What are your thoughts on AI and its coming implications?

[Taomeow]

34 minutes ago, thelerner said:

I'd want to see the greening of a couple of deserts before spending a whole lotta money on Mars. 

 

And who knows, maybe AI is a tool that can do it.  Autonomous solar machines, to plant seeds, water them, dig the trenches, irrigate.. learn what works and keep doing it with endless patience.  There was a Robert Zelazny short story about such machines that was very good.  

 

 

 

The usual problem with those visions is that a lot of pieces of the overall puzzle have to be ignored for it to look good.  Moreover, the crucial pieces are not just ignored by the public -- they are hidden from the public.  Let's take a look at some of those pieces though.  (By far not all, but it's just a forum post, so...)  

 

Autonomous solar machines have to be manufactured.  To manufacture solar anything, we use electricity.  80% of this electricity in the US and 85% globally is derived from burning fossil fuels.  The solar panels themselves are made with organometallic compounds and light-absorbent dyes.  This entails mining for and producing ever-greater amounts of cobalt, rhodium, aluminum, zinc, lithium, ruthenium, copper, titanium, to name a few (as well as fossil fuels that are the other part of organometallic chemistry.)  

 

Most mining operations and industrial production of these goodies are land-intensive, displacing and exterminating all animals and plants in all locations where they take place, and entail human labor, chiefly in the "third world" (i.e. where humans aren't supposed to matter) that is either bordering on slave labor or is exactly that, often child slave labor, extremely high pollution, but also extremely high profitability (due in part to generous subsidies of taxpayer money by governments and various international organizations to the corporations that call this cycle of production "clean energy" -- nice words, who doesn't want clean energy?  Only the worst of monsters, right?)  Then there's a problem of disposal -- all this stuff is highly toxic, its lifespan is presented by manufacturers as 20-25 years but in reality they seldom make it to 12, and then the toxic chemicals they release "forever" have to be buried somewhere, which poses another land-intensive challenge.  Where?  Where people don't matter, obviously.  But we're rapidly running out of places to poison even there.

 

I like Robert Zelazny too but Philip K. Dick is a lot more accurate as visionaries of a technology-based future go.   

[Zork]

38 minutes ago, Taomeow said:

 

The usual problem with those visions is that a lot of pieces of the overall puzzle have to be ignored for it to look good.  Moreover, the crucial pieces are not just ignored by the public -- they are hidden from the public.  Let's take a look at some of those pieces though.  (By far not all, but it's just a forum post, so...)  

 

Autonomous solar machines have to be manufactured.  To manufacture solar anything, we use electricity.  80% of this electricity in the US and 85% globally is derived from burning fossil fuels.  The solar panels themselves are made with organometallic compounds and light-absorbent dyes.  This entails mining for and producing ever-greater amounts of cobalt, rhodium, aluminum, zinc, lithium, ruthenium, copper, titanium, to name a few (as well as fossil fuels that are the other part of organometallic chemistry.)  

 

Most mining operations and industrial production of these goodies are land-intensive, displacing and exterminating all animals and plants in all locations where they take place, and entail human labor, chiefly in the "third world" (i.e. where humans aren't supposed to matter) that is either bordering on slave labor or is exactly that, often child slave labor, extremely high pollution, but also extremely high profitability (due in part to generous subsidies of taxpayer money by governments and various international organizations to the corporations that call this cycle of production "clean energy" -- nice words, who doesn't want clean energy?  Only the worst of monsters, right?)  Then there's a problem of disposal -- all this stuff is highly toxic, its lifespan is presented by manufacturers as 20-25 years but in reality they seldom make it to 12, and then the toxic chemicals they release "forever" have to be buried somewhere, which poses another land-intensive challenge.  Where?  Where people don't matter, obviously.  But we're rapidly running out of places to poison even there.

 

I like Robert Zelazny too but Philip K. Dick is a lot more accurate as visionaries of a technology-based future go.   

How is all this related to AI again?

[Taomeow]

17 minutes ago, Zork said:

How is all this related to AI again?

 

I'm done talking to you, and thelerner to whose post I responded knows "how it is related to AI again."  

 

Make five consecutive sensible, thoughtful, hostility-free posts and then give me a holler if you feel like getting off my ignore mode.  Steeping in your own angry juices any further won't accomplish that.  Entirely up to you.

[Nungali]

10 hours ago, Zork said:

Whoever wrote the article doesn't know the difference between a spaceship and a starship.

 

What EM is vying for is not achievable and moot point. In situ water exploitation is cheaper than bringing so much water there.

Until we see some kind of factory in LEO producing goods from extraplanetary materials, colonisation of Mars en masse is not going to happen.

 

Elon's  pipe dream .

[silent thunder]

I definitely don't want whatever elon's smoking...

[Zork]

18 minutes ago, Taomeow said:

 

I'm done talking to you, and thelerner to whose post I responded knows "how it is related to AI again."  

 

Make five consecutive sensible, thoughtful, hostility-free posts and then give me a holler if you feel like getting off my ignore mode.  Steeping in your own angry juices any further won't accomplish that.  Entirely up to you.

Who told you that i am angry?

All i see is a confused person who is making assumptions about what i believe.

Plus the rant about solar panels is misguided. The materials can be mined and the panels assembled in space with no environmental consequences.

[Nungali]

3 minutes ago, silent thunder said:

I definitely don't want whatever elon's smoking...

 

 

 

Mars colony 

 

If it ever gets off the ground  - I pity the fool that gets involved .

 

I have seen really stupid  (but thats okay, a LOT of people ARE stupid and will get sucked in by it )  .... well, basically , advertisements ; 

 

People in little Mars cars or light space suits  'on vacation'   touring the beautiful landscape of Mars .

 

 

 

 

If anything , you will be living in a plastic tube down the end of a lava tube underground, drinking your own recycled piss and  eating  lab grown Marschow . . . .   enjoy !

 

 

[Zork]

1 minute ago, Nungali said:

 

 

 

Mars colony 

 

If it ever gets off the ground  - I pity the fool that gets involved .

 

I have seen really stupid  (but thats okay, a LOT of people ARE stupid and will get sucked in by it )  .... well, basically , advertisements ; 

 

People in little Mars cars or light space suits  'on vacation'   touring the beautiful landscape of Mars .

 

 

 

 

If anything , you will be living in a plastic tube down the end of a lava tube underground, drinking your own recycled piss and  eating  lab grown Marschow . . . .   enjoy !

 

 

There will be no Mars colony in the foreseable future. Mars' moons and our moon make for better bases. Who the hell is going to Mars and for what reason? It is not terraformable despite what some "visionaries" declare. It is full of iron but water is scarce and there are no good power sources for industries to work.

 

Who the hell is going to spend billions of $$ on a science project?

[Nungali]

3 minutes ago, Zork said:

There will be no Mars colony in the foreseable future. Mars' moons and our moon make for better bases. Who the hell is going to Mars and for what reason? It is not terraformable despite what some "visionaries" declare. It is full of iron but water is scarce and there are no good power sources for industries to work.

 

Who the hell is going to spend billions of $$ on a science project?

 

Nazis  ?

 

 

 

 

[ralis]

@CloudHands

 

Why on earth do you find frozen methane hydrate bubbles amusing?

[CloudHands]

Just now, ralis said:

@CloudHands

 

Why on earth do you find frozen methane hydrate bubbles amusing?

 

The irony of your comment coming from the beauty of the picture... is. I can find something amusing in such a distance.

[ralis]

6 minutes ago, CloudHands said:

 

The irony of your comment coming from the beauty of the picture... is. I can find something amusing in such a distance.

I guess you are not informed as to the methane hydrate problem in which once it thaws there will be massive amounts of methane released which will exponentially increase AGW!

Edited January 21, 2020 by ralis

[CloudHands]

Just now, ralis said:

I guess you are not informed as to the methane hydrate problem in which once it thaws there will be massive amounts of methane released which will exasperate AGW!

 

You underestimate me, by farrrrr

[Zork]

5 minutes ago, ralis said:

I guess you are not informed as to the methane hydrate problem in which once it thaws there will be massive amounts of methane released which will exponentially increase AGW!

Sadly this irreversible at the stage we are now. Will that lead us to a human powered ELE? Who knows? Only time will tell.

[CloudHands]

I think we live an era of technological boom and I think one day it will settle or at least there will turn in a form of stability.

 

I trust our need for diversity. Lack of rooting will create a need for it.

 

What reunite many of us here are ancient cultures we perpetuate. These evolved too but I think the root, the why and the how are maintained. We also do it to stay human, to keep that inertia inside that revved engine.

 

We are very young, if we happen to live long maybe one day we will become mature. Hope is free and necessary.

 

One thing I think is very positive even considering it's own limits and tendency to overrule, beliefs slowly replaced by science. Considering science as a process not a doctrine.

[Zork]

Besides, what i see rarely mentioned is the potential of AI guided drones to operate in environments hostile to humans or improve things like traffic, driver safety, architecture or urban development, geological surveys, prediction of seismic events.

 

Singularity will change everything. I just hope we don't get extinct before we get there.

 

We got 20 years tops before we reach maximum population capacity. Once we hit 16 billion, interesting things will happen. Famine, war, disease, you name it!

[Taomeow]

11 minutes ago, ralis said:

I guess you are not informed as to the methane hydrate problem in which once it thaws there will be massive amounts of methane released which will exponentially increase AGW!

 

I believe you are also not exactly informed in this particular case.  Lake Baikal and the surrounding area has been warming up by 0.5 degrees Celsius per decade since the late nineteenth century (maybe earlier too but no one measured), and has been the fastest warming area on Earth for well over a century.  My both parents used to work on the methane problem straight out of college -- it was in the 1950s.  It's not new, not related to man-made processes, and far as I know, is about as feasible to "address" as a volcano eruption.  Something may happen, or we'll get lucky and it won't.  There's a line between science and indoctrination that the media crosses too eagerly but I wouldn't follow in their footsteps.   

[Zork]

21 minutes ago, CloudHands said:

I think we live an era of technological boom and I think one day it will settle or at least there will turn in a form of stability.

Well if we disregard the increase in computer power then there is no boom. On the contrary we are stagnating technologically the last 50 years.

Think about it in a simple way: how long has it been since a man has stepped on the Moon?

Has there been any breakthrough in propulsion? Life support? NASA can't even build Saturn V launchers from scratch anymore FFS!

Edited January 21, 2020 by Zork

[ralis]

4 minutes ago, Taomeow said:

 

I believe you are also not exactly informed in this particular case.  Lake Baikal and the surrounding area has been warming up by 0.5 degrees Celsius per decade since the late nineteenth century (maybe earlier too but no one measured), and has been the fastest warming area on Earth for well over a century.  My both parents used to work on the methane problem straight out of college -- it was in the 1950s.  It's not new, not related to man-made processes, and far as I know, is about as feasible to "address" as a volcano eruption.  Something may happen, or we'll get lucky and it won't.  There's a line between science and indoctrination that the media crosses too eagerly but I wouldn't follow in their footsteps.   

 

I am well informed as to the degree of Arctic Ocean as well as ocean warming in general, in which methane hydrate is being released in the Arctic Ocean as well as all oceans being a CO2 sink. CH4 release as well as CO2 are causal factors in human caused AGW. That is an indisputable fact! Read the climate change thread on this site.

[CloudHands]

1 minute ago, Zork said:

Well if we disregard the increase in computer power then there is no boom. On the contrary we are stagnating technologically the last 50 years.

Think about it in a simple way: how long has it been since a man has stepped on the Moon?

Has there been any breakthrough in propulsion? Life support? NASA can't even build Atlas V launchers from scratch anymore FFS!

 

Pure research :

Higgs' boson

Gravitational waves

Complete model of particle physics

 

Technology (just as scary as any new tool in a clumsy child's hands) :

DNA based

Nano Tech

Technology power is related to smallness : axe, knife, engine, micro chip, then now nano technologies.

It's goes the same for handling sources of power. Fire, Gas, Nuclear, what's next ?

 

 

 

[Taomeow]

9 minutes ago, ralis said:

 

I am well informed as to the degree of Arctic Ocean as well as ocean warming in general, in which methane hydrate is being released in the Arctic Ocean as well as all oceans being a CO2 sink. CH4 release as well as CO2 are causal factors in human caused AGW. That is an indisputable fact! Read the climate change thread on this site.

 

I thought we were talking about methane bubbles in lake Baikal.  Observed for almost 200 years due to regional warming unrelated to any other kind.  Related to volcanism associated with the Baikal Rift Zone.  The rest is, indeed, beyond the scope of this particular thread.   

Edited January 21, 2020 by Taomeow

[Zork]

3 minutes ago, CloudHands said:

Higgs' boson

Gravitational waves

Complete model of particle physics

All 3 are subjects of heated debate.

None of them are huge breakthroughs that will change the lives of the average citizen like say operational deuterium fusion reactors.

3 minutes ago, CloudHands said:

Technology power is related to smallness : axe, knife, engine, micro chip, then now nano technologies.

Miniaturisation is a sign of technology refinement not a technology breakthrough.

[ralis]

3 hours ago, Taomeow said:

 

I thought we were talking about methane bubbles in lake Baikal.  Observed for almost 200 years due to regional warming unrelated to any other kind.  Related to volcanism associated with the Baikal Rift Zone.  The rest is, indeed, beyond the scope of this particular thread.   

 

CH4, CO2 are related whether in the Arctic Ocean or any ocean is relevant to AGW. All oceans are warming at an alarming rate which results in a slightly acidic PH and so forth. The effects are not favorable in the long run for survival in this biosphere.

[Cookie Monster]

.

Edited May 4, 2021 by Ocean Form

[Zork]

4 hours ago, Ocean Form said:

But why would you refuse to help stop global warming if you're a super saiyan?

Not him but i understand his PoV. For those near the arctic GW could be a godsend. For those on the islands of the pacific or in New York it would be a godsend... cataclysm!