Re: Robots, but philosophers (or, Hal-2001)

From: Franklin Wayne Poley (culturex@vcn.bc.ca)
Date: Fri Sep 29 2000 - 17:50:53 MDT


On Thu, 28 Sep 2000, Samantha Atkins wrote:

> Franklin Wayne Poley wrote:
> >
> > On Wed, 27 Sep 2000, Samantha Atkins wrote:
> >
> > > Franklin Wayne Poley wrote:
> > >
> > > > How about 2001, Hal? Could it be that by 2001, someone somewhere will
> > > > already have AI machinery to surpass human equivalency?
> > >
> > > Not on this planet. Maybe you want to call on Ashtar High Command or
> > > some such. :-) They've been feeding us all of this tech anyway, don't
> > > ya know?
> >
> > How about the "Andromeda Strain", some little AI seed that will grow by
> > genetic algorithms until it knows all?
>
> Where do you propose this seed came from? Do you honestly think we are
> capable of creating it next year? Don't confuse fiction with reality.
> We live in sci-fi times but let's keep some groundedness for the sake of
> halfway decent real-world plots.

I put that out tongue-in-cheek but I couldn't find the tongue-in-cheek
character on my keyboard. Apologies. Mind you, there are some interesting
fantasies out there and <http://www.interchangelab.com> is one Andromeda
Strain scenario. Some pretty big breakthroughs are going to happen if
Kurzweil-the-Prophet is borne out re 20,000 years of progress (at today's
rate) being actualized between now and 2099. No wonder poor old Bill Joy
suffers from nanophobia (and I don't mean fear of nannies). Bill has
nightmares about Andromeda strain AI. Then there's Doug Lenat,
<http://www.Cyc.com> who tells us on his web site "How to build HAL today
in three easy steps."

Such dreamers!

Niknarf
(That's Frankin, backwards)



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Oct 02 2000 - 17:39:27 MDT