NYT
“To clarify, you’re predicting your immortality”
Your father, a musical conductor, died when you were 22, and you insist that by using his DNA, as well as the music and writing he left, you can reanimate him. Will we literally find him on a car lot picking out a new Cadillac?
By 2029, computers will have emotional intelligence and be convincing as people. This implies that these are people with volition just like you and I, not just games that you turn on or off. Is it my father? You could argue that it’s a simulation. But it’s not something you can play with. You don’t want to bring someone back who might be very depressed because the world is very different than they expect and the people they know aren’t around.
Blowback
Note from Hot Air management: This section is for comments from Hot Air's community of registered readers. Please don't assume that Hot Air management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment just because we let it stand. A reminder: Anyone who fails to comply with our terms of use may lose their posting privilege.
Trackbacks/Pings
Trackback URL
Comments
Immortality is overrarted. I’ve been hearing Glenn talk about the coming singularity, and while I don’t reject it’s possibility (or even it’s inevitability), I think that when people are given a chance at letting machines become close to human or even allow people to live through them, we will see a major realization that life as ordained by God is not something to be trifled with.
nobar on January 27, 2013 at 10:06 PM
Still Gonna Die
sharrukin on January 27, 2013 at 10:10 PM
It’s not impossible and it will come some day but considering computers today can not emulate emotion at all, 2029 seems a bit far fetched.
lester on January 27, 2013 at 10:12 PM
Well, since so many people have little emotional intelligence themselves, it’ll come a lot quicker.
-or-
I’m not sure I’m speaking to human when said person says “L O L” to me.
lorien1973 on January 27, 2013 at 10:24 PM
May I encourage Ray Kurzweil to ponder this philosophical and profound point?
As a matter of fact, the entire book is well worth reading .
There is still “nothing new under the sun.”
ColtsFan on January 27, 2013 at 10:28 PM
Spoiler alert: they’re never going to replicate intelligence by creating machines that run more and more lines of code faster. It will be centuries before we can even simulate it that way.
We are our bodies.
HitNRun on January 27, 2013 at 10:31 PM
And in the 1930′s we were all going to be living in a utopian, futuristic world by now with hover/mag-lev cars. Still using gasoline and tires…
Logus on January 27, 2013 at 10:50 PM
Just go to sleep for hundreds of years like Lestat did.
John the Libertarian on January 27, 2013 at 10:58 PM
People would be less anxiously violent if they didn’t feel mortality breathing down their necks like an implacable hangman in the short century allotted to us.
Extending the healthy and vigorous human lifespan to several centuries, at least, would give us room to breathe, time to learn, and not rush into traumatic cul de sacs in the desperate attempt to do everything in the fleeting span Nature gave us.
Cells, as cancer shows, are inherently immortal. It was only cunning evolution that invented death to spur us to defeat it.
We either shall, or will exterminate ourselves on the brink through being too clever by half at the moment of its possibility.
Nature is a beyatch in that respect as well.
profitsbeard on January 27, 2013 at 11:06 PM
Anyone that disagrees will be subject to deresolution.
Browncoatone on January 28, 2013 at 1:06 AM
Knew it was Raymond from the headlines. All I can say is “dream on”. We all will die a physical death someday, thanks to the original sin.
AH_C on January 28, 2013 at 1:55 AM
Cyrus – an A.I. program that astonished people (who were easily astonished)
The program was designed to emulate Cyrus Vance (former Secretary of State) and in a demonstration the Real Cyrus Vance and the program answered Blind Questions on screens.
People were astonished at how they could not tell the computer from the real Cyrus Vance. Both kept answering intricate questions identically!
Until; someone who was not so easily impressed asked Two Simple Questions.
1) Have you ever met Prime Minister Margret Thatcher?
A) Yes B) Yes
2) Have you ever met a Female Head of State?
A) Yes B) Unknown
No matter how well you try to program A.I. to be human, it is like Trisecting an angle – It cannot be done.
Not as long as we have words like Bill.
1) Duck’s Mouth
2) Leading Edge of a Cap
3) Statement of Money Owed
4) List of contents
5) Person’s Name
6) Denomination of Money
jd
jaydee_007 on January 28, 2013 at 3:00 AM
And if you don’t toe the company gov’t line, we have this nifty USB v9 yottabyte drive that we’ll put you on and stick you on the shelf. Maybe.
Cyberwar becomes up close, personal… real.
Yeah…that will work out so well “for some.”
ProfShadow on January 28, 2013 at 3:43 AM
Operating from the premise that consciousness arises from the physical brain, the conclusion is logical enough…if you ignore certain difficulties:
1) We don’t know how consciousness might arise from the physical brain, so throwing more computational power at it is next to futile.
2) The actual physical structure of the brain is radically different than what computing technology we have and neuroscience is at about the same stage as Galileo with his telescope in understanding that structure.
3) Further, computers are just complex pieces of clockwork that use electrons instead of gears. They merely execute instructions which are fed into them.
4) All of this presumes materialist metaphysics, which traditionally break down at a theory of knowledge.
5) Additionally, it ignores entropy, which you can’t escape.
David Marcoe on January 28, 2013 at 7:51 AM
Look to the left. Way back in the 60s we decided to shun technical progress in favor of social progress. It was far more important to us as a society to tech kids that all are equal, that other cultures are better and the wickedness of the world was because of rich white males. We decided it was a far better use of money to provide drug addicts with clean needles than it was to build a Moon base. We don’t have hover/mag-lev cars because we didn’t want them. It’s that simple.
Dr. Frank Enstine on January 28, 2013 at 8:30 AM
This is a materialist wet dream. Being in the sciences I have had many a discussion with atheists and materialists about AI or the transfer of our minds to computers. Another great debate is Star Trek like transporters and whether on not you would use one. As a person of faith I don’t like any of the implications of any of those technologies. My thoughts is that dead is dead and you may be able to create a near perfect simulation of what you were but that it would not be you.
Dr. Frank Enstine on January 28, 2013 at 8:36 AM
Kurzweil’s been predicting the technological singularity for years, maybe decades, and they only just now get around to this interview?
So, just to make sure we’ve covered everything:
- Dyson listened while the Terminator laid it all down: Skynet, Judgment Day, the history of things to come. It’s not every day you find out that you’re responsible for 3 billion deaths. He took it pretty well.
- Greetings. The Master Control Program has chosen you to serve your system on the Game Grid. Those of you who continue to profess a belief in the Users will receive the standard, substandard training which will result in your eventual elimination. Those of you who renounce this superstitious and hysterical belief will be eligible to join the warrior elite of the MCP.
The Schaef on January 28, 2013 at 9:08 AM
Give this man the Nobel.
I honestly cannot look at an old magazine with starry-eyed predictions of the future because of this. We threw away so. much. in the 60′s. It literally breaks my heart to think of what might have been.
MelonCollie on January 28, 2013 at 10:05 AM
Actually, quite the opposite. When they try to get outside their normal bounds they tend to malignancy and end up killing us.
GWB on January 28, 2013 at 10:12 AM