The date 21 April 2011 has been prophesied in the Terminator series as Judgement Day, when the machines rise up and bring about the end of human society as we know it.
Artificial intelligence clearly has not developed in quite the way James Cameron’s science-fiction franchise predicted, but how close are we to the technologies he depicted? Central to the Terminator series is the idea of Skynet, the United States’s “Global Digital Defense Network”, which develops self-awareness and begins a nuclear war…
More worrying to would-be members of “the resistance” is the rise of augmented systems and unmanned military technology.
The Guardian reported last week that a Ministry of Defence study had warned this technology could be the start of an “incremental and involuntary journey towards a Terminator-like reality”.
“We should not go down this route, just like chemical weapons and biological weapons are regarded as being beyond the pale, we should be saying this about automated systems…”
The film’s director, James Cameron, told the TMZ website: “Kyle Reese said in the first film that it was only one possible future – clearly, not the one we’re in…now instead of nuclear war we need to worry about global climate change.
“And the machines taking over? With everybody going through their lives bent over their Blackberrys all day long, you could even argue the machines have already won.”
Will someone please go down to the basement and tell the nerds cowering there it’s OK to come out.
It is – isn’t it?
The day’s not over, yet.
It’s all good – everybody can come out!
I have EMP. No worries.
No worries..still celebrating from yesterday.
Are you kidding me! I’ve just paid my f**king VISA bill! Now you’re telling me the worlds over!
COME ON!
Same day Washington Post headline: Obama authorizes the use of armed Predator drones in Libya
So it’s not that far off folks.
Th only good thing about being the kind of dirt poor ex super power we’re going to be when our line of credit runs out is that the flaming bleeps in the white house aren’t going to be able to run around attacking everybody they don’t like because they are going to be doing well to afford body guards.
At the rate we are gaining on a making a real AI I’d say it will take another century or two to get skynet up and running and even then I have doubts. You need a really small power plant to power the worker units and so far no such power power plants exist.
Predictions? Prophecies? Geez. I thought they were works of fiction!!!
# 1 god said, “The day’s not over” It is where I live. Send another tsunami.
I am confused… some sources say the 19th, some say the 21st…
any Sarah Chronicle fans care to illuminate the correct date?
Only slightly related to the main post: Did you hear that China is not allowing it’s citizens to watch TV programs that feature time travel?
“…they are “unhealthy” and that the plots were “frivolous“ and showed no respect for history.” http://bit.ly/fxZnyb
Real quick on the math…
The human brain has about 20 billion neurons, and 20 trillion connections, each cell operates at about 20-50 times a second.
That is a neural network system than you could simulate on a smallish cluster of about 500-1000 modern servers. Still not as elegent as biology, be we have the size down to a a dozen racks or so.
I leave it to the reader to explore what DARPA has been doing with full human brain simulations on their super computers, sort of taking the engineers approach rather than trying to work out what inteligence is…
I’d say he wasn’t so far off considering, and our science so far has beat Kurzweils expectations of 2030 or so… (Age of spiritual machines)
If I had to guess, we are right now waiting for the Wright Brothers of human-computer inteligence to put all the pieces together and make it work.
Also, if you have a chance in your research, have a look at the “holy crap its alive” technology that Microsoft has processing the data streams on the Kinect, not that they have made a useful thing…
The matter is time and scale.
Movies and books always has to show things happening in a “pretty soon” time frame, else the consumer will say “it has nothing to do with me”
And disasters shown is always a dramatic crescendo, instead of a slow creeping spread/death/whatever.
What no hatred and vileness from you? What are you loosing your “edge”? Oh wait… Hatred for nerds… my bad.
Call me old fashioned but I prefer “judgment” with eight letters.
Must be “loosing” my edge.