My random thoughts

Anything that doesn't quite fit in elsewhere...
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funkervogt
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Re: My random thoughts

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funkervogt wrote: Wed Oct 13, 2021 3:43 pm By 2100, these three things will exist for sure:

1) Multitudes of narrow AIs, often paired to robot bodies, that can do specific tasks as well as humans or better, and at lower cost. Countless jobs will be automated.

2) Cheap, lag-free FIVR that lets humans remotely control robots. Countless jobs that are now protected from offshoring because they involve physical labor will no longer be protected. The "person" fixing your air conditioner in 2100 might be someone in Africa or India, in their rented VR immersion booth.

3) Narrow AIs that can watch individual humans and recognize what they are doing and saying, from moment to moment. This will allow for highly accurate quantification of work output and work competency. The impact on pay, hiring, firing, and promotions is clear. The workplace would be more meritocratic and competitive than ever.

Note that I've made no mention of AGI. In omitting it and focusing on simpler technologies, I hope to illustrate how we're headed for profound shifts in labor and the job market no matter what.
Let me add this:

4) Narrow AIs that can assist humans with work tasks, allowing even a worker with moderate skills to be like an expert.
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funkervogt
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Re: My random thoughts

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Portable GPS devices have turned every person into a navigation expert who never gets lost, even in totally new places. Likewise, AR glasses will turn every person into a master chef, car mechanic, air conditioner repair person, or any number of other things. Just follow the visual clues and verbal instructions your glasses give you.
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funkervogt
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Re: My random thoughts

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I've long believed that modular home construction is an underappreciated technology. Mass-producing house "modules" in prefabrication factories, then trucking them to building sites and having workers connect them together would lower the cost of housing and reduce construction waste.

I'd like it if we used robustly-made modules that could be easily connected and disconnected from each other through some simple method like lining up the holes in the metal frames of two modules and then hammering thick pegs through the holes. Instead of demolishing houses once they were unwanted, they could be easily disassembled, and sold as is to people (maybe someone really likes the kitchen configuration), or sent back to the prefab factory to be gutted, refurbished, and resold.

Robust prefab houses that could be easily broken down and put back together would also make it possible for average people to move their houses to new locations, like these people did.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/16471073/ ... home-lake/

However, it would be easier and cheaper since a prefab house could be moved piecemeal, and each piece would be stronger and hence less likely to sustain damage during the move.
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funkervogt
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Re: My random thoughts

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Tori Spelling was recently spotted taking a heated phone call outside of an attorney's office.

The 48-year-old actress – who wore a baggy black blazer, matching black pants, jewelry and large black sunglasses for the Monday outing in Los Angeles – was also seen holding a notebook that listed a 3 p.m. meeting with a lawyer.

The topics of discussion listed included "assets," "support" and "custody."
https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/t ... ce-meeting

The article contains a photo of Tori, taken outside the office. In spite of being taken from some distance away, the photo is of such high resolution that it is possible to zoom in on the paper she is holding in her hand and to read what she wrote on it, revealing it pertains to divorce matters.

These sorts of invasions of privacy made possible by advanced optics will only get worse in the future. A person with AR glasses could zoom in on you to read papers you had in front of you, or written text you were looking at on a computer monitor of even a smartphone screen. Built-in apps might even let the person read your lips from long distances, like HAL did in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

It goes without saying that future AGIs will also have these abilities.
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funkervogt
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Re: My random thoughts

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Our concept of "handmade" products made through "traditional" or "artisanal" methods will be undermined once there are machines with hands and arms that are as dexterous as humans'.



There will come a day when a robot in an industrial park not far from your house can make textiles through the EXACT same process and out of the same materials as those shown in the video. Imperfections meant to mimic human errors could even be deliberately added to the products.

Once technological unemployment gets really bad, and a "Buy human" movement arises, it will be dogged by major problems with counterfeits.
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funkervogt
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Re: My random thoughts

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The movie Rememory is free on YouTube right now, and I'm watching it. The premise is that a scientist invents a computer-like device that can scan a person's brain, copy all of their memories--including memories they can barely remember (or not at all)--and replay those memories to them in vivid detail.



In the distant future, brain implants will allow us to do this, though I don't think the memory footage will be "crystal clear" as it was in the film since humans don't actually encode images in their minds with photographic levels of detail. It's fascinating to imagine what it would be like to get such an implant, and to lie back in sessions and relive what you experienced.

Your memories could also be saved digitally and passed on to other people, including your descendants. Imagine being able to experience the story of your entire family.
Nanotechandmorefuture
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Re: My random thoughts

Post by Nanotechandmorefuture »

Thanks for posting this I'm going to check out that movie now!

I figured as well that is what brain implants should be able to do. Cyberpunk 2077 also touched on that with their brain dances. It would be nice to be able to preview such things.
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funkervogt
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Re: My random thoughts

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The future is female, but the even farther future is androgynous since AIs will be in charge.
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funkervogt
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Re: My random thoughts

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I've been watching the TV version of Y: The Last Man. The sudden deaths of all human males except one destroys most of the global workforce, including the vast majority of workers with some types of technical skills (pilots, for example, are overwhelmingly male). As a result, the impact on public services and business activity is as traumatic as the psychological impact on the survivors, who are all women except for one.

In 100 years, a similar show could be made if it were premised on the sudden, permanent shutdown of all AIs and robots. By that time, we will heavily dependent on them for even simple tasks.
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funkervogt
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Re: My random thoughts

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The "time traveling" that the main character of Slaughterhouse Five experiences throughout the book, in which he vividly relives memories of past events, will be a reality one day thanks to technology. Mass surveillance and body-worn devices will record most of the moments of your life, and computers will be able to use those records to recreate most events in virtual reality, for you to experience again. In the farther future, brain implants will directly record your brain activity and your memories, and will be able to, through electrical stimulation of your brain, make you subjectively relive whatever past events you choose.

If you ordered your brain implant to "play" a memory, you might fall into what appears to be a trance to observers, while your internal mental state would be a forced replay of the past experience. You'd be lying still on a bed while, from your perspective, you were running along the beach as a child, feeling the wet sand between your toes.
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