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Ray Kurzweil Is Building Your ‘Cybernetic Friend’

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Re: Ray Kurzweil Is Building Your ‘Cybernetic Friend’

#11
post #3

Do we have any privacy in future?

yes. In a cave, a jungle, a desert or a glacier or moving from place to place every few hours.

Either that or right in front of everyone (grey man theory).

Its possible to have privacy, but you will have to put up with a little inconvenience and live a different life to others.

I have considered this myself to be honest - it would be an interesting way to live.

Re: Ray Kurzweil Is Building Your ‘Cybernetic Friend’

#13

It sounds like an extension of Google Now to me. I was wondering what the big G was planning on using Kurzweil for, I wonder how his singularity shtick is related to this.

Pretty obvious - modeling your interests is (in the limit) equivalent to modeling you.

Re: Ray Kurzweil Is Building Your ‘Cybernetic Friend’

#15
post #8

This has a flavor of reviving some ideas on how search will change that had been popular in the late 1990s / early 2000s. There were a number of proposals that "search engines" as a tool that users use to query for information should be replaced with a paradigm of "software agents" that build a model of what the user is looking for or trying to do, and which then roam around the web on the user's behalf. Here's a sur…

Its not that the idea didn't catch on, its that they were unsuccessful. Just like most attempts that aimed towards 'strong' or general artificial intelligence were unsuccessful. Natural language understanding is not necessarily general intelligence but it is closer.

The difference is not so much about the profile data that Google has now but rather the AI approaches which are available. For example, the type of hierarchical hidden Markov models that Kurzweil goes into detail on in his book have a broader application than most AI approaches previously used. Also the body of text which Google can process and the amount of processing power Google has contribute to making the goal feasible.

Re: Ray Kurzweil Is Building Your ‘Cybernetic Friend’

#16
post #6
post #4

You know, that friend who you're nice to and all but deep down you don't really trust, but you don't want to unfriend because that could set them off and you suspect they could do you great harm, and might just for the hell of it. Your, not quite a psychopath friend but with enough clues that you find yourself wondering how to create an opportunity to add distance without calling attention to yourself kind of friend?…

A bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes.

"Your plastic pal who's fun to be with"? Never!

Re: Ray Kurzweil Is Building Your ‘Cybernetic Friend’

#19
post #4

You know, that friend who you're nice to and all but deep down you don't really trust, but you don't want to unfriend because that could set them off and you suspect they could do you great harm, and might just for the hell of it. Your, not quite a psychopath friend but with enough clues that you find yourself wondering how to create an opportunity to add distance without calling attention to yourself kind of friend?…

Yeah. Your friend who you suspect may be able to read your thoughts and predict your actions so you have to basically wipe your own memory each time you have a malicious thought.

Imma switch back to AOL now.

Re: Ray Kurzweil Is Building Your ‘Cybernetic Friend’

#20
post #6
post #4

You know, that friend who you're nice to and all but deep down you don't really trust, but you don't want to unfriend because that could set them off and you suspect they could do you great harm, and might just for the hell of it. Your, not quite a psychopath friend but with enough clues that you find yourself wondering how to create an opportunity to add distance without calling attention to yourself kind of friend?…

A bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes.

"Go stick your head in a pig."
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