I think the real news story here is that this company, Ambrosia, actually exists, and that someone at some point looked at their business plan and said “yes, good idea, have some money,” rather than “haha, I think this was a villain’s plot on an 80s Saturday morning cartoon? Please get therapy.” I mean... Between…

Why are you more concerned about how stupid Gawker is than about how much of an ass Thiel is? I think the latter is more worrysome. I think this is an interesting story, anyway; I had no idea this particular brand of snake oil even existed and besides, it’s always interesting to read about new and exciting ways in…

I think the search for megastructures is fascinating, but I doubt they really exist. Why would an alien civilization advanced enough to build one actually want to? I’m imagining that a civilization powerful enough to build a Dyson sphere wouldn’t be terribly excited by capturing a star’s outflowing energy. Why harness…

“Homer, I won your respect, and all I had to do was save your life. Now, if every gay man could just do the same, you’d be set.”

There should definitely be a ton of compensation — I’m not sure Michigan has any laws requiring compensation, though. I think there was an attempt to make it law that the state would pay $50,000 for each year spent wrongfully behind bars (which would make $2,050,000 in this case) but I don’t know if this was ever…

Is there an uncanny valley for plants? Because those plants are starting to look *just* good enough that I’m starting to be weirded out by tiny flaws of realism that I otherwise would not have noticed.

Erm. Totally with you as far as gender roles go — I wish gender as a concept would just go away and be found exclusively in social history books. Not so much with you when it comes to that bit about race and privilege, if I understood it correctly. A FtM trans person is not gonna be gaining a lot of privilege, given…

It wasn’t even remotely a bad movie. It wasn’t a great movie either, but it was well-made, fairly memorable in parts, and overall I remember enjoying it. I don’t remember feeling that it was “all over the place;” yes, it did mix serious and comic bits, but that didn’t seem like a particularly bad thing. Chappie…

Potentially orders of magnitude more efficient as the technology matures, yes. Anyway, my response was to your original comment — the “you have to choose one or the other” part. Yes, the system is useful, potentially even life-saving if it can be used to locate potentially violent suspects. I’m not even against it.…

Why would you possibly argue in favour of simplistic, black-and-white, it’s-either-great-or-terrible thinking? Why on Earth can’t we admit that this technology is both potentially very useful and creates the potential for scary abuse? Seriously, this makes no sense to me. It’s like trying to explicitly argue in favour…

Well my argument does not depend on it necessarily being a foregone conclusion, only a real possibility that we have to be prepared for, and I think it is a possibility. As for the second part, again, what new information or argument are you introducing? It’s circular logic. “Tools should not have rights because tools…

“They are tools because they are built to specifications.” Yes, I don’t understand how that’s a reason for anything. If you gave a more detailed explanation I just simply missed it. I would argue that if an entity of any sort is capable of self-awareness, intelligence, of independent thought and understanding, then it…

I’m not sure whether the creation of AI is worth the risk or not; personally I think it might be, but I do see where you’re coming from. But I believe that no law could really stop it. Computers are still getting more sophisticated, as is our knowledge of how to use them in new and interesting ways. How are you going…

How does that follow? If a machine, hypthetically, *did* have the ability to learn, think for itself, etc., why would it matter whether that ability developed as a result of programming that was originally done by humans? Why would the origin of its abilities matter more than the abilities themselves? Human intellect…

To echo a comment I saw on another Jezbel article today, maybe at least Musk can give us a cool dystopia, with spaceships and robot cars and stuff, instead of the crappy, boring dystopia we live in today? Musk for Supreme Space Emperor! Hurrah!

It may not be possible to “nip this in the bud.” An AI does not have to look like us or think exactly like us to be intelligent and self-aware. And there’s a lot of incentive to built intelligent machines of one form or another. I can easily imagine some company building an AI to perform some complex task — medical…

They... Already do that. Like, we already have learning algorithms and genetic algorithms that, to some limited extent, alter their own code.

Except we’re explicitly talking about intelligent machines, not about hammers. You’re actively ignoring the entire discussion we’re having to make your point. Like the whole core of the discussion is “maybe someday machines will be complex enough to become more than mere tools” and your entire argument is “but they’re…

“Donald Trump Will Probably Pull Out”

But what happens when the people who want to be ignorant form enough of the voting population to have a big say on matters such as the funding and support the smart people get, or the kind of education that potential future smart people may receive while they’re kids?