My random thoughts

[funkervogt]

One thing that makes no sense in sci-fi TV shows is when they stumble across long-lost spaceships that they can't identify right away. I recently re-watched an episode of Babylon 5 where this happened, and the ship was a cryogenic sleeper ship that disappeared into space 100 years earlier. In reality, Babylon 5's external cameras and other sensors would have scanned the incoming ship and cross-referenced it with photos of every known space ship and found the match in a microsecond.

[wjfox]

In the posthuman era, will toxic materials like asbestos and lead paint become widespread again, since posthumans and robots won't be hurt by them?

Nanotechnology will make these substances obsolete.

[Vector]

One thing that makes no sense in sci-fi TV shows is when they stumble across long-lost spaceships that they can't identify right away.

Only that ?? ))
Babilon5 is a good series. But it's surprising to me that most people still believe that a person can make subspace travel...

[funkervogt]

Sci fi idea: A member of a royal dynasty that perpetuates itself through cloning finds that he has a psychic connection to a mysterious, nonhuman intelligent entity that can talk to him in his head and take over the bodies of people around him. Over many lifetimes, each clone becomes aware of the entity in some different way, tries to pass word of it to his next clone to warn them (a clone can only be made after its predecessor dies).

Will there ever be a clone who unravels the mystery before his own death?

[ººº]

I came up with one recently: Musk with his own/bought search engine, video platform and email service against Google.

[Vakanai]

One thing that makes no sense in sci-fi TV shows is when they stumble across long-lost spaceships that they can't identify right away. I recently re-watched an episode of Babylon 5 where this happened, and the ship was a cryogenic sleeper ship that disappeared into space 100 years earlier. In reality, Babylon 5's external cameras and other sensors would have scanned the incoming ship and cross-referenced it with photos of every known space ship and found the match in a microsecond.

I wouldn't say that it makes no sense, I can actually see a few reasons why that specific part of those sci-fi plots are one of the things that do make some sense.

First, you're assuming that all AI in all ships will have access to an archive of all ships ever made in the setting. But I don't think that is very likely. Kind of like how law enforcement now can track any license plate in the country, but most citizens outside of law enforcement can not. It's a question of access. We like to envision these future AIs as basically omniscient, with access to all human knowledge to date and then all knowledge they figure out for themselves on top of that. And some will. But there's no reason to give a cargo ship's AI the sum total of all knowledge, it's a waste of energy and resources. Some AI will be made, while far superior to us, far lesser than other AI. It's just more efficient to build some AI with just the knowledge needed for the job. And any AI aboard a ship in deep space is going to be pretty hard limited to the information it was given before departure - there's not going to be an internet stretching across the universe, certainly not one with communication that can break lightspeed.

Another point of access - not only will some AI, even when AI is making AI, be made with a smaller knowledge base than others for efficiency's sake, but much like with humans, not all AI will have the right to all information. AI will be organized just like we are - some AI will be in charge of more confidential information than others. Much like how I can't track your license plate but a cop with a warrant could or whatever. An archive of all ships' IDs may be similar. AI keeping information from other AI based on clearance levels is highly probable to be a thing.

And that's also assuming that such an archive exists. I can think of several reasons why it might not. Privacy concerns, hacked systems erasing years of data, governments withholding information - because even in the far flung future I'm doubtful personally of the prospect of a United Earth Government or interplanetary government. An American cop can track the license plate of an American vehicle, but probably not one in Russia or China. I imagine in a future there'll be separate AI led governments, again AI keeping secrets from AI.

Just because AI will be more than advanced enough to hold and peruse such an archive like is suggested, doesn't mean that it will have access to one, that there won't be holes in that archive, or that a complete archive will exist. AI is going to be incredibly smart, but there's no reason to believe that all AI will be unified or made or treated the same. Some AI is going to have to be the janitor, and if you were a supervisor AI would you give all janitorial AIs all possible knowledge that AI civilization has gleaned? Every cargo ship, every mining drone, every distant outpost?

[funkervogt]

First, you're assuming that all AI in all ships will have access to an archive of all ships ever made in the setting. But I don't think that is very likely.

Babylon 5 was the most important and advanced station built by the humans, so it would have it.

Also, hard disks are so cheap that you could probably fit files of 3D models of every spaceship and satellite humans have launched into space into an external HD. In the future, Moore's Law means it will be get even cheaper.

Sorry, but I don't see how, given the tech trends, automated sensor recognition of other spaceships doesn't become a standard spaceship feature, like headlights on cars today.

[Vakanai]

First, you're assuming that all AI in all ships will have access to an archive of all ships ever made in the setting. But I don't think that is very likely.

Babylon 5 was the most important and advanced station built by the humans, so it would have it.

Also, hard disks are so cheap that you could probably fit files of 3D models of every spaceship and satellite humans have launched into space into an external HD. In the future, Moore's Law means it will be get even cheaper.

Sorry, but I don't see how, given the tech trends, automated sensor recognition of other spaceships doesn't become a standard spaceship feature, like headlights on cars today.

1. I was discussing the premise of that plot tool across all science fiction and the potential future itself, not specifically in Babylon Five (never watched the show outside maybe two or three partial episodes).

2a. Sure they're cheap - but in the future when we have mining and manufacturing colonies converting entire asteroid belts into fleets of ships over centuries, we're talking about potentially hundreds of millions if not billions of ships. No matter how cheap hard drives are, that's eventually valuable virtual space better used on star charts, ship logs, and so on. Plus Moore's Law won't hold forever.

2b. Never mind those hundreds of millions or more ships are being manufactured in solar systems many light years apart - and again light speed is a hard barrier. Those archives will be woefully out of date, unable to account for ships made in the centuries it took for the information from one facility in one system to be beamed to another.

Sorry, but the tech trends are only one part of the story, and a part we can already interpret in different ways even now. Countries are becoming more secretive, governments more divisive, companies more IP focused, and humans more privacy minded. This will likely be translated in our AI as well. An archive might not exist, might not be complete if it does exist, might be coded, might not be included in the ship's archive just because there's no way it could be up to date with all ships if we're creating them across multiple star systems in mass numbers over decades or centuries (again, light speed is a limit here, the AI just can't know about ships created in another solar system a century ago, the information wouldn't have arrived before it left).

It's not out of the realm of feasibility. Even a recognition feature would rely on the derelict ship either still being working in some order, or have some visible marker like a QR code that's survived who knows what for who knows how long.

Edit: Sorry if it seems like I'm coming across as argumentative, I'm actually just very interested and am enjoying just imagining different scenarios. Sometimes it's fun to treat discussions like puzzles, and if someone says it can't be done the natural urge is to just tinker with the possibilities and see if you can crack the challenge.

[funkervogt]

Imagine all the inconsistencies and continuity errors super-observant AIs will discover in our movies and TV shows.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/arti ... -eyes.html

[funkervogt]

It would be interesting if humans could tell time by sensing the decay rate of smelly objects and residues, as dogs can. A gross application of this might involve a human spitting on the ground or something, or ejecting some kind of secretion, and then using their sense of smell to monitor changes in the substance's odor. Think of it as a biological chronometer.


Posthumans and machines capable of internally synthesizing biomolecules could also do this.

[ººº]

1. It will be a relatively long time between the arrival of settlers on Mars/Moon/Space and the first baby born there.
2. Tests on animals (or humans) will be progressively replaced by robots.

[funkervogt]

The fact that a few, well-placed bullets shut down electrical service to 45,000 homes for four days makes me realize we should expect to lose most of the power grid on the first day of a war with AGI, even if no nuclear weapons are used.


And last week's grounding of all planes in America thanks to a computer code error makes me realize we'll also lose that on the first day.

You should prepare to spend a lot of time at home, burning wood in your fireplace to keep warm.

[funkervogt]

Sci fi film idea: A hostile AGI attacks humanity with a zombie virus it created.

[funkervogt]

Paris Hilton just had an IVF baby that was carried by a surrogate mother. This method of childbearing has become common among celebrities and rich women. When human cloning gets safe and at least somewhat socially accepted, I predict that same group will lead the way making use of it as well.

For celebrities, making clones is actually a great way to ensure their children's success since the clones could coast off the fame and roles their parents established.

[funkervogt]

How different technology paradigms define each generation

Gen X - Remember a time before personal computing devices existed and before there were any computer/video games.

Gen Y - Last to remember what it was like to be unplugged from the internet. First generation to experience social media. 

Gen Z - First to be online and to have personal devices from infancy. 

Gen AA - First to never know a time when there wasn't a Turing Test machine that it could talk to and ask questions of whenever they wanted.

Gen AB - Last to ever have to work jobs to survive.

[funkervogt]

I just found this article about U.S. soldiers based in Poland who give Ukrainian soldiers telephone advice on how to fix and maintain U.S.-donated weapons that the Ukrainians are unfamiliar with. https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukrai ... 124dcea5c8

“A lot of times if they’re on the front line, they won’t do a video because sometimes (cell service) is a little spotty,” said a U.S. maintainer. “They’ll take pictures and send it to us through the chats and we sit there and diagnose it.”

There were times, he said, when they’ll get a picture of a broken howitzer, and the Ukrainian will say, “This Triple 7 just blew up — what do we do?”

And, in what he said was a remarkable new skill, the Ukrainians can now put the split weapon back together. “They couldn’t do titanium welding before, they can do it now,” said the U.S. soldier, adding that “something that was two days ago blown up is now back in play.”

Whenever intelligent robots become widespread in military service, remarkable feats of repair will become common. I'm reminded of the WWII Battle of Kursk, where the intensity of the fighting was so great that some German tanks were disabled by damage, repaired, and sent back into battle four or five times. Many people involved in the battle, including repairmen, didn't sleep at all for almost a week.

Likewise, machine repairmen will be able to make Frankenstein weapons in the field out of spare parts belonging to different weapons. Again, I'm reminded of the Germans in WWII, who combined tank chassis made at a captured Czechoslovak factory with captured Soviet 76.2mm artillery guns to make the Marder III tank destroyer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marder_III

As they look to the future, they are planning to get some commercial, off-the-shelf translation goggles. That way, when they talk to each other they can skip the interpreters and just see the translation as they speak, making conversations easier and faster.

Within ten years, you won't need to call a human to be told how to fix your artillery gun, or any other piece of equipment. Through advanced AR glasses with built-in microphones and forward-facing cameras, you'll be able to communicate with a Turing Test-capable chatbot that will visually recognize the piece of equipment in front of you along with whatever is wrong with it, understand your spoken questions, and then walk you through the repair process through a combination of verbal instructions and digital images projected over your field of view.

In machine-run armies, equipment will probably be LESS standardized than it is in today's human armies thanks to the machines' much superior ability to use, maintain and repair different kinds of equipment. This scene from The Second Renaissance, where we see the ragtag composition of the machine army, is actually not inaccurate.

[funkervogt]

I just found this article about U.S. soldiers based in Poland who give Ukrainian soldiers telephone advice on how to fix and maintain U.S.-donated weapons that the Ukrainians are unfamiliar with. https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukrai ... 124dcea5c8

“A lot of times if they’re on the front line, they won’t do a video because sometimes (cell service) is a little spotty,” said a U.S. maintainer. “They’ll take pictures and send it to us through the chats and we sit there and diagnose it.”

There were times, he said, when they’ll get a picture of a broken howitzer, and the Ukrainian will say, “This Triple 7 just blew up — what do we do?”

And, in what he said was a remarkable new skill, the Ukrainians can now put the split weapon back together. “They couldn’t do titanium welding before, they can do it now,” said the U.S. soldier, adding that “something that was two days ago blown up is now back in play.”

Whenever intelligent robots become widespread in military service, remarkable feats of repair will become common. I'm reminded of the WWII Battle of Kursk, where the intensity of the fighting was so great that some German tanks were disabled by damage, repaired, and sent back into battle four or five times. Many people involved in the battle, including repairmen, didn't sleep at all for almost a week.

Likewise, machine repairmen will be able to make Frankenstein weapons in the field out of spare parts belonging to different weapons. Again, I'm reminded of the Germans in WWII, who combined tank chassis made at a captured Czechoslovak factory with captured Soviet 76.2mm artillery guns to make the Marder III tank destroyer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marder_III

As they look to the future, they are planning to get some commercial, off-the-shelf translation goggles. That way, when they talk to each other they can skip the interpreters and just see the translation as they speak, making conversations easier and faster.

Within ten years, you won't need to call a human to be told how to fix your artillery gun, or any other piece of equipment. Through advanced AR glasses with built-in microphones and forward-facing cameras, you'll be able to communicate with a Turing Test-capable chatbot that will visually recognize the piece of equipment in front of you along with whatever is wrong with it, understand your spoken questions, and then walk you through the repair process through a combination of verbal instructions and digital images projected over your field of view.

In machine-run armies, equipment will probably be LESS standardized than it is in today's human armies thanks to the machines' much superior ability to use, maintain and repair different kinds of equipment. This scene from The Second Renaissance, where we see the ragtag composition of the machine army, is actually not inaccurate.

[funkervogt]

I heard someone say that they like ChatGPT because it could function as a "translator" that made everyone sound smart. I'd prefer a personal assistant AI that could make most people's words shorter and simpler. In trying to sound smart, too often people use bigger words or more words than they need to, and they also use rhetoric to mask or to bloat whatever their true idea or message is.

If you also equipped your personal assistant AI with the ability to read human biometrics and to do real-time psychoanalysis, most human interaction could be boiled down to even simpler levels that would make our animal natures and true intentions clear. So many long-winded and oblique statements could be translated to things like:

"I don't like you."

"You made me mad."

"I want to have sex with you."

"I don't want to do it."

[ººº]

I heard someone say that they like ChatGPT because it could function as a "translator" that made everyone sound smart. I'd prefer a personal assistant AI that could make most people's words shorter and simpler. In trying to sound smart, too often people use bigger words or more words than they need to, and they also use rhetoric to mask or to bloat whatever their true idea or message is.

If you also equipped your personal assistant AI with the ability to read human biometrics and to do real-time psychoanalysis, most human interaction could be boiled down to even simpler levels that would make our animal natures and true intentions clear. So many long-winded and oblique statements could be translated to things like:

"I don't like you."

"You made me mad."

"I want to have sex with you."

"I don't want to do it."

I am in agreement with your comment.

[funkervogt]

I am in agreement with your comment.

AI revised to: "I agree with you."