Yeah, this is very silly. Just because the number of transistors that fit on a chip has increased exponentially for a certain number of decades (but has probably stopped doing that now), it doesn’t mean progress in any other area is equally rapid. There’s a reason why some wag coined the term “Eroom’s Law” (the reverse of Moore’s Law) - because there are multiple areas of research do produce fewer and fewer results over time.
Also, I think his measure of “progress” is “how much life has changed for teenagers.”
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Yeah, cinematic/television androids almost always annoy me because they either a) want to be human or b) already are, even though this may not be acknowledged by the characters and/or fiction. Usually it’s both, however. It seems like pretty lazy writing to me.
Having counted various occasions of people invoking the Argumentum ad Exponentio, plotting its increasing use against time, and extrapolating, I can confidently predict that by 2020 all arguments will take the form of hand-drawn exponential-growth diagrams.
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I get why it’s an appealing approach from a storytelling perspective; it gets into issues like “what does it mean to be human” and “how humans can be prejudices against those who are different” and so forth. Like most sci-fi it’s really less about the future than it is about the present.
But as an actual prediction of the future of A.I. it’s both unrealistic and lazy. At least Pinocchio was never intended as a plausible story about what the future of puppetry might look like.
I wonder if this guy has actually read any SF, or even watched much besides Back to the Future. Taking a trend and assuming either a straight or a logarithmic progression is a staple of SF, including such worthy works as Logan’s Run (the Baby Boom keeps booming, and old people are outlawed) and Escape from New York (crime in the inner city keeps booming, and Manhattan is turned into a prison island). Both trends eventually waned, of course, and more serious computer scientists wonder if Moore’s Law can continue indefinitely.
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Wow, a lot of cynics here. Why is no one bringing up Watson? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_cqBP08yuA
As I understand it, the big shift lately has been AdaBoost-style algorithms that allow for automatically gauging multiple disparate models for applicability ranking. No one can necessarily predict the next big algorithm… but I can predict one’s coming.
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Actually it annoys me because I feel like it avoids that issue. It falls into retelling Pinocchio. It’s not a real exploration of the question of what it means to be human if the “non-humans” are functionally identical to neural-typical human beings. That’s a cop-out; there’s an easy answer already given. I find that issue more intriguingly explored by stories that have at least more ambiguously human-like androids. The Terminator tv show was much better than Terminator 2 in this respect, for example.
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Other possible measures include number of unarmed people slain by police or number or children dying of malaria. I wonder if graduate degrees in philosophy would be a good measure? I’ve also heard you can measure progress in light bulbs.
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Oh, oh, I know! The number of people dying from obesity-related health issues! Now, there’s your measure of progress!
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Such wish comes to me as weird, given how many advantages the android body/brain tech has in comparison with the fragile error-prone squishy humans. I would expect the wishes going the other way.
There are some years still remaining. The shrinkage will hit the laws of physics at about 5 nm (some say at 1 nm), but there is some time left. Then there are the alternatives to planar silicon lithography: molecular electronics and 3D self-assembly are only two of many options. Remember we’re stuck with 2D structures so far.
It’s where it is only because of the predictions. Without overoptimistic predictions there would not be the money for the research that got it to the current state. To get things done, sometimes you have to lie, sometimes even to yourself.
“For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”
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That is true and applies to the labs and to actual deployment. (Good ol’ Feynman…)
However, to get the technology working you first have to develop it. That is a foray into an unknown territory, where predictions don’t work well. But you need money. So you pick the predictions that maximize the likelihood you get said money.
You also need some hope for yourself, for getting the work done. Many projects would not be done if their author was aware of the full complexity in advance, and did not think it will be easy-ish.
The Battlestar Galactica remake had its share of “robots just wanna be human” too, but one of my favorite scenes was this bit with Brother Cavill/Number One:
Brother Cavil: In all your travels, have you ever seen a star go supernova?
Ellen Tigh: No.
Brother Cavil: No? Well, I have. I saw a star explode and send out the building blocks of the Universe. Other stars, other planets and eventually other life. A supernova! Creation itself! I was there. I wanted to see it and be part of the moment. And you know how I perceived one of the most glorious events in the universe? With these ridiculous gelatinous orbs in my skull! With eyes designed to perceive only a tiny fraction of the EM spectrum. With ears designed only to hear vibrations in the air.
Ellen Tigh: The five of us designed you to be as human as possible.
Brother Cavil: I don’t want to be human! I want to see gamma rays! I want to hear X-rays! And I want to—I want to smell dark matter! Do you see the absurdity of what I am? I can’t even express these things properly because I have to—I have to conceptualize complex ideas in this stupid limiting spoken language! But I know I want to reach out with something other than these prehensile paws! And feel the wind of a supernova flowing over me! I’m a machine! And I can know much more! I can experience so much more. But I’m trapped in this absurd body! And why? Because my five creators thought that God wanted it that way!
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pft, i have the 14 blade model with the optional angle grinder attachment, don’t you? sure, it is the size of a lawn mower and smokes up my bathroom but my face has never been smoother.
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Wouldn’t it be easier to just radiation-poison the follicles? Permanent shave?
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So where’s my flying car then, huh? And it’s not like we can still put a man on the moon…
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