We won't be talking so much about Ex Machina-style anthropomorphic fembots possessing and acting upon what Dennett has called the intentional stance, but over the coming decade so-called "intelligent systems," possessing nothing like self-awareness, will encroach upon capabilities formerly thought to be uniquely human, and will be deployed in the economy to push increasing numbers of knowledge workers off the raft (I am pretty certain that even at today's state of the art, my old job in the International Division at Flatline, Comatose, Torpor & Drowse could be performed entirely by AI, and I'd be willing to wager a decent sum that in under ten years it will be). The social and political consequences should prove a rich soil for discourse and dispute.
Of course, machine sentience is a sexier topic, and as I believe I've stated before, I think it's going to creep up on us, and that we'll see the goalposts being moved repeatedly as each major advance is reported. When and if the existence of sentient AI is recognized, I suspect it will be a few years after the fact. The implications of that development should also make for some interesting threads in advance of the fact (after the fact, of course, it's Singularity or Skynet, and anyway the current estimates for fusion-powered conscious software put its attainment in my mid-nineties), so thank you, management, for this new sandbox.
I'd already looked over the linked article, and other pieces on the site, last year. One of the links I followed, either directly or at once-remove, led me to the Parable of the Sparrows, as framed by Nick Bostrom and reported by The New Yorker:
cordially,
Of course, machine sentience is a sexier topic, and as I believe I've stated before, I think it's going to creep up on us, and that we'll see the goalposts being moved repeatedly as each major advance is reported. When and if the existence of sentient AI is recognized, I suspect it will be a few years after the fact. The implications of that development should also make for some interesting threads in advance of the fact (after the fact, of course, it's Singularity or Skynet, and anyway the current estimates for fusion-powered conscious software put its attainment in my mid-nineties), so thank you, management, for this new sandbox.
I'd already looked over the linked article, and other pieces on the site, last year. One of the links I followed, either directly or at once-remove, led me to the Parable of the Sparrows, as framed by Nick Bostrom and reported by The New Yorker:
The book begins with an “unfinished” fable about a flock of sparrows that decide to raise an owl to protect and advise them. They go looking for an owl egg to steal and bring back to their tree, but, because they believe their search will be so difficult, they postpone studying how to domesticate owls until they succeed. Bostrom concludes, “It is not known how the story ends.”The New Yorker piece, also an interesting read, is here. As you might gather from its title, "The Doomsday Invention," Bostrom's concerns extend a bit further than issues of economic dislocation.
cordially,