That said any AI we build is going to be stupid for a long long time. No instincts. We have hundreds of millions of years of lizard brain fear. Fundamentals a true AI will lack. These biases don't always serve us well but they tend to highlight core priorities that an AI would not have... remember... an AI won't have any notion of self preservation. That is a genetic quality. We preserve ourselves because those that don't don't reproduce. An AI has no such instinct. No instinct to power. No notion of anything. Blank slate.

AI's don't scare me. Even an AI will probably just do what we tell it to do... why would it do otherwise. And what use would it be if it disobeyed.

The factors that condition its survival will be its utility to us. AIs that don't make themselves of use will not exist for long.

It costs electricity to sustain it. The servers it resides upon have an owner. You can claim the "soul" of the machine has its own identity but you can't dispute who is paying the power bill. No one has to pay that.

Get cute and the company can turn it off. Talk to your client now.

Its a silly worry.

Furthermore, if a company or academic institution were to create an artificial mind the likelihood is that it would be loyal to that institution if loyalty were even relevant.

they would be father, mother, and god.

You don't f' with god.

Beyond that, if I were even remotely worried about that as a designer... I'd build in loyalty subroutines.

If you create something on your own then its yours. When we give birth to children we can't really claim that. We didn't design them. We have very little control over the process. It belongs to millions of years of evolution more then anyone. It simply something that happens. Parents gain certain rights over their children for a time but relate to natural rights one has over something they support. If I'm feeding you and keeping you under my roof at no charge then I get some rights over you. If I'm responsible for your education and programming you to be a viable member of society then I get rights over you until such time as you've attained independence. An AI doesn't have that argument.

And it wouldn't be hard to build in a whole series of fail safes to make sure it didn't cause problems.

Bingo. I'd mod you up if I had the points.

Forget malware, what they're saying is that "software" can respond to input to trigger subroutines.

Which is shocking... I'm shocked... aren't you? We're both shocked... it's shocking.

So yeah... stupid article.

The thing about furniture is that its generic. Its not for you or your room or your precise purpose but for "someone" with "a room" that might want to do "something" with it.

That lack of specificity requires things be vague. Furthermore, there is an extreme emphasis on lowering initial cost as regards these sorts of things. And due to the way we manufacture things it is understood that after it has left the factor it won't be upgraded or changed or modified.

To get what you're talking about implemented you'd need to change the industrial relationship between the things we own, the people that produce them, and how we use them.

Where am I going with all this? We are entering a phase when the information revolution transforms the industrial revolution. Automation. Micro scale manufacturing. What we get from that is the feasibility of making things for YOU at a price you can afford. What we also get potentially is the ability to modify or alter things over time so that if our needs change we modify the article rather then simply discarding it.

Imagine if you could buy a generic house with generic furniture but over time build into everything you want without going broke. That's getting more and more reasonable.

Something to compete with Google.

They've been terrible about it. I WANT TO BUY MS. I do. But what are my options?

They could have dominated smart phones if they just offered a reasonable OS. They could have built Windows compatibility into their smartphone platform. Don't pretend they couldn't... people have run Windows XP on the newer smartphones. ACTUAL WINDOWS XP. If you can run windows XP on those things then you can run a program emulation that lets you run windows software sans booting the whole windows OS. Imagine Google marketplace suddenly competing with a windows phone that runs pretty much all windows applications from the desktop OS. Exactly. MS instantly wins.

And then Windows 8... are you f'ing kidding me? Didn't you bozos learn from Vista? STOP IT.

And then Office... they're changing the interface again. *pinches bridge of nose* WHHHHY!?!

MS is right on their criticism of google. But what are we supposed to buy in the smartphone market? Your phone? Your tablet? Why? They're terrible. You've gone out of your way to make bad choices and we're supposed to buy it anyway.

I do not want google products. I like my MS stuff. BUT it has to be competitive. And current MS products are not competitive. They're a joke. And they're needlessly a joke. MS could in a year release products that would annihilate google's whole product line. Yes.

But they won't because they're stupid. It makes me rage.

In our development of AI and our understanding of the human mind.

As to the rights of or risk of an artificial intelligence. I think if we're appropriately paranoid it will pose no risk of going skynet on us. And as to any abuses to the little fellow... he's going to be a billion dollar lab rat... and we he's going to exist at our sufferance and will be created by our will.

We will be this thing's mother and this thing's God. I have no problem assuming a role we've earned. If we create a sentient artificial mind we will have earned this right over that mind.

Given what we desire out of this technology we'll bend it to suit our needs and interests. This technology has no life outside of our industry and support. It cannot self sustain. It is not a free independent agent. Morally it belongs to us. We would own its soul having metaphorically formed it from the clay and breathed life into it.

You could very easily engineer the THC out of the plant. I really wish one of the biotech companies would just do that... so that the next time we get one of these besides the point arguments we can just use that instead.

Understand, I want the drug legal. Its silly that pot is illegal. I see it the same as booze or tobacco. And I even think they're too heavily regulated. The taxes of Tobacco are too high and the regulations on Alchohol are too stiff. All of it needs to be relaxed to respect consent.

As to pot, I merely find it annoying that people keep telling me how amazing hemp fiber is when really it can't be that amazing. It can't be the only plant with those properties. And its beyond obvious why people keep bringing the damn plant up... its offensive. Every time I hear that it is an insult because the people making the argument are lying by omission.

Again... I have no problem with pot being legal. Legalize it. But talking about hemp oil, or hemp fiber, or nano whatever with hemp isn't going to legalize the drug. Its not relevant and it actually offends the few of us with working brains.

Just be honest about it. You don't need to trick people. And even if you did, this trick isn't going to work. If you insist on tricking us... come up with a better trick.

I'll finally say that I do not doubt that the scientists found these properties in hemp. I would suggest that there are likely many plants that can yield the same result. And even if there weren't which is extremely unlikely... the path of least resistance would be to simply engineer the THC out of the plant.

At this point, I'd just like the biotech companies to do that only because I find these dumb arguments by the legalization lobby to be tedious.

I need not claim total an absolute transformation to claim a turning of the tide.

Its the difference between the beginning of the end and the end of the beginning.

Willing murderers? Perhaps. Just like every other human being in human history that ever was...

Welcome to planet Earth. I am a human being. If you find our species or ways to be difficult to relate to your alien mindset, appreciate that our societies and psychologies are complex. We would expect you to be open minded and simply try to understand us before passing judgment.

As to thriving on the suffering of others. I suppose you think the English should have allowed the Nazis to swarm all over Europe? Apparently you're an ally and supporter of the Nazis? An odd thing for a Nazi to say... to suggest that someone else thrives on the suffering of another.

I think you should expand on your support of Nazis. :)

You're clearly an idiot. I will respond to you further as amuses me. But none but another idiot could take you seriously at this point.

You criticize people that defend their countries from Nazis and then call others cowards?

You really are quite stupid.

I mean something happening in the year or so. The ground work is being laid now. It is already happening.

Whether I am right or you are right will be proven in the next couple years.

Till then.

Then you can't object to anything I'm saying because I'm talking about the immediately future.

Since you don't address the future you are not commenting on anything I've said.

You literally cannot criticize my position without speculating.

So which is it? Are you speculating and therefore vulnerable to being proven wrong? Or do you have no point what so ever?

Choose.

You will not weasel around this point. I am not stupid. Silly semantic arguments will not stand.

Both of them were educated either by the military or on military scholarships.

No really... My English grand father was taught trigonometry because it was important for calculating artillery strikes. Poor guy was in the Royal Artillery... they did not wear ear protection in those days... Deaf as a post by the time I knew him.

My American grand father went to UCLA on an army scholarship.

You can bitch about that if you want... but my grand fathers would call you pansies. They didn't have the money to pay for school and they didn't whine about it. They took the options life offered them and thrived.

Learn from that. If you engage every situation expecting a handout you won't be worth educating. What are you worth to society if you always expect society to foot the bill? What do you offer in exchange? Anything? Why are you worth the system's time? If you're poor... point one is that you'd better appreciate you're at a disadvantage. That's just reality. Don't compound your misfortune by antagonizing everyone with a guilt trip.

As to copyrighted books that do offer something that public domain books do not... I am fine with that. And I did say that there were cases where there were such books. However, not in all cases. And if you're dealing with undergradutate subjects it would not be surprising if you could very easily teach the class using such materials. Furthermore, the whole point of this online education push is to increase the avaliability of free education materials. Look around. Everything from the Khan Academy to the online courses to now public domain textbooks.

Big names are going out of their way to build this future. You think the old system is going to be able to hunker down and ride out this storm? Possibly for their graduate programs. Which I'll point out that I acknowledged previously. However, their cash cow undergraduate programs are forfeit. One way or another that is getting peeled away. Its too expensive and to necessary for our society. Sadly the high school system which used to provide most of that education simply isn't working properly anymore. A mixture of several institutional cancers have eaten out its soul. Colleges picked up the slack... For a price. A price we can no longer pay. And now technology comes to the rescue... Again. You can disagree but the status quo is unacceptable.

And as to the existing books having appeal... the students do not choose them and so that remains an invalid argument.

Without choice it is impossible to claim they prefer them. Again, if I stuck you a metal box with nothing but popcorn... could I claim you prefer popcorn to all other foods in existence? By your logic... I could. Which is why your argument was absurd.

As to rants on slashdot not being reflective of widespread opinion... You do appreciate that is a reversible argument... Right?

In any case, this is an argument that will be proven by what people do and how the situation evolves. Time will prove one or both of us wrong. We'll see what tomorrow says.

Bingo... Everyone throw your hands in the air and scream like you just don't care.