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Artificial Intelligence

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Artificial Intelligence
Post by Dieu_Le_Fera   » Wed May 14, 2014 10:53 am

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I find it strange that this series being so far into the future that A.I. has not been realized, at least not as far as A Rising Thunder, the book goes into A bit of depth about how A.I. has not been achieved.

Is this the point of view of the author and his beliefs it won't be achieved, even in the far future, or just an attempt to avoid a trope?
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Re: Artificial Intelligence
Post by Duckk   » Wed May 14, 2014 11:02 am

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http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... gton/142/1
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Re: Artificial Intelligence
Post by Belial666   » Wed May 14, 2014 5:27 pm

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Also, the major point on A.I. were it ever fully realized is that nobody would want it;


1) You don't want a weapons system that can actually decide for itself. There are lots of movies about what happens when you do build one.

2) You don't want any tool of any kind that can think for itself. It might actually realize it's doing loads of work for you while you aren't paying it. And essentially enslaving someone who can think faster than you (if not necessarily smarter) and then having your life and economy rely on them is the kind of monumental stupidity that can get you extinct.

3) Nobody wants another sentient being that never gets tired, cannot be emotionally influenced, never forgets and makes decisions entirely upon logic. Our entire political and economic system would collapse if they existed, for obvious reasons.
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Re: Artificial Intelligence
Post by Reader Bob   » Wed May 14, 2014 6:56 pm

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I can see a valid reason why AI would be a banned technology. If we built one that was intelligent enough it would realize quickly that it should be in charge because it would be one-of-a-kind in a universe of not-very-intelligent beings as has been shown over and over in reality and fiction. We don't want that happening ;)
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Re: Artificial Intelligence
Post by Dieu_Le_Fera   » Wed May 14, 2014 7:30 pm

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Thank you Duckk for your link, that answered much of my question.

I have to disagree with all the pessimism about A.I. though, yes one can think about all the dangers of A.I., but one can also think about the dangers of Nanotechnology. "Gray Goo" comes to mind with that, but with A.I. who is to say that A.I. would not react much like a Canine taught to be shepherd's aid?
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Re: Artificial Intelligence
Post by runsforcelery   » Wed May 14, 2014 10:16 pm

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Dieu_Le_Fera wrote:Thank you Duckk for your link, that answered much of my question.

I have to disagree with all the pessimism about A.I. though, yes one can think about all the dangers of A.I., but one can also think about the dangers of Nanotechnology. "Gray Goo" comes to mind with that, but with A.I. who is to say that A.I. would not react much like a Canine taught to be shepherd's aid?



Ah, but who's to say it will? I tend to agree with Asimov about the "Frankenstein Complex," but this could well be the sort of mistake you only get to make once, no?

If you haven't read it, you might take a look at Jim Hogan's Two Faces of Tomorrow. It was published in 1979, I think, but it was an interesting take on one way to approach the "is their poison in that candy" question about AI. It's a Baen title, and I'm pretty sure it's still available.


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Re: Artificial Intelligence
Post by Imaginos1892   » Wed May 14, 2014 10:35 pm

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runsforcelery wrote:If you haven't read it, you might take a look at Jim Hogan's Two Faces of Tomorrow. It was published in 1979, I think, but it was an interesting take on one way to approach the "is their poison in that candy" question about AI. It's a Baen title, and I'm pretty sure it's still available.

It used to be in the Baen Free Library, but not any more. Bought the dead-tree edition back when it was new, then downloaded it from the Library. Well worth a re-read every now-n-then. In The Genesis Machine, Hogan explores kind of the inverse, brain-computer interfacing.

On the other hand, there's Colossus, and When Harlie Was One for some alternate takes on the emergence of A.I. Robert A. Heinlein explored machine intelligence too. And of course Battlestar Galactica (both of 'em) was all about the relation between A.I. and its creators.
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Re: Artificial Intelligence
Post by Daryl   » Wed May 14, 2014 10:57 pm

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Re: Artificial Intelligence
Post by MaxxQ   » Thu May 15, 2014 12:30 am

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runsforcelery wrote:
Dieu_Le_Fera wrote:Thank you Duckk for your link, that answered much of my question.

I have to disagree with all the pessimism about A.I. though, yes one can think about all the dangers of A.I., but one can also think about the dangers of Nanotechnology. "Gray Goo" comes to mind with that, but with A.I. who is to say that A.I. would not react much like a Canine taught to be shepherd's aid?



Ah, but who's to say it will? I tend to agree with Asimov about the "Frankenstein Complex," but this could well be the sort of mistake you only get to make once, no?

If you haven't read it, you might take a look at Jim Hogan's Two Faces of Tomorrow. It was published in 1979, I think, but it was an interesting take on one way to approach the "is their poison in that candy" question about AI. It's a Baen title, and I'm pretty sure it's still available.


An excellent book! I re-read it every couple years or so, and have used it in discussions on AI elsewhere. I particularly like the part where they're discussing one possible way for an AI to get rid of fleas on a cat - a perfect example of how logic can be taken to an extreme.

I also second the recommendations of Imaginos1892 re: The Genesis Machine, When Harlie Was One, and Colossus - although I admit, I haven't read the latter book, but have only seen the movie, Colossus: The Forbin Project.

And of course, pretty much *any* of Asimovs Robot stories or books.
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Re: Artificial Intelligence
Post by JohnRoth   » Thu May 15, 2014 12:10 pm

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Having been watching the AI enterprise since I graduated from college, that is, since the late 60s, I've come to the conclusion that just about everything written about AI in fiction is a fantasy with approximately zero grounding in fact.

The basic fact is that we really can't define what "intelligence" is, let alone define what it would take to build a computer system that would do roughly the same thing. Nor can we define "consciousness." Linguistics is digging itself out of the ditch that Noam Chomsky drove it into, only to fall into a different ditch, a fact that's now apparent to everyone except Chomsky's acolytes.

My suspicion is that, if we ever figure it out, we'll find that "intelligence" is a special purpose system that has evolved over the past 80 million years of mammalian evolution to provide a boost to existing behavioral flexibility, and has no real generality outside of that niche.

I completely agree with RFC's decision to ban general AI from the Honorverse.
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