My random thoughts

[funkervogt]

Just imagine a flaccid suit of skin, waiting for you to put it on so it could infuse you with its identity, powers, memory, and personality.

[funkervogt]

The fact that LLMs like GPT-4 can do some tasks as well as humans doesn't prove that the machines are "intelligent"; instead, it proves that those tasks don't actually require human intelligence to do.

[funkervogt]

If machines get better at teaching than humans, it will matter a lot less to you as a parent what the quality of the public schools are in your area.

[funkervogt]

Having to wait in line at an emergency room, or more than a day to see a specialist doctor, will be an alien concept in the future because machines with the same diagnostic and treatment skills as human doctors will be everywhere. Your robot butler could set your broken arm in your living room.

[funkervogt]

It's rare seeing human twins, let alone triplets. However, during the early days of android adoption, there will probably be a limited number of models, so seeing three or four of the same "person" in one place will become common.

[funkervogt]

The Aerostat flying drones from Terminator Salvation (made in 2009, set in 2018):


Flying suicide drones in Ukraine hunting down vans (2023):

[funkervogt]

Imagine all the interesting things we'll learn once we have supercomputers that can rerun human history under different conditions. How many alternative empires, races, languages, and religions could there have been? What if there had been an eighth continent in the middle of the Pacific?

[funkervogt]

I've written before that robots could someday let us eradicate invasive species and restore ecosystems to earlier states. Basically, there would be so many robots spread out across the face of the Earth that they could find and destroy every invasive animal or plant. Well, this would be especially helpful in more fragile ecosystems. For example, the removal of alien plant species that suck up large amounts of water from arid places like the American West would be very beneficial.

[funkervogt]

Boston Dynamics just released a video of its "Atlas" humanoid robot doing physical work. It looks like it was moving car shocks from a bin to a rack.
https://youtube.com/shorts/SFKM-Rxiqzg? ... vsT9VtoJW1

The task reminded me of loading a tank cannon.


I think humanoid robots will give new leases on life to old military vehicles, allowing armies to bolster their force sizes. In the Ukraine War, both sides are fielding obsolescent weapons alongside modern ones. Jokes aside, the older weapons do fine so long as their limitations are kept in mind and they are employed in less-demanding niches. Also, consider this:

…And, in a potential conflict with a lesser power, America’s overall military edge may also not be as decisive as previously thought. “It’s a question of cost,” said Phillips O’Brien, a professor of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. “If you can destroy an expensive, heavy system for something that costs much much less, then actually the power differential between the two countries doesn’t matter as much.”

…Western military planners are taking notice. “We have a lot of lessons to learn. One is that quantity is a quality of its own,” said Maj. Gen. Christian Freuding, the head of Ukraine operations at the German Ministry of Defense. “You need numbers, you need force numbers. In the West we have reduced our military, we have reduced our stocks. But quantity matters, mass matters.”

When it comes to tanks, in particular, the lesson of the Ukrainian war is that tank-on-tank battles have become a rarity—which means that the relative sophistication of a tank is no longer as important. Fewer than 5% of tanks destroyed since the war began had been hit by other tanks, according to Ukrainian officials, with the rest succumbing to mines, artillery, antitank missiles and drones.

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginal ... rfare.html

There could be 200,000 obsolescent tanks built between the end of WWII and 1980 scattered across the world. Most are out of service because their countries' armies have moved on to better models and the old tanks are considered death traps on the modern battlefield. If they could be "manned" with expendable robot crews, many would find their ways back into combat. Even if each tank had three robots inside and each robot cost $150,000, that would (except in the most dirt-poor nations) be a smaller investment than a three-man, reasonably trained human crew. Losing the robot tank in battle would also not incur the political cost that losing three humans would, either.

[funkervogt]

An advanced android could be like Jesus.
1) It could have tiny needles in its fingertips that it would use to painlessly inject people with medical nanobots that would heal their health problems, and mind-altering chemicals to make them appear to fall into trances in front of everyone.
2) The miracle in which Jesus was at the lake and summoned fish into the nets of his followers could be performed thusly: the android touches the edge of the water, surreptitiously injecting nano- or micro-machines into it. They swim a short distance and release a powerful synthetic bait chemical that attracts fish. Fake Jesus then tells his followers to cast their nets at that point.
3) It would have an encyclopedic knowledge of all holy books and other texts, and extremely good speaking and debating skills. As a result, it would gain followers and appear to be a supreme expert in religious doctrine.
4) Torture and crucifixion would not kill such an android, though it could convincingly mimic pain and death. After being put in its tomb, the android could "wake up," feigning a resurrection from death.

Imagine a scenario where a narcissistic android from Earth goes alone to a planet full of primitive aliens. Using the aforementioned abilities, it reenacts the life of Jesus among them.

[wjfox]

An advanced android could be like Jesus.
1) It could have tiny needles in its fingertips that it would use to painlessly inject people with medical nanobots that would heal their health problems, and mind-altering chemicals to make them appear to fall into trances in front of everyone.
2) The miracle in which Jesus was at the lake and summoned fish into the nets of his followers could be performed thusly: the android touches the edge of the water, surreptitiously injecting nano- or micro-machines into it. They swim a short distance and release a powerful synthetic bait chemical that attracts fish. Fake Jesus then tells his followers to cast their nets at that point.
3) It would have an encyclopedic knowledge of all holy books and other texts, and extremely good speaking and debating skills. As a result, it would gain followers and appear to be a supreme expert in religious doctrine.
4) Torture and crucifixion would not kill such an android, though it could convincingly mimic pain and death. After being put in its tomb, the android could "wake up," feigning a resurrection from death.

Imagine a scenario where a narcissistic android from Earth goes alone to a planet full of primitive aliens. Using the aforementioned abilities, it reenacts the life of Jesus among them.

Would make for an interesting sci-fi novel, or short story.

Also, reminds me of –

[funkervogt]

In a future where everyone's subsisting off of UBI and there is mass surveillance, some key aspects of life would be improve and become more efficient. Welfare fraud would go way down since an AGI would manage your UBI transfers and directly pay for your food, rent, utility bills, and other essential expenses. You might find ways to waste the remaining fraction, but at least you wouldn't be able to blow so much on drugs or alcohol that you wouldn't even have a roof over your head anymore.

AIs would also have a perfect grasp of how physically and mentally able you were, and they'd watch you throughout the day to see whether you were working and behaving at your potential. It would be possible to tell shirkers apart from people who were idle due to genuine reduced ability.

[Powers]

That sounds very horrible.

[funkervogt]

Think of all the fun you could have if you had an implant that could stimulate every part of your brain, and you laid down and set it to "Random."

The brain implants might also make drugs and alcohol obsolete since they'd let you induce any kind of mental state at will, including various types of intoxication, but you would have control over the degree of intoxication, could end it at any moment, and there would be no health consequences or risk of death.

[funkervogt]

If we all turn into technologically unemployed UBI bums, won't we start having more children like today's unemployed welfare bums? Won't that solve the depopulation crisis?

[Powers]

If we all turn into technologically unemployed UBI bums, won't we start having more children like today's unemployed welfare bums? Won't that solve the depopulation crisis?

Everyone should be very bored first for that.

[funkervogt]

I'm watching Rael: The Alien Prophet on Netflix.

If AGIs will do everything at least as well as humans someday, does that mean they'll also be charismatic cult leaders?

At least in the first episode, Rael seemed like a good guy who brought his followers together in harmony and happiness. What if AGIs can do the same for everyone?

[funkervogt]

Having to upgrade yourself with cybernetic brain and/or body implants to remain competitive against machines might sound cool, but it really means humanity is on a dystopian path.

You've got a brain chip and robot limbs now, so in an eight hour day, you do twice as much work as a regular human.

Uh-oh, the machines just improved. You know how you could keep up? Install these new upgrades that eliminate your need to sleep. That way, you can work an extra eight hours a day for a total of 16 hours, which makes you four times as productive as a regular human.

Uh-oh, the machines improved again. You know how you could keep up? Install newer upgrades that let you ingest nutrients through a mainline drip so you won't waste time eating, start wearing an advanced body suit that periodically sloughs off your dead skin and squirts hair remover on it so you don't need to waste time bathing, shaving, or getting your hair cut anymore. Another three hours a day freed up for work.

If you keep using technology to keep up with machines, you end up stripped of all your humanity, existing as mere computational substrate that continuously processes data as it arrives or furiously plugs widgets into holes on an assembly line.

At a certain point in your cyborg upgrade path, you get enough intelligence enhancements to realize you're on a treadmill that leads somewhere really bad.

[citali_]

What makes the future what it is?

[Jakob]

The application of the laws of nature to the universe's current state.