So Google bought Boston Dynamics, I missed this

  On 1/2/2014 at 9:08 PM, azatoth said:

If I had a multi-billion company, I would spend a lot of that money to fund research in all kinds of sci-fi sounding tech. It's only a matter of time until Google buys a small country and establishes a city which is inhabited by scientists doing all kinds of cutting-edge research in fields from genetics, robotics, AI, nanotechnology and all kinds of other stuff. That's what I would do if I had a ridiculous amount of money and no sight of ever it stopping to come in.

Hmm - IMO cutting edge research in genetics, robotics, AI and nanotechnology need democratic oversight to serve people safely and in their interests. International democratic oversight in fact, as those technologies often know no boundaries. We're already failing at this pretty miserably in the West, and it's terrifying to think of what would happen if a single profiteering entity became the guiding light for an entire nation.

Yeah, having a private company meddling with that stuff would be a bad idea. That's why a an international consortium with proper oversight doing this sort of research would be ideal. Speaking of the implication that these emerging technologies could bring, has there even been any proper debate on how these technologies could impact the future and how it would be used. I believe human cloning is a no-no, but how about other stuff. I know most of this sort of stuff is still some time away, but wouldn't it be prudent to have a think about it before we actually can apply the technology on a scale that would affect humanity as a whole.

That would be a very wise society indeed. Unfortunately I think your first scenario is more likely to play out than any international governing body having long-term regulations for innovative technologies. Not sure what to do about that.

We are starting to be at a stage where our understanding of how nature works has allowed us to start applying it in different ways, be it in the field of genetics or nanontechnology. The cutting-edge research is still mostly done in publicly funded universities with proper oversight but it's starting to trickle down to private enterprises and some sort of control might be worth exploring before it's too late. Maybe I've been reading too much dystopian sci-fi.

I recently had to attend a webinar (ugh) on the benefits of Corporate Colleges, and it is truly disgusting what some of these business people think needs to happen to education in the US. The idea is that education should reflect the current market needs of the economy, and that there is no one better poised to educate in this manner than the business leaders of the nation.

As for the proper oversight in public universites bit... not sure I agree. I work in a molecular analysis facility at a public university and the walls are littered with research posters about "Novel application of new semiconductor for energy extraction in extreme environments" or "Increasing market viability for large scale solar projects" - ie, it is largely all based on the idea of moving the research to market ASAP. Grad students need jobs, man.

The almighty dollar speaks again. It's truly disheartening. Even in this socialist paradise (hellhole?) with free university education for everyone there is a tendency to cater to what the market wants, which of course leads to the humanities faculties to suffer and restricting academic freedom. It's shit.

All bow to the corporate overlords.

Oi, that's frustrating.

I often wonder if it's even a "corporate fault" that primarily got us here. I think perhaps initially it was, as the very nature of mass production for profit that arose some 300 years ago requires mass consumption (and thus mass marketing) to even be worthwhile, but the now pervasive mindset of people (at least on the internet) who champion innovative technologies and higher efficiencies for existing technologies can be just as central to this ongoing, unwarranted optimism, even if the people claim to be "anti-corporate" in some sense. I have way too many peers who subscribe to the "engineer our way out of it" mentality, as well as something I've come to know as the "technological imperative": 'whatever can be done technically, should and will be done technically.' This is how we got into a race for an atom bomb, of course. Oppenheimer himself is quoted as saying "When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb."

We've generally become so convinced of the goodness of these innovations that regardless of our individual political standing, most of us are eager to see these things continue to develop. We're promised great advances for health and happiness and so forth, and often times those promises come true in the short term, making it easy to be optimistic. Recently sheatheman had some impassioned arguments here on WATMM in favor of fracking; I put out my position, largely saying the same things I am here (oversight, regulation, caution, ecological perspective). Shea had fine points about the disaster that would ensue if we abandon these technologies - my point was that so long as we continue to use these exploitative technologies, disaster is coming either way. We are simply displacing it in time and location.

Bringing it back to this thread, the general support for Google getting in on military robotics technology seems to again be one based in the technological imperative. Someone is gonna build those robots, and we can't stop that, so it's good that at least it's google. So goes the argument, anyway. Nevermind the fact that we are washing our hands of any democratic debate about having these things in the first place.

@luke

I read a book a few months back (The Ascent of Humanity by Charles Eisenstein) that explores the ideas I think you're getting at. It creeps into new age mysticism from time to time, & I'm not sure what the author's credentials are other than "I wrote a book", but it was a fun read & the guy has the whole thing up for free on his website.

cool, thanks for the tip man - I've been reading some other nonfiction stuff kinda on this subject lately... i'll put the ascent of humanity on the ole' corporate aggregate bookstore wishlist. *lrns2internet* I see now you said it was free, awesome!

  On 1/2/2014 at 11:51 AM, goDel said:

Read an interesting interview with Douglas Hofstadter recently on why he thinks current developments in AI aren't nearly as AI as AI is supposed to be - according to Hofstadter, that is.

 

To a point I agree with him, but would it matter if a droid had his target aimed on you and autonomously decides to pull over the trigger?

 

  Quote

 

“It depends on what you mean by artificial intelligence.” Douglas Hofstadter is in a grocery store in Bloomington, Indiana, picking out salad ingredients. “If somebody meant by artificial intelligence the attempt to understand the mind, or to create something human-like, they might say—maybe they wouldn’t go this far—but they might say this is some of the only good work that’s ever been done.”

Hofstadter says this with an easy deliberateness, and he says it that way because for him, it is an uncontroversial conviction that the most-exciting projects in modern artificial intelligence, the stuff the public maybe sees as stepping stones on the way to science fiction—like Watson, IBM’s Jeopardy-playing supercomputer, or Siri, Apple’s iPhone assistant—in fact have very little to do with intelligence. For the past 30 years, most of them spent in an old house just northwest of the Indiana University campus, he and his graduate students have been picking up the slack: trying to figure out how our thinking works, by writing computer programs that think.

 

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/11/the-man-who-would-teach-machines-to-think/309529/

also this was cool, thanks godel. didn't know Hofstadter was still working on that sort of stuff. I like his perspective here.

  On 1/3/2014 at 12:57 AM, luke viia said:

 

Bringing it back to this thread, the general support for Google getting in on military robotics technology seems to again be one based in the technological imperative. Someone is gonna build those robots, and we can't stop that, so it's good that at least it's google. So goes the argument, anyway. Nevermind the fact that we are washing our hands of any democratic debate about having these things in the first place.

Unless you believe google when they say they will not accept any more military contracts?

I don't believe google can or will keep that promise forever... do you?

Why not? It doesn't make any sense economically. This article says BD received $140 million in contracts since 2000 from the DoD (so let's count that as gross revenue). Sounds impressive, until you remember that Google made $50 billion in 2012, with a net profit of nearly $11 billion.

With their ideas regarding technology, I'm pretty sure that Google will be able to find something useful for this tech beyond just military application.

Of course I could be totally wrong. In which case, run for the hills.

Word, I do think they'll do other things besides make military technologies now that they've bought 8 robotics companies in the last year. I suppose my point here has been that it doesn't matter who is working on these technologies; the implementation and distribution of novel technologies currently lacks any meaningful democratic oversight and that is what I consider to be the problem. (I'm also not saying that I think everyone would vote in line with my own thoughts in such a democratic debate, mind you).

Comparing google's net profits as a company to the recent revenue of one of their acquisitions isn't really convincing me, though... Google may be able to fund BD in the same way DARPA did, even more so, but in what world does it make sense to think DARPA will just sit by and lose one of its favorite research groups without trying to get involved? I mean, a pet favorite of the defense tech branch of the US government was just bought by the most powerful information company we have in this country - I just have trouble believing that DARPA and Google, sharing heavily overlapping technology interests and both funding the research labs conducting it, would somehow avoid becoming closer bedfellows than they are now. If anything can keep up financially with Google, it's the US defense budget. We also know google isn't opposed to secretly aiding branches of the government and subsequently denying they ever did such a thing. They have been outspoken in the past, but there's no sense trusting any company enough to assume it has moral integrity beyond that of its current operators, which is also constantly fluctuating. I just don't put too much faith in them in the long term, I guess. :oldman:

lol you don't get to pull oldman on me.

I imagine DARPA isn't concerned because they have something else up their sleeve.

Google does have to answer to its shareholders, so making financially sound decisions is something to consider. I'm not saying it's impossible, just not probable.

And I fully agree about the need for oversight on an international level.