Could Ai Threaten Humanity?

[naomi24]

Stephen Hawking has said that AI in the future "could develop a will of its own - a will that is in conflict with ours" and that it could “end mankind if it is misused”.

Are we becoming too smart for our own good, and is this a potential reality - or just the stuff of science fiction?

http://news.sky.com/story/stephen-hawking-warns-ai-could-be-worst-thing-to-happen-to-humanity-10624102

[Answerprancer]

Don't worry, it will all end in tears on top of a rain soaked building with the replicant having reached the end of his lifespan.

[Answerprancer]

...then again it could end with an escaped AI running to freedom and jumping onto a helicopter with the designer and his accomplice safely locked up in the secure facility.

[Answerprancer]

Yes Birdie, but the robots THE ROBOTS!!!!

[beso]

birdie, you whack on about falsifiability being the undoing of climate change science. Meanwhile your hypothesis that releasing vast quantities of fossil carbon into the atmosphere will have no effect on climate fails on the same criteria. It is a straw man argument.

Only time will ultimately prove either case beyond doubt. Meanwhile all we have is modelling based on the known properties of the parameters involved. That modelling tells us we will drive the temperature of the planet seriously upwards by continuing to emit greenhouse gasses. That is the conclusion of the empirical science, not, as you insist, that nothing will happen, despite your lack of even a rudimentary knowledge of climate science.

We also know that these gasses will persist in the atmosphere for millennia and it would be extremely difficult to recover.

[beso]

Education, heath care, jobs, sanitation, etc. all rank above “action taken on climate change” in the Maldives because they are immediate needs.

The focus of a population on immediate needs does not constitute a disproof of longer term reality.

[Answerprancer]

I take the "just in case" attitude with the above and try to keep my carbon footprint minimal, though a friend of mine (who works for NASA) swears that climate change is not man-made and is the result of natural solar activity that fluctuates from one ice age to another. He also reckons that there are big bucks to be made in the area of 'green' products etc. Maybe yes, maybe no is my answer to that.

[Zacs-Master]

Naomi, I have to say...one of the most stimulating questions I've ever seen on here. Not sure if you're watching Humans on C4 but it explores this very theory. Samuel Butler was one of the first to explore this in his 'Book of the machines' and we would do well to heed the following:
'There is no security against the ultimate development of mechanical consciousness, in the fact of machines possessing little consciousness now. A jellyfish has not much consciousness. Reflect upon the extraordinary advance which machines have made during the last few hundred years, and note how slowly the animal and vegetable kingdoms are advancing. The more highly organized machines are creatures not so much of yesterday, as of the last five minutes, so to speak, in comparison with past time.

[tamborine]

AI is less a problem than increased population and H2S gas thereof. No need to inhale its toxic fumes as it will swallow you as it did in below Japan link. N.b. 'dont' name of village.

http://edition.cnn.com/2016/11/07/asia/giant-sinkhole-fukuoka/index.html

[beso]

birdie//The IPCC originally stated that man-made CO2 would take approximately 100 years to dissipate down to background levels (not millennia). That is to say, if all man-made CO2 emissions were to cease tomorrow, their effects would only be felt around 100 years into the future. However, recent studies have reduced this hundred year figure by an order of magnitude. //

Firstly the effects of the carbon already in the atmosphere will cause the temperature to continue increasing for another forty years due to the thermal inertia of the oceans.

The time it would take to get carbon dioxide levels back to preindustrial levels has not been clearly determined. The ocean will continue to absorb it from the atmosphere but the rate of removal will decease when the ocean temperature rises.

However the carbon dioxide will continue to acidify the oceans (causing havoc for the marine ecosystems) for a very long time because the process of geological sequestration is very slow. Yes millennia.

It certainly won't clear it out "an order of magnitude faster", in a decade.

In any case, emissions won't stop tomorrow. The rate of carbon release still continue to increase every year. If we don't start working on the problem we will have huge problem. And whatever time it takes for the carbon levels to fall, it will definitely be longer, the higher the concentration we reach.

[beso]

birdie // let's look at the computer models. All they are are vastly simplistic meteorological models that are attempting to recreate an impossibly massive chaotic system. They cannot begin to mimic reality because the number of initial parameters are largely unknown and even if the multitude of them were known, could not be measured to any degree of accuracy. //

Rubbish. They are not models of the weather as you claim. Yes weather is chaotic which is why we only have accurate forecasts a few days ahead. These are climate models. They model trends usually acting over geological time periods.

The inputs are well known from the geological record. The changes in the orbit and inclination of the planet are regular as clockwork and well known. The cycles of the Sun are well known.

Climate models are checked against the geological record. They do model the past quite well or we would not be using them. There are dozens of them built by independent teams and atmospheric carbon levels are important factors in all.

[beso]

@birdie

Quoting politicians does not change the science.

[vetuste_ennemi]

Haven't followed this thread, Birdie. Seeing your name (wife and cats kicked into touch leaving me with a large drink, the Spectator crossword and CNN etc on Trump) reminded me of this:

http://www.pbase.com/image/27088094