Sounds as if you are close to the source. So, what are the real dangers of creating robots who will be brighter than us and perhaps not so willing to do our bidding, when it doesn't suit them? And is it the military that is financing most of this?
Its already here anyway.......has been for ages........I'll bet nobody can paint spray a car as well and as quickly as a robot.
You may not be far wrong there mate, Blackadder is one of the latest colours from Ford, along with Dogknob pink.
Ahhh AI, yes. You could easily argue that we already have forms of AI at work. Take something as simple as autocorrect. That's a system smart enough to correct a spelling mistake. Now ramp that up a little and we already have robots that work in factories that are 'programmed' to follow a specific set of rules, which 'could' be argued as an intelligence. Will we have a system like in the movies? Its certainly possible. Of course the military will take an interest as they'll claim it will save lives. Drones are already in wide use. The idea of an AI that is self aware is potentially one of the scariest future scenarios we could face. Will it happen? Who knows? but by the time it does, I'd venture at lest 90% of us will be long dead and buried.
In really simple terms, is AI a software programme or algorithm, whatever its called, the ability for a machine, programme, to make decisions, learn and realise its virtual environment and to make calculated decisions based on what it has learned?
The term 'Self Aware' gets banded around a lot when talking about AI, normally followed by scary or terrifying but what's to say a box of transistors would have the same sense of awareness as a human? We are aware in that we sense our surroundings and make judgements based on our understanding. Why would an AI in the purest sense need the same senses as us? What use would an AI have for touch or smell? Are people genuinely scared of AI or are they really scared that Hollywood has got it right? Intelligence is the same whether it is artificial or organic, are you scared of the person sat next to you because they are self aware? What's the difference between them and a box of transistors? I'm genuinely interested this as I am a futurist, i'm excited by potential for the technology not scared of one possible future...
The best thing you can do to answer most of your questions here (in fact, pretty useful for anyone who wants to have a view on this question) is to read the short papers at the base of my post on the gliddofglood blog referenced in Post No. 1. This will tell you more than I can. What seems obvious is that AI is not far away. AI being the ability of a system to learn things and self-correct, to educate itself if you like. It will inevitably become self-aware, or it wouldn't be very intelligent, would it? I won't bother repeating here all the things that I have already said on the blog, or that academics have said about it
I have just read your blog post (but admittedly not the supporting papers) and it's very good but seems to only focus on the military applications. My point on the sense of awareness was that if an AI perceives the world differently would it react to things in the same way as a human being? Why would it be interested in the limitations of inhabiting the physical world if it has access to the near unlimited possibilities of a virtual one? And if it resides in a virtual world would it care what we do in the real world? I don't subscribe to the theory that a self aware AI will automatically become violent towards humans, we as a race would have to do something to precipitate such a reaction. I also believe that the first real self aware AI will not be a military development, the military want a level of intelegence but primarily they want control, not a rescalable learning machine.
The only real concern of an emergent AI would be for its own safety. It is unlikely to be dangerous to humans unless it was able to perceive them as a threat. It would have no instinctual reactions - xenophobia, for instance - as it would have no antecedents endowing such instincts. The military absolutely does not want AI. It doesn't even want autonomous intelligence from its existing flesh-and-blood assets, no way it wants anything like that from machines.
