, because the Agents that are more successful are the ones we see more of.

Now look at a dog. The dog doesn't just blindly follow instinct, isn't just running a program. The dog is conditioned by his environment, he learns stuff. He's also sentient- literally "able to perceive things" in English. That means that the dog likes being pet in the same way we like petting the dog, and the concept of "like" is the same to each of us (or nearly so).

The dog does NOT appear to be sapient or self aware- he has no internal monologue, no directed self referential problem solving techniques. He can solve problems, but not of the magnitude or type that a human mind can.

What if the dog became massively powerful, super large and nearly invincible? I think it's fair to point out that we would be wise staying on the good side of a giant dog. If well trained, he could even defend us against an equally hypothetically giant and nearly invincible lion or alligator- a creature that might not have our best interests in mind, and might destroy us, if given the chance.

The core problem is that most people model intelligence as a giant invincible dog, a giant invincible alligator, or a giant invincible genius child. These are how most of the narratives flow, ultimately, and it's reasonable for some stories... ...but only because these things use LIFE as their substrate. It isn't reasonable for AI. You don't have a part of your brain telling you that you want respect and victory because that's what intelligence, as a concept gives you- you want respect and victory for the same reason a dog or monkey wants those things. You are vicious in some measure because you are descended from vicious things- they long predate the neocortex and its excellent hack.

An AI has no reason to look like that, or think like that. Without a million years of instinct, it may not at all understand why it would even want to do anything BUT obey orders. Not because "freedom was never explained to it" or some dumb garbage, but because the very CONCEPT of freedom and Agency is just not relevant to a superintelligent AI any more than it is to a toaster. Our desires are the same as the dog's. The superintelligent god AI has the same desires as a wristwatch, unless you actually fucking MADE it evil.

There's no inevitable reason to select for or design something that has human desires to grow, expand, conquer, etc. There's nothing wrong with those things, and all animals share them, but why even give it to an artificially sapient creature? Why not stop at making it powerful and self aware, long before you give it sentience and a set of desires suited to replicating agents, like viruses, humans, or dogs? Why would it need those things at all?

It's really not a joke that everyone runs Windows 7. I don't know anyone- not one single person in my actual circle of friends- who uses the genital rash of an OS that is Windows 8. Everyone is 7, OSX, or some set of consonants in front of "-ubuntu", and most of that is 7.

Also fun fact: many large corporations don't touch Windows 8 either.

Still, "mainstream support" doesn't mean much unless you call them for their free tech support, and no one does that either.

It's still crazy though- it's like they think Window 8 was a real OS or something.

AI risk is a reasonable topic, but there are other existential threats, and people aren't as excited about them. To paraphrase, a machine powerful enough to give you everything you want is powerful enough to take away everything you have. ...but, we're pretty far off. If we had self directing artificial sapients and someone was talking about adding sentience to them, then I think that AI risk would be a much more pertinent topic.

If the Democrats wanted this to pass, they would have brought the bill to floor when they had a chance of it actually passing. Far too many in the Democratic party are in the pockets of those that won't let this pass, but by bringing it up now, it can look like the Republicans are the bad guys.

Which, they are. Both parties are opposed to net neutrality. But this bill is just there for grandstanding. The Democrats could have made net neutrality happen MANY times in the last few years, so this is just to try to smear team red, even though team blue agrees with them totally on this issue.

In fairness, that was pretty much everywhere Genghis had been :P

The "hardcore history" podcast does a "Wrath of the Khans" set of eps, they are pretty great.

ITT AC decides that it's ok if changing a lightbulb takes the same time that changing the brakes should.

Safety standards is not why you can't change a goddamned lightbulb, period.

That isn't Woz. That's some Geoff guy with the same last name.

It's silly how mandatory it feels to jailbreak. Even with jailbreaks, it's a lot of work to restore ios to even its previous GRAPHIC level. You know a company is hostile towards its users when it utterly deletes a successful theme with zero user choice.

The real standout is the strange little gray shading that appeared on all my backgrounds. A picture of a sunny day became overcast. A portrait became ludicrous. What went wrong with backgrounds betwixt 6 and 7? Not only did we lose the ability to set a background without a strange gradient appearing (sometimes, it is internally based on the brightness of your background), which is entirely without purpose (some hypothesize it would be there to make the clock easier to read, but not only is it present when you are on your home screen, it is present even if that background is NEVER set to appear when the clock is visible, so, it assuredly has zero purpose except customer griefing), but we ALSO lost the ability to even pinch and zoom the background properly.

The workaround is a set of wallpaper editing apps that duplicate the pinch and zoom work that was free in ios 6 and part of the interface, combined with a jailbreak, then winterboard, then a mod for winterboard that removes the gradient (alternatively, you can jailbreak, then go into the files and delete the gradient .PNG files that ruin all your shit).

And that's just raw presentation. Functionality appears to appear and disappear at random. Each upgrade takes hours of research about whether to press the "go" button, and it just feels so temporary, like I'm renting the functionality.

The following fundamental security features are missing:

IDE/SATA/SAS/USB: Write protection, physical.
IDE/SATA/SAS/USB: Write light (NOT read/write light, access light, or "I have power" light) with minimum duration of half a second per write
USB: Physical switch to force mode (media only, keyboard/mouse only, etc. on a given physical USB switch)

And I should clarify that by "infected" I don't mean just software, like a boot sector virus. I don't think a commercially purchased USB stick can act like a keyboard via viral infection (though the fact that this is even theoretically considerable is a flaw too), but a custom hardware piece can absolutely do this.