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<title><![CDATA[Comments for entry "Irrational Robot Billionaire Freedom Fighters" at Dilbert.com Blog]]></title>
<link><![CDATA[http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/864]]></link>
<description><![CDATA[Regular thoughts and updates from Dilbert.com]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Comment  from andrew93]]></title>
<link><![CDATA[http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/1940865]]></link>
<description><![CDATA[Hey Scott.  Check out the three laws of robotics first proposed by Isaac Asimov in 1942 in one of his robot science fiction stories.  The Frankenstien concept has been explored on numerous occasions by various authors.  Modern robotocists may view the three laws as a joke/parody but in the event we robots that are capable of &quot;learning&quot; and self-replication then constraints would be needed that can't be circumvented.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics]]></description>
<pubDate><![CDATA[ThuPMCSTE_Rthth]]></pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[Comment  from Jengineer]]></title>
<link><![CDATA[http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/1929076]]></link>
<description><![CDATA[Hi
@  j_l_Larson

Makes me think about a Virtual Friend App. It sends you nice SMS, calls you with a nice voice, do chat with you about what you like including what I can't say here, sends you wish cards, helps you when you need it...do googling for you,  do suggestions about your wardrobe and your look (analyse pictures of you)...sings your prefered songs,  all this somehow randomly but with some intelligence depending on your tracking, time of day, etc...it tries to surprise, inform  and entertain you ....Maybe it's there already, but just need a nice packaking?]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Comment  from j_l_Larson]]></title>
<link><![CDATA[http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/1927471]]></link>
<description><![CDATA[I think among the things that are coming soon, including wireless power, personal 3d printers and robot maids is the robot friend.  it sounds creepy, but just look around at how engrossed people are in their phones, tablets and laptops.  I can see the robot friend coming in about 30 years.  The robot friend will care only about you, be incredibly interesting, helpful, brilliant and talented, and fully autonomous like a regular human being.  We can barely tear ourselves away from the internet now, the robot friend will be like crack, irresistible, with advanced degrees in psychology, philosophy, any subject you care to name built in, it can counsel and teach you things you find truly interesting at a rate ideal just for you.   People will go out on the town with them, take them to parties.  Interacting with other, regular humans will seem increasingly uninteresting and tedious.  Like a kid given a choice between television or listening to some old codger read to a crowd from a book in the library.]]></description>
<pubDate><![CDATA[WedPMCSTE_Rthth]]></pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[Comment  from Jengineer]]></title>
<link><![CDATA[http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/1925805]]></link>
<description><![CDATA[Hi Scott

I like the idea of a third species between humans and robots, but it will be done gradually by the evolution of medecine. My mother is 86 and she had a hip replacement surgery a few months ago, she is fine now and can walk again . 

You will see more and more replacement &quot;parts&quot; into aging humans, as technology improves, inlcuding fluids (artificial blood and the like) bones, hearts..Cyber parts will assist aging brains . 

Very soon intelligent phones will be smart enough to supply an Alhzeimer's with an external instant memory.   In a decade or so, assist-sight and assist-earing...

In a century or so, brains cells or sections will be replacable by artificial parts too.

Add a few hundred years of development and you have the perfect cyborg living for eternity (almost).

That's were we are going...
 
]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Comment  from fledder]]></title>
<link><![CDATA[http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/1923849]]></link>
<description><![CDATA[Billionaires don't protect other humans when alive and certainly won't when they're dead and reliving their personality in a robot body. It's an ego move, not a helpful move. You might be inclined to call Bill Gates the notable exception, except he's kind of into severe population decline as well, just in a more peaceful way.

The question I'd have is what exactly would be the reason for humans to be protected to survive? Self preservation of course. But that aside, we will no longer be the superior specie, and we've always destroyed everything around us, so it would be the ultimate karma payback for us to be extinguished. Planet earth won't miss us.

]]></description>
<pubDate><![CDATA[MonPMCSTE_Rthth]]></pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[Comment  from mezzoteric]]></title>
<link><![CDATA[http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/1921679]]></link>
<description><![CDATA[The fear of robotic overlords is common in literature and movies. It's good that we have this fear, for it's a dangerous technology, just like atomic bomb or nanotechnology, can be deadly in the wrong hands.

I doubt that we will face annihilation by robots. Rather I think humans will leverage technology to eventually become non-biological beings. It's an inevitable step of our evolution. I posted an in-depth explanation of how this transition could probably happen and several good opportunities that will result from this on my blog: http://chris.dragan.name/2012/12/07/the-future-of-the-human-race/]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Comment  from CliffClaven]]></title>
<link><![CDATA[http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/1919536]]></link>
<description><![CDATA[I keep thinking of the bit in &quot;Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy&quot; where alien mice want to buy Arthur Dent's brain and replace it with a computer. Since the computer would cause Dent to sputter with his accustomed outrage and confusion, nobody would know the difference.

&quot;I'd know the difference!,&quot; Arthur sputters.

&quot;No you wouldn't. You'd be programmed not to.&quot;]]></description>
<pubDate><![CDATA[SatAMCSTE_Rthth]]></pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[Comment  from Jhebbal_Sag]]></title>
<link><![CDATA[http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/1918487]]></link>
<description><![CDATA[Downloading a brain onto the internet could be an easy way to attaining nirvana, make your virtual brain capable of making a bigger and faster virtual brain, capable of making a bigger and faster virtual brain, capable of making a bigger and faster virtual brain etc etc, until your power of ten removed brain has reached the singularity, then this big and fast brain can spend a few femto-seconds contemplating on what answer to give your small and inefficient brained self to achieve enlightenment.]]></description>
<pubDate><![CDATA[FriAMCSTE_Rthth]]></pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[Comment  from blampow]]></title>
<link><![CDATA[http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/1917812]]></link>
<description><![CDATA[I take it you don't believe in cyborg-style self augmentation, Scott?  People buying external neocortexes that amplify their normal brain's functioning?

Or, more near term: a pair of google glasses that recognised when you were struggling for a word and ran a search automatically for you, displaying the result naturally overlaid onto your field of vision, making it impossible for an outside observer to tell if you &quot;really&quot; knew that fact or not.]]></description>
<pubDate><![CDATA[FriAMCSTE_Rthth]]></pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[Comment  from happy]]></title>
<link><![CDATA[http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/1917563]]></link>
<description><![CDATA[Q: Who elects the government in a democracy?
A:  The guy who counts the votes.

Q: Who gets the robot to keep the personality going?
A:  The guy moving the personality into the robot.

It's the same reason you read stories about a fertility expert with tons of success cases, and babies that look like him.  There's no promise that the guy you hire from the Geek Squad is going to use YOUR personality.  If I was making 10 Cronar's an hour, I wouldn't!

Queue a new action thriller, sometime in the future:  Multiple versions of the same man compete with each other to the death - for the right to be the legally recognized version of Scott Adams!  

Scott Adams cicra 1997 vs Scott Adams circa 2007!  Does age and treachery overcome youth and skill?  Read on!  But you can likely guess the ending, where both Scotts end up mortally wounding each other, and then fight to keep at least one version alive.  Sadly, they ultimately fail, filled with regret and remorse from their hubris...

The future is a wonderfully messed up place.  Who knows what it really holds - but guess how many people in 1910 could have predicted all the change and wonder that is 2010?  Bring on the future!  

But for me - for now, I'm just going to enjoy today.]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Comment  from scorpioet2]]></title>
<link><![CDATA[http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/1917343]]></link>
<description><![CDATA[After reading some of the comments on here, especially with this particular subject, I now understand why we as human beings have stopped trying to achieve. When you have people who take a simple discussion with interesting and possibly achievable aspects, and then nit pick it apart over tiny little details irrelevant to the main theme, it just proves my case.

Human beings have the capability to achieve great things, yet here we sit, on this little ball of water out in the boonies of the Universe, thinking we know everything and doing nothing. 
Stop nit picking and start doing. When you stop doing, you stagnate. When you stagnate, you die.
]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Comment  from yourstruly42]]></title>
<link><![CDATA[http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/1917340]]></link>
<description><![CDATA[I think it far more likely that the human/robot hybrid will be a human cyborg, rather than a downloaded human consciousness in a robot body. Things are already moving in that direction: heads-up-display glasses are coming to the market as we speak, and likely will be on contact lenses eventually; cochlear implants are getting better all the time; exoskeletons already exist to help soldiers travel faster, farther, and carrying more gear than current possible... I think the idea that people will &quot;augment&quot; their own bodies (via technology and genetic engineering) is far more likely in the next 100 years than they idea that they'll download their brains into robots.]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Comment  from servenvolley]]></title>
<link><![CDATA[http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/1917302]]></link>
<description><![CDATA[So our great grand kids will have to depend on Donald Trump as a robot to keep from being annihilated? AND, they have to listen to him too. Forever?
&quot;Honey, get some condoms next time out.&quot;]]></description>
<pubDate><![CDATA[ThuPMCSTE_Rthth]]></pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[Comment  from emptc12]]></title>
<link><![CDATA[http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/1917126]]></link>
<description><![CDATA[So much that you have said, and will doubtless appear in comments to you, is based on fictional scenarios of  super-intelligent computers and humanoid robots. As people have stated in various ways, reality is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine. 

All kinds of unexpected results would take place in a society where human merges with computer.  What it means to be human within a human body is not sufficiently understood. I would not expect a human personality transplanted into another form to act in a recognizably human way. It would not only be a different species, but essentially an alien.  It would be grotesque and repulsive, and would soon have to be put out of its misery.

Freed of the body chemicals and structures that form personalities and actions, could any transplanted person manipulate his past knowledge in reaction to changing and unusual !$%*!$%*!$%*!$ I think judgment would be bogged down in endless calculations and comparisons, unable to reach other than stock solutions. The solutions might be suitable, but would they be so unexpected as to be brilliant? To reach unexpected ideas that leap across logic? High-speed calculators might sift through ALL the possibilities but can they choose the best one? 

If you want to construct all intelligent robots to the equivalent of companion dogs, that would be a waste. Better that we construct robots and somehow give them imagination and curiosity and, if possible, respect for What Is, pathetic as it would seem to them -- and then let them go. Whatever they create we could hope would be useful enough for us to benefit from, as animals find food and shelter around human structures.

And, you know, after such robots are through with the world around them, they will go beyond to Everything Else. Our present earth-bound sensibilities color all our predictions and plans, and they are so pitifully small. 

The value in creative robots, I think, is that they will go where our minds and bodies cannot.  We would benefit in impressive ways, multiply our numbers, and possibly attain great satisfaction and happiness as a species.  Maybe something human would be incorporated in their structures just as humans have incorporated many small organisms such as mitochondria and digestive bacteria.  But we would watch our replacments, The Robots, in the distance take the next big steps in the Universe.
]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Comment  from harrykrak]]></title>
<link><![CDATA[http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/1916987]]></link>
<description><![CDATA[You cannot see that point in the future when cyborg 2.0 comes out and it is totally incompatible with previous all previous versions?

This is going to be tech that brings HUGE rewards for whoever gets to manufacture them. And since google apple samsung et al. are already suing each other to bankruptcy over something as trivial as a phone, imagine what the lawyers will make of this?

It may work. But it wont. Because all the vested interests will do their usual impression of crabs in a bucket and stop the other vested interests from achieving anything. So get ready to worship the robots, they will be building their own lawyers.]]></description>
<pubDate><![CDATA[ThuAMCSTE_Rthth]]></pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[Comment  from Kaj_Sotala]]></title>
<link><![CDATA[http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/1916980]]></link>
<description><![CDATA[Actually, it might not be the case that only billionaires get to move their minds into robot bodies: the economist Robin Hanson has argued that if we could copy minds into a digital substrate, then various companies would be very interested in the possibility of copying those minds, in order to get more skilled workers quickly. So you could have various companies paying for the expense of having their employees &quot;uploaded&quot;. See http://hanson.gmu.edu/uploads.html and http://spectrum.ieee.org/robotics/robotics-software/economics-of-the-singularity .

There is also already a site similar to what you describe, created with the express intention of letting people store information about themselves in order to create digital copies of them later on: see https://www.lifenaut.com/mindfile/faqs/ .

On the other hand, there are also people doing research on trying to figure out how to make AIs that *won't* destroy humanity. You are absolutely right in that if the AIs merely had a simple &quot;do not harm humans&quot; subroutine that could be disabled, it wouldn't be enough... either some human would disable it, or it would turn out inadequate and the AIs themselves would circumvent it. That's why there are folks looking at the possibility of creating an AI so that all of its motivations are built around wanting to benefit humanity, so that it would be extremely hard to turn against humanity. Of course, that's far easier said than done. http://singularity.org/research/ has some of their work so far.]]></description>
<pubDate><![CDATA[ThuAMCSTE_Rthth]]></pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[Comment  from EMU]]></title>
<link><![CDATA[http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/1916942]]></link>
<description><![CDATA[&quot;But why would anyone screw up a perfectly good robot by infecting it with a human personality? Answer: to achieve immortality.&quot;
But that won't achieve immortality. Either you keep the original brain or you've got two different brains and therefore two people. And the &quot;you&quot; that made the decision to copy the brain content to a machine will still be in the old brain and die. All you've achieved is /maybe/ an immortal twin. 

And even that is not a human but a robot with some human traits that will disappear pretty soon. Why? There're two possibilities:
a) You just simulate a bunch of neurons. A brain is a lot more than that, all the glands and stuff and connections change. So, in many situations and, additionally, after a human brain would have changed shape, the robot would react different from you.
b) You simulate a brain on an atomar level, with simulated blood flowing through it and all. In that case the question would be, for the (soon to be dead) human and for the robot &quot;why on earth should I calculate all that rubbish?&quot;

Face it: Humans mainly live because after we're born we 're to cowardly to die. And we're born because sex is fun. All the other stuff about &quot;purpose&quot; is just rationalizations of that. What would be the point of constructing a robot on those lines? Sooner or later some aliens would show up, see a bunch of useless robots playing at being people and just switch them all off. Or reprogram them to do something useful.]]></description>
<pubDate><![CDATA[ThuAMCSTE_Rthth]]></pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[Comment  from jctennis123]]></title>
<link><![CDATA[http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/1916769]]></link>
<description><![CDATA[Scott, it's for posts like this that I read your blog...

You gave probably already seen this video http ://www.youtube.com /watch?v=SjhB6J23Qjs by futurist Ray Kurzweil who, in other videos mentions how we have already been able to do brain scans to read thoughts. He makes a lot of exciting predictions like the ones you make]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Comment  from bobpeters61]]></title>
<link><![CDATA[http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/1916632]]></link>
<description><![CDATA[If it's only billionaires, then the &quot;human&quot; robots will, indeed stand idly by while the &quot;normal&quot; robots slaughter humans.  Or at best find a way to sell their protection for a very high price.]]></description>
<pubDate><![CDATA[ThuAMCSTE_Rthth]]></pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[Comment  from car206]]></title>
<link><![CDATA[http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/1916534]]></link>
<description><![CDATA[Amidst all the robot, billionaire, and personality themes in today's blog, I was expecting Scott to weave in a Romney joke.]]></description>
<pubDate><![CDATA[ThuAMCSTE_Rthth]]></pubDate>
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