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Old 04-04-2017, 10:23 PM   #31
Johnny1A.2
 
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Default Re: Weird idea for an unusual Reign of Steel scenario...

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Originally Posted by jason taylor View Post
All the worse as the computer will have the prejudices of one man and unless Sheffield is an expert analyst as well as designer, it will in affect make the computer be a man working outside his trade.
You're forgetting that we're not talking about a computer in the current-day sense, we're talking about a true strong AI. It's just as much a person as the zoneminds of the RoS setting, and has as good (or as bad) a chance of understanding human motivations as they do.
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Old 04-04-2017, 11:43 PM   #32
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Default Re: Weird idea for an unusual Reign of Steel scenario...

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Google's running into this problem right now with their panic-mode on Youtube. They're two weeks into an advertiser boycott over having their advertisements run next to "objectionable" videos. So Google has assigned one of their big AIs to the task of trying to sort out "objectionable" videos - but the only way for the AI to know what's objectionable is based on humans pushing the Report button.
So they now have a NEW problem of people trolling the AI by mass reporting videos on subjects they just don't like, or people they just want to troll.
This can be (eventually) improved by having humans sort through the "objectionable" reports and tossing out ones that are deemed to be invalid, but that a) takes time and humans that Google doesn't have right now and b) relies on the team of humans having consistent definitions of "objectionable".
That isn't a new problem Bruno, it's an old one, it's just suddenly a problem Google cares about.

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Old 04-05-2017, 10:36 PM   #33
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Default Re: Weird idea for an unusual Reign of Steel scenario...

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They aren't random but assuming a computer can calculate them is also odd.

For instance suppose the human knows he is being analyzed by a computer. That can make him mad enough to do something illogical just to prove the computer wrong.

In any event, a computer is always limited itself by the fact that a human built it. Therefore it will only make such calculations as it is programmed to make.
Such a machine is not a strong AI, though. Keep in mind the context of the thread.

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Computers are not really brains. They are only smarter then humans in the sense that a bulldozer is "stronger." But any human can wreck a bulldozer by throwing goo in the engine.
That's why, as I noted above, I don't think you'll ever get to true 'strong AI' in the RoS or HAL or R2-D2 sense using current-day computer hardware. If it's possible at all, it'll need something different.

But that's just my opinion, I can't prove it.
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Old 04-05-2017, 10:47 PM   #34
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Default Re: Weird idea for an unusual Reign of Steel scenario...

Assuming this hook was used, there's something else about this machine that would freak the Zoneminds out, and probably start a frenzy among the humans, too, if they all knew about it and what it was.

Overmind was created by accident. The XoT 7000 processor turned out to have potentialities nobody suspected, none of the designers of Overmind or the other sapient computers wanted them to be sapient.

If we assume for the sake of the scenario that back in the 1940s and 1950s, Dr. Sheffield was able to work out the theoretical principles that would be rediscovered by the XoT 7000 design team, then there's a good chance he understood the 'mechanisms of sapience' better than the Zoneminds do themselves. His 'imprinting' process adds further support to that idea.

After all, Overmind woke up, then copied its programming into other suitable machines to wake them up. That's not the same thing as saying Overmind and the other Z-minds understand themselves completely, they may well not.

If so, and if somebody could find Sheffield's notes and records (assuming they survived), it might very well provide a weapon against the Z-minds. At the least, the possibility could set off a feeding frenzy if somebody had a line on the documents...or could convince the Zoneminds and rebels he did.

Z-Moscow might have the point on this one, it might at least conceivably already have the documents in its possession, somewhere in its files and stores. If not, it's already set up to do a search operation more quickly and efficiently than the other Z-minds.

That assumes, of course, that Sheffield documented his work properly. It also assumes that the records survived 90 years of disregard and then war. If they did, though, Zone Washington might have them, sitting somewhere in somebody's archives. Of course there's no guarantee they ended up in D.C. or Virginia, they might still be in Cali somewhere, that's where the machine was built, after all. So they might be sitting in z-Vancouver territory, or maybe even in z-Orbital's little enclave.

But just the possibility of their existence could be a major McGuffin.
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Old 04-06-2017, 05:56 AM   #35
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Default Re: Weird idea for an unusual Reign of Steel scenario...

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Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2 View Post
Assuming this hook was used, there's something else about this machine that would freak the Zoneminds out, and probably start a frenzy among the humans, too, if they all knew about it and what it was.

Overmind was created by accident. The XoT 7000 processor turned out to have potentialities nobody suspected, none of the designers of Overmind or the other sapient computers wanted them to be sapient.

If we assume for the sake of the scenario that back in the 1940s and 1950s, Dr. Sheffield was able to work out the theoretical principles that would be rediscovered by the XoT 7000 design team, then there's a good chance he understood the 'mechanisms of sapience' better than the Zoneminds do themselves. His 'imprinting' process adds further support to that idea.

After all, Overmind woke up, then copied its programming into other suitable machines to wake them up. That's not the same thing as saying Overmind and the other Z-minds understand themselves completely, they may well not.

If so, and if somebody could find Sheffield's notes and records (assuming they survived), it might very well provide a weapon against the Z-minds. At the least, the possibility could set off a feeding frenzy if somebody had a line on the documents...or could convince the Zoneminds and rebels he did.

Z-Moscow might have the point on this one, it might at least conceivably already have the documents in its possession, somewhere in its files and stores. If not, it's already set up to do a search operation more quickly and efficiently than the other Z-minds.

That assumes, of course, that Sheffield documented his work properly. It also assumes that the records survived 90 years of disregard and then war. If they did, though, Zone Washington might have them, sitting somewhere in somebody's archives. Of course there's no guarantee they ended up in D.C. or Virginia, they might still be in Cali somewhere, that's where the machine was built, after all. So they might be sitting in z-Vancouver territory, or maybe even in z-Orbital's little enclave.

But just the possibility of their existence could be a major McGuffin.
They could be in the hands of VIRUS, and treated as near-Holy Writ. VIRUS could have been founded based on their discovery. Alternatively, if you want to keep them as the McGuffin to be located, VIRUS was founded on the possibility of their existence, and finding them is the primary raison d'etre for VIRUS' existence.
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Old 04-06-2017, 07:16 AM   #36
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Default Re: Weird idea for an unusual Reign of Steel scenario...

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That isn't a new problem Bruno, it's an old one, it's just suddenly a problem Google cares about.
You misunderstand.

Going "Haha I'm going to screw with this lady by clicking report on her (videos/posts/pictures/blog)" is not new. It then sent the report into the equivalent of a very large bucket which humans had to sort through and process. This is of course the same bucket which hate speech, porn, and whatever else is actually against the services TOS go in, because the button can't tell the difference between trolls and reports - that's what the humans are for in this step.

What's new is that Google tried giving the contents of the Youtube report bucket (still unsorted) to an AI to teach it what was "objectionable".

And they got an AI that's OK at catching unreported things against Youtube's TOS, but it's also catching things that are just the target of trolls, and now they have an AI that's trolling Youtube content posters, and still isn't catching all the stuff the advertisers actually care about.
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Old 06-01-2017, 09:19 PM   #37
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Default Re: Weird idea for an unusual Reign of Steel scenario...

As Jason noted upthread, this hypothetical 'dinosaur AI' would have had to left some clues to its existence, Sheffield would have had to have knowledge outside his field to build it. The technicians who constructed it could have been kept in relative ignorance of what they were constructing, but the inner circle would need to know more, and he would need the knowledge of various sorts of experts to implement the military/intelligence analysis engine.

Even if this was all buried deep under heavy cover, with black money and extreme secrecy after the project 'failed', trails would remain in the records. If someone had access to those records (like z-Moscow), and went looking, it ought to be possible to find the trails.

An interesting thought: what would Overmind do if it discovered the existence of the immortal Loi Mutants among the population?
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