And so it starts

Minority Report was just another science fiction movie based on a story by author Philip K. Dick. A world when AI could predict murder and police were assigned to preventing predictions from becoming reality. Technology making the world safer, better. Once again a vision of Man playing God. And when going awry, no longer just a vision, but a nightmare.

No technology is an immediate panacea or catalyst for anything, least of all world shattering changes. Technology advances slowly, at times in spurts, with acceptance and application moving forward from subtle positions to the mainstream, and then we ask how that happened so quickly? 40 years ago, a few satellite phones were making news, today, people can't seem to live without their smart phones, and even check them during sex. Addicted to a technology. There is no way at this time to truly predict how a "new" technology will change human cultures, predilections, behavior and so on. I'm sitting here typing into my computer and the browser has a assistant application that finishes the words before I finish typing them, a prediction of my future intent by a second or two. However, technology moves onward......

And so it starts:

https://www.sciencealert.com/neural-network-software-predicting-human-actions-future-minutes

It's not as mysterious or creepy as it sounds. Humans follow patterns of behavior, and are fairly easy to predict. For example, if you get up at 6am every day, it's pretty easy for a computer to recognize the pattern and "predict" that you'll get up at 6am tomorrow.

OldFatGuy said:

Minority Report was just another science fiction movie based on a story by author Philip K. Dick. A world when AI could predict murder and police were assigned to preventing predictions from becoming reality. Technology making the world safer, better. Once again a vision of Man playing God. And when going awry, no longer just a vision, but a nightmare.

No technology is an immediate panacea or catalyst for anything, least of all world shattering changes. Technology advances slowly, at times in spurts, with acceptance and application moving forward from subtle positions to the mainstream, and then we ask how that happened so quickly? 40 years ago, a few satellite phones were making news, today, people can't seem to live without their smart phones, and even check them during sex. Addicted to a technology. There is no way at this time to truly predict how a "new" technology will change human cultures, predilections, behavior and so on. I'm sitting here typing into my computer and the browser has a assistant application that finishes the words before I finish typing them, a prediction of my future intent by a second or two. However, technology moves onward......

And so it starts:

https://www.sciencealert.com/neural-network-software-predicting-human-actions-future-minutes

Click to expand...

Here's a much better Cspan video on what AI is, can be doing, and will likely do in the future..

https://www.c-span.org/video/?444193-2/prediction-machines

Starts is an understatement. Much of our activity is logged, saved and analyzed without any special permission (other than by using a device or service).

How to use Frequent Locations and Maps Destinations features in iOS

beancounter said:

It's not as mysterious or creepy as it sounds. Humans follow patterns of behavior, and are fairly easy to predict. For example, if you get up at 6am every day, it's pretty easy for a computer to recognize the pattern and "predict" that you'll get up at 6am tomorrow.

Click to expand...

If it were so easy to predict patterns of human behavior by computers, shouldn't we have seen far more of this than we do now? I'm not so sure even humans are all that good when it comes to perceiving patterns of behavior, but then what do I know?

late said:

Here's a much better Cspan video on what AI is, can be doing, and will likely do in the future..

https://www.c-span.org/video/?444193-2/prediction-machines

Click to expand...

I've seen this previously. Many are paying attention to Ajay Agrawal. However, I don't believe anyone truly has any idea about where we are heading with Ai. Certainly, there are specific goals, and more so, specific fears. But the guy who invented the wheel wasn't a genius. The guy who figured out how to mount two wheels on an axel, and then attach it all to a cart, he or she was a genius.

OldFatGuy said:

I've seen this previously. Many are paying attention to Ajay Agrawal. However, I don't believe anyone truly has any idea about where we are heading with Ai. Certainly, there are specific goals, and more so, specific fears. But the guy who invented the wheel wasn't a genius. The guy who figured out how to mount two wheels on an axel, and then attach it all to a cart, he or she was a genius.

Click to expand...

The problem with fear is that it's an emotion.

When Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, that was around the time we learned about electricity in the body. People were afraid, thus the book.

But now? You can find a box in schools, sometimes buses, or cop cars. If you are old like me, it would make sense to buy the box to keep at home. It's a defib device. They are literally all around you, and you don't care one damn bit. Because people stopped being afraid about that a century ago.

In any case, this is the next Big Thing. If we don't develop it, China will and once again eat our lunch. The way they did with solar panels. We used to be ahead of China on solar panels. But China invested heavily in them, and our Republicans whined like babies.

Agrawal has a good handle on the near term to the mid term. This is going to be such a transformative technology, that you really can't predict the long term.

But it won't be the Terminator, unless you want to think of Trump as the Terminator.

OldFatGuy said:

Minority Report was just another science fiction movie based on a story by author Philip K. Dick. A world when AI could predict murder and police were assigned to preventing predictions from becoming reality. Technology making the world safer, better. Once again a vision of Man playing God. And when going awry, no longer just a vision, but a nightmare.

No technology is an immediate panacea or catalyst for anything, least of all world shattering changes. Technology advances slowly, at times in spurts, with acceptance and application moving forward from subtle positions to the mainstream, and then we ask how that happened so quickly? 40 years ago, a few satellite phones were making news, today, people can't seem to live without their smart phones, and even check them during sex. Addicted to a technology. There is no way at this time to truly predict how a "new" technology will change human cultures, predilections, behavior and so on. I'm sitting here typing into my computer and the browser has a assistant application that finishes the words before I finish typing them, a prediction of my future intent by a second or two. However, technology moves onward......

And so it starts:

https://www.sciencealert.com/neural-network-software-predicting-human-actions-future-minutes

Click to expand...

As the article says, this kind of speculation on what happens next is fairly easy for humans to deduce. Even a dog that is conditioned to know that when we pick up the car keys, a ride in the car is a possibility or when we pick up the leash, there is a good chance for a walk in that park. But that sort of reasoning isn't so easy for a computer.

But isn't it? We have been using algorithms to calculate behavior and probabilities for quite some time now, and computers learn to do that fairly easily. Computers are presumably used to calculate what the weather will be three days from now as well as evidences of climate change. Computers are already choosing what ads they think will be of interest to us on the internet based on the words we type into our browsers and probably from our internet usage and probably from what we buy at the supermarket or Wally World.

A 1983 movie "War Games" was based on the concept of a computer playing endless strategy games and learning from them toward the end of teaching itself how to successfully conduct thermonuclear war. That is not into the area of science fiction any more. "Hal" may already exist.

I don't think it is a matter of 'so it starts.' I think it has already been here for some time.

ttwtt78640 said:

Starts is an understatement. Much of our activity is logged, saved and analyzed without any special permission (other than by using a device or service).

How to use Frequent Locations and Maps Destinations features in iOS

Click to expand...

Apple Maps allows the user to opt out of analytics in the System preferences for security. Google Maps offers no such option. Apple Maps store the data locally, unless the user has added the maps app to iCloud storage and back up, which can only be accessed by other Apple devices authorized by the user. Apple cannot access personal data stored by a user in iCloud. Google stores the data on its own cloud servers.

Real men don't need computer or phone navigation maps. We'd rather get lost. Women don't understand it is an adventure!

OldFatGuy said:

Apple Maps allows the user to opt out of analytics in the System preferences for security. Google Maps offers no such option. Apple Maps store the data locally, unless the user has added the maps app to iCloud storage and back up, which can only be accessed by other Apple devices authorized by the user. Apple cannot access personal data stored by a user in iCloud. Google stores the data on its own cloud servers.

Real men don't need computer or phone navigation maps. We'd rather get lost. Women don't understand it is an adventure!

Click to expand...

I thought that metadata (where your cellphone pings or was used) was kept (by someone) regardless of any security settings.

late said:

The problem with fear is that it's an emotion.

When Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, that was around the time we learned about electricity in the body. People were afraid, thus the book.

But now? You can find a box in schools, sometimes buses, or cop cars. If you are old like me, it would make sense to buy the box to keep at home. It's a defib device. They are literally all around you, and you don't care one damn bit. Because people stopped being afraid about that a century ago.

In any case, this is the next Big Thing. If we don't develop it, China will and once again eat our lunch. The way they did with solar panels. We used to be ahead of China on solar panels. But China invested heavily in them, and our Republicans whined like babies.

Agrawal has a good handle on the near term to the mid term. This is going to be such a transformative technology, that you really can't predict the long term.

But it won't be the Terminator, unless you want to think of Trump as the Terminator.

Click to expand...

Mary Shelley is one my favorites. Dr. Frankenstein playing god terrified her early readers. Byron, Percy Shelley, John Polidori, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin and her step sister Claire Clairmont (Byron's momentary mistress), Abraham Stoker, jet setters of the day, along with others were guests at Byron's Villa Diodati during the summer of 1816, the year of no summer caused by the climate changing volcanic eruption in Indonesia, the largest in recorded history, when a summer night storm hit. Fueled by use of excessive wine, psychotropics including laudanum, sexual orgies, 18 year old Mary started writing Frankenstein after a challenge by Byron as to who could write the scariest story. Her themes were man playing god, and abandonment, the latter a dig at Byron. Mary had lost two children in their infancies by two husbands who left her before she was 17. Byron had left a legacy of 100's of natural children throughout Europe. Polidori (Poly Dolly) started Vampyre, laying the foundation for Stoker's Count Dracula. Dr. Frankenstein, in Mary's novel, abandons his monster. Mary had no concept of electricity in the human body, she knew nothing of electricity, but she did know the classical European myths of lightening being a tool of the gods to grant life or death. Vampyre failed to capture the imaginations of the reading public, but Stoker's Count Dracula was a relatively instant hit. Both Byron and Shelley gave up on writing scary stories, they were too stoned to complete a work at the time.

We all know Shelley married the young Mary, and when he prematurely died, she viewed his death as another abandonment. Not to mention she knew he and Byron had been cheating on her with each other and other women and men. Byron had enjoyed threesomes with Mary and her husband. Mary never remarried, despite that Bram Stoker proposed to her every year until her own death. He was infatuated with her. Mary went on to write 18 more novels, all sold well, and one, The Last Man, predicted AIDs, the last man alive from millions who died because of an STD epidemic, in a world of women desperate for the fulfillment of birth.

I received a new pacemaker/defib implant just last week. My third. I'm nearing 70 in 6 months or so, and I am bionic. An internal prosthetic left shoulder, my fourth since SE Asia, titaniums bone supports in both legs, another gift from SE Asia, and a few other goodies. Next, a gift from Rockefeller University, a cloned from my own stem cells, second heart, much smaller, as an assist to my existing heart. About 2-3 years away.

China is of little concern for AI development. They are decades behind American research, and further behind Israel, from whom we are receiving huge advances, neither standing still as China and Europe attempt to catch up. Russia isn't even a player. Israel is at the forefront of AI research and development, the reason why both Apple and IBM build facilities in Israel. What is more interesting are the two approaches to AI being used by Apple and IBM. There's good reasons why both giants are allies. China has nothing to be compared to either, or any of the other private American companies working in the field. This is not a hardware function that can be easily commoditized, despite the toys from Amazon and Alphabet. Checkout Apple's chair at MIT for real world advancements that will give us a taste of what is coming for everyday use. Driverless cars are a mere blip to the evolution of AI. We will all be connected and networked, just a matter of time.

AlbqOwl said:

As the article says, this kind of speculation on what happens next is fairly easy for humans to deduce. Even a dog that is conditioned to know that when we pick up the car keys, a ride in the car is a possibility or when we pick up the leash, there is a good chance for a walk in that park. But that sort of reasoning isn't so easy for a computer.

But isn't it? We have been using algorithms to calculate behavior and probabilities for quite some time now, and computers learn to do that fairly easily. Computers are presumably used to calculate what the weather will be three days from now as well as evidences of climate change. Computers are already choosing what ads they think will be of interest to us on the internet based on the words we type into our browsers and probably from our internet usage and probably from what we buy at the supermarket or Wally World.

A 1983 movie "War Games" was based on the concept of a computer playing endless strategy games and learning from them toward the end of teaching itself how to successfully conduct thermonuclear war. That is not into the area of science fiction any more. "Hal" may already exist.

I don't think it is a matter of 'so it starts.' I think it has already been here for some time.

Click to expand...

War Games was speculative fiction. Not reality. I think you're confusing relatively simple pattern analysis with AI. AI uses pattern analysis as part of its education of self methodologies, however it reaching toward new methods of thinking. Language is everything. Facebook researchers had to shut down their AI research program when two different AI machines they were using created their own language for communicating with each other. Scared the pants off the boys and girls at Facebook's labs.

NASA ran into a similar quandary, but requested tools from their AI experimental machines for understanding the language they created, a scientific and more efficient programming language for its own needs, and they were received, resolving the temporary issue.

ttwtt78640 said:

I thought that metadata (where your cellphone pings or was used) was kept (by someone) regardless of any security settings.

Click to expand...

You just smacked the soundbite form of journalism in the mouth. Like any form of data, instructions must be created for how metadata is stored and distributed. Apple decided long ago, all that data was worthless without the ability to analyze it and use it, and for what? An unwarranted expense, an unneeded storage function. Apple devices store locally unless instructed to use the iCloud. The user controls the storage. Apple figured out it had no need of data when the subject matter was Aunt Mary's choice of neckties for her nephew was under discussion with her sister, between passing recipes for garlic and cheese mashed potatoes. The science of diminishing returns. Metadata for cell phone usage, regardless of brand is kept by the carriers, if only for predicting future usage build out needs for their networks. Nothing else. Not something to paranoid about.

Do you really think any of iMessages with my grandkids under age 10 will provide data with substance? Why bother? Have you spent time reading jokes written by a 7 year old? They all end with "What a doodoo head. Ha Ha Ha" Why does a 7 year old get Dad's old iPhone 4?

OldFatGuy said:

War Games was speculative fiction. Not reality. I think you're confusing relatively simple pattern analysis with AI. AI uses pattern analysis as part of its education of self methodologies, however it reaching toward new methods of thinking. Language is everything. Facebook researchers had to shut down their AI research program when two different AI machines they were using created their own language for communicating with each other. Scared the pants off the boys and girls at Facebook's labs.

NASA ran into a similar quandary, but requested tools from their AI experimental machines for understanding the language they created, a scientific and more efficient programming language for its own needs, and they were received, resolving the temporary issue.

Click to expand...

War Games was fiction, but I think whoever wrote the script was uncannily prophetic in envisioning a computer that could process information and learn from it.
Scientists Are Building Computers That Can Learn And Adapt - Business Insider

Sometimes the simplest proposed solution or point of view is the most accurate one.

AlbqOwl said:

War Games was fiction, but I think whoever wrote the script was uncannily prophetic in envisioning a computer that could process information and learn from it.
Scientists Are Building Computers That Can Learn And Adapt - Business Insider

Sometimes the simplest proposed solution or point of view is the most accurate one.

Click to expand...

Science fiction has often been marked by prescience.

My computer has learned to shut down if I look at porn. Uh no, that's my wife pulling the plug. I don't know why she does that, I get friskier, and she sleeps happier, knowing I'm feeling frustrated.