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Posts concerning artificial-intelligence

Considerations for a Space Opera Setting: Artificial Intelligence

23:48 16 Oct 2011

The effect of AI on a setting is similar to the effect of sentient alien beings, in that it helps to define the limits of “humanity”. By AI here I mean strong AI, the ability to create sentient machines, and particularly sentient machines of vastly greater intelligence than humans.

While it’s certainly possible to include AI created by non-human civilizations, that’s really the realm of “sentient aliens” rather than what I have in mind here, which is strong AI created by the human race. The interplay/tension between those two groups is critical a lot of space opera, e.g. Iain M. Banks’ Culture series and Dan Simmons’ Hyperion Cantos—not to mention Battlestar Galactica and critical aspects of the background of the Dune setting.
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The Scary Thing is, it Must Work Some of the Time

23:56 20 May 2011. Updated: 01:09 21 May 2011

Personally, I don’t think Turing would have been too impressed; also, could your thinking the bot is human in a case like this be considered a test failure on your part? That brings up one of my favorite rhetorical questions: “what do we do with humans who fail the Turing Test?”.

(This reminds me of my less-funny-but-possibly-still-amusing Dialogue with Eliza.)

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Pool-Playing Robot: Deep Green

13:27 17 Sep 2009

The Robotics and Computer Vision Lab at Queen’s University Ontario has produced a working robotic system that can play pool. Called Deep Green, it appears to have an excellent understanding of geometry, although it’s not clear that it understands the rules of the game per se, or that it can do its own shot selection.
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Skynet Expands Potential

20:11 13 May 2007

As reported by The Register, The UK Ministry of Defence is running a satellite network that will be used to control unmanned MQ-9 Reaper drones… and the name of the network? Skynet. Presumably killer androids who like phased plasma rifles in the forty-watt range will be added to the network soon…
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A dialogue with Eliza

00:00 31 Dec 1997. Updated: 15:43 28 Jun 2013
A whimsical conversation with a Macintosh.
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