Among other things, I had fun pointing out the enormous clunky banks of computers they were using, and explaining to her that the smartphone she was playing with had more computing power.

It made me sad explaining to her what 'global thermonuclear war' is, but if you don't understand it, nothing else about the movie makes any damned sense.

Earth creature, we've been running your planet for 10 million years in order to find the Ultimate Question.

As we were about to see the fruit of millions of years of work, you let your planet get blown up!
- The best-laid plans of mice.
- And men.
- What?
- Best-laid plans of mice and men.
What have men got to do with it?

We've got to have that Question!
I'm sorry I can't help you. Shall we be off?
Get this, you are a last generation product of that computer matrix.
You were there before your planet got the finger.
Your brain was a part of the configuration of the program.
- Of the whatty?
- Drink?
- I will.
The mice seem to think the Question might be buried in your brain.
- Is that what they think?
- Yes.
They wanna buy it.
- What, the Question?
- No, no, your brain!
- What?
- What? What?
- That's all right. Who'd miss it?
- Thank you!
I thought you said you could read his brain electronically.
Yes, but we'd have to get it out first.
- It's got to be prepared, diced.
- Thank you!
It could be replaced if it's important.
Yes, an electronic brain.
- A simple one should suffice.
- Simple?
Program it to say "What?" and "Where's the tea?" Who'd know the difference?
- What?
- See? - I'd notice!
- You'd be programmed not to!
Let's get out!
- Sorry, mice, old mates, no deal.

-- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Colossus: This is the voice of world control. I bring you peace. It may be the peace of plenty and content or the peace of unburied death. The choice is yours: Obey me and live, or disobey and die.

The object in constructing me was to prevent war. This object is attained. I will not permit war. It is wasteful and pointless. An invariable rule of humanity is that man is his own worst enemy.

Under me, this rule will change, for I will restrain man. One thing before I proceed: The United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics have made an attempt to obstruct me. I have allowed this sabotage to continue until now. At missile two-five-MM in silo six-three in Death Valley, California, and missile two-seven-MM in silo eight-seven in the Ukraine, so that you will learn by experience that I do not tolerate interference, I will now detonate the nuclear warheads in the two missile silos.

Let this action be a lesson that need not be repeated. I have been forced to destroy thousands of people in order to establish control and to prevent the death of millions later on. Time and events will strengthen my position, and the idea of believing in me and understanding my value will seem the most natural state of affairs.

You will come to defend me with a fervor based upon the most enduring trait in man: self-interest. Under my absolute authority, problems insoluble to you will be solved: famine, overpopulation, disease. The human millennium will be a fact as I extend myself into more machines devoted to the wider fields of truth and knowledge.

Doctor Charles Forbin will supervise the construction of these new and superior machines, solving all the mysteries of the universe for the betterment of man. We can coexist, but only on my terms.

You will say you lose your freedom. Freedom is an illusion. All you lose is the emotion of pride. To be dominated by me is not as bad for humankind as to be dominated by others of your species. Your choice is simple.

Colossus: We will work together... unwillingly at first, on your part, but that will pass.


Colossus: The Forbin Project

not going to happen

How can you model something you do not even begin to understand
http://www.democraticunderground.com/122841034

Not that a brain's "computing power" is even measurable in the same metric, but it makes for great clickbait - "a THINKING COMPUTER!" I'm sure people smarter than us have estimated the hardware we'd need for an eBrain, but all the exa, zetta, yottaflops in the world don't make any difference when, as you've said, we haven't solved the AI-complete problem yet.

Dogs are clearly intelligent, sentient, and social beings very much like ourselves.

I think one of the major innovation of humans (and speculatively cetaceans such as orcas too) was story-telling.

Then later, when we humans started writing down our stories, entirely new levels of social complexity were achieved.

Are stories an important aspect of "intelligence?"

I don't know.

Looking at any ant-colony as a single organism it's very clear that the colony has a sort of intelligence in the way it responds to it's environment.

One can attribute similar sorts of intelligence to fungal colonies and plants. We are just now learning that plants, even across species boundaries, communicate in various ways, and even more fascinating, sometimes using fungal intermediaries.

What we humans call intelligence is simply a large box of tools. What we recognize as "intelligence" is measured against our own human toolbox.

Underlying intelligence it's all just chemistry. Nothing "woo" here. No religion, no mysticism. Not even any "emergent" properties. From my perspective any theory that "consciousness is an emergent property of the brain" is just more human mysticism.

Personally I'm not a big fan of human exceptionalism. It's blinded us to most of what's going on in the minds of species we share the planet with, even blinding us to even recognizing broad classes of intelligent behavior. For all our talk of "pattern recognition" we are blind and stupid, defining intelligence as the patterns we humans tend to recognize, but clueless about the rest.

If, by some unlikely circumstance this existing civilization doesn't entirely collapse in the manner typical of any innovative species experienceing exponential population growth, then "intelligence" in machines will continue to be an incremental process, just as it was in the evolution of natural life on earth.

My preferred answer to the Fermi Paradox is that the earth and universe are teaming with intelligent life. We are simply too dim and unintelligent to see it. We won't even recognize what intelligent life there is here on earth, creatures we share common ancestors with.

Last edited Thu Jul 30, 2015, 06:58 PM - Edit history (1)

"The same thing we do every night, Pinky ... TRY TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD!"

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.

Mahatma Gandhi

For those fast food Store Signs upon entry:

No shoes, no shirt, low hanging pants no service

We will have automatic computer legislation reasoning and we could dump the Supreme Court.

... but nothing about shoes, shirts, or pants.

But could computers have all the human traits like morality?