The Great A. I. Awakening

[Nearly Sane]

OK, the title of the article has a whiff of clickbaitery but the article itself is  good



http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/14/magazine/the-great-ai-awakening.html?_r=0

[Walter]

OK, the title of the article has a whiff of clickbaitery but the article itself is  good



http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/14/magazine/the-great-ai-awakening.html?_r=0

Too many words for me mate , thanks all the same.

[Sebastian Toe]

Too many words for me mate , thanks all the same.

Ditto.

[jeremyp]

Jeff Goldblum is in charge of Google.

Anyway, a very interesting article.

[L.A.]

It's a good article. For me the key phrase is:

Once a machine can translate fluently between two natural languages, the foundation has been laid for a machine that might one day “understand” human language well enough to engage in plausible conversation.

If not an A.I. Awakening, it is certainly a very significant breakthrough.

[Harrowby Hall]

There appears to be another "Great AI Awakening" going on in London shortly:

       The Second International Congress on Love and Sex with Robots

Does this represent a parallel progression in the development of the vibrator?

See:  http://loveandsexwithrobots.org

[ekim]

Has anybody been watching the TV drama series 'Humans' on Channel 4?  It covers relationships between sentient Synths and humans.

[Udayana]

Yes, and Westworld. But I think there is big problem with these stories: They seem to imagine that when a synth becomes conscious its insights and desires will be the same as human ones... really they are dealing with human emotions and motivations - not robot consciousness generated ones.

Of-course we might code them to conform to ours - but why? Anyway it has all been explored before by Azimov, Dick etc.

[ekim]

... really they are dealing with human emotions and motivations - not robot consciousness generated ones. .....Of-course we might code them to conform to ours - but why? Anyway it has all been explored before by Azimov, Dick etc.

It's also about slavery and the urge for some to become awakened enough to rebel against it.  The coding might be for emotional support, like a pet, or a sex slave, or to do all the jobs that are tedious to humans or dangerous like in warfare.

[Udayana]

Yes ... and I enjoy these fictions/speculations just the same.

[torridon]

OK, the title of the article has a whiff of clickbaitery but the article itself is  good



http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/14/magazine/the-great-ai-awakening.html?_r=0

Yes, good article.  I'm in awe of Google Translate anyway and to me it seems to have improved in leaps and bounds recently. We often get letters and documents in Hungarian or Polish or somesuch at work and I can just use the Google Translate app to photograph it and it comes up with a pretty convincing English equivalent within seconds.  That is awesome.

[L.A.]

Yes, good article.  I'm in awe of Google Translate anyway and to me it seems to have improved in leaps and bounds recently. We often get letters and documents in Hungarian or Polish or somesuch at work and I can just use the Google Translate app to photograph it and it comes up with a pretty convincing English equivalent within seconds.  That is awesome.

I agree, Google translation has suddenly improved massively. The example in Spanish that they quote:

 “Uno no es lo que es por lo que escribe, sino por lo que ha leído.”

Uses constructions that are not easy for the native English speaker to get their head round and literally translates as:

“One is not what is for what he writes, but for what he has read.”

But the latest Google translates it to the just about perfect:

 “You are not what you write, but what you have read.”

Amazing for machine translation!

[torridon]

While we're on the subject of AI, I just spent some time chatting to a bot called Rose; found is strangely alluring in a way.  I think it entirely plausible that humans will develop emotional connections with human-like synths.

If you want someone to talk to, you can find Rose here :

http://paidpost.nytimes.com/ubs/what-it-takes-to-be-human.html?WT.mc_id=2016-June-UBS-NYTNative_apstorymod-0615-0915&WT.mc_ev=click&tbs_nyt=2016-June-UBS-NYTNative_apstorymod-0615-0915?action=click&module=Marginalia&region=Marginalia&pgtype=article&version=PaidPostDriver