Why not machines

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The first general AI will certainly be in a very naive state when it is turned on, since you can't get real sentient behavior out of the systems we have today, which act kind of like ants or bees: they don't need a lot of training, relatively speaking, but are very good at only a few things.

It will need a teacher to impart behavior, and that teacher will most likely be the US military. As such, it will probably be trained to have some inclination towards wiping out things it doesn't like outright and surviving at all costs, as well as a good working knowledge of deceit. You wouldn't expect anything other than highly calculating psychopathy, right?

(I'm not 'afraid' of this scenario btw)

How do you impart to a hard AI any human notions of right/wrong, good/evil? It wouldn't be enough for HAL 900 or whatever to understand right/wrong good/evil; HAL 9000 (or whatever) would actually have to believe in those right/wrong good/evil concepts. Which begs the question, if a machine intelligence can have morality, should it be made to believe in God?

It would be the job of the human operator to supply the AI with the input. But where to begin? Since this would be a learning computer, the logical place to start would be at infancy. Raise it like you would a child.

It would need some kind of interface with which to experience the world, a body of some kind.

The DoD isn't listening. I can't say when they will have this 'child', but you can bet your ass it's going to be in boot camp from day one.



It would be trusted with sensors and effectors of all kinds in no time, indeed many more than we have. In the air, on the land and in the sea...indeed in LEO, too. Mind you, I'm not pulling things out of my ass; these predictions are extrapolated only slightly from official military documents in public circulation.

Isn't this sort of reinventing the wheel, as the saying goes? So humans bring it up...and then it grows up to be like a human. What would be the point in that?

Hate to sound brutal here, but if people in this thread are so eager for the day that machines become self-aware and self-sufficient and kill us all, because we are such a horribly deceitful, misguided and selfish race, then why haven't you killed yourselves yet? If you yourselves are so imperfect, why have you not decided it would be better if you didn't exist at all?
Because really, at the end of the day, you are so human yourselves that you cannot see the fundamental flaw in your argument: That it is still entirely driven by emotion. The only reason you see humanity in such a poor light, is because you see the state of the world, and have an emotional response towards it. The fact that Chever was quoting the lyrics to Godsend by Suicide Commando speaks volumes about his real motives, and it has very little to do with logic. In a purely logical sense, why does wiping out humanity really even matter? Why does technology matter? Why does life at all on this planet matter? If we do end up leaving this planet in total ruins like all the naysayers say, what does it matter if there's not going to be any sentient life left around to go 'ohh, that's nice'? Emotional responses. Reactions to stimulii.
Sure, I think humanity is in dire straits at the moment, and so is the planet. Something needs to be done for sure. But if there's not going to be any sentient life around to appreciate improvement, then the whole thing is utterly pointless.
/end-rant

Civilisation is a miracle of organisation. An "organically" evolved system for feeding, housing, and training thousands of millions of people at the same time.

I don't think that this human machine has done badly at all, considering. People ( "human machines") keep coming up with new sytems, some are a disaster, others are improvements.

And yes, I think that to produce that degree of initiative, creativity, and adaptivity in another machine it also would probably have to go through a process of "growing up" as we do.

.

Cuz I'm an engineering major. (See below.)



The scale is tipping. We need people to stomp on the heavier side.

Not!

What do you mean 'not'

That doesn't really answer my point. Sure, I'm not doubting your ability to build legions of death-robots, but give me a single valid reason why, preferrably without resorting to vague metaphors.

It'd be pretty cool.

Did I not resort to vague metaphors there?

I don't know, "the final triumph of Cosmos over Chaos on Earth" sounds exciting.

Sounds like a Bal Sagoth album to me

Come to think of it yeah

I can definitely imagine that being said in a bombastic Yorkshire accent

Would it be possible to have human and machine civilizations running parallel to each other with neither side jockeying for supremacy?

Anyone see The Animatrix?