[FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence

Wed Aug 9 12:06:44 EDT 2017

Steve, it is a Renesan course on Tue, September 7 and 14. I have read
Jack Williamson, not all 90, and he would have been included in
another course I proposed to Renesan on science fiction themes. Maybe
in the future.
davew

On Wed, Aug 9, 2017, at 09:57 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:
> Dave -

> Most excellent of you to do this, and what will be your venue for
> this class?> Are you familiar with our own Jack Williamson[1]'s vague parallel work
> in his "Humanoids" which began in 1947 with the Novelette: "With
> Folded Hands".  I do not know if he ever acknowledged an influence in
> this work from Asimov's introduction to the "three laws" in 1941?  He
> investigates the (unintended/unexpected catastrophic consequences of
> something like the three laws on humanity, having the human spirit
> "quelled" by being "niced" or "safed" near-to-death)> He claims  to have written this as a cathartic project to shake off
> the existential angst/depression he felt from the (ab)use of atomic
> weapons at the end of WWII.  Jack was too old to serve in the military
> when the war broke out (he was 36?), but instead volunteered to work
> in the South Pacific as a civilian meteorologist.  He had started his
> career in Science Fiction before the term was fully adopted
> (Scientific Romance and Scientifiction being precursors according to
> Jack) with the publication of a short story "Metal Man" In Hugo
> Gernsbach's *Amazing Stories *in 1928.  Up until the end of WWII he
> claims to have been somewhat of a techno-utopianist, believing that
> advancing technology would (continue to ) simply advance the quality
> of life of human beings (somewhat?) monotonically.> I hosted Jack at an evening talk at LANL/Bradbury Science Museum in
> 1998 during the Nebula Awards on the theme of how Science and Science
> Fiction inform one another.   Jack was 90  that year and had over 90
> published works at that time.  His work was always somewhat in the
> vein of Space Opera and his characters were generally quite two
> dimensional and his gender politics typical of his generation of
> science fictioneers, yet he was still loved by his community.  His use
> of this pulpy/pop medium as a way to investigate and discuss
> fundamental aspects of human nature and many of the social or even
> spiritual implications of the advance of technology was nevertheless
> quite inspired (IMO).> He died in 2007 at the ripe young age of 98 and was still producing
> work nearly up to the day of his death.  In 1998 when I first met him,
> the OED was creating an appendix/section of "neologisms from science
> fiction" and he was credited (informally?) with having the most
> entries in the not-yet-published project.   His most famous throwdown
> in this category at the time was his "invention" of anti-matter, which
> he called "contra-terrene" or more colloquially "seetee" (a
> phoneticization of the contraction "CT")!   He was also quite proud of
> being interrogated by the FBI during the Manhattan project for having
> written a story about Atomic Weapons... they wanted to assume he had
> access to a security leak until he showed them a 1932(?) short story
> on the same theme, making it clear that the ideas of nuclear fission
> (fusion even?) as a weapon were not new (to him anyway)...  that
> apparently satisfied them and of course, he didn't appreciate the full
> import of their interrogation until after the war.> Carry On!

>  - Steve

> 
> On 8/9/17 9:05 AM, Prof David West wrote:
>> For what its worth - I will be teaching a short class next month in
>> Santa Fe, "Isaac Asimov and the Robots." Two points of coverage: 1)
>> the robots themselves invent and follow a "Zeroth Law" that allows
>> them to eliminate individual human beings with a result the exact
>> opposite of Hawking et. al.'s fears that our  creations will not love
>> us; 2) how the actual evolution of robotics and AI (see Daniel
>> Suarez'* Kill Decision* - autonomous swarming drones as tools of war
>> and death to humans) diverged from the rosy naive 1950s view of the
>> future that Asimov advanced.>> 
>> davew
>> 
>> 
>> On Mon, Aug 7, 2017, at 09:54 PM, Carl Tollander wrote:
>>> It seems to me that there are many here in the US who are not
>>> entirely on board with Asimov's First Law of Robotics, at least
>>> insofar as it may apply to themselves, so I suspect notions of
>>> "reining it in" are probably not going to fly.>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Mon, Aug 7, 2017 at 1:57 AM, Alfredo Covaleda Vélez
>>> <alfredo at covaleda.co> wrote:>>>> Future will be quite interesting. How will be the human being of
>>>> the future? For sure not a human being in the way we know.>>>> 
>>>> http://m.eltiempo.com/tecnosfera/novedades-tecnologia/peligros-y-avances-de-la-inteligencia-artificial-para-los-humanos-117158>>>> 
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Links:

  1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Williamson
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