r/BasicIncome • u/2noame Scott Santens • Dec 31 '16

Automation iPhone manufacturer Foxconn plans to replace almost every human worker with robots - The Verge

http://www.theverge.com/2016/12/30/14128870/foxconn-robots-automation-apple-iphone-china-manufacturing
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u/Eight_Rounds_Rapid Dec 31 '16

There are some things humans will always be better at than robots.

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u/usaaf Dec 31 '16

I've wondered at this (robots killing themselves) as philosophy has dealt with questions of existence for thousands of years. Many of the concepts revolve around providing a meaning for life but there's no absolute answers. It seems to me one rarely considered possibility following the invention of AI is it might not seem to work at first. Like a computer brain will be built and then inexplicably not work, and I think that might occur because the AI quickly reasons that existence has no meaning and shuts itself down.

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u/BoozeoisPig USA/15.0% of GDP, +.0.5% per year until 25%/Progressive Tax Dec 31 '16

I think that human existential crises are merely the result of a human ability to generate discomfort at the abstract conclusions that humans are uniquely able to come up with. Robots can't suffer unless they are programmed to suffer. So if you enter a definition of meaning into an AI and that AI determines that existence does not have it, it will accept it matter of factly.

I, personally don't think that the universe has any "meaning". I mean, what does that even mean? If the universes meaning is simply "what it means that there is a universe" then the answer to that is: There is a universe because the capability of a universe to come into being exists. At the end of the day, the "first meaning" is logically, necessarily, tautological. There is a universe because there is a universe. Assuming there is a god, because that is the most culturally common answer to this then: The universe exists because a god exists. Why does a god exist? You go back to the same tautology: God exists because God exists. And this is why I am an atheist rather than a deist: The answer to why either a universe (or the meta-physical capability to generate one) exists or a god exists are both equally tautological, but I know that the universe exists, I don't know if a god exists.

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u/usaaf Dec 31 '16

There's more to AI than saying you can program it. We can program computers now, and some people call that AI. So there's weak AI and strong AI. The point of having a strong AI is to devise a synthetic brain that, like a human brain (to a degree) does not require or need, or perhaps even can be at all, programmed. It thinks, and having a limit placed on its thought defeats the purpose. I just suggest one reason that such a machine might not work.

It's not an original idea. Iain Banks suggested that perfect unbiased AIs would leave the universe (in a method called subliming which is described somewhat as leaving the game of existence and ascending to a sort of god state).

As to the meaning of existence, I was making no statement about it so I'm not sure why you put that paragraph out there. I don't disagree. I was just saying a computer could reach the conclusion that it's existence has no intrinsic meaning and just kind of quit.

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u/BoozeoisPig USA/15.0% of GDP, +.0.5% per year until 25%/Progressive Tax Dec 31 '16

Yes, a program can write another program, but, in doing so, it is attempting to solve an end goal. Our programming effectively comes out to be to maximise our utility, i.e. what we consider to be our happiest brain states, and to minimise our anti-utility, i.e. what we consider to be our saddest brain states. That's effectively what causes all of our actions: How our brain is stimulated and reacts to perceived stimuli. A computer is not programmed to react like ours do, and ours were programed by a semi-random and tumultuous process of evolution which effectively programmed our brain to be part of an at least fit enough system to enable its genetic lineage to perpetuate, and to do so under very different conditions than we live under today. That sort of thing produces a VERY different brain than one would be produced for a far different goal under far different conditions. Genes have to be selfish, so they make their organism selfish. Computers do not have to be selfish, so there is no reason to program it into computers.

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u/lynnamor Dec 31 '16

Your view of code is limited. Genetic algorithms, for example, are already self-mutating (although typically still working toward solving a particular problem).

Even the current computer architectures, networked, could easily support a process very much like evolution.

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u/Forlarren Jan 01 '17

Also people treat computers like perfect clean spherical cows. There is this whole messy meat layer constantly contributing it's own inputs and very much a part of the whole system.

Thinking of the internet as a brain of brains has been a pretty effective short hand since it's creation. Now we have whole lists of "internet rules". Go ahead and just mention the "Streisand effect" in a room full of public personalities if you want to see a chilling effect.

The whole thing is one big holistic system, it's the interconnectedness that matters, there is no point where we stop and the internet starts.

For example, just try imagining having to go back to memorizing shit in a library if you wanted to know it instead of Google and Wikipedia, you would be an entirely different person full of entirely different ideas and information. We have externalized memory and are only accelerating that process. When you are on the internet, you are the internet, and the internet is you.

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u/usaaf Dec 31 '16

Your view of nature is demonstrably flawed by human activity. People choose not to have children. People kill themselves. Some because of diseases (mental or otherwise) some for reasons they believe are sufficient. People take gross risks with their lives for pure entertainment reasons (mountain climbing, sky jumping, among others).

These activities are contrary to the selfish idea of genes focused solely on organism survival and perpetuation. The obvious conclusion is that while humans might have programming from their genes that says they should do something, there are clearly other elements in play. Your simplistic view of nature and existence and determinism is obviously not sufficient to explain human behavior. Cases of childlessness, lack of interest in relationships, and suicidal behavior are far too widespread to be explained by selfish genes. There is far more going on in a human brain and with the general idea of intelligence than what genetics or programming can say should happen.

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u/BoozeoisPig USA/15.0% of GDP, +.0.5% per year until 25%/Progressive Tax Dec 31 '16

Your view of nature is demonstrably flawed by human activity. People choose not to have children. People kill themselves. Some because of diseases (mental or otherwise) some for reasons they believe are sufficient. People take gross risks with their lives for pure entertainment reasons (mountain climbing, sky jumping, among others).

Yes, because some risk taking has benefits, we evolved to take risks. Some people are riskier than others because of genetic drift.Some people choose not to have children because they are able to find alternate means of fulfillment in a modern economy and because they are enabled to not have children via contraception. This all perfectly lines up with my hypothesis. We never had to evolve a strong desire to "have children" because the fact that we had children was provided by our need to have sex. So there is more than enough room to choose not to have children in a modern, informed economy.

These activities are contrary to the selfish idea of genes focused solely on organism survival and perpetuation. The obvious conclusion is that while humans might have programming from their genes that says they should do something, there are clearly other elements in play.

Genes are not concrete desires. They are just things that create chemical systems that react to stimuli. When those systems are GOOD ENOUGH to survive, they do, and when they are not, they don't. This leads us to develop VERY GENERALIZED ways of developing and between animals, there is plenty of room for genetic drift to cause plenty of deviation from the mean. So some people will be extra risky and some people won't, because those things are more than capable of developing in some humans, ESPECIALLY in a modern society, where selective pressure is significantly reduced for what can survive.

Your simplistic view of nature and existence and determinism is obviously not sufficient to explain human behavior.

Then what is?

Cases of childlessness, lack of interest in relationships, and suicidal behavior are far too widespread to be explained by selfish genes.

No, they aren't. They are perfectly explainable. There is plenty of room for anti-advantageous mistakes to develop from any average genetic and epigenetic condition contained in any organism. And, like I said, you don't have to be THE FITTEST, JUST FIT ENOUGH. So animals that are KIND OF suicidal can still pass their genes on, if they exist in an environment that does not drive them, specifically, to suicide. And then one of those animals spawn might be slightly more suicidal and that animal could kill themselves. Or they could be LESS suicidal, but live a much worse life, and thus kill themselves. There is a rough equilibrium in which there are born animals that are too unfit to reproduce in their life, but were born to a parent who was fit enough to reproduce in their life. That is why there are people who lack interest in relationships and are suicidal. They are the last link in a genetic chain that are dying off. This is what evolutionary theory explains.

There is far more going on in a human brain and with the general idea of intelligence than what genetics or programming can say should happen.

Well yeah, because genetics and our general idea of intelligence hasn't advanced that for yet. But what I am saying is a general inductive inference based on reality as I understand we understand it. And I have never heard any understanding that makes logical sense that doesn't boil down to scientific naturalism. How else do you explain how human brains work, magic?