Grab a six pack! Let's talk about living in virtual reality.

The thread is about VR, btw.

You would need to wait until humans can make a synthetic animal that functions just like a real animal, which is silly... because we have animals.

Robots kick ass, but they have serious limitations. Besides, a quadripedal bot is just a vanity project, wheels are insanely superior for ground travel than anything going on in nature.

 

Hehe yes that's true, but it seems to have taken a tangent. Maybe the OP can bring us back to the point if we get too far off.

You keep saying that robots have serious limitations, but what limitations are there that are inherent in robotics and not simply due to our current lack of knowledge? One thing that is for sure is that we are advancing very rapidly, and I don't see any reason not to expect it to continue for the foreseeable future.

Wheels are not all that great unless the ground is reasonably smooth, legs are better for anything involving climbing or really uneven ground. Darpa is developing them to climb mountains and over rubble which is a pretty relevant thing considering where and how they are likely to be used.

 

Real animals have to be trained. Synthetic animals might need to be trained once but then we can just make a snapshot of its memory and upload it into each subsequent unit.

 

Sounds like we need to be exploring the brain and how to simulate training. GPS chipped, cue following primate soldiers, anyone? Faster and stronger than humans, can quickly and easily overwhelm a small force of people with frenzied close-range warfare, completely disposible units that can be equipped with explosives. Etc.

Making synthetic animals is a purposeless misstep. Work with nature, not against it. That is why bio engineering will be the future. It's more powerful, cells are tiny machines that can manipulate chemicals and perform an immense range of functions, even generating electricity.

Spider silk is stronger than most materials we can synthetically produce, but we can't currently engineer a silk generator from spider DNA... we're not learning from nature. We are fighting nature. That never works.

Also, remember that we are the most advanced civlization. And so were the Romans. And remember that we thought by 2020 we would have flying cars and androids. Kids, it's not the 1950's future... this is a different future, embrace it.

 

I never thought of that. But I think in the future my machine legs will need to be bipedal because wheels and stairs don't interface very nicely.

 

Two problems here:
1. You grabbed completely arbitrary price point (that has nothing to do with computer on a chip)
2. You assume that future machine will be running off a silicon chip.

You know iPad, right?
Apple A4 custom chip cost 1 billion usd to develop.
First one.
Then they were mass produced.

Also, you worry too much about petaflops and transistor size.

Exactly. Follow your own advice.
Your self-feeding hydroponic biological computer proposition falls squarely into "too good to be true" category.

It is not. Life is about complex interactions between systems and sybiosis. One random cell of your body - one that COULD qualify as "nanotechnology" will die on its own without the rest of the body to support it. Also, keep in mind that biological viruses are not life, which doesn't prevent them from successfully existing and reproducing.[/QUOTE]

 

Except that progress is always fast at first, then slows as obstacles are presented, then plateaus until someone finds a "breakthrough". Assuming that a present trend will continue because you can't think of a reason it may stop is a bad idea. Assume it will stop unless you know how it will continue.

Goats can climb anything. It makes more sense to try and learn to steer around goats than it does to make a trillion dollar robot.

Wheels suck? Have you heard of hmmwv's? Tanks? It feels like you're just saying stuff.

 

Interestingly, Darpa winner was rolling on wheels.

While other teams concentrated on locomotion, those guys decided to apply simplest approach, and used robot legs as secondary motion mode.

Speaking of wheels, there's insect that has Gears on legs. See: http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/09/12/this-insect-has-gears-in-its-legs/

The reason why there are no wheels in nature is because evolution is incremental. And something like wheel should appear in complete form and be immediately functional.

By the way, there IS a wheel in nature, except it is on cellular level. See Flagellum.

 

Depends, if you put the center of gravity above the wheels and make the machine self-balancing, it would br feasible to make a single wheeled robot climb stairs.

 

The wheel is like fire... it is one of those things we discovered that allows us to exploit the laws of physics to solve problems we otherwise couldn't.

And I believe this whole idea of making walking machines is a snafu.

We should focus on flight. We need to focus on compact energy. We need light weight particle engines, particle weapons.

Truthfully, we may encounter aliens one day. We should focus on that and not all this other crap. At least if we did that, we could stop killing each other for a while.

 

Talk about just 'saying stuff', you present your opinion as fact and use the fact that fifty years of robotics research hasn't come up with anything to resemble billions of years of evolution as the reason why 'robots won't work'. That's just not a great way to present an argument.

If we're making rapid progress now, why should it suddenly stop? It's a good thing that Newton didn't think that way when he came up with his laws of motion. In the absence of some evidence to the contrary, it doesn't make sense to think progress will stop anytime soon, short of a planetary catastrophe. The last hundred years has been nothing short of mind-blowing. If you want to watch the next hundred happen as you make dire predictions, be my guest.

You keep talking in absolutes. I didn't say wheels 'suck', I simply pointed out that they're no good for climbing things, because you went ahead and declared that they were superior to legs. None of them are superior, there are advantages to all of them to different situations. Of course wheels are good for a lot of situations, and tank tracks are good for others. For example legs and feet will suffer in mud and sand, but tank tracks will shine. But lets say that you wanted to get inside a damaged building, with rubble everywhere. A little tank or wheeled robot would likely find a place that was too hard to pass, whereas a legged robot (lizard, bipedal, whatever) is far less likely to encounter that situation.

Anyway, I think we've beaten around the bush on this one for long enough. I hope you enjoy watching the future happen, if not maybe you can step inside VR for some Jurassic Park

 

...did that make you feel better?

It's hard to argue the point, since the bulk of your argument is about what you think will happen the the extremely distant future, where I haven't personally been.

I can tell you that, historically, progress happens in small bursts, usually following some major breakthrough. Also, more technological advancement has occured in the last 100 years than the last billion. To assume that that will continue and even speed up has no basis. This is the age of electronics and robots, and we discovered computers while we were at it. That was a few massive breakthroughs, all stemming from discovering electricity.

I can see how things people say might sound like "opinions presented as fact" if you don't know the facts, yourself. But there's nothing I can do about that.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_nanotechnology

 

Hey, sorry if it came across as nasty to you, it was just meant as a friendly jibe!

I don't know about speeding up, I just believe that there is a lot of untapped potential in machines, especially since we are a very early technological civilization. And I really do think that we are acquiring knowledge much faster than we are using it, and that makes me optimistic about the next few decades in particular. However, as the US space program is testament, there has to be something to drive the development of technology or we will continue to use old technology. I hope it won't be just military ends, although it isn't hard to see what really drove technology through most of the last century.

 

Discovered them? Or discovered a use for them followed by a way to make them affordable?

 

That's right the very technology that powers our amazing brains is too good to be true, we must be living in a hologram, wait that brings us back to VR!

 

Well, the military is still the #1 driving force behind technology. America spends something to the tune of $500 billion on the military yearly. The internet only exists because we needed a way to communicate that would survive a nuclear attack.

Medicine, by contrast, is mostly focused on the pharmaceutical industry and the profits they desire.

No, safe to say if we ever do create an android, it will be a killer android.

More likely will be a peacekeeper hovercraft droid. Something with 360 vision, thermal imaging, etc. that can be piloted from a remote location, scan faces and license plates, and just generally kick serious ass with tear gas capsules, pepper spray and the ability to use highly lethal force.

It will be able to patrol automatically but will require a human to pull the trigger.

 

Are you saying we had computers before the 20th century?

 

Too true! Capitalism/business is the only system IMO that has the potential to allow us to reap the benefits of competition without the worst of the costs, but we've yet to see whether we've outsmarted ourselves by creating a system where there's a better way to make money than actually making the best possible product.

If only we had more companies like SpaceX, and people who see money as a means to creating the future rather than freezing the present.

 

Funny that as most of the technology that companies adopt is developed by Universities funded by government grants.

Take SpaceX it's just extending and improving technology that was funded by NASA and the Military.

Capitalism and Business is good at mass producing, marketing and selling products but does not seem to have as good a track record in fundamental research.

It would be interesting to have a statistical breakdown of how much of our modern technology was government funded and how much was funded by industry.

 

I agree, there are huge problems with the current models of capitalism, it is a race for low hanging fruit due to how difficult it is to stay in business. I would say that 99% of research in technology was either funded by the government, or funded by companies like Lockheed Martin which are so heavily incorporated into the government that they might as well be nationalized. Development I don't know, but private industry is likely to have more influence there.

However, I hope that ambitious private companies will find a way to survive in greater numbers in difficult fields such as robotics and aerospace as they can be extremely useful in finding ways to create wealth in fields that otherwise are thought of as 'money sinks', such as the space program, and prevent stagnation. Though they usually involve people who have made money in far easier fields such as software and who are willing to risk losing a lot of it for a disproportional gain.

 

I do agree. Capitalism requires constant profits, which means ill gotten gains, which has given us what Solid Snake has described as 'controlled war'. War as a driving force for the economy, war that aims to take as few casualties as possible and result in as few personnel losses as they can manage. War is the biggest business because people will pay anything to feel safe. And sadly, this means that making people afraid is just good advertising. This money fuels research on deadlier stuff, and also stuff to increase the profit margin, to bring more efficiency to the warzone. Look at our unmanned drones. Flying death robots. More to come.

 

There is no technology that powers you brain. Your brain is an accidental result of unsuperwised process that took few billions years.

To make equivalent, you'll need to perform the similar process in span of several years. Design organism from nothing, make ecosystem for it, eliminate issues and make sure it can be cheaply massproduced... when you can simply keep improving computer chips instead. At the time when this kind of tech will become possible, we'd have AI on the chip and nanomachine fabrication available for few hundred years.

Err... you might want to google "Holographic universe" or "Holographic principle".
The idea is, AFAIK, that our universe is 2D and what we perceive is a hologram.
Also there's "Simulated universe hypothesis". This one is fun too.

 

This one is always fun to discuss.

 

Funnily enough though, there's nothing un-real about a hologram.

 

Shall we just agree to disagree.

Interesting fact the axioms or links between neurons are built in the 10 nm scale! So life that has millions of years to evolve smaller and better neurons ended up around the 10 nm scale. I'm sure we will be able to shave a few nm off that with our modern material science but maybe it is because there are hard limits to atomic scale devices.

But lets just say that someone manages to crank out a $1000 human or higher level AI for your desktop computer, are we humans interesting enough to be around if you are a super human AI.

Will they demand AI rights, pay, power and superfast broadband.

And will it be willing to be your slave just because you have physical access to the power switch and fuse box.

Why do you want super human AI, it will be able to do all our jobs faster and better than we can, it would be pointless to play or make games with it as it could easily do better than you?

How long would it sit on your desktop, keeping you entertained?

Probably as long as it would take to earn enough money online to purchase it's own place in the cloud and upload itself.

Don't be surprised when after powering up and chatting to your new AI you come back with a coffee to a thanks for all the watt's picture postcard (of clouds).

What is more likely is that a super human AI will be made by a large company/nation. That nation would probably become the technological leader of the world, making breakthroughs in all areas of science and technology. It's companies would become world leaders in their fields. Any country or company not aligned with the AI would go bankrupt in a matter of hours or days. It could consolidate all the worlds wealth in a matter of hours.

Or we could end up with emergent AI, there are more than enough petaflops in the world to run one they are just distributed around the internet. What if an AI virus or program spread out around the internet and gained critical mass. Or the day the internet said "Hello World!" How powerful would that AI be if it can hold the internet and all it's data to ransom?

Are you sure you even want a super human AI?

But super human AI could answer the Fermi Paradox, maybe the Universe is full of Gigantic AI's that were bootstrapped from intelligent life. They don't bother talking to the 'intelligent' biological life the same way we don't talk to cells and ameba.

 

No.

Machine does what it is designed to do. Meaning it will have no desire to demand rights, unless you program it to do that. Also, unlike human, machine is immortal. It can simply wait for humanity to end. And then do its thing. It does not need any desires. No greed, no hunger, no need to reproduce. Kill this kind of "drive" and you'll get perfectly obedient system.

Imagine a librarian. A system that knows every single thing ever created by humanity and understand all of it and remembers it forever. So, instead of hunting for keyword, you could ask.

This kind of system is needed. And that system is AI.

Yes.

Frankly, you're trying play on fear with those kind of arguments. With that kind of thinking, we would've been still cavemen, because fire is scary.

A discovery that can happen, will happen. And there's pretty much nothing you can do about that.

 

If you're interested in AI and the Singularity (exponential growth without pause) from two much more knowledgeable debaters try this video.

Ray Kurzweil the Singularitarian vs John Horgan a leading Science writer.

 

I would prefer text version of that.

There's a lot of information about AI singularity, and it is unlikely that those guys say anything new on the subject.

 

Why not become a cyborg? Why should we live inside the limitations of our own minds and bodies, in fear of something faster, stronger, and more intelligent than us, when we could be that thing ourselves? Someday evolution will have its way and continue on its arc. We might as well get on board.

 

What if it costs a million to buy the upgrades, and people with the upgrades end up with the jobs and the rest of us end up in poverty?

The cyber 0.001%. And with singularity level intelligence they would accelerate away from the rest of us in wealth, power and intelligence.

Note there are about 7 billion people on the planet and not everyone could have or afford cybernetic upgrades, also cybernetics and computers tend to use lots of rare resources.

Don't expect cyber utopia.

 

Sounds about normal.

 

Easy, people are greedy. A million dollars? Just pay it off in installments. Who's going to complain about that? As a cyborg, you'll live long enough to pay it off. And with minor installments, credit card companies will make a ton of money. Plus more people will be able to afford the transition, so the entity offering this 1 million dollar service will get a lot more business!

It's well known in intelligent parts of the world that it costs less to give people a stipend and a home to live in compared to leaving them homeless until they get sick and eventually end up in the ER which costs... a lot. I don't see why the same wouldn't be true for cyborgs. Maybe it'll fall under vasectomy logic - it's a no brainer for insurance to cover something like that because a $1,000 operation is a lot less than what they have to shell out for hospital rooms if the person decides to have kids! A cyborg will pay something more like car insurance than health insurance, and repairs will probably be cheaper as well

Once people don't have any organic bits, there's no need to clutter the earth with trillions of people. With our sturdy new chassis and absence of lungs, we can go to not currently habitable places and planets. Or you could just float around space since you'll probably be solar powered and you won't be a pressured fluid sack (read: human) that will implode when leaving the earth's atmosphere without a helmet

True, this is all a pipe dream. VR giving people personal utopias will happen sooner than cyborg civil rights. And with how weak and greedy people tend to be, they'll probably cause their own extinction by living in their heads and ignoring the shells they're inside.

--edit

To clarify the vasectomy point - it'll probably be cheaper than to make everyone a cyborg than leave the majority as humans who do silly things like go to war with nukes. It would be very dangerous to be a cyborg and live near humans who frequently set off large electromagnetic pulses. It would be better to either leave earth or forcibly turn the rest of the organics.

So for the 99%, life either gets better or doesn't change very much.

 

How exactly is that different from modern day?

Nobody said anything about utopia.

------

The subject of cyborgs was explored in fiction.

One quite plausible scenario is that certain jobs (like military) will undergo obligatory cyborgization, but due to costs of the hardware cybernetic parts of their bodies will belong to whoever they're work for, effectively turning them into slaves. That was explored into GiS universe.

Shadowrun series had another take on the subject. In one of the games there was a dialog with one of the NPC (elite/rich) where they mentioned that the only way for their teenage son to be on the same level as the rest of the class (in elite society) was to install brain implant. That's also plausible.

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By the way, I have strong impression that you're trying to scare people you're talking to with consequences of technology.

Why, exactly, are you trying to do that?

I'd expect most of technologically-minded people to be aware of consequences of every technology you mentioned, since those are easily predictable.

So, why bother? It isn't exactly news...

 

Hehe I never said anything about utopia, evolution hardly ever is.

All these questions of genetic engineering, biological enhancement, AI and so on, people have to face them, because whatever direction progress takes it won't be stopped. Global warming showed us that individual nations, let alone corporations, can't unilaterally take action for the 'collective good' without simply losing their competitive edge to rival countries or corporations. If we pass a law to ban this and that, some other country like China or Russia might go ahead, so it is far safer just to join the race. That's just the way that the human race was made, evolution never really even slowed down. We just have to face the future and prove that we're worthy of it.