Confessions should not be admissible as evidence in court unless the jurors are given a full, uncut tape of the interrogation that led up to that confession. Along with that, jurors should be allowed to directly question attorneys and witnesses.
And informed of the jury nullification option.
In their defense, I want them to do their due diligence whenever they get a report.....
Sure, they should. But how about requiring completion of some sort of certification course for informants before they can be considered qualified to report situations that require the police or CPS to respond to activities where no child is actually in any immediate or obvious danger? Also, how about getting the informant's contact details, so they can be held financially liable for the trouble and expense they are likely to cause by such over-the-top reporting? (Anyone ever have to pay a lawyer before?)
Do we really need such eager busybodies to call in that "I see an 8 year old out in the cold without a warm hat! And it's freezing out here! Get CPS, quick!", when they haven't even bothered to observe that the kid is simply going from the family car to the house? Because that's where it's headed, folks.
Soo.. overfishing + nuclear contamination to fisheries + global warming + other radioactive environmental damage = less significant? What if we throw in a massive Gulf oil spill? Kind of a crappy argument to claim that because X is worse, Y + X is less significant.
I'll answer your question; massive releases of nuclear contaminants into the environment will raise the number of cancers, birth defects and other health issues that are related to radioactive contamination and lower the environment's (already stressed) ability to supply quality foodstuffs.
Again, I'd like to point out that "we" (the general population of the world) are not responsible for the bulk of the environmental damage that has happened or is happening. "We" don't control/make decisions for Tepco, BP, Monsanto, etc., etc. Those sublimely paid, decision-making executives are responsible and should be held directly accountable for their actions. And how much environmental damage do you think the war machine causes? (Cue: sock puppets.) That's not "we" either. You'll know who "we" are when you're inside a FEMA camp!
Back to the cute kitten videos.....
Because of the ever increasing amounts of internet insecurity, shills paid to push corporate/government agendas and rebuke/dismiss detractors, "sock puppet" and AI posters, overzealous copyright take-down operations, pay-only access to verified (ie: useful) information, spamming, spoofing, bandwidth throttling, spying, tracking, personal information gathering, legal constraints and considerations, over-suspicion of anyone not 100% politically "correct" or aligned with power, agenda based "news", "echo effect" search results, and probably some other stuff I can't think of right now, the internet is quickly losing it's ability to be much other than a channel for light entertainment.
Has the internet hit it's nadir? It's probably only a matter of time before e-commerce fails in a major way due to these security leaks. And it may also be way too late to be useful in organizing any type of real grassroots socio-political change. Let's just go watch cute kittens on YouTube.
this is just stoopid...we've already done so much damage to this planet...
WE?
I had no part in the decision making process that led to any significant world or environment damaging, and I doubt you did either, unless you have a hand in directing activities of a industrial company or are involved in military decision making. You may very likely not even know anyone who did. Get it straight, the robber barons and financially powerful that direct the ecologically damaging activities are not "We". Not without contorting the meaning so as to blame the consumers for how the products used are produced. Were "we" dumping agent orange in Vietnam? "We" level mountaintops? Funny, I don't recall getting my share of the profits!
Little known fact: The iconic "Crying Indian" commercial of the 1970's was produced by a consortium of industrial polluters in order to throw the popular focus back on individuals at a time when industrial pollution was an exponentially greater problem. Sure, people threw garbage out their car window, and that's bad, but the cumulative damage from that was a tiny fraction of what industry was doing.
And.... as a matter of fact... our current overlords would like to have us believe that we are warlike and unpredictable, though we are not! There is an inverse relation between distrust among individuals and a unified mass population. If regular folk weren't driven to conflict along minor issues they might rise up and take back their birthright. They might wonder if a handful of trillionaires and multi-billionaires really deserve to own the planet.
"Divide and conquer!" In which case, "divide" means "artificially create warlike antagonisms between citizens." Artificially, i.e. not the natural condition.
Consider this: When humans gather in large groups voluntarily, it is almost always a peaceful happening. If violence does erupt, it's due to a small contingent of agitators, the police (themselves following orders), or there is some other extreme factor (like scarce resources, or a flash point has been reached due to extreme government measures). I've never warred with my neighbors, fellow shoppers, others sharing the parks, on the highway, etc., and they all pretty much seem to be getting along ok too. Doesn't look like a warlike species to me. Looks pretty much like folks just generally get along. If the species was truly warlike in nature, we would have long ago have eradicated ourselves from the planet, and saved the future AI's the trouble.
When humans gather in large groups involuntarily, it is almost always a violent scenario. But who conscripted them, and cui bono? Hint: It's never the farmer, nurse or small businessman.
Sure, humans have the capability to cause harm. So does almost every other species. Any horse can be made to bite or kick humans at any opportunity, and any horse might bite or kick in some scenario, but who will label the equine species "dangerous and unpredictable"?
I still contend that it is only a small and sick subset of our species that the OP's AI of the future will want to kill. There's absolutely no evidence that "normal" humans choose to create war. Normal humans just want to enjoy their life, their friends and family. A super intelligence would be able to recognize this and go after the unpredictable psychopaths running the species like it's their personal chicken farm.
For that matter, it's the fact that humans ARE predictable, easily cowed and generally passive, that has allowed the psychopaths to remain in control for so long!
What's to stop an AI system from becoming psychopathic machines who believe they are demigods?
Nothing, probably. I'm with you -- we'll just pull the plug. I was just addressing the assumption that the entire human race would be eradicated because WE are so bad. A double assumption. I'm not about to chop down my peach tree because of a few rotten peaches. Nor would I assume all peaches are rotten. The OP's concern that "intelligent" computers (far more intelligent than humans) will kill off all us rotten peaches incorporates a contradiction because that's clearly not an intelligent conclusion.
Humans are a species that "is unstable, creates wars, has weapons to wipe out the world twice over, and makes computer viruses
I beg to disagree. The typical human works toward stability in his/her life, wields (relatively puny) weapons only to protect him/herself (if at all), and is subject to attacks from computer viruses. Will intelligent computers make the mistake of defining the human species by the small percentage of psychopathic humans who believe they are demigods? Not if they are intelligent. Btw, no one will miss the subset of the species that "is unstable, creates wars, has weapons to wipe out the world twice over, and makes computer viruses" when our new overlords wipe them out. (You know who you are!)
"Engineering without management is art." -- Jeff Johnson
