April 19, 2011 @ 8: 11 PM Skynet goes online and will end the world on Thursday!

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Well not really but in the science fiction movie Terminator 2, the Skynet system went online and declared war on humanity within a few days, starting a long conflict between artificial intelligence and humans. Recently in an interview, director and producer James Cameron said:

"Kyle Reese said in the first film that it was only 'one possible future.' Clearly, not the one we're in. Maybe Kyle, Sarah, John and the T-800 changed things enough to steer us away from that possible future...Now instead of nuclear war and the machines taking over, we need to worry about global climate change. And the machines taking over. With everybody going through their lives bent over their Blackberries all day long, you could even argue the machines have already won."

But what can we really expect? Sure-- if you look at movies from the 1950s and 1960s, or even Star Trek, the predictions have been somewhat more off than on, depending on what you use as a yardstick. But what are people saying NOW? What's OUR future really hold? Futurist Ray Kurzweil lays out his vision in a new documentary Transcedent Man - Prepare to Evolve to released next month.


And Mr. Kurzweil was a featured guest on The Colbert Report. Kurzweil's track record at making predictions is impressive (it's reviewed briefly in the Colbert piece), but our future will be a surprisingly Terminator-esque, with a melding of computers and technology and humanity in an effort to manage the constantly exponential growth of change, and knowledge and "information overload." Within 25 years, according to Mr. Kurzweil, nanobots will heal and restore human health, medical technology will eventually be able to "download" your memories, your personalities, and technology will theoretically be able to restore you in the case of a "breakdown." Kurzweil also believes that humans will become nearly immortal, and his personal lifestyle choices are his attempt to live long enough to see those advances.

Is Mr.Kurzweil too optimistic? What are the implications for society at large? Who will reap the benefits of such technological advances? Some have suggested that lower income lack of broadband Internet access is already hampering their chances and likelihood at breaking out of their poverty in a world that is becoming wired more. The National Broadband Map shows rural areas are naturally lagging behind cities. Other studies have examined the economic breakdown in more detail. But will our future be a case of the Morlocks and Eloi? I'm not familiar enough with Mr. Kurzweil's theories to know what he offers in a way of solutions to make sure everyone's boat rises with the technological tide. That issue aside, do any community participants have thoughts or fears about where all these technological will lead us?

Here is the trailer for Transcendent Man - Prepare to Evolve

Comments

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

Akchewalie, in T2 skynet goes online on August 29th, 1997. Today is the Sarah Connor Chronicles timeline.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I'm a LOTR nut, Star Trek OS nut, but not so much into Terminator. :P

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

Oh and w00! about the Kurzweil movie, I'm a bit of a fanboy.

I like to hope of a future where once we can upload our brains we'll be able to just be uploaded into a virtual world and live forever in peace and happiness; provided the flesh bodies on the outside don't fuck things up...

Actually, this is probably how the whole rise of the machines happens. Gen Y gets to upload after retirement and wind up getting all pissy at the kids of today. Only now, rather than shaking a cane at teenagers we'll be able to transfer our consciousness to a KillBot and go on a rampage at the local high school.

The future is going to be SWEET.

[terminator44.livejournal.com]

Beat me to it!

[paedraggaidin.livejournal.com]

Peter F. Hamilton explored what a future human society might be like when it became essentially immortal through memory-downloads and cloned bodies (in the "Commonwealth Saga"). It might be science fiction, but it's fascinating stuff, I think. Especially the religious implications (is the consciousness that from a memory cell implanted in the brain of a cloned body really you? Is it your original soul, or is a new one created? Is the soul, in effect, downloadable?)

Of course, it seems that very rarely do the technologies we think will develop along a certain line actually do so. Witness the original Star Trek: everyone has cell phones now, but the way computers advanced seems to have happened completely different.

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

My honours thesis was on the merging of the subject-object dichotomy between humans and their technology. As our technology becomes more and more embedded there will be less of a sense of our technology as something not-us. My prediction is that by the time we get to sentient robot technology any attempt to differentiate between them and us will be moot (actually, I think there will be a big pure-human/transhuman divide, but there won't be an easy human/not-human divide). In fact it is my prediction that machine sentience will come as a result of human consciousness uploading (if for no other reason than it will be really easy to deny sentience before then).

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Have fun ;)

You may like this too

[terminator44.livejournal.com]

I remember a prominent SF author (can't remember the name, though Robert A. Heinlein made a similar point) who wrote that science fiction isn't supposed to predict the future. It's meant to, as you said, use a future setting to tell a story that's fundamentally rooted in the past and present.

Anyway, robots will definitely destroy mankind long before zombies appear. :D

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

I for one have always wondered how much of things like email is influenced by previous ideas. Would email work as it does were it not for Clarke's predictions? Who can say. Would we have the iPhone if not for the Tricorder? Who knows...

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

I recall a book called 2000 And Beyond which was written somewhere in the 70s and it was full with predictions of the sort: "At the rate humankind is increasing, by 2000 there will be no space left and people would be sitting on top of each other". LOL.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't say it's never been good at predicting things. H.G. Wells predicted tanks, aerial warfare, chemical warfare, Jules Verne predicted space travel and functional submarines, Ray Bradbury predicted future generations would be so obsessed with panem et circenses that life itself would be lost.....

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

It's not Skynet we need to fear, it's GladOS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Glados-welcome.ogg).

[terminator44.livejournal.com]

She ain't nothing but a ho, and Skynet's her pimp.

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

I'm still mad about how they butchered the script for T4, the one where Sam Worthington's character becomes John Connor and lets Christian Bale make eight more Batman films.

[anosognosia.livejournal.com]

"I'm still mad about how they butchered the script for T4..."

You're not kidding. I waited my entire life for a movie about the machine wars, and I got that crap.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I for one blame the British for our future Robot overlords:

http://www.secret-bases.co.uk/secret2.htm#skynet

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

I thought this would be appropriate.

[terminator44.livejournal.com]

The greatest story ever told. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qnq7N6X4x84&feature=related)

[rasilio.livejournal.com]

He is both massively right and wrong.

The idea that we will be able to predict what life will be like 25 years from now is laughable. There will be inventions and developments that will change life in ways we cannot possible imagine and which may very well make life then incomprehensible to us today.

That said the ideas that some of his specific predictions will come true anywhere near that time frame or in the ways he imagines are infinitesimally small.

Things I think are wrong,

Downloading out consciousness into a computer will not occur anytime within our lifetimes and probably not our childrens. We simply do not have enough understanding of how the brain works or the nature of consciousness to begin to contemplate how to build a hardware platform capable of doing the job. Far more likely is we develop the ability to vat grow entire cloned bodies and copy the neural patterns we already possess into them but my guess is even that will take another century to master.

Within 25 years we may start to see the first functioning nanobots and yes they will be used in medicine first, however I think he is a few decades ahead of their being able to constantly repair our bodies from any injury or illness, more likely on the timeframe he is talking we'll have learned how to make them to cure a few forms of cancer and they will progress from there.


Where I think he is right is that we will see a continual merging of us and our technology and that within 25 years we will see the first 2 way direct neural interface devices, where you can not only send data to a computer to give it instructions just by thinking about it, but also have it feed data directly into your brain. I don't think they'll be commonplace at that time, but the first generations will appear. Most likely uses will be remote control of robotic devices in dangerous areas (toxic and nuclear waste dumps, combat zones, etc.), telemedicine, and replacement body parts (aka cybernetic limbs), we might also start to see devices like that just starting to enter the entertainment market as well.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

For example jet packs and flying cars have existed since the 1940s and there was a general belief that both would prove more efficient than the mundane automobile and the internal combustion engine. As it turned out the automobile and the jet plane were superior technology as far as convenience.

Ironically there's a real-life corporation named Cyberdyne working on robotics and there's a British satellite system with military applications named Skynet. The real-life Cyberdyne is a Japanese corporation, though, and bipedal robots are unlikely barring some major improvements in robotics engineering to make viable front-line soldiers.

Now, drone tanks like our UAVs, OTOH.......

[telemann.livejournal.com]

The idea that we will be able to predict what life will be like 25 years from now is laughable.

His track record is rock solid for what he's predicted so far, and he's not doing this in some style of doing daily astrology readings, he's an inventor and had to make rock solid predictions on where technology is and will be, so as a successful businessman, he would know what to work on.

[chron-job.livejournal.com]

> the predictions have been somewhat more off than on, depending
> on what you use as a yardstick.

I remember a quote from Robert Anton Wilson concerning evolution/history/change and predicting the path of any such. If you gathered together a committee of Apes to design the next big thing, you might have expected them to try an invent an Ape mark II. A super ape. An ape+. Perhaps bigger, stronger of arm, able to brachiate faster, etc.

But not a human.


Most predictions about the future are of the Ape Mark II type. Flying Cars, Cures for Cancer, typical wish fulfillment of today's desires... not a prediction about what desires of tomorrow will rule us.

The important things in history are transformative, and by definition, the changes they make defy prediction. Star Trek could conceive of faster than light star ships, but not the PC.

But I wonder if the singularity will change human nature much...

[telemann.livejournal.com]

lol

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

There is literally zero meaningful progress on a computer than can simulate the processing architecture of the human mind; because we still don't know how the human brain/mind works. Generally speaking, the idea that we can load ourselves onto a chip is generally rejected, since human consciousness is beginning to look like an integral system of embodied presence. Take away the body, take away consciousness. Asmiov said as much, which is why you'd need human shaped robots. But even that is a far-cry from just putting yourself on a holo-drive and not existing other than a series of ones and zeroes. Which of course is sad, cuz you'll have millions of people committing suicide and no way of knowing.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I watched the documentary, and several biologists and neurologists said pretty much that. The leap for AI is also a dicey bet, at least at the level that Kurzweil is talking about. And if it does happen, several commentators said essentially humans will become useless and a source of irritation for the hybrid machines/humans. In other words, a Matrix/Terminator future indeed.