I, for one, welcome our AI overlords.

[Coito ergo sum]

http://science.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/0 ... think?lite

"The question is, could we evolve ourselves out of existence, being gradually replaced by the machines?" Slonczewski said. "I think that's an open question."

[klr]

The past two singularities — the Agricultural and Industrial revolutions — led to a doubling in economic productivity every 1,000 and 15 years, respectively, said Robin Hanson, an economist at George Mason University in Washington, D.C., who is writing a book about the future singularity. But once machines become as smart as man, the economy will double every week or month.

This rapid pace of productivity would be possible because the main "actors" in the economy, namely people, could simply be replicated for whatever it costs to copy an intelligent-machine software into another computer.

I don't know what he's smoking, but it must be some seriously strong weed.

[natselrox]

Kurzweil.

There should be an app to block everything by Kurzweil.

[klr]

Kurzweil has been on the money with a lot of his predictions over the years. But when he's wrong, he's likely to be very wrong. And will continue to be very wrong, as in predicting a "world government" by 2020.

[PsychoSerenity]

Kurzweil has been on the money with a lot of his predictions over the years. But when he's wrong, he's likely to be very wrong. And will continue to be very wrong, as in predicting a "world government" by 2020.

Could happen. The US and western economies crash, China steps in to help/take advantage, and then they nuke all countries that don't cooperate.

Oh shit I'm channelling Scrumple.

[cronus]

[Coito ergo sum]

I like the idea of a one-world government, provided, of course, that it is a republican form of government, with serious separations of powers, and protections for individual liberties.

I would love to live to see the day when the last army is dismantled, because we are one world and the only thing needed are police to punish domestic criminal activity. How great would that be?!

Imagine if all the military budgets in all the world could be directed toward activities in outer space..... the potential is awe-inspiring.

If only....

[klr]

Back to the economy doubling every week/month. Every month means that in just one year, it would be about 1,000 times what it had been. And every week ... well, let's not go there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat_and_ ... rd_problem

[rasetsu]

While it's an interesting hypothesis, it ignores the fact that, likely, in order to duplicate the feats of human minds, we'll have to understand how human minds do what they do. While there's no absolute block to that, there's no indication that we are near or far from that goal, and while experimenting with computers is easy, the tools for investigating the mind are clumsy, imprecise and very ineffective. Anyone that's been around long enough recalls that similar rosy predictions were made for symbolic AI in the 70s. What they found was that the problem was not as easy as it looked, throwing more resources at it doesn't necessarily get you closer to a solution, and most researchers in the field more or less conclude that symbolic AI is a dead-end which will never reach its goals because it is simply the wrong model of cognition.

[Ian]

Kurzweil is the man.

Well, almost. I have a lot of respect for his understanding of AI, but I don't think he grasps the effects as much as he thinks he does. The basic thrust of his point of view is correct, but the end results are not going to be what he is imagining. The whole world isn't going to change radically within the space of a generation or two. It'll take considerably longer under the best of circumstances. People simply don't change as fast as technology can.

Still, I recently read Abundance by Peter Diamandis. I've never been more optimistic about the future, and I've always been a bit optimistic. I'd recommend that book (among others I could list if I had to) to anyone, especially all the cynics out there.