One of the most worrying things about the synths in humans was when one of them became aware and was being used as a sex worker, she had all the feelings and awareness of a human but no right to say no, eventually she flipped and started killing men. A robot union may not be what they chose.
Actually none of that stuff made much sense TBH. The synths were by definition man-made machines. Anything and everything they were was created by the humans that made them. If they could simulate feelings it could only be because their creators programmed simulated feeling responses in their coding. What is being expressed as feelings by the synths is simply computer coded feelings. One has to ask why the programmer would have put the effort in to make the robot behave in that way.
By far a better approach for the whole TV show would have been to turn it around and have some tech company making robots out of humans, i.e. starting with a human, adding better body elements, organs, limbs, eyes, skin and so on and then basing the show on the interaction of “enhanced humans” with ordinary humans. After all, that is most certainly where the coming years will take humanity, no question about it.
I think you will find that robots are being programmed to think for themselves and to evolve. The confines of the initial program are not barriers any longer. There will definitely come a time (and quite soon) where robots will be thinking and behaving in ways that are no longer understood or envisaged: robots creating new cpus for instance or creating new programs for use in robots designed and built by robots! The door will be wide open for robots to evolve any which way they choose. The initial constraints imposed by the programmers are under threat and have been for quite some time.
well for the true believers there may be a ‘God’ angle here and a real, realistic one too!!
Maybe this is the point of human evolution where ‘God’ has lead us to be our own creators - He/She created us and no one has done any better yet?? and now we are having a go. A bit like ‘Dad/Mum’ building a real, realistic house and then saying to their sons and daughters “there ya go - you have a go now - you don’t have to build it as big but we think you are ready to make a good effort”
just watched ‘Six Sense’ again - great film heh?:-p:-p
There is no “thinking” involved. A robot/computer only “processes” and it processes only in the way it has been programmed to process.
You can build random elements into a computer which can make it appear to be unpredictable, but in the end it’s just following the rules it has been given.
Again doesn’t make sense. If a robot creates a CPU it can only do that if it has been programmed that way. It is not thinking, it is simply following rules.
Humans are pretty much the same. We have an amount of memory (RAM) and an amount of processing power (CPU) and everything we do is simply following the various rule sets we have been programmed with. Your body for example has been designed and programmed to operate as it does. Are YOU making your heart beat? Nope. That was decided for you by someone else. Go ahead and try to refuse to breathe. You can’t because your programming does not permit it. After a few minutes the programming in your body will take over and force you to take a breath.
Everything you invent or are capable of imagining is based on existing knowledge, on factors and criteria, however remote, that you are already aware of.
Humans started off with basic abilities and the capability to store information and process that information. Through increased experimentation and experience we have progressed from cave men to current day people.
Despite all this, are we actually thinking? Or are we just working within the rule sets that have been given to us?
Yep it was a good watch, but ultimately it is quite flawed because it so implausible that Willis can’t realise he is a ghost until the very end.
What did he think about all the other strange goings on up to that point? A movie flaw website puts it like this:
[I]All the other ghosts in the film seemed to be wandering the earth, mindlessly reliving their deaths, with little awareness of the outside world at all. But ol’ Bruce was just carrying on as normal, working and going about his day-to-day routine, completely unfazed by the fact no one but a small child had spoken to him in several months.
What kind of lifestyle was he living before his death that would make him fail to notice that no one could see or hear him? He assumes his wife isn’t speaking to him because he’s “neglecting their marriage.” In the days right after he died, did he think she was mad at him for getting shot in the stomach? And what about everyone else? Does he also assume all waiters are suddenly assholes? That the girl at the supermarket check out finds him too hideous to make eye contact with? That taxis won’t stop for him because he’s balding?
And how does he get the assignment to treat the kid anyway? Nobody hired him, being a ghost and all. Does he just approach random children in churches and start giving them free psychiatric advice?[/I]
An interesting post Realist. I hope you are right.
You do understand the word ‘evolve’ do you? FREE thinking robots are on the cards whether you discount the idea or not. A programmer can construct a program and a machine can construct a cpu but the complexities are immense these days. With the way robotics are nowadays and the hunt on for who can create the first ‘aware’ robot only a robot will be able to understand the logic involved eventually. The ‘stuff’ you posted applies to common garden computers but to the incredible designs being put forward no-way. As for the rest of the stuff what on earth are you on about? We are discussing robots that can think for themselves and that is all.
You draw a comparison with robots to human beings and I will go along with that but you are really shooting yourself in the foot by doing so. Human beings can be totally unpredictable, devious and secretive. Some human beings cannot understand themselves never-mind others trying to do it for them. If, as you say, we are just robots then by your logic everyone of us is predictable owing to some ‘greater understanding’. If only that was true.
And stop bloody preaching to people as it is pissing me off - again!
Yep. But strictly speaking that is a term applied to LIVING biological things. The evolution happens through freak mutations perhaps caused through environmental impacts.
Robots do not “evolve”. You confuse iterations of technology with something completely different. Media advertising might claim for example that the iPhone has evolved to the latest version, but it’s simply marketing spiel. Nothing has evolved, it’s just a different iPhone.
Your definition of the term “Thinking” is the issue with your statement. Robots do not “Think”. They just process instruction sets that they have been programmed with. For certain that may APPEAR to you as thinking, but it clearly isn’t. For example the super computer developed by IBM called “Watson” was capable of winning the US Game Show “Jeopardy”. It could anticipate the questions being asked faster than a human and come up with the right answer just as quick. However all it was doing was firstly reading text, simple, interpreting that text, simple following defined rulesets, analysing the questions, based on logic programmed into it, and deriving the answer. Fabulous to watch and witness but in the end it’s just a dumb machine doing whatever it’s developers programmed it to do.
How are you defining “aware” here. Robots can have sensors of varying types but the human has to programme the robot so it knows how to interpret the signals from those sensors. So for example you can programme a robot to recognise say a fire and programme it not to go near. The robot is not “aware” of the fire, it is just a machine processing signals.
I disagree. Even the impressive Honda robot ASIMO is just a machine doing what it is programmed to do. Nothing more.
I would say that humans display a great many attributes of what we ourselves would call a robot. There is a whole debate to be had in regards to how you define a robot.
There is a cause for every action. Whether one man understands the cause of another’s action is neither here nor there. You can only predict those things you are given to predict.
I don’t preach MJK. I enter civil discourse and debate. It’s obvious that you don’t respond well to alternative view points or to anyone that challenges your posts. You seem to take that personally as if you were being attacked, but that’s not the case. It is through such exchanges of dialogue that we learn and see new avenues to explore. Embrace it.
Phew, trying to argue with you (Realist) is akin to pulling your own teeth out.
Robots can and do ‘evolve’ now. Robots can learn and change. This adaptation is the future of robotics. Adaptation is chaotic in nature with surprising results. You think one man is capable of programming an incredibly complex robot? It is a conglomeration of ‘brains’ inputting all sorts of logic. It is obvious to me that the combined understanding of these programs will be way beyond anything one human brain can grasp. Only the infinitely streamlined and incredibly powerful computer brain will be able to absorb all the signals and interpret them accordingly, but to what result?
I can give you an analogy of the above - Alan Turing breaking the Enigma Code.
If one man’s mind is capable of so much why did he have to create a massive machine to work out the problem? The machine he created was a forerunner of the computers we have today.
Lets take this a step further. The machine worked out a solution that was in effect not known to the creator. He made the damn machine but the results it came out with were beyond his reasoning. Move forward to today where robots are able to find answers that are again beyond any human’s brain to figure out and then to adjust themselves or to create something NEW from them - even to redesign their own brain. This is evolution in a sense and will result in totally unpredictable actions. Taking it a few steps further forward we will eventually no longer understand robots.
And by the way statements such as these …
Robots do not “evolve”.
is akin to preaching. It is trying to impose your dogmatic approach (to everything it seems to me) on others.
Try not to think of forum discussions as arguments. That puts you on the wrong footing from the very start. With arguments there is a tendency to defend your viewpoint at all costs and to some extent to “win” the process. A debate is much different. There are no winners unless it be all participants by learning and broadening their knowledge and understanding.
I simply disagree but most likely much of our differences here come down to your definition of evolution. Learning and changing is not necessarily evolution. I can upgrade the RAM of my PC making it faster and better, but it hasn’t evolved.
Evolution occurs through mutant changes in the form of things and such changes have to fortuitously provide additional benefit in order that the new mutated form has the advantage over non-mutated form. The various processes of “selection” natural or otherwise, then act upon those forms to sift them out and the ones with advantages survive. So for example, a crab that was happily eaten by humans at some stage mutated producing a much uglier (to humans) kind of crab. Still edible but ugly. What happened then was humans would catch and eat the less ugly crabs, throwing the ugly ones back in the water. The net result was the ugly crabs flourished whilst the less-ugly ones died off as their stocks were eaten by humans.
Robots do not mutate or evolve like this. They are machines plain and simple. Now if you want to specifically talk about making a bio-robot i.e. a machine created from living matter and not from nuts and bolts then yes there is a case that the bio living matter could mutate. Whether that would happen in such a way as to provide advantage over other bio-robots who knows. What we know though is that it takes millions of years for such mutations to occur such that significant advantages are seen.
I agree with you that machines can operate quicker and more efficiently than humans in many tasks. SO clearly they will be able to build more of themselves (replication) quicker and more efficiently than we could. But that’s just machinery doing what it has been programmed to do. The “Robot Building” robot is never going to suddenly build a Cat Robot just for the heck of it unless it has been given specific parameters to do so by its creator.
You could quite obviously programme a “Robot Builder” robot with all manner of blueprints and patterns and give it some randomising parameter and set if off running to build whatever it likes. But none of that is evolution. It’s all very predictable. Data in, data out.
Because currently, whilst the human brain is immense in its capacity and processing power, we have not yet been given the programming to know how to use it properly. Hence humans only use a tiny percentage of that massive potential.
So designing and building machines based on electricity and solid state components provided a way to achieve the same results far far quicker and more reliably than a human could achieve. In time, that will of course change.
Not really. In order to arrive at the solution at all, the machine had to be programmed with the process or mechanism for arriving at the answer. The “solution” is nothing more than a by-product. If I teach a child to add up two different numbers and state the result then the child is not in any sense special. The child simply has the mechanism to determine the answer. So if I ask what is 565465234258 + 4632565432542 neither you nor I immediately know what the answer is. But we know how to calculate the answer, we have been taught that process. Similarly the computer is taught the process and so it does the same thing we would do, only thousands/millions time faster and without flaws. The fact that my calculator can achieve this answer doe snot make it in any way clever or “evolved”. It’s just a machine doing what a human has programmed it to do.
I simply state my view/opinion and I am willing to discuss it and for it to be challenged, examined, appraised and dissected. As a result I am prepared for my views at times to be changed by such processes.
You are considering ‘evolving’ only in the biological sense. To ‘evolve’ can be considered to change to improve to alter.
The main crux of this discussion - argument - whatever, is that computers are being programmed (by us I know) to be creative, to learn, thereby allowing them to alter themselves - to change into something different than they were initially. This doesn’t have to be a mechanical alteration but a ‘thinking’ one. They are being allowed to alter their own programming thereby the initial program is no longer as it was or as controlling as it was. The result is a program (computer type thought process) that is surprising in nature. The computer (robot whatever) will react in unforeseen ways.
As far as mechanical alterations are concerned computers are being used to alter designs based on their own findings so again this is a form of change. It all hinges on change from a computer’s own viewpoint which is very new.
You keep drawing the analogy between computers and humans and there is one in that they are both unpredictable owing to their complexity. Robots / computers are becoming more complex by the day. Can you honestly say you are capable of understanding all that another human being can do or how he is likely to react in all circumstances? How much of the human brain do we know about?
A brain is just a bunch of synapses and nerve impulses. You could predict what someone will do if you stuck a pin in his or her leg but that doesn’t enable you to understand all that goes on in a brain, or to always understand all results of all stimuli. Similarly a cpu is just a bunch of electronic impulses but one that can adapt and learn these days. What more does the future hold?
Scientists love pushing the boundaries and handing over development of computers to computers must be fascinating but with far reaching consequences.
I consider it just a matter of time before the processing power of a computer is a match for our brain in all aspects, or at least in most. The worrying part could be the lack of accountability or empathy. But such a computer is bound to exist soon if it doesn’t already.
As an interested bystander I can see the logic in both Mark’s and Realist’s arguments but I tend to come down on Mark’s side. If a computer is programmed to ‘think for itself’ then there is no telling how it will ‘evolve’ or ‘advance’ or whatever label you care to give it. IMO it is quite conceivable that a robot will one day outsmart mankind.
well put Alan I like your succintness - I usually skip all the other garbage well perhaps not MKJ - he is after all one of our true and tested - verbousness is a terminal illness!!
keep goin MKJ we’re with ya on this one - maybe we could ask Robert to join us [no not you RJ the other one] that would really pile it all on and then the thread would grind to an almighty stop!!
ps: has anyone else noticed that realist sounds like a robot??:shock:
:shock:
erm … nah
I didn’t realise I had groupies 
.
well I’d rather be a gropee or even a “doe snot” as recommended by Realist ??
Probably more like the Devil making work for idle hands or the cat being away :shock:
'ang about 'ang about the lack of authenticity is beginning to worry me here
So for example, a crab that was happily eaten by humans at some stage mutated producing a much uglier (to humans) kind of crab. Still edible but ugly. What happened then was humans would catch and eat the less ugly crabs, throwing the ugly ones back in the water. The net result was the ugly crabs flourished whilst the less-ugly ones died off as their stocks were eaten by humans.
now let’s dissect [sorry about the term probably dreaded by crabs] this here - ’ a crab mutates to an uglier crab’ - don’t get this - who defines what is ‘ugly’ and not ‘ugly’ in crabs?? - realist - he must be an expert on crabs - do you have crabs at the moment Realist?
then he suggests that if there became an ‘ugly crab’ less humans would eat the ‘ugly crabs’ - how bizzare
- now realist can predict what other humans cannot determine are ugly or non-ugly crabs and then decide on that basis that because they are ugly their flesh will not be acceptable or edible or tasty - this guy or computer is making quantum leaps starting with crabs but perhaps the rest of us -yes he is definitely a computer and not a human!!:twisted::twisted:
Aha … a revelation ! … beauty is in the eye of the beholder 