Singularity and the common man

For some time people have proposed the idea of a moment when machine intelligence will outstrip that of not only humans as individuals but that of the entire collective race. Ray Kurzweil has predicted this in around 2040 and suggests that at this time artificial intelligence will be able to solve all the problems of the world and elevate mankind to a state of pampered security without the need for jobs, money or struggle against illness.
Is this possible or just hogwash? Strangely, despite my cynical nature I think so! There are however, as always, caveats that will make such a process difficult in the shorter term and which will make transition to such a new age of plenty very painful for some.
The greatest question of what will we do when machines can do everything? springs to mind. There is indeed a possibility that this might be answered sooner rather than later and this answer will become a test for how we deal with what may be inevitable.
Today Google and now others have perfectly functional self-driving cars that perform driving tasks far more reliably than people. A self driving vehicle cannot become drunk or use recreational drugs. Neither can they fall asleep at the wheel or suffer bouts of road rage. While not even truly intelligent, the software mechanisms and hardware integration is simple enough that the processing power in a mobile phone can now take on the principle job of truck drivers the world over. Companies would certainly prefer to have a tireless self driving truck deliver goods without obligatory rest stops or accidents caused by overworked drivers distracted by their CB radio or texting while driving. Unions however will inevitably see this as erosion of rights and an excuse for companies to eliminate their entire workforce in favour of robot vehicles. Unless it is done carefully, the destruction of robot trucks will be guaranteed by all ex truck drivers and a new age of luddite values will hold sway.
The truck driver then must probably become the model for this new world order that will surely arrive if we continue to develop intelligent machines that can take on otherwise human tasks. Truck drivers will necessarily become well-paid and pampered chaperones of machines with a highly desirable job that will probably become regulated by a guild structure once again. After all, when you have to do nothing but accompany a robot truck on a thirty seven hour non-stop journey with no stress and no actual work to do, well then everyone will want to be a truck driver!
Once again, the traditional job of the desperate immigrant, Taxi driving, would be eliminated by self driving, one hundred percent safe and reliable taxis. Of course, the process of ensuring that excessively drunk passengers do not board and that vandalism does not take place during the journey should rightly fall to a supervisor who should be paid for their work. This would continue until such times as the taxi itself is intelligent enough to refuse a fare based upon the comportment of the client or go directly to a police station if vandalism is instigated.
As society becomes more used to the idea that we have no choice but to pay people for doing essentially nothing, so then will companies have to accept that giving away their goods for free is the norm. Why should a food distributor pay a wage when they can simply feed their employees instead? Logical knock-on consequences would continue up and down the supply chain such that organised barter would become a great part of the commercial structure. This all implies that radical and fundamental changes must occur in society if we are to continue on track in our technological development.
The logical conclusion of this becomes a race of humans with no need for work. This could mean no need for education because education today is mostly preparation for work. The possible future portrayed in E. M. Forster's <i>The Machine Stops</i> is too horrible to imagine yet all too possible. Another possible future would be that the human race would be subject to compulsory continuous secular education interspersed with the creation of personal development projects.
The ultimate question of what will we do when machines can do everything else is probably that we could spend a long and full life raising children with no need to worry about war, with no need for money and no worry about health care costs. Insurance would be redundant, as would the mortgage. These two burdens alone would alleviate vast suffering because the need for a country with vast resources to maintain them within it's borders to promote the cycle of cashflow would also be redundant meaning that resources could be shared with the rest of the world. The truth is that more well-off people have fewer children and spend more time improving their own minds and bodies. This could become universal. What will be required without doubt is original creative work by people to share with others. The currency of the human race in such a world would be the currency of fame engendered by the personal talents of exceptional people. No longer would the billionaire be the most important person but the actor, the sportsman, the writer, the comedian. The intangible products of the human mind are after all the true currency of society, everything else is support and enablement.

The future of the human race

I took two of my children, Julia and Aran with me yesterday when I went to see some folks at Sensorit, a spinoff company of Microsoft France. Sensorit do gesture aware interfaces based on the Microsoft Kinect device most often used on X-Box games platforms but, of course, Kinect is just an input system so using it to recognise hand, arm or even whole body movement as an input stream to control software other than games is a logical step in a logical direction.

Aran is seven years old. He has never seen a telephone with a dial, he has lived all his life in a world that has The Internet and Google, his house is filled with computers and his dad, your's truly, works in an industry that deals in the ultimate abstraction of software architectures and user interfaces. He has had no formal training in the use of computers but he understands the use of a mouse, clicks, double clicks and context clicks. He understands at a fairly deep level that a progress bar shows a position on a time-line. certainly, he understands it well enough to put himself back where he left off in an on-demand program or video on You Tube. 

Sensorit have just created an interactive map of Paris that can be navigated by simple gestures. Zooming, scrolling, selecting and so-on can be accomplished using body gestures with arms and hands. This was effectively exactly what was so stunningly amazing about the first sequences of the film Minority Report. Interaction with a computer using a mixture of voice and gesture to sort through and select data from a visual database.

Within a few minutes Aran had gleaned all he needed to know from the system to begin to interact with it. Interestingly, the engineers said that Aran did all the things that an adult would do and made them think more deeply about the interface and its possible shortcomings. Using this system Aran was able to "fly" over the map, scrolling and selecting areas for deeper study, zooming in and out to get greater or lesser detail as needed. He didn't need a course in computer interfaces, it just happened.

Children born today will grow up in a world that has a Higgs Boson. They will probably have a quantum computer in their pocket where we carry a smart-phone. Their phones might be really smart, like Siri but with true intelligence and a real personality. Their cars will drive themselves so teen-agers won't have to die in stupid drunk-driving accidents. One thing is for sure. There's no going back from here.

Paranormal activity on the increase. 400% rise!

Hello and welcome to my little experiment. Have you arrived at my blog because you searched for paranormal activity? Well, thanks so much for coming and helping to prove that the world is a strange place because it has folks like you in it.
A few days ago I posted a little tongue-in-cheek post about mermaids that was a response to the number of, well, lets tell it like it is shall we? IDIOTS who called into marine scientific institutes, the offices of the Discovery Channel and other places because the aforementioned TV channel had made a spoof documentary suggesting the existence of those mythical beasts.
The thing that surprised me most of all was that my hits on my blog went soaring through the roof and I decided to attempt a little experiment to see whether another headline would draw even more, well, lets say it again shall we? IDIOTS- to read what was posted.

Anyone who reads my blog on any sort of regular basis, and there are a few, will know that my tolerance for things unscientific is slightly less than zero and the mere mention of anything that might be construed as nonsense mumbo-jumbo promulgated by, well, lets.... you get the picture... brings a shudder to my spine in the same way that a slug sandwich might.

If you are indeed an idiot. Please leave this blog by clicking on the image shown to the right of this text ->

Existence of mermaids finally proven!

Something which I have hoped for these many long years is that the existence of the mermaid (piscespartes dominia) has been finally confirmed. US government science advisors have rushed to deny this after the discovery channel released the news this last week but there's no fooling the canny folks who live along the eastern seaboard of the USA and who are even now packing up rod and reel with a view to catching themselves a trophy. Never mind the traditional formaldehyde Marlin or the demure and tasteful Billy Bass mounted on the den wall. Imagine what the boys in the fraternity would say to a beautifully stuffed mermaid with pert little titties and a big-ole sardine tail "down below"

Of course, none of this would be possible without the intervention of the good-ole-boys in the North Carolina state legislature who say that we don't have to believe scientists any more and that we can rely on historical evidence for all our daily truths. The bible has real pictures of mermaids that were drawn by a man who actually seen 'em in real life when he signed on aboard Noah's ark as a deck hand.  The picture is in the Nuremberg Bible so it has to be true! Those mermaids even have a little mer-dog to get the newspapers in for them. Ahhh.

So, there you have it. Santa Claus is true because NORAD tracks him wherever he goes. Mermaids exist because it says so on Discovery channel and especially in the Bible which we all know cannot tell a lie and never EVER cuts down apple trees. God did make little green apples cause Tony Bennet said so and that's good enough for most people. Darwin was a lying poof and that poor tortoise, lonesome George only died because that SOB gave him a vernacular disease. Y'all have a good one!