“Man Becomes the Sex Organs of the Machine World” (2012)

Post by ben_w » Fri, Jun 07, 2019, 9:04 AM UTC

indigochill wrote: post #10

Jedi72 wrote: post #9

"We refer to the question: What sort of creature man’s next successor in the supremacy of the earth is likely to be. We have often heard this debated; but it appears to us that we are ourselves creating our own successors; we are daily adding to the beauty and delicacy of their physical organisation; we are daily giving them greater power and supplying by all sorts of ingenious contrivances that self-regulating, self…

What he seems to have missed is that no matter how complex the machine, it always has a creator and a master. Even the most sophisticated AI was designed someone who, deliberately or not, encoded that AI with biases likely mirroring that of its creator (e.g. racial bias in facial recognition software). Even if we achieve the singularity and have software making other software ad infinitum, the biases are there in the…

Post by narrator » Fri, Jun 07, 2019, 10:43 AM UTC

Post by pygy_ » Fri, Jun 07, 2019, 11:03 AM UTC

narrator wrote: post #33

Machines can eat petroleum and electricity like cows can eat grass. That's why we have symbiotic coexistence with both of them. If machines could only eat human food, there would be a lot less of them. For example, it takes two acres worth of land to make enough biodiesel annually to fill up an suv gas tank. Properly cultivated, that could feed a significant number of people.

Post by whatshisface » Fri, Jun 07, 2019, 11:44 AM UTC

pygy_ wrote: post #35

narrator wrote: post #33

Machines can eat petroleum and electricity like cows can eat grass. That's why we have symbiotic coexistence with both of them. If machines could only eat human food, there would be a lot less of them. For example, it takes two acres worth of land to make enough biodiesel annually to fill up an suv gas tank. Properly cultivated, that could feed a significant number of people.

That's about to become a problem once a sufficiently large share of humanity is economically obsolete and not worth feeding by the industry. With an automated agriculture and seed production in the hands of a few companies (among which Monsanto/Bayer), it becomes trivially easy to start producing GMO seeds that are toxic to humans in massive amounts.

Post by nkurz » Fri, Jun 07, 2019, 12:14 PM UTC

PavlovsCat wrote: post #20

Jedi72 wrote: post #9

"We refer to the question: What sort of creature man’s next successor in the supremacy of the earth is likely to be. We have often heard this debated; but it appears to us that we are ourselves creating our own successors; we are daily adding to the beauty and delicacy of their physical organisation; we are daily giving them greater power and supplying by all sorts of ingenious contrivances that self-regulating, self…

The horseman serves the horse, The neatherd serves the neat, The merchant serves the purse, The eater serves his meat; 'T is the day of the chattel, Web to weave, and corn to grind; Things are in the saddle, And ride mankind. There are two laws discrete, Not reconciled,-- Law for man, and law for thing; The last builds town and fleet, But it runs wild, And doth the man unking. -- excerpt from "Ode Inscribed to W. H.…