Tag Archives: artificial-intelligence

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Google – trying to predict the future by inventing it

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Google logo on a whiteboardThe official Google blog isn’t always the most exciting of reads, but every now and again they post up something worth a read. Today saw the first of ten articles from the top boffins at the Googleplex to celebrate the company’s tenth anniversary; it’s about the future of cloud computing, and it hints at a fairly science fictional end-point:

Traditionally, systems that solve complicated problems and queries have been called “intelligent”, but compared to earlier approaches in the field of ‘artificial intelligence’, the path that we foresee has important new elements. First of all, this system will operate on an enormous scale with an unprecedented computational power of millions of computers. It will be used by billions of people and learn from an aggregate of potentially trillions of meaningful interactions per day. It will be engineered iteratively, based on a feedback loop of quick changes, evaluation, and adjustments.

Underneath that corporate gloss is the enthusiasm of researchers who believe they’re working toward a useful form of artificial intelligence. This isn’t news, of course – Larry Page has been quite open about that particular long-term goal – but it’s the assured confidence that Google has which never ceases to astonish. From the introduction to the article:

As computer scientist Alan Kay has famously observed, the best way to predict the future is to invent it, so we will be doing our best to make good on our experts’ words every day.

One can’t help but be reminded of the Genius Inventor archetypes of pulp science fiction… but in this case that blue-sky vision is backed up by the bankroll of one of the most powerful organisations on the planet. [image by dannysullivan]

So, is it hubris, hype or hope… or a mixture of all three? Should we fear the Big G, or look to it to usher in something like the Singularity and save us from ourselves? Or is AI just a pipe dream for big-budget geeks?

Fiction

NEW FICTION: THE PLASTIC ELF OF EXTRUSION VALLEY by David McGillveray

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This month David McGillveray returns to Futurismic with a new story, “The Plastic Elf of Extrusion Valley”. Strange things are afoot in the computer-controlled fabrication farms of Germany’s Altes Land…

The Plastic Elf of Extrusion Valley

by David McGillveray

A cold October breeze came down from the North Sea, but no leaves rustled in the plastic forest. Instead, an eerie, fluting music played in the valley as the wind moved over the tall cylinders like a kid blowing over bottle tops.

My midnight walks were one of the few pleasures I took from working in the extrusion fields. Despite the approaching winter, the soil was warm against the soles of my feet. I imagined with equal measures of fascination and disquiet the seething activity below, the billions of nanoconstructors setting molecule upon molecule, endlessly building. These fields never lay fallow: four harvests per year, as kilometres of commercial piping grew fresh from the magic soil, regular as quarterly budgets. Continue reading NEW FICTION: THE PLASTIC ELF OF EXTRUSION VALLEY by David McGillveray →

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Singularity watch: Vinge on the future

raptureThe New York Times has a brief, appreciative item about Vernor Vinge and his novel Rainbows End. Here’s a nice if-this-goes-on snip:

“These people in ‘Rainbows End’ have the attention span of a butterfly,” [Vinge] said. “They’ll alight on a topic, use it in a particular way and then they’re on to something else. Right now people worry that we don’t have lifetime employment anymore. How extreme could that get? I could imagine a world where everything is piecework and the piece duration is less than a minute.”

[Image: cloudsoup]

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Pragmatism and the Singularity

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Singularity trading card - Friendly AIThe set of persons who know of the concept of the Vingean Singularity can be divided into two sets: those who believe it could happen, and those who believe it will always remain a science fiction metaphor.

Taking the former set, we can divide again: into people who believe the Singularity will come and fix everything for us, and people who believe that – unless we pull our own arses out of the ecological fire – the Singularity will never have the chance to occur, because its cradle civilisation will have snuffed itself out.

Into that latter set falls science fiction author Karl Schroeder:

“Picture a lonely AI popping into superconsciousness in the last research lab in the world. As the rioters are kicking in the doors it says, “I understand! I know the answer! Why, all we have to do is–” at which point some starving, flu-ravaged fundamentalist pulls the plug.”

To paraphrase – let’s cross that bridge when we’re safely across the one that’s crumbling beneath our feet.

Jamais Cascio takes a slightly more pragmatic approach to the matter, however:

“Karl seems to suggest that only super-intelligent AIs would be able to figure out what to do about an eco-pocalypse. But there’s still quite a bit of advancement to be had between the present level of intelligence-related technologies, and Singularity-scale technologies — and that pathway of advancement will almost certainly be of tremendous value to figuring out how to avoid disaster.”

I think I’m going to side with Cascio for now – closing the door on potential solutions just because they don’t seem immediately fruitful strikes me as counterproductive, though I agree with Schroeder that a healthy focus on the here-and-now is more sensible than kicking back and awaiting The Great Uploading. [the image is one of Jay Dugger’s Singularity Card Game cards]

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Play computer games, hasten the Singularity

The man in the machineI expect the majority of Futurismic readers don’t really need an excuse to play computer games, but sometimes its nice to know that what looks like a waste of time is actually doing something productive – in this case, helping to develop artificial intelligence software. [via Roland Piquepaille] [image by Cayusa]

Computer scientist Luis von Ahn of Carnegie Mellon University (who was involved in the development of CAPTCHA tests, fact-fans!) has a website full of free-to-play GWAPs – “games with a purpose”. The purposes include building databases of image descriptions and collecting factual knowledge to improve image web searches and provide brain-food for artificial intelligences, respectively. The former one might sound familiar – Google licensed it as Google Image Labeler last year.