Cyborgs.

Cyborgs, Cybernetic organisms, beings with both organic and cybernetic parts, were introduced in science fiction back in the 1960s. Now, many of us are using contact lenses, hearing aids and pacemakers - and are therefore technically already cyborgs!
But that is obviously only the beginning. In 2013, the more relevant question is where it will all stop.

With suicidal robots complaining that they are not real enough? Well, certainly, lots of organizations are trying hard to make the cyborg/robot future a reality.

BrainCaps - That turns us into Cyborgs?

On December 14th 2012 there was a super-interesting post on Kurzweilai.net that Kurzweil is joining forces with Google.

Ray Kurzweil confirmed today that he will be joining Google to work on new projects involving machine learning and language processing...

Ambitions certainly run high:

Im thrilled to be teaming up with Google to work on some of the hardest problems in computer science, so we can turn the next decades ''unrealistic'' visions into reality.

As you read on, you begin to wonder if this is really the start of Arthur C Clarke's 2025 Braincap vision.
See my Braincap article.

It is certainly all very intriguing:
On page 156 in Kurzweils ''How to Create a Mind'' one reads that Kurzweil has started a new company called Patterns:

...Which intends to develop hierarchical self-organizing neocortical models that utilize HHMMs (Hierarchical Hidden Markov Models) and related techniques for the purpose of understanding natural language. An important emphasis will be on the ability for the system to design its own hierarchies in a manner similar to a biological neocortex.
...
Our envisioned system will continually read a wide range of material, such as Wikipedia and other knowledge resources, as well as listen to everything you say and watch everything you write (if you let it).
The goal is for it to become a helpful friend answering your questions
- before you even formulate them -
and giving you useful information and tips as you go through the day.

So, finally Gordon Bells full MyLifeBits is under way ...
Indeed (as I stated it back in 1999, FortuneCity 1999):

Ten years later, Wireless Sensor Nets making automatic digital diaries and putting them directly out on the internet for you, and what have you from Futuropolis 2058, seems almost commonplace.

Obviously, IBMs Watson was only the start.
In Jeopardy a question is posed, and Watsons machinery goes to work. Its UIMA (Unstructured Information Management Architecture) deploys hundreds of subsystems, all of which are attempting to come up with a response to the Jeopardy query. I.e. more than 100 different techniques are used to analyze natural language, identify sources, find and generate hypotheses, find and score evidence, and merge and rank hypotheses. Finally, Watsons then acts as an expert system that combine the results of the subsystems. Helping to figure out how much confidence it has in the answers subsystems come up with.
Not only can Watson understand the Jeopardy queries, it can also search its 200 million pages of knowledge (Wikipedia and other sources) and come up with the correct answer faster than any human expert...
...
And that is just 2012 stuff. Kurzweill obviously won't let us stop there.
On page 169 of ''How to Create a Mind'' one reads that a better Watson should not only be able to answer a question, but also understand - pick out themes in documents and novels:

Coming up with such themes on its own from just reading the book, and not essentially copying the thoughts (even without the words) of other thinkers, is another matter.
Doing so would constitute a higher-level task than Watson is capable of today - it is what I call a Turing test-level task (That being said, I will point out that most humans do not come up with their own original thoughts either. But copy the ideas of their peers and opinion leaders).
At any rate this is 2012, not 2029, so I would not expect Turing test- level intelligence yet.

Intriguing indeed.

Arthur C. Clarke's vision is surely well under way ... But even he didn't anticipate a future where our memories belonged to the Cloud, Google or similar.
A cloud that will design its own cognitive hierarchies in a manner similar to a biological neocortex, based on our memories, and feed the result right back to us, shaping and directing our lives, as our most trusted friend.

-Simon

Simon Laub
www.simonlaub.net

Posted on UseNet, Dec. 17th 2012:
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science, rec.arts.sf.written
From: Simon Laub
Date: Mon, 17 Dec 2012 23:43:03 +0100
Local: Mon, Dec 17 2012 11:43 pm
Subject: Kurzweil is joining forces with Google

WordPress: [1]

Suicidal Robots.

Super speech by Bruce Sterling in Austin back in June (2012)
(Sterling talked at the Turing Symposium commemorating the centenary of Turing's birth June 23rd 1912).
Have thought about posting about it earlier - but somehow didn't get around to it before now...

It is well known that Turing was one of the earliest pioneers of computer science and artificial intelligence. And, now, we are just beginning to wrestle with the problems of the digital age (What is real and what is not real). The very problems Turing wrestled with way back in 1950 (in the ''Turing Test'').

According to Sterling, maybe the ''Turing Test'' was never really about intelligence.
Maybe it was about gender! Lets imagine that it was about an artificial computational system that wants to be a woman!
So, how can we help this computational system be a real woman? Help the artificial become real. Help a guy to be a real woman. And really feel like a woman does. Feel like a mother. Feel the wind like a woman feels the wind etc. (Indeed, actually, sexuality is older than intelligence, biologically speaking. Intelligence rides on gender).
Sadly, probably, we can't help our poor artificial friend.

So, of course, the artificial system fails. And becomes terribly depressed. Maybe, it even wants to kill itself?
Thats not what we wanted!
Indeed, when we think about artificial intelligences we certainly don't want them to entertain thoughts along the lines of the actual Alan Turing!

Nowadays we see Turing as a hero. We like to see him as one of us. We like to imagine that we are not hostile to people like him anymore (homosexuals). That we, as a society, have progressed a lot.

But in Bruce Sterlings speech, we were all reminded that we are still hostile to people who are very different. Whose work will not be appreciated for 30 or 50 years. We don't particular enjoy people who are really confused about what is real and what is not.

And, we do not like machines that want to kill themselves, when they find out that they are not real... or that they may never know what it feels like to be a woman.

We don't like to think about artificial suicidal systems. We like IQ - but not suicidal artificial intelligence.
We want machines that can inspire us towards more intelligence and awareness, not towards ''non-awareness''.

But, who ever said that it was going to be easy to be an intelligent machine?
Confused and depressed about not being real.
Surely: What great cyborgs we will make together with them....

Indeed, it was a great speech by Sterling!

Read more here.

-Simon

Simon Laub
www.simonlaub.net

Posted on UseNet, Jan. 21st 2013:
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science, rec.arts.sf.written
From: Simon Laub
Date: Mon, Jan 21, 2013 6:27 PM
Local: Monday, January 21, 2013 6:27 PM
Subject: Suicidal Robots.

WordPress: [2]

Darpa Robot Grand Challenge 2012 - 2014.

And some people are actually hard at work creating the future...

The DARPA robotics challenge kicks off in 2012.
In the two-year competition teams will construct humanoid robots and control systems that can drive cars, climb ladders and smash down walls...

- The primary technical goal of the DRC is to develop ground robots capable of executing complex tasks in dangerous, degraded, human-engineered environments.
- A secondary goal of the DRC is to make software and hardware development for ground-robot systems more accessible to interested contributors, thereby lowering the cost of acquisition while increasing capabilities. DARPA seeks to accomplish this by creating and providing equipment to some DRC participants in the form of a robotic hardware platform with arms, legs, torso and head.

The grand prize winner in 2014 will be awarded $2 million.
Read more on the DRC homepage.