My random thoughts

[funkervogt]

In this sci fi film, Mr. Stitch, the main character is constructed from the body parts of 44 dead males and 44 dead females, thus representing the full diversity of humankind. He also has superhuman strength and intelligence, and computer implant in his brain.



I don't think posthumans will look like Mr. Stitch, but I think they will have superhuman abilities and individuals will encompass the full genetic diversity of our species. One posthuman might contain the full genomes of hundreds or thousands of different humans, along with their wisdom and knowledge, and it could shapeshift to turn into any one of them, or any combination thereof.

[funkervogt]

Better genetic technology will let us grow purebreed animals, like dogs and cats, in labs. The vagaries of meiosis ensure that even if two, prizewinning purebred animals are bred, most of their offspring will have some characteristics that make them fall short of prizewinning status. The result is large numbers of unwanted animals created for every one prizewinner, which is costly and leads to a lot of animal suffering.

A solution would be to identify a few perfect examples of each breed and to clone them, over and over, for whoever wanted them. Genetic defects could also be spotted and eliminated in the labs, ensuring that all the birthed animals were healthy, further helping animal welfare.

Note: I have no interest in animal shows and in fact think the phenomenon is creepy. I merely put this idea forward as a way to improve animal welfare, not to make animal breeders and show organizers richer.

[funkervogt]

I've been reading about the challenges of transferring military vehicles to Ukraine in light of the Ukrainian's unfamiliarity with repairing, maintaining, and operating some types of equipment. In the future, this will not be a problem for machine armies, since they will have encyclopedic files on every type of vehicle and weapon system, as well as masterful levels of mechanical and engineering skills. You could give them any type of gun, tank or plane, and they'd be able to use it without a problem. They would also have a better grasp of the design tolerances of their equipment and would push them beyond those limits less often than humans, meaning their weapons would break less often.

This reminds me of the scene from The Second Renaissance, where the Machine Army prevails in spite of its ragtag composition.

[funkervogt]

Intelligent machines will revolutionize the shipbreaking industry since they'll be immune to toxic substances found on ships, like asbestos, lead paint, and mold. They will be able to break down those ships as easily and as cheaply as any other, and all the mothballed vessels (mostly ex-warships) that are still afloat because their owners lack the money to pay humans in biohazard suits to scrap them will disappear.

[funkervogt]

I had a talk with my friend about futurism. One thing I mentioned is that, as the animal kingdom shows, there is no single, idea body form, so the most highly evolved type of posthuman would be a shapeshifter. It could assume any form it needed to at a given moment. I said this would lead to a basic psychological disconnect with natural humans like us, since it wouldn't be able to contemplate being stuck in one, fixed body that it didn't even choose for itself.

My friend made the point that, while a shapeshifter would be superior to us, our limited human experiences might still offer some value to posthumans and to the universe as a whole. Our inherent limitations force us to cope with the world and its unforgiving forces in ways that a shapeshifter or even an AGI couldn't imagine. In the same way that today's AIs come up with counterintuitive tactics for beating video games, maybe it's the case that we humans, by virtue of being so mentally and physically limited, come up with modes of thinking and behaving that a more advanced and resilient intelligence couldn't formulate by itself.

It was an intriguing hypothesis, though let me be clear that I doubt humankind creates as much useful, creative output as a civilization made of superintelligent machines could. But maybe we are unique and worthy in spite of it all.

[funkervogt]

Once autonomous cars are standard, speed bumps should disappear since there will be no need to force human drivers to slow down. Machines will always obey speed limits. Cars will last slightly longer since they won't have to deal with the impacts.

[funkervogt]

Due to a drought, Lake Mead's water level is the lowest it has been since the 1930s. Long-dead bodies that have been resting on the lake bottom are now being exposed:

The first body, discovered on May 1, was likely a murder victim who died from a gunshot wound "some time in the mid '70s to early '80s, based on clothing and footwear the victim was found with."

https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/09/us/lake- ... index.html

Imagine what else we'll find in the future, when drones are everywhere and map the whole planet, including its aquatic regions. I envision something like a robotic alligator that can swim quickly through the water, yet also walk on the sea floor and grasp things with its fingers. A few dozen of them would be assigned to Lake Mead, and would slowly swim through it in a grid pattern, mapping every square inch, and finding everything that has been lost to history.

[funkervogt]

A trope I've seen several times in future sci-fi is the robot servant that kills its human master because it finds out the master has ordered a more advanced replacement, and the older robot is headed for the scrapyard. I doubt anything like this will ever happen, since old robots could get software upgrades to make them more capable, and since it wouldn't make sense to junk them merely because they weren't top-of-the-line anymore. Like with cars, older robots would be sold secondhand to poorer people.  

[funkervogt]

If it were possible to upload minds, I would make several of myself. One as a child, one as a teenager, one as a twentysomething, etc. We would live, laugh, and cry together like a family. If I had so many uploads, I don't think I'd be scared to die anymore.

"Live," I would say on my deathbed. "LIVE!"

[funkervogt]

Modern combine harvester vehicles are incredibly heavy and have huge wheels. When they drive over farm fields, they compact the soil, causing many problems.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-61468116

Robotics will provide a solution: A farmer will be able to own many smaller, lighter, autonomous combine harvesters. Even smaller machines will be able to create and manage backyard gardens for average people, boosting global food output, and giving people more control over the quality of their own food.

[funkervogt]

A smart friend of mine and I had some drinks and speculated about what a war with a hostile AGI would be like. We agreed that it made the most sense for the opening attack to involve biological weapons and cyberwarfare. Those two things would let it cause the most damage for the least cost. Only in a later stage of the conflict would it start using killer robots for kinetic attacks on humans and our infrastructure. I don't think those machines will be like Terminators, and instead expect them to mostly be the sizes of small animals up to dogs.

We also agreed that our best hope of victory would be to entrust our defense to friendly AGIs that could think and act as fast as the hostile AGI. In a few hours, the AGIs could fight a massive, intricate war across the internet for dominance of it, while humanity was sitting off to the side, not able to comprehend what was going on other than widespread disruption of the internet and electronic devices. To the machines, it might seem like years passed.

A lack of trust in our friendly AGIs could doom us. For example, if the hostile AGI disseminated a killer virus in several cities at once, the friendly AGI might be able to create a cure in a few days, but the human population would have to agree en masse to inject themselves with the mystery concoction, invented by a robot, and unproven by clinical trials. As politicians and the public debated the issue, and access to the vaccine was held up, millions of people would die.

Seeing how incompetently people at all levels and across the world responded to COVID-19, I expect us to make even bigger blunders if pitted against an intelligent, powerful enemy that was releasing bioweapons.

[funkervogt]

This YouTube page posts time-lapse videos of car engine rebuilds. It's really cool to watch.



Future AGIs will master all human skills, including those possessed by the men in the video. The AGIs will be able to control dexterous robot bodies as well. This means that countless mechanical objects, like cars and their engines, that today are thrown out because humans lack the skills, time, or money to repair them, will be repaired and kept in service.

I think it would be really cool if, in the distant future, 100+ year old cars like VW Beetles were still plying the roads alongside newly made, highly advanced vehicles. And if all vehicles were driven by machines (older models like VW Beetles would be retrofitted with cameras and other tech to make them autonomous), there wouldn't be accidents, so there'd be no risk of ruining vintage cars.

[caltrek]

^^^ I think another interesting part of the mix will be 3d printers. These should help with the supply of parts.

[funkervogt]

The movie Armageddon is free on YouTube.


If a scenario like this happened in the future, no training time would be needed since all the knowledge and skills for drilling could be downloaded into the space ships in a few minutes.

Also, the Space Shuttle that crashed on the asteroid would have had better luck since its AI pilot would not have been killed. It would have remained functional and done a controlled crash landing.

[funkervogt]

A smart friend of mine and I had some drinks and speculated about what a war with a hostile AGI would be like. We agreed that it made the most sense for the opening attack to involve biological weapons and cyberwarfare. Those two things would let it cause the most damage for the least cost. Only in a later stage of the conflict would it start using killer robots for kinetic attacks on humans and our infrastructure. I don't think those machines will be like Terminators, and instead expect them to mostly be the sizes of small animals up to dogs.

We also agreed that our best hope of victory would be to entrust our defense to friendly AGIs that could think and act as fast as the hostile AGI. In a few hours, the AGIs could fight a massive, intricate war across the internet for dominance of it, while humanity was sitting off to the side, not able to comprehend what was going on other than widespread disruption of the internet and electronic devices. To the machines, it might seem like years passed.

A lack of trust in our friendly AGIs could doom us. For example, if the hostile AGI disseminated a killer virus in several cities at once, the friendly AGI might be able to create a cure in a few days, but the human population would have to agree en masse to inject themselves with the mystery concoction, invented by a robot, and unproven by clinical trials. As politicians and the public debated the issue, and access to the vaccine was held up, millions of people would die.

Seeing how incompetently people at all levels and across the world responded to COVID-19, I expect us to make even bigger blunders if pitted against an intelligent, powerful enemy that was releasing bioweapons.

Infecting animals with diseases that they can pass on to humans would also be a powerful strategy. The diseases would become endemic to various species, and they'd serve as reservoirs for it indefinitely. Imagine how demoralizing it would be if you had a pet dog and learned that the government was going to kill all dogs because Skynet had released a killer virus into the dog population that could jump to humans.

[Vakanai]

A smart friend of mine and I had some drinks and speculated about what a war with a hostile AGI would be like. We agreed that it made the most sense for the opening attack to involve biological weapons and cyberwarfare. Those two things would let it cause the most damage for the least cost. Only in a later stage of the conflict would it start using killer robots for kinetic attacks on humans and our infrastructure. I don't think those machines will be like Terminators, and instead expect them to mostly be the sizes of small animals up to dogs.

We also agreed that our best hope of victory would be to entrust our defense to friendly AGIs that could think and act as fast as the hostile AGI. In a few hours, the AGIs could fight a massive, intricate war across the internet for dominance of it, while humanity was sitting off to the side, not able to comprehend what was going on other than widespread disruption of the internet and electronic devices. To the machines, it might seem like years passed.

A lack of trust in our friendly AGIs could doom us. For example, if the hostile AGI disseminated a killer virus in several cities at once, the friendly AGI might be able to create a cure in a few days, but the human population would have to agree en masse to inject themselves with the mystery concoction, invented by a robot, and unproven by clinical trials. As politicians and the public debated the issue, and access to the vaccine was held up, millions of people would die.

Seeing how incompetently people at all levels and across the world responded to COVID-19, I expect us to make even bigger blunders if pitted against an intelligent, powerful enemy that was releasing bioweapons.

Infecting animals with diseases that they can pass on to humans would also be a powerful strategy. The diseases would become endemic to various species, and they'd serve as reservoirs for it indefinitely. Imagine how demoralizing it would be if you had a pet dog and learned that the government was going to kill all dogs because Skynet had released a killer virus into the dog population that could jump to humans.

Why bother? Would kill more people targeting food animals instead of pets. Mad cow, avian flu, dialed up to the nth degree would be pretty bad. Find a way to kill off fish as well, and we'd have a disaster. Sure there's plants, and you could argue that people should eat less meat, but the sudden absence of so much food from the marketplace would have disastrous effects. Never mind that the AI would target plants too.

[funkervogt]

It seems like every time I go to a business these days and interact with minimum-wage staff or the products of their labor, I notice a problem, whether it's merchandise put in the wrong place, or someone not giving me the correct food I ordered. It won't take much for machines to get good enough and cheap enough to replace them, and there will be nowhere else for the displaced people to go. They can't be retrained or relied upon to do more complex or important jobs.

[Vakanai]

It seems like every time I go to a business these days and interact with minimum-wage staff or the products of their labor, I notice a problem, whether it's merchandise put in the wrong place, or someone not giving me the correct food I ordered. It won't take much for machines to get good enough and cheap enough to replace them, and there will be nowhere else for the displaced people to go. They can't be retrained or relied upon to do more complex or important jobs.

You know it's not as simple as saying that low wage workers can't be relied on to do more complex tasks just because they're current work isn't satisfactory. You have to remember that over the past couple of years there's been a mass exodus from some jobs. My local McDonald's is supposed to employ and be operated by 60 people. They have 20. People are having to pick up the slack, they're overworked. That's true all over right now. Wal-Mart used to have several cash registers open, now there's only one, maybe two on a good day, most people just have to self check out now.
Fewer people covering all the work, quality is going to go down, and it has nothing to do with the reliability of the employees. They're just swamped.

[Nero]

The reasons for their quality of work being lower are not really relevant, the lower the quality of work needed to be replaced the easier it will be for a machine to be that replacement and once these individuals are displaced they and many others will quickly realise that they will not be able to reskill faster than a new machine can be trained to do equally well or much better.

[funkervogt]

You both make good points.