Just *whose* New World Order was that, anyway?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/from_our_own_correspondent/newsid_888000/
888059.stm
Sunday, 20 August, 2000, 11:42 GMT 12:42 UK
Robots rule OK?
Scientists ask: How human do we want to make our robots?
By Peter Day in Pittsburgh
I went to Pittsburgh to talk to a man about robots. Once a dirty coal and steel
town, it is now a centre of finance, medicine and learning.
I went there to meet a remarkable academic whose predictions may make your flesh
creep.
In fact, Hans Moravec is the most amiable of men. He has been building robots
since he was 10. Talked about for so long, now, he thinks, their time has come.
By around 2050, predicts Hans Moravec, a computer costing only a few hundred
pounds will have the capacity of the human mind - after that, it will start
exceeding it
Certainly the little machines were buzzing along the corridors of Carnegie
Mellon University's Department of Robotics on the day I was there, recognising
their surroundings and edging around them. But that is nothing.
Mr Moravec's thesis is that some time in the next 50 years, machines like these
are going to become more intelligent than we are. It is, he says, the way the
world is evolving.
Brain power
Currently, he says, men can create machines such as the ones negotiating his
corridors with the calculating powers of insects. But with computer power
doubling every year, or year and a half, robots will evolve from insects to
animals to human intelligence - at breakneck speed.
By around 2050, predicts Hans Moravec, a computer costing only a few hundred
pounds will have the capacity of the human mind. After that, it will start
exceeding it.
It may sound like pure science fiction, but it is serious academic stuff.
Sometimes we non-scientists glimpse the details of it.
Human chromosomes - but will robots soon be superior?
The American computer chip maker Gordon Moore enunciated what is now known as
Moore's Law 30 years ago, when he noticed that the power and pace of computing
was doubling every 18 months or so.
But the roboteer Hans Moravec thinks the evolving change we are now experiencing
in computing has in fact been going for centuries in human evolution.
When machines have more intelligence than men, they will be able to do the
things we do better and faster than we do.
Taking over
For Hans Moravec - and he keeps a straight face here - that means they will
start taking over from us. It is not, he insists, a frightening prospect.
These super-intelligent machines will be our children, says Mr Moravec. Each
generation of humans eventually learns to accept the idea of handing over
continuing existence to its own offspring.
Well, the abiding faith in technological progress has long been one of the
defining features of American life - it is a mainspring of the country's current
extraordinary optimism. But even some Americans see a dark lining to the silver
cloud.
In the networked computer world...knowledge about all these things is now
readily available to everyone - for good uses or bad
The scientist Bill Joy is an influential man. He is one of the founders of the
huge computer company Sun Microsystems. The magazine Fortune called him the
"Edison of the Internet".
Last year when I saw him in his think-tank hideaway in Aspen, the ski resort in
the Rocky Mountains, he was still one of the optimists.
But now Bill Joy is having second thoughts, about things such as the advances in
robotics that Mr Moravec is predicting.
Plagues
Add to them the human genome project, and nanotechnology, the new ability to
build minute machines that can replicate themselves, too small for the human eye
to see.
The result, says Bill Joy, is the possibility of electronic and biological
plagues which could threaten the future of the human race.
In the networked computer world he has been instrumental in creating, knowledge
about all these things is now readily available to everyone - for good uses or
bad.
Most of the technology experts dismiss out of hand the idea of reining
themselves in
Bill Joy first voiced his concerns in a magazine article last spring, and
because he is co-chairman of President Bill Clinton's Information Technology
Advisory Committee, he got a lot of attention.
With genetic codes now cracked by computers, people will soon be able to choose
desirable attributes for their babies.
The smallpox genome may soon become very easy for anyone to get hold of. Bill
Joy's message to his fellow scientists is: stop and think.
He is so concerned about the misuse of knowledge that he is urging restraint -
limits, voluntary or imposed, on where scientists should tread, and what science
should do.
Forging ahead
But most of the technology experts dismiss out of hand the idea of reining
themselves in.
Nevertheless, we have been warned.
A few days later on my summer trip criss-crossing America, I saw one of the
wittiest advertisements I've ever seen.
A billboard sign just outside Philadelphia said in huge letters: "Go Ahead. Pick
Your Nose". The message was followed in small print by the name of the
advertiser: Gehry's Cosmetic Surgery.
It won't be long before we're picking more than just our noses. And within a few
decades, it is just possible that our noses may be picking us.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Robert F. Tatman
Information Technology Consultant
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Jenkintown, PA, USA
*Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.*
<A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A>
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html
<A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html">Archives of
[EMAIL PROTECTED]</A>
http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
<A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/">ctrl</A>
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
