Anyone still reading the thread: Please send invite: algebraicring (a/t) gmail. thanks in advance!

I think you have your argument backwards. We'll achieve more sentient appearing AIs through running simulations of a human than by trying to write an AI from scratch and try to mold it to emulate human behavior.

Simulating the biological processes related to emotionality will go farther than trying to guess at what a good logical model for emotions would be. AA

Logic will tell you that you have a contradiction and that at least one of your premises or assumptions or axioms are inconsistent. Logic does NOT tell you which premise is false. That decision occurs on the realm of INTUITION. Intuition cannot be achieved from pure symbol manipulation. It requires emotion, memory and visceral experience (having a body which senses the world), and probably some randomness thrown in as well. Until we begin to explore something like wetware, our AIs are going to be dead from the get -go, just symbol manipulating machines. Real creative intelligence requires more than just logic and symbols.

Going "Mad" will never happen to a computer without first giving it a sense of emotions. As much as people would like to imagine that emotions can be codified into symbols, I seriously doubt its possible. The symbol != The Thing. The symbol "Anger" != the visceral experience of ANGER. The experience is chaotic while the symbol can only move in a finite number of ways.

If we're just staying in the realm of symbolic manipulation, derivation and inference, then madness will never be achieved. Every conclusion it makes will be consistent with its programming. At a symbolic level the worst we'll have is an AI that is told to go out onto the net and learn what to do from people who post on Slashdot. The AI will see posts like "Smart AI's are going to blow up the world" and it will add the data point to its information base. Now the AI will be able to reason about smart AI's and what they might do, but will this imply that the AI can reason about itself with this data point? In order to reason about itself and what it should do, it first has to have a concept of "self" which it identifies as a smart AI. Concepts of oneself do not develop out of thin air, but take a LONG time to develop.

A symbolic AI is simply going to absorb the symbolic knowledge of the people around it. If it displays any kind of madness, it is simply parroting the madness of the content it is exposed to. Or we are projecting the idea of madness onto its completely rational (not necessarily predictable) behavior. Self awareness at a symbolic level never breaches the programming.

Human self-awareness is at a deeply emotional level. While we are constantly surprised by what our current AI's can create, it is simply because our brains are not good at fast logical derivation and symbol manipulation. If we could sit down and map out every logical possibility and explore the tree to the nth degree, we would not be surprised by anything our AI does and it would clearly be "just a machine doing what a machine does". Real sentience is going to require depth of emotions. The human understanding of symbols is not grounded in other symbols, it is grounded in the experience of our senses and our emotions.

AA

Nice to see that I've evoked such an emotional reaction out of you that you've resorted to associating me with pirating Brittny Spears and the Fast and the Furious. Most of your response is ad hominem, which I guess is a testament to the quality of your own argument.

I am not proposing a restriction on anyone's behavior. Copyright law is what is restricting behavior. People can do what they want with their creations, including selling them. But what would the world look like if there was no copyright? What would our economy look like? Would people still buy art? Of course. If the media stopped producing digital content because there was no money in it, would our world collapse? Would we get mass produced crap like Brittny Spears and Fast and the Furious? If people stopped producing digitized versions of things, would there be a greater demand for live performances? Would people actually stop producing digital versions of art? No. Even now there are people that are finding novel ways of capitalizing on free content. Its not like copyright is the gluon which keeps the nucleus of the atom together.

Ack, well that question doesn't really work for you, does it? Copyright law is already a "right" over other people's decisions. If I have a copy of your work and you don't want me to distribute it, then you are influencing my decision and my ability act autonomously. I'm proposing a situation where there is less restriction on everyone's behavior.

As for being arrogant, hello pot, kettle, black... A painter will still be able to sell their painting, which is a physical artifact and requires skill in its creation. I've never suggested giving away things for free which require physical effort to reproduce. You've put words into my mouth. I'm only suggesting that trying to prevent copying is a losing proposition. It criminalizes a behavior which we have a natural and automatic impulse to perform, the sharing of experiences we have found valuable.

Well I must say that you've over reacted to my post and put words in my mouth. Man, I'm sorry that VW bus ran over your dog when you were a strapping young lad of 8.

Linking to copyrighted material isn't the problem. Its the fact that the purpose of the link is to enable unauthorized distribution. Linking directly to an episode of LOST on ABC's website is an authorized form of distribution and linking to the torrent of a home-recorded copy is not authorized by the copyright holder.

Now take a deep breath in and breath out slowly, relax and let your butt cheeks unclench. Now you can pull your panties out of your sphincter.

I'm with you, I think the whole situation sucks and we should get rid of copyright completely. But going ape-shit doesn't do much to change the situation. It just encourages the police state to become more tense and reactive to the populace.

Knives are sold with the intent they be used for purposes other than murder and mutilation of fellow human beings. Copyrighted torrents are shared through TPB with the intent they be distributed freely even when the copyright holder does not approve. There is no other purpose for sharing a torrent other than distribution. Your analogy fails.

Copying does take something away from the original distributor. When a person copies they become a distributor of the information. When more and more people copy we get an increased number of distributors which dilutes the power of being the original and sole distributor. So, yes there is a loss of power in having other entities distribute the work.

The real problem is that the original author doesn't know how to capitalize on a decentralized distribution channel. Sounds like a need to innovate and adapt to new technology. Use viral media to drive traffic to a central location and then capitalize on that attentive audience. This is the business model of the future. You use the free stuff to bait people into checking out the not-free stuff.

But the fact remains, copying does have an impact on distributors, it weakens their power and authority. Authors of content need to shift their understanding and realize the power and opportunity available to them through networked decentralized distribution channels. That or just switch to creating art for the sake of art and make money through other means. (performances, selling t-shirts, a job, etc)

There are those who create art for the sake of art, and there are those who create art to make a profit. If copyrights were to go away, the former would continue to produce while the latter will go find something else to do.

People are more than willing to create and distribute their art for free. Each of us has a creative drive. I myself am writing this post as a work of art and passing that along for free. The ideas and principles I use are my color palette while this post is written with the brush strokes of my own personal and unique style. But my purpose in writing this post is not to make money from a copyrighted work but to freely pass on ideas and perspectives which might benefit people in their lives.

The value of a piece of art is not in its authorship, but in its effect on the human spirit. While copyright may have been created with the intent of benefiting the public through encouraging creation via financial incentive, I challenge the notion that "without copyright then no one would create art." I also put forth the consideration that adding in financial incentives has a tendency to pollute the quality and purity of expression in the art. Once money making is involved then you get controlling publishing and distribution companies who will impose requirements and make editorial changes as they see fit.

An artist is compelled to create art, regardless of whether that art is copyrighted or makes them money. How many sites have cropped up across the net where people are freely publishing their own creations for public consumption? Copyright is not the reason behind why so many people freely create and distribute their art on these sites, it is because we have deep within our spirit a need to create art and share it with each other. This drive has been there since the caveman days.

The one value in copyright that I see is that it might protect the the original expression of new ideas from more influential and powerful marketers who twist the presentation and then drown out the original author's ideas with the perverted ones. That is the only case in which I feel copyright might be beneficial: in preserving the original message.

However, in the age of computers with moderated and syndicated content, it is evident that people on a whole have the capacity to recognize and honor quality expression. (see Slashdot where what people find of value floats to the top while the rest sinks to the bottom.) People search for quality and want to pass it on to others. The ability to copy and paste means the public is benefiting at an exponential rate. Copyright actually slows down or stops the distribution process and in turn slows down the rate of benefit by the public.

Yeah sure, every post and every submission has a disclaimer that the copyright relating to the submission belongs to the appropriate author, and that supposedly I own the copyright to any original work that I create on the net... But does anyone truly know or care who I am as the author of the work I publish? When people pass on their new experience and understanding to others should there really be "And I got this idea from some schmuck named Joe off the net" attached to everything? My whole purpose in publishing my work is to improve the quality of everyone's life. If people want to reward me for that, bonus! But its the new experience and understanding that people value, not the author.

True artists are compelled to create and to share their experience. The experiencer decides what is of value and what is worth passing on. If the original creation was not worth passing on, but a derivative work was, then the existence of copyright actually hinders the public from getting maximum benefit.

Copyright is not needed. It creates more headaches than it solves. In an era of easy copy-paste and mass communication, it is the message that matters, not the author. We are fighting a losing battle. Its time for us to evolve the way we think and adapt the way we operate with respect to easily copied material.

Trying to fight nature through establishing man made custom and laws is a waste of energy and it causes more harm than good on a psychological level. We human beings are copy machines with our mirror neurons, cameras, and computers (ctrl-c, ctrl-v). We have an innate desire to copy and pass on that which we find of value. Making a law to try to control this is not only futile but damaging to the health and well being of the individual.

That which can be copied easily should be created for the love of creation, not for the purpose of making long term profit. If you can capitalize on it in the near term, great. But someone somewhere is going to copy it or re-invent cheaper and better.

Maybe I'm a hippie at heart, but all man needs to survive is food, shelter, water, community and love. My personal goal is to move into a communal situation where my family's basic needs are being taken care of for minimal effort, and then my free time can be invested into that which I have a joy for creating. If others copy my work it is because they perceive it as value and want to share that value with their peers. I personally do not want to do anything to prevent a broader reach of increased value in this world.

Wanting to control others in their creative process is spiritually sick. Ultimately it stems from the fear of not being able to survive in the world without that degree of control. We could be living in utopia and in harmony with the life on this planet if we stopped trying to prevent the natural evolution of creative expression. Mimicry and Copy-Paste is a valid form of creative expression and a valid form of passing on what is of value.

Giving away your creations to increase the value in people's lives is more spiritually rewarding than trying make a buck off each person who views or uses your work. If your concern is about survival, then perhaps you should change your lifestyle and methods for surviving.