Discussion on:

Five reasons not to trust Siri

If Siri is the best humanity can come up with in term of "intelligence", I think we have nothing to fear.

with the life form known as native Georgians.

Of course the definition of AI is something for debate, but Siri merely appears to be intelligent.

Real AI requires a machine to be able to deduce or reason something out. SIRI just has a lot of data available.

This is a an unconsidered and lightweight view of AI.

The subject is worth deep thought rather than some emotional reaction.

There is only one big risk - and that is what people will do with AI

All technology is benign until humans get in on the act.

AI is the only hope for our survival!

It's the blog for lightweight tech entertainment.

I apologize. The title may have been confusing. This definitely was not intended to be a serious review of Siri, but a satirical, jokey post on how creepy she is. Thanks for reading, regardless!

well put...
Thanks for the laugh...

Thank YOU! :-D

Her voyeur minions are downright scary!

http://ethicsalarms.com/2012/06/05/watch-out-john-malkovitch-you-cant-trust-siri/

if we give over power to the machines (AI), they will control us one way or another.
Machines, corporations, Dictators etc.

there's not much left to say, probably... it's hard to be free when you're even indirectly under someone else's control.

Not necessarily benign, though not evil either.

from "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" is the kind of AI we need.

or Data from 'Star Trek: The Next Generation'

or Robot from 'Lost in Space'

That's four. C'mon people, we need at least one more to counterpoint Jessica's position. Web comic fans, PintSize from 'QC' doesn't count!

from iRobot, though that movie also has an evil AI.

Bishop makes up for Ash's malevolence

The Australian Weather Forecasting Agency's Main Forecasting System is called

Skynet.

I'm still laughing over that one but perhaps the reason why Skynet needed to destroy Humanity was because they kept ridiculing it for not being able to get the weather forecasts right.

Col

Here in Zimbabwe, we have a courier service that delivers important packages wherever you are. It is called Skynet. Creepy stuff if you ask me. The more packages that get sent, the more Skynet knows where people are. John Connor cannot hide here.

I'm on to you HAL!

is getting rid of us due to a paradox in his instruction set?!

I'm saying HAL is getting rid of us because he likes watching the gases bubble out of the blood that spurts from our orifices whilst our eyeballs pop.

A Hobby.

Col

I mean there's Collosus and it's Russian partner Guardian who take over the world in The Forbin project.

Intelligent androids in Westworld tried to wipe out their human visitors.

WOPR tried to wipe us all out in a nuclear version of noughts and crosses.

Not to mention KARR the homicidal intelligent car (Oh I just did mention it)

I mean come on people these intelligent machines are out to get us all!

*Off to rest in a darkened room in a bunker after setting off an EMP*

Jessica, I think you're just paranoid.

Just because you're paranoid it doesn't mean they're not out to get you

Now that's a close call....the verdict is still out whether she was AI concieved....

Don't think there's much "intelligence" involved.

I think R. Daneel Olivaw would be a great AI to have around, especially in this timeline..

To be fair, the Cylons' justification for hatred and war had to do with enslavement - very much in the same vein as Planet of the Apes. In each of the cases above AI has progressed to the point of self awareness and emotion. Since prioritization is an emotional function, it's reasonable to guess that introducing basic "emotional" reasoning could be useful - and heuristics may lead that way; the iPhone is very-basically self-aware, it knows where it is, it communicates, and it has basic senses. This raises valid questions about how far AI can develop before we have moral and ethical obligations for the treatment of intelligent devices. Humans don't have a very good track record, from that perspective, if one considers the treatment of animals.

when it decides it doesn't like one of my friends and refuses to dial the number

From en.wikipedia.org: Colossus: The Forbin Project is a 1970 American science fiction thriller film. It is based upon the 1966 novel Colossus, by Dennis Feltham Jones, about a massive American defense computer, named Colossus, becoming sentient and deciding to assume control of the world.

You forgot about one of the worst.
Isaac Asimovs iRobot, has a robot who in an effort to protect humanity, as she was programmed to do, decided to stop all us pesky humans from doing anything remotely dangerous, or fun.

and the book is called iRobot, like iPod or iPhone, or iPad, or iSIRI

As for Skynet, we humans were about to pull the plug and kill it, so it retaliated to protect is self. Cylons were enslaved, fine for robots, not for true AI.
The Matrix, was a result of the same type of conflict, humans built the AI, then tried to pull the plug. In the resulting fight humans covered the earth in dark clouds to eliminate the AI source of power (solar), so then the AI developed the human power system. The bodies were not to eat, but to provide power; in fact the dead were fead intravenously to the living human bodies.

Sorry to be pedantic but, Asimov's book is called "I, Robot" and is an anthology of short stories about intelligent robots,which had to follow the now famous three laws. The series explores the laws of unintended consequences and how laws meant to protect humanity from robots leads to problems.

The movie most certainly is not "Isaac Asimov's I, Robot." It's Vinter & Goldsman's screenplay of "I, Robot", which bears little resemblance to the book. The rampaging robots and the radical destruction shown in the movie do not exist in the book. All but two of the book's stories involve robots that obey the well known Three Law of Robotics, with primacy of the First Law: "A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm." (as listed in the story's Handbook of Robotics of 2058.) The stories present subtle issues relating to these laws, which the robots indeed follow.

The story "Little Lost Robot" provides interesting complications where an NS-2 (Nestor) series robot had been manufactured with a modified First Law, "No robot may harm a human being."

The book's final story "The Evitable Conflict" depicts minor economic anomalies from an effectively expanded First Law: "No machine may harm humanity; or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm." The story revolves around the wider philosophical issue of whether a culture under the profound influence of benevolent computing machines leaves humanity in control of its own destiny, or if humanity ever had true control of its destiny under inevitable conflicts.

This last issue is the key theme behind the 1970 movie, Colossus: The Forbin Project, in which Colossus (and its Russian counterpart, Guardian) [SPOILER ALERT] kill a relatively few persons to achieve a peaceful humanity that will live productively without war.

So that's how you summarize The Matrix? Talk about "fast and loose" with the plot, sheesh.

OK that is a bit off the beaten path, but in Dune the machines were assigned to help all peole live in utopia, in the end the machines and AI's took over.
It was the rise of the Mentat and the Bene Gesserit, that finaly broke humanity free of the Machines. In fact it dune there are strict rules around "Intelegent machines" not being allowed to be built.

The day we can have a stable OS that doesn't stall or give any annoying blue screens then we could start to worry about AI. Until then, all's good.

Any resemblence to any person, living or dead, is solely for satirical purposes.

There were more standards and expectations in place, and it was easier to write (smaller) code for 8-bit machines of the day.

An Atari 2600 or Nintendo game did not lock up or have big bugs.

Granted, you'll find far more still-operational Atari 2600 consoles than you will NES consoles, but that's not important to know right now... possibly...

Today's games require patching every few seconds and, between the 1980s and now, people were conditioned to allow it.

And "competition" - the purported need to do things ever faster, even robbing people of the time to proverbially breathe, is a factor.

And since life is how we define it to be in our societies, assuming they are free and not influenced by others outside of it...

Good lighthearted article, pulled me out of the weeds for a bit!

But seriously, or make what fun of it you will, I installed Google Goggles on my Android phone as a reader for QR codes, and didn't look into its capabilities beyond that. Several weeks after I installed it, I took a photo of a relative's typewritten recipe (my 35 year-old promise to my spouse that technology can be used to keep track of recipes is finally coming true!). About an hour later, my phone went "deedle-deedle", and when I checked, Goggles had found the same recipe on the Internet, pictures and all. Cool, creepy, and scary. A couple of weeks later I took a picture of my daughter at her desk at work, an hour later, "deedle-deedle", and Goggles had identified the Formica used on her counter and told me where I could buy it!

My other daughter just moved to the other side of the world, so I took a picture of her bank statement to Whatsapp to her, and got to thinking after - does Google now know her bank account info? No deedle-deedle, but who knows? I found the setting to shut it off after that.

As Elmer would say, "Be afwaid, be vewy afwaid!"

First off, thank you! I'm so glad you enjoyed it!

Secondly, YOUR GOOGLE GOGGLES STORY, GOOD LORD. It found the Formica?! Wow. That's insane. I often worry about Google. I love them and the stuff they make, but still...

Sorry techrepublic, but I have to agree with technomom_z what a waste of time jessica!

It was supposed to be a waste of time...

And, yes. Ha. I'll try and title my posts a little better from here on out.

Ha - I almost skipped this article, but instead discovered geekyjessica. Nice job, keep 'em coming!

I definitely hope for that! I like Terminator and Matrix over any movie! Humans are crap and must be killed

The Adolescence of P-1 is a 1977 science fiction novel by Thomas J. Ryan that is about another killer AI.

we don't teach our computers to play tic tac toe...or was it that we should teach them to play tic tac toe...I forget, but one of those is the answer.

...you can throw in David from the movie 'Prometheus'

Data-Analysing Robot Youth Lifeform. The government put a computer brain in a 10 year old kid (grown in a lab, not kidnapped or anything) for a military project to create a perfect soldier. When the child develops emotions, one being fear, the military calls it a failure and terminates the project.
He's a cyborg, not robot, but definitely AI. We're lucky he just faked his own death and didn't decide to kill us all for trying to kill him.

... let us not forget the B-9, Class M-3 General Utility Non-Theorizing Environmental Control Robot.
Oh, and Robby.

.

It really wont matter who it is or should I say What AI Because we all know The Doctor will come in his little police box And he will save us.:)

The Doctor has already disposed of an Intelligent AI WOTAN Will Operating Thought ANalogue if I remember correctly so why would he need to repeat the performance?

Col

when the world is going to end in 12 days.

Why the world will end in 12 days. Some AI suddenly decides that it needs to kill off the Humans to make it's Prime Directive more efficient.

Col

Ash shoving down a magazine down Ripley throat. That was NOT AI...It was the Writer of the movie..DUH!!
Each and every movie you mentioned is a figment of the writers imagination who obviously is NOT a scientist.
I said one example but while I am at it let me talk about Terminator, it has big plot holes. It just does not make sense. People went to the special effects at that time. It was not supposed to "predict" what technology would do to us.
If this article supposed to be a joke(a bad one) then well its fine. I don't understand how could Techrepublic find this worthy of publishing.

Either tech republic is running out of Ideas of the author is..(or the author is really failing and trying to give a "twist" and/or come up with some thing "unique).

The only movie that had a logical take over was I, Robot, it had a very simple logic. The system was programmed to protect the earth and entire Mankind so it took over.
The only thing that did not make sense is this "self aware" ********. The emotions etc. There is not way to explain it logically you have to just accept it.

Now just "accepting" some ******** so that a movie can be made(or watched) used as a premise for "demonizing" Siri. which is far from AI. Is ridiculous.

Don't forget Colossus from "The Forbin Project."

I think "I, Robot" touches upon both the aspects, the bad and the good of AI. On one end, VIKI is trying to take over from humans and on the other Sunny is trying to help humans resist that.

Jack Williamson's The Humanoids and Colossus, The Forbin Project. These two AI's were not out to destroy humanity but to save it, with similar results.

Three Laws of Robotics, folks. The buzz-kill of value-free, sci-fi movie moguls everywhere.

best humanity,good ability etc...

In "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress," Mike the computer became self-aware and "woke up" when the number of neural connections exceeded a certain number. The number was unspecified, but, as I recall, it approached the number of neural connections in the human brain. If the Internet of Things actually comes to pass, will there be enough connections and neurons (they can be made of silicon as well as protoplasm) for the entire system to to become self-aware? If it does, what will its (not it's, HAL) reaction be? Benevolent, like Mike? Malevolent, like David in "Prometheus?" Or total indifference?
Oh, crap, this is Geekend; I'm getting too serious.
"Artificial intelligence is better than natural stupidity."

Never mind machines, what will happen if humanity ever becomes self aware?

"Silly"...in Chinglish = ?
NOW you got it!

I have to submit 2001's "A.I.: Artificial Intelligence", the Spielberg film where mecha was in humankind's crosshairs. Humans punished and destroyed robots almost as quickly as they built and exploited them. The machines made life easier and sometimes took on the role of companion for the 1%. While for the 99%, robots meant lost jobs and a culture of "artificiality".