Why not machines

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I assume the monkey did not volunteer for the surgery and sign a release form.


*sigh*


When it comes to animal testing, I am really of two minds.

Animal testing is the price that is paid in the name of progress. As a biology student I have personally participated in tests that required the death of an animal; it is never pleasant but the knowledge gained is, in my opinion, well worth it. Granted, I worked with goldfish, so I cannot comment on the ethics of primate research.

In relevance to the topic, this is extremely interesting. I am fascinated by electrophysiology and this is right up my alley; I am curious to the direction that they take this research.

I try to keep out of the threads on topics like abortion, the death penalty, animal testing, animal curelty, hunting...stuff like that in general. I have my views, but

Me too. I can only wish it even close to my alley. Way out of my league.

If animals are to be sacrificed on the altar of science, I would want the sacrifice to be truly worthwhile. If the research is aimed at bettering or saving human lives, I understand the urgency and the importance. It's a shame, though, that the reseachers can't control the outcome and moreover the fruits of their work. I'd hate to think of all those research animals destroyed for what ultimately amounted to nothing.

It's sad, but if it can save or improve human lives, it is worth it.

But testing cosmetic products on animals is deplorable and must stop.

Ok...I had a really long argument to post here...but I thought it would clutter too much, and would only result in what I consider to be another form of the last example I give in this reply. So Here is the little bit of information I will reply with simply to defend myself.

Continous: Variables that can take on any value in a certain range. Time and distance are continuous; gender, SAT score and "time rounded to the nearest second" are not. Variables that are not continuous are known asdiscrete variables. No measured variable is truly continuous; however, discrete variables measured with enough precision can often be considered continuous for practical purposes.

Discrete: Variables that can only take on a finite number of values are called "discrete variables." All qualitative variables are discrete. Some quantitative variables are discrete, such as performance rated as 1,2,3,4, or 5, or temperature rounded to the nearest degree. Sometimes, a variable that takes on enough discrete values can be considered to be continuous for practical purposes. One example is time to the nearest millisecond. Variables that can take on an infinite number of possible values are called continuous variables.

What you are after...is the specifics of a MEASURED AND DEFINED set of N independent variables known to be in use of the BINOMIAL DISTRIBUTION. (or in some scenarios normal or poisson distribution)

What I am describing is an INFINITE....not FINITE. Not meant to be measured for use in everyday life, but rather to signify the bigger picture of an unending series.

I'm not looking for what the TOTALITY of the SUMS of an infinite series is. I'm essentially looking for the lower bound of what 1 divided by LIMITLESSNESS is.

Since you cannot technically plug that number(infinity) in as a measurement(even though people do for practical mathematical purposes), you define it as a LIMIT. That LIMIT is ZERO.

Don't try to attack the concept and use the word "approach."(even though your last comment was no different than this) All that shows is you want to play devils advocate with such notions like (freewill vs fate, god or not god, etc.) and cannot accept the notion of the vernacular when you know damn well the vernacular form is the only way to have a conversation other than:

AntiValue...anti-antivalue...anti-anti-antivalue...etc.

or

Person A(chever): I pick 3 centillion
Person B(hero): Pick a further number...
Person A(chever): Than I pick 3 centillion and 1
Person B(hero): *sigh* ...PICK A FURTHER NUMBER!!

etc. etc.

I'm not interested in playing that game. That is exercise in futility for both sides.

And here's my response:

http://www.google.com/search?q=coin+bin ... ite%3A.edu

The coin flipping experiment you described has a binomial distribution. Which is discrete. Period.

And I know full well that P(all heads) approaches zero as n approaches infinity. But what the fuck does that have to do with the fact that the US military is at the forefront of applying AI techniques?



Well ... another project is to 'enhance' soldiers with technology. Keep them awake without fatigue for hours, give them electronic sensor input directly to the brain, etc. Believe it or not, the fundamentals of this technology already exist and have been used to give a blind man crude artificial vision.

This whole thread is based on speculative concept.



If your whole argument of this scenario being so likely is based on research and development by DARPA, then any resulting army of death-robots will be controlled by humans who will be pretty interested in the idea of self-preservation. Any sentient AI that may be eventually developed will certainly have some sort of clause built into its codebase/neural-net model that would prevent it from taking action against its masters. So unless the system had some means of overwriting its own hard-coded enforced behaviours, it would have no way of rebelling against its masters and killing everyone.



I'm glad you agree with me.

Very interesting...have any links?

Yes

http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ad ... erformance

Depends on how much autonomy we give them; if indeed we give robots the ability to have creative thoughts (those are not my words), they can look out for #1. It also depends on who else has them, too. And, above all, it depends on the officials in charge not doing something stupid. There are quite a few variables there.

I suppose we aren't really thinking the Three Laws of Robotics will work eh?

Hmm... pretty much everyone has seen Terminator by now, ESPECIALLY the geeks who will be working on the AI for such a machine, and I'm pretty sure not many of them will want the blood on their hands for exterminating their own race. I've certainly heard of certain people within the US military wanting future developments on AI to include a spin on Asimov's 3 laws of robotics, which I know is not exactly an ideal solution, but at least it shows that the issue is at least given some importance when such matters are discussed.

Autonomous cruise missiles can be considered robots, in some sense...

But by 2015 at the earliest, you are probably going to see a lot more violations committed by non-trivial robots. That's why the URBAN challenge is conducted every year: to provide the research for building autonomous ground vehicles.

• Many of them, possibly including me especially now that Cornell University has expressed interest, obviously do not give a flying fuck about anything.
• Myopia besets a lot of technical and military personnel, even ones with at least partly good intentions. And you can't discount that either.

Yes ... these kinds of people typically retire or are 'dismissed'.

The 3 laws of robotics will of course not work when a robot has military application. The first law being "A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm." Immediately, if the robot is being used for battlefield purposes, this law is violated.
A suitable modification may be something along the lines of 'A robot may not injure a human being without the express command of a figure of authority', but of course this is way too ambiguous and open to exploitation.

You seemed to have a problem with the notion of the robots maintenance dying out over an infinite timeframe. Hence, my problem with what you wrote...etc.

otherwise...

You have no way of measuring that the US military is at the forefront of empirically applying AI techniques. They are certainly a major contributor, and SEEMINGLY ONE of the FOREFRONT of applying AI techniques...but unless you have documented sources from every international, national, public, private or independant industry that could somehow relate to robotics(even if they themselves did not mean to contribute)...you have no basis to make a comment about who is where.

Seeing as how no one on the earth has that wealth of data...I know you sure don't. The most we have EVER had were studies of speculation or opinion. And most opinions had everything to do with pride and identity with certain organizations.

Not exactly ambiguous. You would simply need a database for those who it could harm and those who it could not harm. As long as you had sufficient data, it would be able to follow the command.

That might result in loopholes for others to take advantage...or those involved in the creation to dictate some social heirarchy or abuse their creation's abilities...however those involved would likely do that, rather than let a robot go maverick without some form of safety guarantee.