Anyone else think Technological Singularity is a joke?

[KevDen2005]

I think it's possible. Then, after a major world wide nuclear strike, machines will fight and wipe out the remaining humans. Hopefully there will be a man that can lead everyone and fight these machines...my fear at this point will be time travel...

[Byte Stryke]

Computer chip implants?

insanity I say!

or is it?

Saw a story where they are using small implants in certain parts of the brain to control things like epilepsy and other disorders.

My Father's pacemaker uses a computer interface and can be controlled remotely.

[spyder]

I thought about saying what kind of stuff they already put into people, but I didn't earlier. They have quite a bit of stuff ready to stick into us from artificial eye implants, hearts (which don't last longer than 18 months currently), limbs which we all know about, brain "pacemakers" which are used to stimulate the brain, and soon to come are nice new man built lungs. None of the devices make us any smarter, but eventually I see them being able to tap into that realm also. Now as far as not being able to understand how technology works, that is already happening. Hell, there are some people on this forum who don't understand how their AR's work yet alone a state of the art computer system or something like that.

[Pancho Villa]

If the govt doesn't crater civilization first, we are really on the cusp of some incredibly neat things.

All that "robots take over" stuff is nonsense, because by the time we have robots that can think you'll have people who can compute like a computer. It'll just be the next new thing for all the old codgers to say is the debil.

It'll also be totally awesome, if we get there.

[Ronin13]

I think the biggest issue I have with the singularity is that it assumes that progress is automatic.

LOL, I just thought of that old saying: "If the opposite of Pro is Con, then wouldn't the opposite of progress be congress?"

With technology the way it is right now, in 2011, it feels like we have kinda hit the brakes a bit. From 1890-1950 technology was changing so fast like a runaway train, then the space race and arms race and tech went leagues beyond what we could possibly imagine. Then all of a sudden, in the 80's it seems like everything except computers just stopped. We've been traveling to the heavens in planes that were designed in the 70's, flying into space on a vehicle that was designed in the late 70's, and the internal combustion engine has gone relatively unchanged for 30+ years. Science Fiction to Science Fact hasn't moved ahead as fast as it was estimated. Hell in 1985 they thought today we'd all have flying cars, cybernetic limbs and implants, colonies on the moon, people exploring mars, and weapons advanced beyond projectiles. In that place, what do we have? Pretty much the same crap from 1985 except in newer, smaller, slightly more advanced form. I want my phaser, flying car, insta-meals, and head-implanted cellphone!

[spyder]

If the govt doesn't crater civilization first, we are really on the cusp of some incredibly neat things.

All that "robots take over" stuff is nonsense, because by the time we have robots that can think you'll have people who can compute like a computer. It'll just be the next new thing for all the old codgers to say is the debil.

It'll also be totally awesome, if we get there.

There are already incredibly neat things already. None of it gets any big press though so not many people know about it. As far as robots taking over.... I think the movie I-Robot is the closest thing to what could happen in the near future, non intelligent (other than the main computer) machines working on basic programming against humanity. We have robots that can stand, run, do cartwheels, and hold and manipulate objects with their hands. All they need is the programming to do their job... So, how impossible is something like that? Oh, and we do have computers that think and reason already also being used in the science field. It just depends on what extent of "thinking" you are talking about. There are robots that do research on their own and have made scientific discoveries on their own without human help. There are robots that as a lot of people know, fight eachother, some with and some without human control. They go about trying to destroy eachother without randomly going nuts and trying to destroy the arena wall in which they are put in. In the end, it all depends on who has the tech, and what they would do with it.

Some new tech I read about recently was a 19 gigabyte camera (off subject of killer robots, I know...).

[Pancho Villa]

Human consciousness is way more complicated than just a computer, though.

To have a computer have the capacity to learn in the same ways a human does is the holy grail of computer science, and we're still a long ways from that. We can program them to analyze pictures, identify friends and foes, etc., but as yet we don't have a robot that can learn like a human can.

[Ronin13]

Human consciousness is way more complicated than just a computer, though.

To have a computer have the capacity to learn in the same ways a human does is the holy grail of computer science, and we're still a long ways from that. We can program them to analyze pictures, identify friends and foes, etc., but as yet we don't have a robot that can learn like a human can.

What about those web bots I keep hearing about? How they mine the internet for data and try to figure stuff out... they don't learn like us, yet, but they can develop their own formulas to predict different trends like stock market, housing market, etc. I know they were programmed to do what they do, but they also learn and adapt from the data they go through.

[Pancho Villa]

We have adaptive programs that can change how they operate based on a strict set of rules, but I don't think they "learn" in the same way we do. You'd have to write a different set of learning codes to cover every possible situation for the robot, and if it ever encountered something not coded for it would just take a shit and not know what to do. Overly complicated and VERY fragile.

Those adaptive programs are neat; a friend who was a day trader used one to automatically predict trends as stock prices went up/down. Had some pretty phenomenal returns for a while, and then equally bad losses.

[spyder]

Human consciousness is way more complicated than just a computer, though.

To have a computer have the capacity to learn in the same ways a human does is the holy grail of computer science, and we're still a long ways from that. We can program them to analyze pictures, identify friends and foes, etc., but as yet we don't have a robot that can learn like a human can.

I never said anything about human consciousness or a computer being able to think exactly like a human. What do you mean by learn exactly? There are computers that can read text, store it, and use the information in the text later on. There are computers that do experiments, formulate theories and learn from them also. So it all depends on what you mean by learn... Is a computer ever going to be like a human? Who knows, but pancho, there is a lot of tech out there that you apparently don't know about. Like I stated earlier, not many people do.