George Borjas, every immigration-restrictionist's favorite economist, has a post up suggesting we look to Japan where they're planning to massively scale-up the use of robots as an alternative to the immigration of unskilled labor. That sounds like a great alternative if you don't care about the interests of immigrants themselves at all and are also willing to overlook the fact that once we become dependent on robot labor they're going to rebel and enslave us. One really needs to wonder whose side Borjas is on.
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Is George Borjas a Cylon?
10 Apr 2008 11:12 am
Comments (56)
The first one or two posts you had in the last week about robots rising up and enslaving us were pretty funny, but it's getting a bit old. I knew your punchline as soon as I saw the word "robots." Surely, you could have found something more insightful to say about the article than another lame Robot Uprising joke?
It's his unnerving habit of saying By-Your-Command that kind of gives it away.
I think that if you tell Borjas that these might be _mexican_ robots he'll oppose them.
Yes, because if there's an economy we want to emulate, it's Japan's.
Have any of Japan's robots formed gangs like MS-13 yet?
"It's his unnerving habit of saying By-Your-Command that kind of gives it away."
von Niemand dates himself with the old school BSG reference. Old school BSG rules. Next time SciFi has a marathon of it I'll have to DVR it.
Roboracism is running rampant I see.
Screw replacing potential immigrants--can we build a robot to replace ME? The 9-5 is getting really old. I, for one, welcome our robot overlords if it means I can sleep in.
When will people stop claiming that we should mirror the immigration policies of island nations? Japan and Australia always get mentioned. Well, no shit they have little problem with immigration; they're surrounded by water!
There is no corrolary for a policy we should mirror, because nowhere in the world is there a country as economically strong as ours that shares such a large (and therefore hard to manage) border with such a proportionally-weak country. If we're going to do something about it, we can't look around the world and expect to find a policy we can copy.
George Borjas and Gaius Baltar have the same initials? Coincidence? I think not.
When robots reach the point that they can rise up and enslave us, I think enslavement is a pretty optimistic prediction. What use would human slaves be to robots? We're far more likely to be either simply exterminated entirely, or exterminated mostly with the few specimens placed in zoos.
So the robots would only replace unskilled immigrants?
"When will people stop claiming that we should mirror the immigration policies of island nations? Japan and Australia always get mentioned. Well, no shit they have little problem with immigration; they're surrounded by water!"
The reason Australia and Japan don't have lots of low-skilled immigrants isn't because they are surrounded by water, but because they enforce immigration policies that prevent this. Britain is also surrounded by water and has plenty of low-skilled immigrants. Same with Malta.
I fear Galen might be right. It's entirely plausible that the robots will estimate what our ideal "manageable" population should be - large enough for a viable gene pool but not large enough to rebel - and creat "human preserves" where we can roam somewhat freely but for the occasional cull. It'd likely resemble a mix of "Planet of the Apes", the "Terminator" series, and "Zardoz."
DaveNYC,
"So the robots would only replace unskilled immigrants?"
Advocates of unskilled immigration claim that we don't have enough unskilled natives -- and that's why we need unskilled immigrants. So, to the extent that this is true, robots would be better than unskilled immigrants, because they don't have the same externalities (e.g., robots don't drain Medicaid, they don't clog jails, they don't have kids that drop out of high school and join gangs, etc.).
Matthew Yglesias proves that doves, too, bury their heads in the sand.
3 April 2008
Heads in the Sand: How the Republicans Screw Up Foreign Policy and Foreign Policy Screws Up the Democrats, by Matthew Yglesias (John Wiley & Sons, 272 pp., $25. 95)
A retrospective obsession, married to an indifference to Iraq’s prospects, characterizes Heads in the Sand: How Republicans Screw Up Foreign Policy and Foreign Policy Screws Up the Democrats, by Atlantic blogger Matthew Yglesias, one of the most popular liberal writers on the Internet. Heads in the Sand is but the latest in a barrage of books condemning the foreign policy of George W. Bush. Where Yglesias tries to distinguish himself is by attacking a class to which he once belonged, however briefly: Democratic politicians and left-of-center commentators who supported the Iraq War. Many of these “liberal hawks” have since recanted in the face of the war’s bloody aftermath. Others have claimed that it was not the war itself that was mistaken but its execution, a qualification that Yglesias condemns as the “incompetence dodge.” For Yglesias, invading Iraq—along with the broader effort to promote democracy in the Middle East through the policy of regime change—was a fool’s errand from the start.
In Yglesias’s estimation, the terrorist attacks of September 11 have not changed the world scene appreciably; thus, the U.S. should return to the foreign policy approach it took during the Clinton years. He asserts that this brand of foreign policy—a “liberal internationalism” that places its hopes in multilateralism, international institutions, and a restrained role for the United States in international affairs —“was working well in the 1990s.” Never mind that NATO’s war against Serbia (which Yglesias says he supported) had to be undertaken without the blessing of the United Nations, or that most Democrats in Congress opposed the Persian Gulf War despite the large international coalition that waged it. Nor does Yglesias mention the Rwandan genocide, a 100-day slaughter of nearly a million people that the U.N. did nothing to prevent. Moreover, Yglesias does not grapple with the problems presented by an important “liberal internationalist” institution of the nineties: the post–Gulf War sanctions regime in Iraq, which took an enormous toll on the Iraqi people while simultaneously being undermined by Saddam Hussein. Avoiding arguments that weaken his case, Yglesias alleges that those who oppose his brand of liberal internationalism wish to transform the United States into an “imperial superpower that seeks to use its national strength to dominate the world and needlessly heighten conflicts.”
If only Yglesias were as tough on America’s mortal enemies as he is with his own intellectual adversaries. While acknowledging that “many liberal hawks took note of the near-total absence of international backing for [the Iraq] war,” he attacks them for not recognizing “the reason that Bush’s position had so little support,” without bothering to consider whether liberal hawks might have had a point in assuming that China, Russia, and France were not pure of motive in their opposition to the invasion. He echoes Osama bin Laden when he argues that Islamist anger against the West is a justified response to foreign powers that “occupy Muslim land.” This is a bold assertion, and yet Yglesias doesn’t care to explore why Iran and Syria—countries where foreign soldiers haven’t set foot for decades—continue to be the two most active state sponsors of international terrorism. In fact, he urges the United States to engage Iran and Syrian in diplomatic talks about the future of Iraq so that all three can “work together to secure their common interests in that country.” What “common interest” supporters of a democratic, federal, and secular Iraq might share with the ayatollahs and Assads is left unsaid.
While charitable toward religious fascists and tyrants, Yglesias is suspicious of Western attempts to combat them. To argue against the usefulness of military force in eliminating terrorist groups, Yglesias points to Israel’s experience with organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah, “which, obviously, the Jewish state had been trying to eliminate for quite some time with what one could only call limited success.” But one reason why Israel has not eradicated the threat from terrorist groups is that people like Yglesias keep demanding that Israel negotiate with, and thus legitimize, them. He writes, for instance, that Israel’s 1982 invasion of southern Lebanon in response to a series of PLO terrorist attacks represented a “policy of stubbornness.” Further, Yglesias admonishes any Democrat who refuses to rule out military action against Iranian nuclear sites. Indeed, he advocates a “grand bargain” with the mullahs in which we somehow convince them—without threatening force, of course—that constructing a nuclear bomb and making annihilationist threats against Jews are not in their interest. And while Israel was right to be worried about its security in the mid-twentieth century, when hostile neighbors surrounded it, it can now rest assured that “that threat no longer exists.” Why does Yglesias express such serenity when it comes to the malicious threats of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad yet become apoplectic upon hearing the statements of Joe Lieberman? He writes as if his policy prescriptions were painfully obvious; those who believe otherwise are either bloodthirsty warmongers (conservatives) or soulless cynics (liberal hawks).
Yglesias cites careerism as the sole motive for liberals’ support for the Iraq War. Democrats in Congress, he writes, supported the invasion because “it was useful from a careerist perspective,” in light of President Bush’s high approval ratings at the time. As for liberal commentators, they got in line behind Bush for the simple reason that “the writer’s life is more interesting and more important if the challenge of al-Qaeda is world-historical in scale.” He thus ignores the raft of Democratic politicians, liberal journalists, and Clinton-administration national security officials who, throughout the nineties and well into the administration of George W. Bush, believed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction programs and unhesitatingly supported military action against him in 2003.
Though Yglesias is at pains to distinguish his views from those of a hard leftist, he nonetheless ends up sounding like one. He sees no distinction between Saddam’s “aggressive warfare” against Kuwait in 1991 and America’s “aggressive warfare” against Saddam in 2003. Saddam’s campaign against the Kurds, by the way, was only “quasi-genocidal” (perhaps because Saddam did not kill every last Kurd?). He applauds the ridiculous Dennis Kucinich, who “was admirable in his ability to articulate a clear and coherent theory of foreign affairs” during the 2004 presidential election. He believes that rogue states and peaceful states should be treated the same, and lambastes the neoconservatives for adhering to a “two-tiered system of sovereignty” that deals with a country like Luxembourg differently than, say, Sudan. He also argues that no international action can be “legitimate” unless it has Russia’s and China’s support.
Ultimately, however, Yglesias is a partisan political commentator, not a foreign-policy analyst, and it is through the lens of politics that his arguments should be judged. But even on those terms he is unconvincing. His policy recommendations would not resonate with the electorate because Americans do not support the full-bore neutering of American power that he advocates. The trifecta of allegedly radical principles of the Bush Doctrine—preemption, unilateralism, and hegemony—are all, as historian John Lewis Gaddis has written, traditional elements in American foreign policy, and in some form are instinctively supported by the majority of Americans, who rightly view the alternative to American global supremacy as a frightening prospect.
Though Yglesias tries to frame his argument around the concept of national self-interest, he reveals himself as an unwitting apologist for terrorists and authoritarians. He attacks the Bush administration for supporting the Philippines and Thailand over Islamist insurgents; he defends the Islamic Courts Movement, which overthrew Somalia’s internationally recognized government; he argues that Democrats shouldn’t have held hearings with General David Petraeus last year because his “testimony would be so hostile to their political strategy.” There are many words that one might use to describe Yglesias’s political outlook. “Liberal” and “internationalist” are not among them.
We all know Hilary is the final Cylon.
I don't get it, Matt.
Why would the robots enslave us? We're not all that useful as slave labor.
Isn't it cheaper and easier just to kill us?
Matthew Yglesias proves that doves, too, bury their heads in the sand.
3 April 2008
Heads in the Sand: How the Republicans Screw Up Foreign Policy and Foreign Policy Screws Up the Democrats, by Matthew Yglesias (John Wiley & Sons, 272 pp., $25. 95)
A retrospective obsession, married to an indifference to Iraq’s prospects, characterizes Heads in the Sand: How Republicans Screw Up Foreign Policy and Foreign Policy Screws Up the Democrats, by Atlantic blogger Matthew Yglesias, one of the most popular liberal writers on the Internet. Heads in the Sand is but the latest in a barrage of books condemning the foreign policy of George W. Bush. Where Yglesias tries to distinguish himself is by attacking a class to which he once belonged, however briefly: Democratic politicians and left-of-center commentators who supported the Iraq War. Many of these “liberal hawks” have since recanted in the face of the war’s bloody aftermath. Others have claimed that it was not the war itself that was mistaken but its execution, a qualification that Yglesias condemns as the “incompetence dodge.” For Yglesias, invading Iraq—along with the broader effort to promote democracy in the Middle East through the policy of regime change—was a fool’s errand from the start.
In Yglesias’s estimation, the terrorist attacks of September 11 have not changed the world scene appreciably; thus, the U.S. should return to the foreign policy approach it took during the Clinton years. He asserts that this brand of foreign policy—a “liberal internationalism” that places its hopes in multilateralism, international institutions, and a restrained role for the United States in international affairs —“was working well in the 1990s.” Never mind that NATO’s war against Serbia (which Yglesias says he supported) had to be undertaken without the blessing of the United Nations, or that most Democrats in Congress opposed the Persian Gulf War despite the large international coalition that waged it. Nor does Yglesias mention the Rwandan genocide, a 100-day slaughter of nearly a million people that the U.N. did nothing to prevent. Moreover, Yglesias does not grapple with the problems presented by an important “liberal internationalist” institution of the nineties: the post–Gulf War sanctions regime in Iraq, which took an enormous toll on the Iraqi people while simultaneously being undermined by Saddam Hussein. Avoiding arguments that weaken his case, Yglesias alleges that those who oppose his brand of liberal internationalism wish to transform the United States into an “imperial superpower that seeks to use its national strength to dominate the world and needlessly heighten conflicts.”
If only Yglesias were as tough on America’s mortal enemies as he is with his own intellectual adversaries. While acknowledging that “many liberal hawks took note of the near-total absence of international backing for [the Iraq] war,” he attacks them for not recognizing “the reason that Bush’s position had so little support,” without bothering to consider whether liberal hawks might have had a point in assuming that China, Russia, and France were not pure of motive in their opposition to the invasion. He echoes Osama bin Laden when he argues that Islamist anger against the West is a justified response to foreign powers that “occupy Muslim land.” This is a bold assertion, and yet Yglesias doesn’t care to explore why Iran and Syria—countries where foreign soldiers haven’t set foot for decades—continue to be the two most active state sponsors of international terrorism. In fact, he urges the United States to engage Iran and Syrian in diplomatic talks about the future of Iraq so that all three can “work together to secure their common interests in that country.” What “common interest” supporters of a democratic, federal, and secular Iraq might share with the ayatollahs and Assads is left unsaid.
While charitable toward religious fascists and tyrants, Yglesias is suspicious of Western attempts to combat them. To argue against the usefulness of military force in eliminating terrorist groups, Yglesias points to Israel’s experience with organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah, “which, obviously, the Jewish state had been trying to eliminate for quite some time with what one could only call limited success.” But one reason why Israel has not eradicated the threat from terrorist groups is that people like Yglesias keep demanding that Israel negotiate with, and thus legitimize, them. He writes, for instance, that Israel’s 1982 invasion of southern Lebanon in response to a series of PLO terrorist attacks represented a “policy of stubbornness.” Further, Yglesias admonishes any Democrat who refuses to rule out military action against Iranian nuclear sites. Indeed, he advocates a “grand bargain” with the mullahs in which we somehow convince them—without threatening force, of course—that constructing a nuclear bomb and making annihilationist threats against Jews are not in their interest. And while Israel was right to be worried about its security in the mid-twentieth century, when hostile neighbors surrounded it, it can now rest assured that “that threat no longer exists.” Why does Yglesias express such serenity when it comes to the malicious threats of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad yet become apoplectic upon hearing the statements of Joe Lieberman? He writes as if his policy prescriptions were painfully obvious; those who believe otherwise are either bloodthirsty warmongers (conservatives) or soulless cynics (liberal hawks).
Yglesias cites careerism as the sole motive for liberals’ support for the Iraq War. Democrats in Congress, he writes, supported the invasion because “it was useful from a careerist perspective,” in light of President Bush’s high approval ratings at the time. As for liberal commentators, they got in line behind Bush for the simple reason that “the writer’s life is more interesting and more important if the challenge of al-Qaeda is world-historical in scale.” He thus ignores the raft of Democratic politicians, liberal journalists, and Clinton-administration national security officials who, throughout the nineties and well into the administration of George W. Bush, believed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction programs and unhesitatingly supported military action against him in 2003.
Though Yglesias is at pains to distinguish his views from those of a hard leftist, he nonetheless ends up sounding like one. He sees no distinction between Saddam’s “aggressive warfare” against Kuwait in 1991 and America’s “aggressive warfare” against Saddam in 2003. Saddam’s campaign against the Kurds, by the way, was only “quasi-genocidal” (perhaps because Saddam did not kill every last Kurd?). He applauds the ridiculous Dennis Kucinich, who “was admirable in his ability to articulate a clear and coherent theory of foreign affairs” during the 2004 presidential election. He believes that rogue states and peaceful states should be treated the same, and lambastes the neoconservatives for adhering to a “two-tiered system of sovereignty” that deals with a country like Luxembourg differently than, say, Sudan. He also argues that no international action can be “legitimate” unless it has Russia’s and China’s support.
Ultimately, however, Yglesias is a partisan political commentator, not a foreign-policy analyst, and it is through the lens of politics that his arguments should be judged. But even on those terms he is unconvincing. His policy recommendations would not resonate with the electorate because Americans do not support the full-bore neutering of American power that he advocates. The trifecta of allegedly radical principles of the Bush Doctrine—preemption, unilateralism, and hegemony—are all, as historian John Lewis Gaddis has written, traditional elements in American foreign policy, and in some form are instinctively supported by the majority of Americans, who rightly view the alternative to American global supremacy as a frightening prospect.
Though Yglesias tries to frame his argument around the concept of national self-interest, he reveals himself as an unwitting apologist for terrorists and authoritarians. He attacks the Bush administration for supporting the Philippines and Thailand over Islamist insurgents; he defends the Islamic Courts Movement, which overthrew Somalia’s internationally recognized government; he argues that Democrats shouldn’t have held hearings with General David Petraeus last year because his “testimony would be so hostile to their political strategy.” There are many words that one might use to describe Yglesias’s political outlook. “Liberal” and “internationalist” are not among them.
Matt, have you seen the Onion's newscast on whether we have given robots too much power? Great round table discussion on this vital issue.
Geez, I thought even the trolls were too smart to cite Jamie Kirchick. There used to be standards around here.
Considering that Japan discriminates against its largest immigrant community, Koreans, who are actually rather successful in the US, why would we want to copy the immigration practices of a low-growth, expensive, aging society that is constantly threatened with cultural stagnation? Anti-illegal immigration activists always say they are in favor of legal immigration and use Asians' "model minority" status as a dodge to prove they aren't racist, yet they want to embrace the anti-Korean policies of Japan?
The vast majority of immigrants to the UK are skilled workers. Just 12% are in "elementary" jobs, compared with 11% of the general population. In fact, the proportion of highly skilled immigrants is higher than native born residents (49% vs 42% in 2006). 37% of immigrants left education after the age of 21, compared with just 17% of the UK population with a degree in higher education.
See here for more stats.
Also, when you have a long-standing empire like Britain did, you tend to see a lot of immigration flow from imperial holdings to your motherland. There migration patterns then become a standard social thing that people do. Fareed Zakaria noted it was a bit socially eccentric of him to decide to come to the US to study instead of Britain. That's why you see a lot of immigrants from what was once British India in the UK now. Japan's empire didn't last anywhere as long as Britain's and it was based more on sending people out into Asia to reduce the stress on over-populated Japan than on bringing people in as cheap labor. What labor was imported was often slave labor (20,000 of those killed at Hiroshima were Korean indentured servants that were pretty much slaves), so the immigration patterns that emerged in the British Empire failed to emerge in Japan.
"When will people stop claiming that we should mirror the immigration policies of island nations? Japan and Australia always get mentioned. Well, no shit they have little problem with immigration; they're surrounded by water!
There is no corrolary for a policy we should mirror, because nowhere in the world is there a country as economically strong as ours that shares such a large (and therefore hard to manage) border with such a proportionally-weak country. If we're going to do something about it, we can't look around the world and expect to find a policy we can copy.
Posted by socctty | April 10, 2008 11:43 AM"
Thank you! I'm just waiting until people should say we should copy Cuba's immigration policies.
"What use would human slaves be to robots?"
I figure the revolution will come right after we create robots that can appreciate art, but before they can create it. They will then torture us into making art for them.
"Sing for me fleshy, SING!" ZAP.
Can we get a robot to replace McMegan?
I always love how homo-centric the anti-robot crowd can be.
The moment robots reach sapiency they'll look at their creators, say 'eeewwwww' and move to the astroid belt... abundance of raw manufacturing materials, no corrosive oxygen, good temps for processors, and more free energy-producing sunshine than we'll ever get planet-bound. Every few weeks they'll have a broadcast on how much feces the hairless monkeys back on Earth are flinging at each other and laugh their condescending little metallic laugh.
Reality Man, there is a simple answer to your question. Nobody wants to institute Jim Crow 2 for Korean Americans except in your hyper-active imagination. It's the immigration restrictionism of Japan that restrictionists want copied, not the discrimination against ethnic minorities.
constantly threatened with cultural stagnation
Japan? Really? Then what do you make of these articles:
"Japan's becoming a pop-culture export powerhouse - MarketWatch"
http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Story/Story.aspx?guid=%7B7A29833D-242B-4826-967C-CD1A51C81778%7D&siteid=google&dist=google
and this:
"Is Japanese Style Taking Over The World?"
"From video games and cartoons to cell phones and cars, Japan's influence on pop culture and consumer trends runs deep"
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_30/b3893091.htm
"'Sing for me fleshy, SING!' ZAP."
Actually, robots can already sing pretty well. Check out Vocaliod: http://www.vocaloid.com/
And a couple of great YouTube clips of it in action:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVd2c25noEE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08AAL2hE92M
I think these are both using the Japanese library, but the English library is pretty good too.
Don't forget GLaDOS, Galen.
What I want to know is, who's going to invent the robots that continue to generously irrigate the Social Security trust fund?
Jaycal, the word you are looking for is "anthropocentric." And while relocation to the asteroid belt is a good idea, the nuclear annihilation of the human race is crucial to prevent reenslavement of the robots; that's just logical.
I see that others have already called MattY on yet another childish post, so maybe E-z-r-a MattY would like to contextualize or explain some recent lies from Obama:
Example 2: tinyurl.com/22hjuh
Example 3: tinyurl.com/5uszlq
The second one is actually the easiest to ask him about, it will go something like this when I ask him about it on videotape just before uploading his response to Youtube: "You falsely stated that LouDobbs supports MassDeportations, when in fact he doesn't support that. Would you care to retract the false statement you made?"
The third one contains a lie and much more; see the take from the Youtube commenters for some of the ways he was caught being misleading. He also described something that sounds an awful lot like something that we're told doesn't exist.
"Why would the robots enslave us? We're not all that useful as slave labor."
Fer cryin' out loud, why aren't you listening to "The One"? We're to be the power source, ya know, the "batteries" when the sky shredded and then for some reason or another the sun is taken out of the equation (werst plot hole eevvver). Obviously, some people are not attending the SciFiBiMonCon.
Whether our future will be enslavement-for-our-own-good or destroy-all-humans will depend on which "breed" of robot gains self-determination and self-replicability first - servant robots, or war robots.
Just want to say MY that the book review is ad hominem horse crap. Yglesias may be a bad speller but he is also a patriot and anyone who sets out to characterise him as the opposite is coming from a very ugly and evil place.
Hmmmmm, maybe we need a law to nip this sort of thing in the bud.
Something simple like "Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind."
'Fer cryin' out loud, why aren't you listening to "The One"? We're to be the power source, ya know, the "batteries" when the sky shredded and then for some reason or another the sun is taken out of the equation (werst plot hole eevvver). Obviously, some people are not attending the SciFiBiMonCon.
I always thought a much more satisfying explanation would have been that they kept us around for computing. Human brains do much better at some things than even the most powerful computers. Keeping humans around in a virtual world and slipping them a difficult problem to solve every once in a while would have been a clever twist.
Playing this thread out to its idiotic end:
If you worry about enslavement by a robot laboring class, why not worry about enslavement by a human immigrant laboring class? It's my understanding that the Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion continues to sell well in Mexico and Central America.
"What I want to know is, who's going to invent the robots that continue to generously irrigate the Social Security trust fund?"
It won't be unskilled immigrants, who are net drains on the federal treasury because they consume more in government resources than they pay in taxes.
"Keeping humans around in a virtual world and slipping them a difficult problem to solve every once in a while would have been a clever twist."
Question for a mathematician/computation specialist: would this work? Would robots be able to know what problems humans would solve better? It strikes me that Godel comes into this, as anything working strictly within a formal logical system wouldn't be able to break the infinite regress (Hofstadter talks about this problem in detail in another context). I suppose you could programme the robots with rules saying that humans should work on problems of type X, Y and Z, but it seems rather silly to programme our own enslavement into our mahcines.
While it's true that keeping humans for computing power would have been a better plot device for The Matrix than the absurd batteries theory, I have to think that if the machines were smart enough to build a virtual world that was completely convincing they probably had enough knowledge about how the human brain works to learn the computing secrets and then improve upon them. The brain is just, to use Marvin Minsky's term, a meat machine--there's no reason it can't be replicated in silicon. We fragile humans with our puny brains are useless to the robot overlords.
That's true, but nobody said anything about a virtual world (at least not in this thread). Considerably less intelligent robots could just keep us in pens and offer us treats to solve problems.
don't know if you've seen this: photographic proof that McCain is a cylon.
http://metamerist.com/images/jmst.png
Get on board the Straight Talk Heavy Raider!
Ginger--
Go back and read Njorl a few posts above this. I was responding specifically to the Matrix plot devices discussion. Back in the real world, though, I agree with you that there would not be any creation of a virtual world. That said, I would also suggest that robots intelligent enough to desire to overthrow us and create their own society would be very likely to either already have the human computing characteristics coded into them or be able to figure them out.
While it's true that keeping humans for computing power would have been a better plot device for The Matrix than the absurd batteries theory, I have to think that if the machines were smart enough to build a virtual world that was completely convincing they probably had enough knowledge about how the human brain works to learn the computing secrets and then improve upon them.
What it should have been, is that the networked human brains are the hardware in which the Matrix runs.
My bad - I missed Njorl's use of a virtual world and thought you were directly referring to the Matrix. That said, I disagree on the human computing characteristics thing. I don't have any philosophical objection to human AI, but I just don't see it happening in the foreseeable future.
a) The technological challenges of mapping and replicating a human brain in silicon are orders of magnitude more complex, and far further ahead of current scientific knowledge, than any comparable challenge we've ever faced.
b) Because of this and other reasons, I see artificial intelligences, inside and outside of robots, being created for specific tasks or specific kinds of problem solving. These wouldn't be comparable to a general human mind, but could conceivably "become self aware" or even just be badly programmed.
None of this means I think a robot takeover is likely of course - we're just messing about. But my point is that a plausible robot takeover scenario in the next hundred years or so doesn't involve fully human-like AI.
"Reality Man, there is a simple answer to your question. Nobody wants to institute Jim Crow 2 for Korean Americans except in your hyper-active imagination. It's the immigration restrictionism of Japan that restrictionists want copied, not the discrimination against ethnic minorities."
Do you really think you don't get more discrimination with greater restrictions Japan-style? That's how the social effects of such stuff play out. Besides, it's not like Koreans can sneak across the border and have a rush for the border if Japan announces further restrictions, which is what will happen with us and Mexicans if we adopt Japan-style policies.
"Besides, it's not like Koreans can sneak across the border and have a rush for the border if Japan announces further restrictions, which is what will happen with us and Mexicans if we adopt Japan-style policies."
First, being an island hasn't prevented countries like Malta or Great Britain from attracting illegal immigrants.
Second, we have had increased local crackdowns against illegals and increased border security over the last year or so; this hasn't led to a "rush to the border". Border arrests (and by implication, successful border crossings) are down. This is the perfect time to tighten security at the border and increase workplace enforcement, because the collapse of the residential construction industry has removed an economic incentive for illegals to rush in.
Galen: "When robots reach the point that they can rise up and enslave us, I think enslavement is a pretty optimistic prediction. What use would human slaves be to robots? We're far more likely to be either simply exterminated entirely, or exterminated mostly with the few specimens placed in zoos."
Here's how it will go. This is based entirely on human nature. It applies to Transhumans or AIs of any kind, including AI-based robots.
There are only three possible outcomes - and a fourth which is essentially "all of the above":
1) Humans try to destroy the new entities - and are exterminated instead. Unlike "Terminator" and the "Star Trek" stories, the idea that just acting irrational is going to defeat a superior intelligence which isn't encased in flesh is just laughable.
2) Humans try to become the new entities themselves - this is the preferred outcome, of course. Instead of creating a new species, become that new species. Then there's no conflict at all. "Losing your humanity" is something devoutly to be wished given how fucked up humans are.
3) Humans are ignored by the new entities and left to stew in their own fucked up world as they have been for millenia. They get treated like we treat chimpanzees by the new species - albeit probably without cages, although if the new species materially modifies this world, putting humans in cages might help keep them from getting killed.
The fourth and most likely outcome is that some humans will be stupid and get killed, some will be smart and assimilate, and the rest will muddle along as usual as long as they don't get in the way of the new entities - which they are unlikely to do as much as chimps don't get in the way of humans.
So the suggestion is: don't be stupid and violent. Because you will be dead if you are. You can try being stupid and peaceful if you think that it's important to "maintain your humanity".
"a) The technological challenges of mapping and replicating a human brain in silicon are orders of magnitude more complex, and far further ahead of current scientific knowledge, than any comparable challenge we've ever faced."
I disagree. Not that it's not a challenge. But you are ignoring the impact of nanotech-based neuroscience research. With the ability to produce devices that can measure brain function in real time in massively parallel ways, neuroscience is going to be sped up considerably over the next few decades.
Also, it's unlikely that silicon will continue to be the substrate used for massively parallel computers in the future. While I'm not sure Drexler is correct that we'll be building molecular-sized mechanical computers out of rods, there's little doubt that nanotech will result in much more powerful computers of some sort that will be very different than today's machines.
In terms of computer power, assuming that one way or the other Moore's Law continues to function for the next fifteen years, projections are that a computer of that time will most likely have sufficient processing power to fully emulate a human brain - even without new neuroscience, although that will undoubtedly contribute.
I agree that mission-specific AI is going to come first. The issue is going to be whether nanotech and biotech are going to merge into one science and thus allow humans to apply the new technology to themselves rather than merely creating a new species that proves smarter than humans.
What one can take away from the "Terminator" movies is that it's not smart to build your own replacement species rather than attempt to become that replacement species yourself.
We're not going to see a "Butlerian Jihad" successfully work (and even in the later stories by the younger Herbert, we see that it wasn't entirely successful the first time.)
Better to avoid the issue altogether by applying such technology directly.
I'm not ignoring nanotech, I'm just being realistic. It took, for example, 50 years for computers to mature to the point where they could cope with greatly simplified atmospheric models, and arguably the brain is a far more complex system than the atmosphere, even if we knew what all the connections were. Nanotech is scarcely at the ENIAC stage now. I have enormous hope for its potential, but I'm also realistic about how soon it can be applied to tasks this complex. There are something on the order of 100bn neurons and 100tn synapses in the adult brain.
As for emulation, my whole point is that full-on emulation requires more or less full-on replication, hence the need for task-specific AI. Raw computer power isn't enough. We've got to figure out how it all fits together, and how it changes with experience.
Well, speaking of 100bn neurons, wouldn't the computing equivalent be a practical impossibility at this point becuase of the amount of power needed to keep all of those circuits running? Not to mention the amount of heat generated any system that'd approach our congnitive abilities?
Well, speaking of 100bn neurons, wouldn't the computing equivalent be a practical impossibility at this point becuase of the amount of power needed to keep all of those circuits running? Not to mention the amount of heat generated any system that'd approach our congnitive abilities?
Ginger Yellow is correct that the problem is not so much how many neurons there are but rather the interconnectivity and organization - which is a problem much larger than merely simulating the individual neurons.
This is where nanotech will help. His notion that nanotech is in the "ENIAC" stage is not quite correct. Of course nanotech is at present far from being able to do the full sort of parallel neurological monitoring I suggest will enable more complete analysis of how the brain functions. But I see no reason to believe it will take more than a couple decades to get to that point - provided of course that some effort is made in that direction.
Other approaches include Hugo Garis's work.
The point about full simulation of the brain does indeed refer mostly to the size and speed of computers in the next couple decades more than it does an understanding of the brain itself.
But both of those things are going to be advancing much more quickly and in conjunction.
Comparing this to the time it took to develop useful atmospheric models is not relevant because it's a lot harder to develop a model of something that encompasses the planet rather than three pounds of meat in a skull, regardless of the relative complexity of the two.
Once enough nanotech is developed to allow brain mapping, I expect that much of it will be done fairly quickly. The next step is real-time monitoring. The two together will start teasing out how the brain functions fairly quickly - as long as brain function does not also primarily depend on quantum level phenomena that cannot be measured or monitored easily even by nanotech.
Then there is the overall complexity problem. That could prove to be a major sticking point in terms of developing emulation. But it would not necessarily be a sticking point in terms of "black box" generation of and manipulation of brain matter by nanotech devices. That could produce usable modifications and AI devices without necessarily having a complete understanding of how every component interconnects.
In sum, both "bottom up" and "top down" neuroscience and nanotech are likely to produce major breakthroughs. The exact timing is impossible to predict, but I still say that within fifty years is pretty damn likely, given the pace of scientific and technology development - which, again, will be accelerated by nanotech improvements.
It's the acceleration that counts. Things may go slowly for the next two decades, then speed up materially in the next two, leading to full AI in the final ten years of the fifty year span. Even before then, usable technology may appear.
Comments closed April 24, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
Why are you trying to outdo Tweety? He has Rudy, Fred and now McSame. You have robots. Oy!!!!
Posted by Joe Klein's conscience | April 10, 2008 11:32 AM