see this adorable robot and the mean things they're doing2it

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It's ok. Robots don't currently have consciousness or the capacity to feel. Even AI in its current state isn't really "intelligence", at least not in the way I'd define it. I don't think we need sentient machines.

I wouldn't mind a friendly sentient machine

I'm not entirely sure that it's possible. Or even ethical. The machines would have to be afforded basic rights, and we'd be their "creators". I'm not sure that we should be playing God. We aren't as smart as we think we are.

Plus we can't even afford animals basic rights. Neuroscience has confirmed that many animals, especially mammals, have feelings and a sense of self as we do. Especially more intelligent ones such as great apes, cetaceans, and elephants. Yet we hold them in captivity and subject them to cruel experiments as if they are objects rather than beings.

in japan they are working on friendly quasi-sentient machines to care for their elderly.

I wonder why the young people are not caring for the elderly. I thought it was tradition to have three generations in the home. Or is it for those who are very ill?

While that's true, we are creeping up the evolutionary ladder in terms of fully understanding & replicating organic neural functionality. For instance, the Drosophila of the neurology world is a 2mm nematode that has 400 neurons in the male and 364 (I think) in the bi sex. Every neuron has been mapped out, not only in connectivity but also functionality. It's even possible to map the connections, expose it to a specific stimulus and then map out the changes in connections. Coming from the other end of the process, we're getting pretty good at really high level functionality like speech & speech recognition, biped and quad locomotion, sensory abilities, etc.. There's nothing "magical" about consciousness; it's just really, really complex at our level. At the level of other animals, it's not always so complicated as much more of their connectivity is hardwired by genetics (although others have neural functionality that surpasses ours in specific areas). And again, we are creeping up the spectrum of consciousness complexity in our successes to replicate. Being humans, we're really good at building tools that automate the analysis & reduction of complexity & there is so much of what we once considered purely the realm of consciousness that we now understand to be purely mechanical (electro-chemical, really, but you get the idea).

Let's just hope roboscientists of the near future don't forget their Asimov...

too many elderly, not enough young to care for them, birth rate below replacement levels. also they are very crowded over there on that little bit of land they got.

Oh, I had forgotten about the low birth rate. That's a shame. And of course people live much longer more than they used to. I believe that the Japanese are particularly long-lived.

they live long due to comparatively undeteriorated genes and superb national health care from cradle to grave, in addition to a relatively healthy diet.

Plus smaller, shorter people live longer, in general.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1071721/

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0094385

Can't find the really descriptive article I had found before. Anyway, it described the study of Japanese men, longevity, and height. The shortest Japanese men tended to live the longest.

The same is often true for other populations, but humans are getting taller with each generation. I guess my short stature is good for something

I bet you'll still be as a spring chicken in 2050 while i'll be pushing up the daisies

I hope you won't be crawling out of your grave like that, though.

My family is generally very long lived. So far, all but one grandparent has made it past 90. We'll see if anyone makes it to 100. The ones that are still with us are not too far off from being centenarians.

I'll probably be around for a very long time, whether I want to be or not.

hopefully by the time you're my age this world will have ironed out its frictions and it will be a more peaceful and enjoyable time for you to live.

I hope so. I certainly don't want things to be any worse than they are, at the least.

I suspect you and your generation will have a hand in making this a better world