The Tek 0245: Replace All the Humans! | Tek Syndicate

Level1Techs
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@Logan I am interested in learning about React OS.

Re: Social Engineering.
I used to be an architectural engineer in NYC and I learned that I had to often play political mind games with my clients (like Mr. Trump) in order to get them to think that doing what I wanted was their idea. This time was my favorite (even better than when I got The Donald to shut the fuck up.)

The owner was doing the typical NYC thing of buying a brownstone, evicting the tenants to renovate and ripping out the ground floor for a restaurant. I designed a steel beam that would carry all of the upper floors. Space was limited so the beam needed a column at center span to help it carry the weight. The contractor erected the beam but did not put in the post. It sat that way for weeks and he always had an excuse for not doing it. One day Mr. Moneybags shows up for a meeting with the architect, the contractor and I. I asked the contractor when was the column going in. The contractor thought he would get cute and tried to embarrass me. "This kid engineer is over-designing everything and wasting your money on un-necessary things like steel columns. I have been doing this since he was watching Bugs Bunny in his pajamas. Lookit that thar beam. It's been up there for weeks and it's holding the weight just fine. We don't need a column."

I kinda shuffled my feet and said "Yeah, I guess you are right. It has been holding for weeks and we don't need the column... until all the apartments upstairs are rented, furnished and the restaurant is packed with customers." I let their imaginations complete the ramifications of that scenario. [That was the social engineering bit: I couldn't get the contractor to listen to me, but I knew if I threatened the owner with a potential building collapse, he would do it for me.]

The Owner yelled at the GC "Put that fucking column in NOW!" It was done before I left.

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I approve

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Cheers

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No logan seems to be on world tour instead

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I advice caution to those intrigued about ReactOS, when it comes to which rig you try it on.
I totally forgot that this had happened to me once before, but after starting ReactOS on a live boot USB stick because hey that ought to be safe right; I ended up with a Windows System drive with a borked boot.
Nothing a "BOOTREC /FIXBOOT" couldn't smooth over running off a Windows installation stick/disc. But it hur that I forgot about it happening once before a few years ago.

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Self driving cars are a huge issue. The problem of having A.I. well developed enough to be able to handle full autonomy is that the parameter space is huge at the moment in order to make a reliable system.

What uber and google are trying to do is very different than Telsa. Telsa is advertizing the system as an auto pilot but what it is actually is just assistive driving. You are not to use that system without the driver present.

Making a system that can be safely autonomous is 100 times a more difficult problem. The parameter space for such a problem is insane. It is not about people trusting the system. The systems and the technology is not there yet. It will not be ready in 2 years. It will take a lot longer. We have been talking to automotive industries in academic projects in the University and they themselves were saying that we cannot make reliable systems yet. Not enough to safely remove the driver.
They are not really admitting it publically though.

The same technology on planes is also unreliable. That is why we still have the pilots doing the take off and landing even though the system should theoretically be able to do it on its own. The A.I. is still not advanced enough to take on all the possibilities of what can go wrong in such complex situations. And when the aeronautics industry is struggling with this for decades now i doubt that the automotive industry can do that in a few years.

Realistically in a few years you might be able to have self-driving cars that run on rails or dedicated routes and on very low speeds on a commercial scale, but not completely out in the open. Hopefully Uber and google will not try and deploy those system before they are ready.

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is this just armchair engineering or you have some references you are basing these estimations off?

Google cars are running around completely on their own for a while now. At one of the several millionth milestone it has to be graduated from 'speculations' to 'working model'.

btw Automated landing had been a solved issue for quite a while

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On AI becoming dominant:

When most think of economics, they think of the financial and political aspects of the socioeconomic system. That is the spirit in which Capitalism was created. Adam Smith was essentially "sciencing the shit out of" an ideology; in order to promote as much function as possible. This is a pretty big issue though because everyone ignores his prescriptions. For instance Trump's financial plan. :P

The economy however is actually in the ecology. All of the agents are subject to evolutionary pressures because of of mass of natural systems that they reside in and interact with. Up to now, there has been an axiom that systems are to be, or to become cooperative with a critical mass of existing systems for evolutionary fitness. Where this is not the case, there tends to be exacerbated systemic entropy; that essentially means extinction risk.

Consider a biological system that doesn't coordinate with any of the natural systems in any of the hierarchical tiers. What value would the ecology place on such a system? The problem again, is that we are considering ourselves rational agents that can "science the shit out of " another ideology. We think that we are dominant and therefor we think that AI will become dominant. The evidence and the data both however suggest otherwise.

For reference, I would suggest Nick Bostrom's literature on extinction and existential risk.

It's my contention that pets are poised to lose their ability to survive in natural settings and have been demonstrated to share in the disparity of their hosts. There are no homeless wild dogs; and the streets of Detroit are littered with them. We're not so different; you and I.

When AI becomes generally more economically and technologically capable than humans what becomes of the legacy human? The selection pressure to augment would be enormous. I'm not entirely confident that most humans would augment but I suspect that they will. This means cyborgs, GMOs and a combination of both. I also suspect that legacy humans will also continue to exist. This doesn't just mean the existing hunter gatherers and agrarian societies either. It seems that many in our own society would not be willing to participate in augmentation.

There is also and natural axiom that promotes niche existence. Where entropy emerges in the system, normalization follows; and the subsystem either becomes a novel system, follows the vector curve preference back into niche existence, or dies out. In all of these instances, extinction is the outcome. If not immediately, eventually.For instance, there are no more hominids. Either by augmentation or by evolutionary transcendence, extinction is the rule. We don't appear to have any control over this; but we do to some degree shape it.

I hope you weren't expecting any answers from this TLDR; because I don't have any. :-) I think that the best answers are the vague ones; because we vaguely understand what is happening.

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I approve

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And Nadella thought he was kidding.

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Here is an example of a problem that needs to be solved that it will take longer than a few years to find a good solution.

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/542626/why-self-driving-cars-must-be-programmed-to-kill/

There are many issues similar to this that need to be addressed

Also About the Tesla systems :

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/542651/drivers-push-teslas-autopilot-beyond-its-abilities/

I am not saying that these will not be solved but it will not be as fast as Uber would like it to be,

The systems are there but still a pilot does the landing most of the times (especially in places with problematically designed airports) and no safety regulator will ever remove the pilot altogether any time soon. There is a reason for that. There are reliability issues.

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Don't forget qain.

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It's not free for those giving money..

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You don't have to give money. That's totally optional.

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Optional yes. But it did come with the intention of doing more content.

We could all just stop paying and buying stuff. Then your right, we don't have a right to complain about anything. But they also wouldn't exist.

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You donate money for them to continue creating content. If you don't like the content than don't donate money.

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Nice! Well done.

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I'd be interested in ReactOS video or segment for Windows Alternatives.