2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal

Don't throw the human nature baby out with the transhumanism bath water

I'd rather be a human than a robot. Just b/c you're a loser, who hates your life, doesn't mean we all have to become slaves to the technotronic era.

The problem with this line of reasoning is that it assumes that computers are "getting smarter."

This is not the case.

Computers are already "smarter" than people in a sense, since the entire reasonwe use them is that they can do a million calculations a second whereas it can take us 30 seconds to do just one.

But that's not relevant because computers, believe it or not, are MACHINES. In the literal sense of that word.

Even if we made a computer a billion times more powerful than they are right now, you would not develop an AI. A computer would no more develop intelligence because of speed than your car become autonomous because of an engine a million times more efficient and fast.

Computers run on algorithms and logic gates, they take in input and spit out output.

Until we can literally redesign them to emulate human intelligence, which can learn and reason on its own, then it doesn't matter how fast a computer is, it's not any more intelligent than your toaster is.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for the coming singularity. I'm a tranhumanist. But we need to be realistic about when we can actually expect AI, and the bottom line is that we can't expect it at all until we figure out how intelligence and the human brain works, which we're still a ways off from doing.

i understand how self awarness leads to consciousness, and computers will someday get that (or already have). But while we are in humanities 101, how does this fit in with the Floating Man thought experiment. that is would the computer realy ever be able to become real.

In this age of aquarius, as we go threw the navel of time, our understanding will seem to speed up, along with our inventions like computer's. Among the Indigo, Crystal and Rainbow children like www.AkianeKramarike.com there are millions like her and somehow are unaware that they exist. We seem to think that an Avatar has a blue face, but like the India Avatar, or 'Indigo', they have [blue] Aura's. While many of the children born after 1948, when Israel became into being again, many of those children communicate on the 'grid', which some call telepathy. To say computer's will out smart us, is only true to those that don't know who we really are. To understand this, one can Google Indigo Children and learn what an Avatar really is. P.S., I am new to this site, and am trying to learn my way around here.

I love how this author relishes in the thought that humans could one day be replaced by machines. I myself would like to see a day when human intelligence is expanded so that we don't require machines as much. Our focus should be human intelligence, ascension, actual immortality even. I see a future with a harmonious relationship with technology where humans are the grander. Not some sky net type future where we practically ask the machines to annihilate us by putting them in control of our entire military and nuclear arsenal. How foolish!

Unless they develop an ego, I think we'd be okay.

Many assumptions about the progress of technology are often subject to inaccuracies. As time passes, unforeseeable events may occur that can drastically alter ones vision of the future.

There are many variables that could hasten or slow the advance of Artificial Intelligence and computing. Lack of resources, war and human opposition could hold back development. On the other hand, breakthroughs in fibre optics and photonic circuits could rapidly speed up development.

The major problem is actually creating an Artificial Intelligence that can even begin to learn in a similar manor to a human. All the computing power in the world could not even compete with the complexities involved with the learning abilities of a four year old child. Trying to create an AI that could reason somewhere in the vicinity of a mature adult is a staggeringly difficult prospect.

A robot vacuum cleaner is a simple task. AI comparable to a human intelligence is akin to a grain of sand compared to the entire solar system. It's a momentous challenge. Though humans never cease to amaze me with their ingenuity.

Two words: Battlestar Gallactica.

So basically, we can destroy the human race ourselves or let them save it, then enslave it. Either way we're fucked.

Machines have been replacing humans by the thousands ever since the cotton gin was invented by Eli Whitney. Our lives are not better for it, people are literally starving in American streets and the richest men seem to create... well nothing really. I think it is plausible to think computers will proliferate in the "Sci Fi" manner you mention. The effects of that are already known.

Heh - - -Just upload me into the "cloud", and reboot me when I am a god !

+^d