tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post8610066346038527054..comments2023-11-22T01:14:54.298-08:00Comments on amor mundi: Note to Drivers of Automobiles in My NeighborhoodDale Carricohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-1045736666529786842009-04-23T10:23:00.000-07:002009-04-23T10:23:00.000-07:00> Note to Drivers of Automobiles in My Neighbor...> Note to Drivers of Automobiles in My Neighborhood<br /><br />Just you wait for the Singularity. Or for self-driving cars.<br />Whichever comes first.<br /><br /><br />http://mthollywood.blogspot.com/2006_03_01_mthollywood_archive.html<br /><br />The Singularity has been described as “rapture for nerds”. We know that<br />Glenn Reynolds ascribes to the Singularity himself: he has written and<br />blogged extensively about Ray Kurzweil’s book _The Singularity Is Near_,<br />and he says here<br /><br />> One of the big criticisms of futurists who write about the Singularity<br />> is that the kind of strong artificial intelligence that Singularity-enthusiasts<br />> predict we'll accomplish is hard to achieve, and hasn't been achieved yet,<br />> despite the extravagant promises of researchers decades ago who thought<br />> that they could achieve human-like intelligence on machines less powerful<br />> than a Gameboy. . . . <br />><br />> But we were a long way, in terms of capabilities, from self-navigating cars<br />> not long ago, too. And being a long way from something in terms of capabilities<br />> isn't necessarily the same as being a long way from something in terms of time,<br />> when your capabilities are improving at an ever-increasing rate. The faster<br />> those signposts flash by, the less time it takes to reach your goal, however<br />> far away it is.<br /><br />As far as I can see, he’s signed on to a cultish self-validating argument: any<br />practical obstacles we may see to immortality (which I think is the money idea<br />in all this) will be covercome when the Singularity takes place. The Singularity<br />by definition will be the “tipping point” event where artificial intelligence figures<br />everything out. The evidence is robot cars! Who’d a thunk it? <br /><br />This guy is crackers. And it ain't new. On December 23, 2000, well before Instapundit,<br />we find Glenn praising ”A terrific work of transhumanist science fiction”<br />[Greg Egan's _Diaspora_]. (As we saw yesterday, science fiction plays a scriptural<br />role for both libertarians and transhumanists.)<br />-----------------------------------------<br /><br /><br />http://www.compapp.dcu.ie/~humphrys/newsci.html<br /><br />"[I]f some of the intelligence of the horse can be<br />put back into the automobile, thousands of lives<br />could be saved, as cars become nervous of their<br />drunk owners, and refuse to get into positions where<br />they would crash at high speed. We may look back<br />in amazement at the carnage tolerated in this age,<br />when every western country had road deaths<br />equivalent to a long, slow-burning war. In the future,<br />drunks will be able to use cars, which will take<br />them home like loyal horses. And not just drunks,<br />but children, the old and infirm, the blind, all will<br />be empowered.<br /><br />Eventually, if cars were all (wireless) networked,<br />and humans stopped driving altogether, we might<br />scrap the vast amount of clutter all over our road<br />system - signposts, markings, traffic lights, roundabouts,<br />central reservations - and return our roads to a soft,<br />sparse, eighteenth-century look. All the information -<br />negotiation with other cars, traffic and route updates -<br />would come over the network invisibly. And our towns<br />and countryside would look so much sparser and<br />more peaceful."<br />-----------------------------------------<br /><br /><br />_Society of the Mind_ by Eric L. Harry (1996)<br />http://www.amazon.com/Society-Mind-Cyberthriller-Eric-Harry/dp/0061096156<br /><br />"'Computer center, please,' Gray<br />said as he settled into the seat beside Laura in the<br />front of the driverless car.<br /><br />'You can just, like, talk to it?' Laura asked,<br />fumbling with her seat belt.<br /><br />'Just tell it where you want to go,' he answered as<br />if it were the most mundane feature of his island<br />world. The moment Laura's buckle clacked together,<br />the car began its acceleration. 'Voice recognition<br />and synthesis are consumer functions, and they<br />require a surprisingly large amount of processing<br />capacity. But the computer is able to parse sound<br />waves accurately enough to recognize rudimentary<br />commands if spoken clearly and in English.' The<br />car picked up speed as it headed out of the courtyard<br />and turned left at the gate.<br /><br />Laura sat in what would have been the driver's<br />seat of an American car. Her pulse quickened in<br />time with the rising speed of the vehicle, and she<br />gasped and grabbed the empty dashboard as it sped<br />into the black opening of the tunnel...<br /><br />The car flew downhill at what had to be close to<br />a hundred miles per hour, veering smoothly one<br />way or the other at forks in the road that were<br />widened and banked like a concrete bobsled course.<br />Laura was on edge. She had no means of guessing<br />which way the driverless vehicle would turn, and<br />the result was a constant fear of impending demise."<br /><br />(pp. 82 - 83): "'...In order for the computer to<br />open the door for you, it's got to know who you<br />are and what you're doing. To know those things,<br />it maintains a real-time model of the world -- who<br />and what everybody and everything is, and what it<br />is they're doing right at this very moment. It<br />builds that model by processing the data it receives<br />from its senses. Visual, auditory, thermal,<br />motion -- it melds all those senses together to<br />form a picture of the world and everything in it...'<br /><br />'And you go to all that trouble just for security?<br />Is Gray that much of a control freak?'<br /><br />'Oh, no, no, no! It's not **just** for security.<br />The robots use that same world model, for example,<br />to avoid running into things. Those Model Three<br />cars whip down the roads so fast because they can<br />see what's up ahead of them. They know if there's<br />a Model Six crossing the road around the next bend.<br />And a Six would know when to cross because they<br />tap into that same world model and look both ways.<br />That's the beauty of building and maintaining<br />a complete world model. There are so many<br />different uses for it.'"jimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.com