From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Sat Feb 02 2002 - 00:22:50 MST
This gets my vote for the most pathetic bit of futurism I have ever
encountered, even worse than the Morgan Stanley "Fashions of the Third
Millennium" report (google on "idiots predict future"). Forwarded from
the Extropians list, where it was posted by Spudboy100@aol.com.
> Courtesy: Dr Clifford Pickover (clifford pickover group on Yahoo.com)
>
> http://www.globalideasbank.org/wbi/WBI-118.HTML
>
> ...How to stop machines enslaving humans
> Kevin Warwick, professor of cybernetics at Reading University and author of
> the book March of the Machines, introduced a brainstorming salon at the
> Institute for Social Inventions in London in April 1998. He explained how
> computers and robots are already as intelligent as ants and that within 20
> years they will have a computational power far greater than the human brain
> and will be evolving at a far faster rate than humans.
>
> 'Advanced machine beings likely to treat humans with as little consideration
> as we treat lower forms of life'.
> These advanced machine beings, with a consciousness of their own, are likely
> to treat humans with as little consideration as we treat lower forms of life,
> especially since the military are largely responsible for creating them.
>
> 'Within the lifetime of our children, Warwick believes, humans will become
> slaves who are culled, farmed and genetically interfered with'
> The race to develop artificial intelligence systems is very difficult to
> halt. Within the lifetime of our children, Warwick believes, humans will
> become powerless slaves who are ruthlessly culled, farmed and genetically
> interfered with.
>
> The brainstorming
> The salon participants suspended any disbelief in this eventuality and
> brainstormed possible ways of preventing it happening. The normal
> brainstorming rules applied, with wild and crazy ideas all welcomed. Here is
> a sample of the suggestions:
>
> Make a peace treaty with the robots, giving them total control of a planet of
> their own to live on, perhaps the moon, if that's not too close; or even just
> all underground parts of the planet, since they may not require daylight.
>
> Intensively train a James-Bond-style team capable of destroying robots at the
> first sign of hostile intent.
>
> Develop gradually enlarging Computer Free Zones which are utterly free of
> dependence on computer systems.......
And there's more.
-- -- -- -- --
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://intelligence.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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