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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AIs and posthumans won't define themselves by their careers like we do because they will be smart enough to quickly master any new skills or domains of knowledge, as needed. We're so dumb and short- lived that we can only master one or two in a lifetime, so we become known for competence in those one or two things.
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funkervogt
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Re: My random thoughts

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Once machines have mastered the ability to mimic human speech, it will revolutionize the audiobook industry. Any amateur could feed the text of a book into a computer program that would spit out an audiobook version, complete with different voices for different characters and the narrator, that matched their age, sex, race, and other characteristics. It would also be easy to add sound effects.

The age of "radio plays" would return, but with higher production standards and for a much greater variety of stories.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_drama
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funkervogt
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Re: My random thoughts

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If you were a posthuman or machine, you'd be able to sculpt your own appearance. Imagine looking in the mirror and being able to see sub-millimeter scale asymmetries in your face, and simply by thinking about it, being able to fix them in real time by mentally commanding your synthetic bones and flesh to change size, shape or color. The notion of "beauty" being a fixed (or nearly so) attribute that people are randomly assigned at birth won't compute.
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funkervogt
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Re: My random thoughts

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The recent collapse of the high-rise condo building in Florida, and some research I did on the tragic Donner Party have made me realize that it will be very valuable for intelligent machines and posthumans to have the ability to "hibernate." Put simply, they would be able to reduce their physiological and mental activity to such a low level that their energy resources would last much longer than would normally be the case.

If you were trapped under the rubble of a building, you could "switch yourself off" until rescuers uncovered you, whereupon you would be switched back on.

If you were stuck in an inhospitable environment, like a frozen wasteland or desert, and rescue was unlikely for a long time, you would instinctively build some kind of simple structure that rescuers could easily spot from the air, and then you would dig a hole in the ground just big enough for yourself, go inside where the temperature was milder and more constant than at on surface, and hibernate.
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funkervogt
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Re: My random thoughts

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One thing I want in the future is a personal palanquin carried by four androids.
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funkervogt
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Re: My random thoughts

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I've said before that posthumans would greatly benefit from the ability to alter their own gene expression at will, simply by thinking about it. Let me add that they'd benefit even more if their genome coded for traits taken from non-human species. For example, if a posthuman found itself living on an island, they could slowly grow gills that would allow them to breathe underwater and exploit whatever underwater resources there were nearby.
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funkervogt
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Re: My random thoughts

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Personal assistant AIs will be invaluable helping you to spot psychopaths, con artists, and other types of people who mean you harm. Just imagine a mechanical "angel" always sitting on your shoulder, seeing and hearing the people you interact with. It would have knowledge of every type of mental disorder and would be able to judge your interactions impartially, not being swayed by emotion or any smoke and mirrors the other person uses, and it would tell you right away if something was wrong.
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funkervogt
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Re: My random thoughts

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Acts that we today consider extreme feats of skill, like making over the shoulder basketball shots or gymnastic multi backflips, will be very easy for cyborgs. They won't be impressive at all.
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funkervogt
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Re: My random thoughts

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The slow extinction of our hominid relatives could portend our own future. Just as Neanderthals and Denisovans coexisted with us for thousands of years, in war and peace, until we slowly edged them out, so will it be true between AIs and us. And just as Neanderthals and Denisovans exist today as scraps of DNA in us from our interbreeding with them, so will we someday exist as ancient mind uploads incorporated into vastly larger and more complex machine minds.

Activating a particular, ancient human upload might be like you briefly reliving a childhood memory today.
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funkervogt
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Re: My random thoughts

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Here's an interesting video I found of a man exploring Kampala, Uganda:



With slightly better technology than we now have, it will be possible for people to create "full-immersion virtual tours" of places like Kampala. A person would wear a hat with embedded cameras facing in every direction to film a 360 degree video, and they would move through the place. The file would be shared over the internet with other people, who could put on VR eyewear to experience it. A viewer could look around in any direction at any moment to focus on whatever interested them.

This kind of technology could be a popular way for people to "visit" second- and third-tier destinations like Kampala or Haiti.
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