Will human's still be relevant in 2500?

[Johninch]

Who is going to pay for all this automation and who is going to but the products? If no one has a job no one will have any money. Your notions seem to dismiss any known economy. Basically nothing ever happens unless some human or group of humans makes a lot of money off it.

Our capitalist system has already started on the automation and labor saving path in order to protect profits and the result is a higher level of permanent unemployment is many advanced countries. The process is gradual. Large companies, who have the most "fat" in terms of excess labor, shed it at every opportunity and excuse.

In the 20 years leading up to my recent retirement, my financial job in a large pharmaceutical company was transformed by computerisation – productivity climbed tremendously, staffing was slashed and big bonuses were introduced to help this process. Make no mistake, the developed world is on track to produce more output at lower costs with less labor.

Social security in its various forms puts money into the pockets of the non-employed. It’s a constant struggle to keep pace with the economics of the underdeveloped world - China, Taiwan, Thailand, Indonesia, Korea and there are many Asian countries like India who have hardly started. It’s a rat race, and developed countries are going to have to automate a lot more, otherwise outsourcing will decimate western industry.

I don’t have the answer to growing unemployment and increasing social security costs – ask a sociologist. I’m only evaluating the current situation and where it is leading. Higher productivity through automation is the only way. Even China is starting to automate. How you distribute the profits is a social question.

A lot goes into taxes and pension funds which spread the money around. Since it’s not enough, we fill the gap by printing more. This is not the right way to go - it's a measure born of desperation. In Europe we don’t want to print so much money, with the result that certain economies are going down the drain. This is not a “known economy”, it’s a serious problem and a big challenge. But we won’t solve it by restricting automation in favour of jobs.

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[DiracPool]

I just want to make two points. There is evidence that the human brain operates on a global level at 10 hz, the so called alpha band. Again, I stated it in an earlier post, local coordinative conditions in the neocortex run at 40hz, the so called gamma band the well known 40hz oscillations in local cortex, such as visual, auditory, etc. discussed by Gray and Singer back in the 80's and continually verified up to the present. Intermediate to that is the beta band, about 15-25 hz, which typically involves inter-regional dynamics. There are current models that place the dynamics of cognition on these levels, with global cognitive "frames" of thought occurring at the 10 hz alpha range.

If you want to argue the validity of that particular model, that is for another thread. My point for this thread is more of a what if? What if we could recreate human cognition in hardware that could run at 1 megahertz instead of 10 hz? Or what about 1 gigahertz? That would mean that this contrived machine would be able to live several thousand human lives in the time in took for you to take a sip of your coffee. That would mean something. Why would we want to kill that and not let it propagate? Some machine that smart would quickly usurp any of our attempts to quell its capacities. In theory perhaps we might be able to put in some fail safe device, but why?

This is just a progression of evolution. We are Homo sapien. Homo erectus is not still around, Habilis? No, Heidelbergensis? No, australopithecis? No? Neanderthal? No. Ardipithecus and Orrorin? No no. The list goes on. Is that wrong? There's a reason for these things. Look, the sad fact is that we are not likely to ever travel anyplace past Mars. If you think that humans are going to populate those huge Stephen Hawking superstructures for multigeneration migrations out to alpha centurai, c'mon that's laughable.

Again, look, humans have not gone past the moon and the Voyager spacecraft s are already at the heliopause, need I say more?

 

[DiracPool]

Look, the sad fact is that we are not likely to ever travel anyplace past Mars. If you think that humans are going to populate those huge Stephen Hawking superstructures for multigeneration migrations out to alpha centurai, c'mon that's laughable.

Again, look, humans have not gone past the moon and the Voyager spacecraft s are already at the heliopause, need I say more?

Is it Narcissistic to quote your own quote? In any case, I just wanted to add that the way I envision it is that our trip to the other-reaches of the universe will be accomplished by the spreading of many of these "human-like" voyager spacecraft s out into the nethersphere, who will power their sustenance of simple electricity by converting the ambient matter and energy they encounter into this electricity. Of course, they will be able to repair and reproduce in the same manner. What do you think? Does this scenario sound more likely, or does a Solyent Green scenario sound more likely where humans have big spacecraft s with greenhouses for growing broccoli, and some guys having a fight with rubber axes? I mean, really? That is what I meant about human-being energy being expensive, unless you think you can make broccoli out of interstellar dust. The Earth and Mars as sustaiable options for humans are, as we know, not going to be around forever. In fact, is certainly possible that, "human-like voyagers" or not, humans will be extinct anyway by 2500. So I think that the answer here is clear. The real question is will we be able to create these interstellar pioneers in time.

 

[Johninch]

What if we could recreate human cognition in hardware that could run at 1 megahertz instead of 10 hz? Or what about 1 gigahertz? That would mean that this contrived machine would be able to live several thousand human lives in the time in took for you to take a sip of your coffee. That would mean something. Why would we want to kill that and not let it propagate? Some machine that smart would quickly usurp any of our attempts to quell its capacities. In theory perhaps we might be able to put in some fail safe device, but why?

This is just a progression of evolution. We are Homo sapien. Homo erectus is not still around, Habilis? No, Heidelbergensis? No, australopithecis? No? Neanderthal? No. Ardipithecus and Orrorin? No no. The list goes on. Is that wrong? There's a reason for these things.

Human cognition in hardware? Do you mean with or without human emotions? I suppose you mean without. In this case you have to build in preordained goals, otherwise it would not know what to do.

Why would it want to explore the universe? If you program it to go explore the universe, that makes it a man-made probe. Is that what you mean? Will it report back? If not, what will you program it do when it finds something interesting? I am not seeing the motivation programmed into this new creation.

I don’t see that you are answering my point about goals. Our goals can’t imply our disappearance or suicide, can they? I assume that the created superior being would be programmed to bring us some benefits, otherwise why would we create it?

I think that human cognition in hardware is a tall order, not for technical reasons, but for psychological reasons. I think we are in a bit if a loop here.

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[zoobyshoe]

My point for this thread is more of a what if? What if we could recreate human cognition in hardware that could run at 1 megahertz instead of 10 hz? Or what about 1 gigahertz? That would mean that this contrived machine would be able to live several thousand human lives in the time in took for you to take a sip of your coffee. That would mean something. Why would we want to kill that and not let it propagate? Some machine that smart would quickly usurp any of our attempts to quell its capacities. In theory perhaps we might be able to put in some fail safe device, but why?

You're making a weird assumption that since we could (in your scenario) make a machine capable of taking over we will do it. There's no advantage in us making it, in relinquishing control to something that puts it's own ends before ours, but you assume we will anyway.

There's no reason to believe a computer could evolve sentience on its own, or emotions. The simulacrum of sentience and emotions would have to be programmed into it. To do that would be to gratuitously invite self initiated, self serving and irrational decisions by the machine. Emotions mean it would start having preferences, tastes, it might get religion. Why would we make such a thing?

 

[collinsmark]

[Source: http://abstrusegoose.com/496]

 

[DiracPool]

Ha Ha Ha. You'll see. You will ALL see! Muahahahahahaha

 

[Evo]

It seems the thread has run out of new thoughts. Closed.