Re: [Vo]:New supercomputer is a rack of PlayStations
On Thu, Feb 28, 2008 at 11:34 AM, Jones Beene [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [SIDE NOTE] In truth, at least in the short history of evolution on earth, it has been the dominant predator which becomes the dominant species; and in the case of 'homo sapiens', being able to use logic and thinking has helped greatly in that quest for domination - but most apparently, the details of that help has been in the design and building of, among other things, superior killing machines ;-( http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080226213451.htm Killer Military Robots Pose Latest Threat To Humanity, Robotics Expert Warns ScienceDaily (Feb. 28, 2008) — A robotics expert at the University of Sheffield has issued stark warnings over the threat posed to humanity by new robot weapons being developed by powers worldwide. more I'll be back.
Re: [Vo]:New supercomputer is a rack of PlayStations
- Original Message - From: Jones Beene [EMAIL PROTECTED] [Not to mention the threat of a computer virus - and say: what about a 'terrorist-trojan' which makes the robot switch sides ??] To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Friday, February 29, 2008 3:46 PM Subject: Re: [Vo]:New supercomputer is a rack of PlayStations Yikes, Terry Michel and I were hoping for a more 'gentlemanly' transition Killer Military Robots Pose Latest Threat To Humanity, Robotics Expert Warns There are some grim implications, which can be taken from last sentence in this quote: Over 4,000 robots are currently deployed on the ground in Iraq and by October 2006 unmanned aircraft had flown 400,000 flight hours. Currently there is always a human in the loop to decide on the use of lethal force. However, this is set to change with the US giving priority to autonomous weapons - robots that will decide on where, when and who to kill And what is the 'authority' for the 'priority' of autonomous weapons? Or does the author mean booby traps and land mines? Simple heat seekers are easy and indiscriminate and ineffective. Real pattern recognition is very difficult, human snipers can make mistakes. One can track and kill an intruder in a controlled situation, but a natural environment is much, much more difficult. Mike Carrell
Re: [Vo]:New supercomputer is a rack of PlayStations
Yikes, Terry Michel and I were hoping for a more 'gentlemanly' transition Killer Military Robots Pose Latest Threat To Humanity, Robotics Expert Warns There are some grim implications, which can be taken from last sentence in this quote: Over 4,000 robots are currently deployed on the ground in Iraq and by October 2006 unmanned aircraft had flown 400,000 flight hours. Currently there is always a human in the loop to decide on the use of lethal force. However, this is set to change with the US giving priority to autonomous weapons - robots that will decide on where, when and who to kill [Not to mention the threat of a computer virus - and say: what about a 'terrorist-trojan' which makes the robot switch sides ??] Professor Sharkey, who is famously known for his roles as chief judge on the TV series Robot Wars and as onscreen expert for the BBC´s TechnoGames, said: The trouble is that we can't really put the genie back in the bottle. Once the new weapons are out there, they will be fairly easy to copy. How long is it going to be before the terrorists get in on the act? With the current prices of robot construction falling dramatically and the availability of ready-made components for the amateur market, it wouldn't require a lot of skill to make autonomous robot weapons... Sharkey ... points out that a small GPS guided drone with autopilot could be made for around £250. Yikes again. Methinks that W, even in retirement, will be keeping all the windows tightly closed in Crawford. That buzzing he hears in the distance may not be yellow jackets... KdF, Harry Tuttle, Pest-eradicator
Re: [Vo]:New supercomputer is a rack of PlayStations
On Fri, Feb 29, 2008 at 3:46 PM, Jones Beene [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Yikes, Terry Michel and I were hoping for a more 'gentlemanly' transition Yikes, alors! Is this very different from Prince Charles' concern on nanotechnology? . . . the grey goo? Terry
Re: [Vo]:New supercomputer is a rack of PlayStations
--- Mike Carrell wrote: And what is the 'authority' for the 'priority' of autonomous weapons? Or does the author mean booby traps and land mines? ... well, there's the rub, and his point may well be that this endeavor is far too unsupervised now (no taxpayer oversight)... and will likely become a very slippery slope if there is any modicum of success. Perhaps the public should think about intervening before it is too late. We will have that opportunity in November. It is pretty clear that McCain represents stay the course or even an expanded Military, and that the other party will massively cut the defense budget (even if they say otherwise now). Both of these courses are risky, but which is less-risky? Already we cannot muster enough human troops for Iraq and if the advance robotics are even partially successful there, and can ease the manpower problems, then the Pentagon's increased 'push' to make them even more capable (intelligent), and numerous, is fraught with unknown risks. because even when many layers of precautions are taken, and to the degree that any smart weapon is made even more capable, there can be no assurance that any such intelligent device cannot become self-aware of its intended purpose, and intervene somehow. This is kind of like 'Hal' and the Clarke dilemma in 2001. For instance, we know that our own Military, long before teraflop computing became affordable, trained dogs and sea-mammals to kill the enemy. Dolphins have been strapped with all kinds of weapons, but few were ever sacrificed. If (under different circumstances) this intelligent creature had been used by us in War, and had been killed in significant numbers, would that kind of information get back to other dolphins? ... or would any guilt attach? Don't laugh yet. Certainly there are reasons to suspect that dolphins have the mentality necessary to feel remorse for their actions or to anticipate their fate; but could enough contrarian discretion emerge to overcome an extended training regimen ?... IOW can they overcome what they had been taught for a higher self-aware purpose? Would they ever turn on the trainer? I believe that there is more than a remote possibility that this could happen; but I am pretty sure that the remorse consideration never entered into whatever decision was made at the Pentagon. For all we know, this kind of activity is still going on in secret. Heck, maybe those pesky dolphins are the nefarious ones who cut all those underwater communications cables in the Mid-East ;-) BTW- some sources claim that as many as eight cables were cut that week! ... but other experts so the spin goes, say that this occurs all the time. Cable cuts happen on average once every three days, one expert reportedly said. There are 25 large ships that do nothing but fix cable cuts and bends... While any severed cable is a cut in the parlance of telecom, most often they're the result of cables rubbing against sea floor rocks, eventually cutting through the copper shielding and exposing the thin fiber optics inside. Right... well, once again, not sure who to believe- ...but isn't that exactly how the spin-doctors like to leave things ? Jones
Re: [Vo]:New supercomputer is a rack of PlayStations
Howdy Jones, Lets also remind ourselves of what happened to Egypt and the mercenaries of Pharaoh. One day the hired help decided they could take over from the decadent royalty. A recent report has 150,000 employees under contract with K-BR and others like Blackwater supposedly handling chores below the dignity of the US Army et al. We have no way of knowing what these employees are contracted for except repair power plants and pipelines. The 150k include mercenaries from every nation including ex Viet Cong. A well disciplined and well paid small mercenary force with proper training and advanced technology could be a lethal opponent in today's world as attested long ago by the kid who described himself as the Alex the great. Richard
[Vo]:New supercomputer is a rack of PlayStations
The esteemed Mr. Jones might enjoy this article: SUBJECT: New supercomputer is a rack of PlayStations By: Louisa Hearn February 26, 2008 http://www.theage.com.au/cgi-bin/common/popupPrintArticle.pl? path=/articles/2008/02/26/1203788327976.html http://tinyurl.com/2vbc87 What makes the gaming console vastly superior to high-end computers for complex research algorithms, Mr Khanna says, is the Cell chip built by IBM to facilitate high-end gaming functions on the latest generation of consoles. Regards Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com www.zazzle.com/orionworks
Re: [Vo]:New supercomputer is a rack of PlayStations
Interesting analog observation Jones, I had never connected this thought when observing the laws of human nature, ( alive and well in the Dime Box saloon).Public education provides and equally valid example of the law governing cultures which allow that when mixing cultures, the most base culture will drag every other culture down to it's base as demonstrated by USA public education experiments. It is often proposed that ancient Greece culture was destroyed from within. The city of Ephesus offers a clue to what really happens when a culture like the Greek is invaded by a most evil and debased culture that totally corrupted the higher ideals taught in Greece. We can anticipate the next generation of computer technology to validate the result of a combination of shifts in society. Everything predicted by Alvin Toffler has already come and gone when he predicted that a culture will rise that produces a religion of demanding constant change vs the time held desire of past generations to cling to traditions. When the concept of money has been reconceptualized as revealed by Don Rumsfeld remark that deficits no longer matter, we may begin to better understand a new economic model is being tested on the world. These future shock events now taking place are only preludes. Richard Jones wrote, The very best human brain is 'around' the equivalent of 1-10 teraflops although admittedly this is an impossible comparison to make valid- since the brain is analog not digital.
Re: [Vo]:New supercomputer is a rack of PlayStations
Steve, Don't know if you caught the full impact of the double paradigm shift which is looming on the immediate horizon, and which is hinted at the end of this piece. Probably not to the extent which is verbalized below, since as usual, I am reading-in more information (and personal expectation) than was likey intended by the writer; but anyway, there is appearing (once again) the signs and reverberations of what looks to me like the start of a quantum leap in the evolution of ... hmm ... well, not just the evolution of computers, which Moore's Law is taking care of, but in the evolution of (who/what) will become the dominant thinker on Terra ...and eventually maybe even the dominant species. That would be assuming that the dominant-thinker becomes the dominant-species over time. [SIDE NOTE] In truth, at least in the short history of evolution on earth, it has been the dominant predator which becomes the dominant species; and in the case of 'homo sapiens', being able to use logic and thinking has helped greatly in that quest for domination - but most apparently, the details of that help has been in the design and building of, among other things, superior killing machines ;-( Anyway, after that long-winded preamble, here is the quote from the article which portends a double paradigm shift with Darwinian consequences: Of course 'it' [the ultra-computer based on cheap gaming machines] does cost less, but what needs to be recognized is that it also changes the way people think about problems when they are given a hundred times more computer power. Paradigm shift #1 is reaching the 'tipping point' of raw affordability (MIPS/$) in the hardware. This is what can be called the 'son of x-box' where within 2-4 years (if Moore's Law holds) we will have reached the $100/teraflop level in raw processing power. The very best human brain is 'around' the equivalent of 1-10 teraflops although admittedly this is an impossible comparison to make valid- since the brain is analog not digital. With 'proper software', many experts suspect a 10 teraflop computer will become fully 'verbal' and equal to humans in most respects and far superior in others beyond that is anybody's guess. (there is not enough space time here to counter the Penrose objections to that conclusion. Anyway, back to the unexpected and final step in linked paradigm shifts: So rather than taking the thing apart you just start moving all the knobs about to see what happens when you change something - just as you might in real life Paradigm shift #2, however, goes beyond this (which is a bit short-sighted) and is found in reaching another tipping point of NOT necessarily needing knobs, or human programmers, but instead you just step aside That is, you instead of requiring software to utilize that affordable hardware, someone will just give the machine a few basic rules and logic, stand back, plug it in and let it learn and self-educate itself from any and all accessible information resources (mainly the www, of course). Of course you have to teach it to discriminate, weed out the BS and minimize the disinformation and SPAM which is overwhelming the net these days ;-} We are not that far away from this scenario, and yet almost no one outside of the field of AI is aware of the ultimate ramifications of allowing this kind of evolutionary jump to continue at its present pace. Except Sci-Fi writers and assorted Vorticians, of course. Jones --- OrionWorks [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The esteemed Mr. Jones might enjoy this article: SUBJECT: New supercomputer is a rack of PlayStations By: Louisa Hearn February 26, 2008 http://www.theage.com.au/cgi-bin/common/popupPrintArticle.pl? path=/articles/2008/02/26/1203788327976.html http://tinyurl.com/2vbc87 What makes the gaming console vastly superior to high-end computers for complex research algorithms, Mr Khanna says, is the Cell chip built by IBM to facilitate high-end gaming functions on the latest generation of consoles. Regards Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com www.zazzle.com/orionworks
Re: [Vo]:New supercomputer is a rack of PlayStations
- Original Message - From: R C Macaulay [EMAIL PROTECTED] snip Jones wrote, The very best human brain is 'around' the equivalent of 1-10 teraflops although admittedly this is an impossible comparison to make valid- since the brain is analog not digital. Animal brains are neither analog or digital; they are a blend of both and are non-algorithmic. Comparisons with algorithmic computers are misleading at best. Arguably the salient property of brains is pattern recognition, which is central to the perceptual systems; it is poorly done by algoritmic machines. Penrose in his Shadows of the Mind pointed out that there are problems which human minds can solve which have no *algorithmic* solutions. Neurones can have hundreds of synapses connecting other neurones. The synapses are binary in their action but the threshold is influenced by many 'analog' factors including the chemical environment. The possible number of patterns of activated neurones is beyond astronomical in number. I think it very adventurous to state what this entitiy can or cannot do; this is perhaps the interface between 'science' and 'religion'. IBM is building a massively parallel computer to emulate an anatomical feature of the neocortex. We may find that it cannot be programmed but it can learn -- and we know how predictable[?] is the outcome of teaching a human child. Mike Carrell This Email has been scanned for all viruses by Medford Leas I.T. Department.
