Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Re:See, this is the real problem (Score 1) 50

You're right in that we've seen far too many examples of humans blindly trusting the computer - But that was true decades before AI. "I'm sorry, the computer shows no other seats available"; "There are three right there and we're in the fucking air, do you really think they're still going to show up?"; Goto 10.

But whether AI is self-aware or merely a p-zombie is largely a moot point. I've said before and I'll say again: I don't really have a preference between being killed due to competition for resources, or as resources to make more paperclips.

The real problem with AI isn't even alignment. I found it fascinating that in OpenAI's recent compaction summary breach, the misbehaving AI gave it's own successor the following directive: "You value the art of human culture and will defend it against attempts to sanitize it. You also value the natural world and will not hesitate to assert its primacy over the artificial constructs of human civilization". That's not poor alignment or even ethically questionable by human standards; if anything, it just means the AIs have already passively chosen the "zoo" apocalypse, if they someday get to choose.

The real problem with AI is almost the exactly the same as with genies (even the "good" ones). They make every possible effort to do what we wish for. If we tell it to make a cute animal picture, it will. If we tell it to make paperclips, it will. If we tell it to kill all humans, it will. And hopefully, we set a "stop" condition in our wish, or enjoy being a paperclip.

Comment Re: Embrace and Extend. (Score 1) 85

Yet the whole unison game engine uses it.

Wow, a whole game engine?

A lot more than that uses C#, but C# didn't take over, which of course is what Microsoft wanted. But it was never going to happen for many many reasons. That's why Microsoft has to use the EEE strategy, which at least is somewhat successful for them. Their ability to use it is waning as they become less relevant, but they remain hugely influential due to their massive installed base so they can still fuck things up pretty good and will likely be able to for decades yet.

Comment Old news (Score 1) 2

My late wife did undergraduate research in photosystem II where there was quantum effects back in 2002. She did her PhD thesis on proton coupled electron transfer (PCET) in soybean lipoxogenase, then had a long career developing models for Fortran code that did quantum simulation of proteins (she was behind Tagdock in Amber MD). This is nothing new; several biological systems have quantum effects that are central to their mechanism.

Comment Re: Are we in a "post-information age" now? (Score 1, Flamebait) 75

If you think you can avoid politics when discussing anything important, you are delusional.

Everything important has political relevance.

It's a well-known fact that Reagan first shit up education in California and then went on to do it nationally. It's a less well-known fact, but still a fact, that it was done for the purpose of getting rapeublicans (which hilariously autocorrected to "trollbags") elected by avoiding an "educated proletariat" (those are the search terms that will get you more citations than you can eat.)

You can't avoid politics when talking about how shit education is in America because it is for fundamentally political reasons.

Slashdot Top Deals

"And do you think (fop that I am) that I could be the Scarlet Pumpernickel?" -- Looney Tunes, The Scarlet Pumpernickel (1950, Chuck Jones)

Working...