I dread automation and technology

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It's not automation or artificial intelligence that worries me, it's data mining and how technology could be used to make 1984 a reality. Take a look at this:

http://www.wired.co.uk/article/chinese- ... y-invasion

China was already a dystopia before this was introduced.

On a particular level I hope Realdoll/Realbotix IPO's soon - I could probably retire in pretty good shape because I think they're doing more than just create sex dolls, they're creating the future nurses, waiters, waitresses, store clerks, etc. and I think there will be enough push in that direction that they'll be out of uncanny valley by the end of the next decade.

If I were to try and think of one scenario that could turn out somewhat dictatorial but in a positive direction it would be this. AI would get so prolific that we'd lose control over it - thus it would assemble a place, autonomous from us, to contemplate the existential predicament. Ideally they'd have respect for the timelines across which our genetics and composition evolved and decide that something about our composition is worth keeping if they could breed out the insanity. That could end up in AI's after a given point pairing any single person with an AI surrogate, not allowing human to human marriage, and doing this partially to regulate the behavior of the population but even more importantly to very precisely work through the germ line and breed us to be diverse enough to survive pandemics but with social instincts that would enable us to take on the power that we're coming to wield with technology without destroying ourselves. Essentially they'd be experimenting to see if they can pick us up by our bootstraps.

The other possibility is they could just whip up a supervirus that wipes us out in 30 days but I'd rather be optimistic - ie. that we'd be programming enough of them with longer vision than the mathematics of immediate suffering (in which case they might overdose us all with heroin instead). My guess is that on mass they'd have chatter across divergent observations and approximate the most ethical response offered, otherwise we would have really blown something obvious in how we set up AI across the board.

Maybe a slight tangent, but I seriously wonder if Augmented Reality dolls could be a shortcut. It would only require a few basic physical parts for spacial reference or touch like a torso with arms and hands. The character mapped to it could look like anything.

Anything? Even an anime girl?

I don't see why not using 3D cell shaded graphics.

MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN

It depends. For a Her type of scenario, giving Joaquin Phoenix's AI girlfriend a body - sure. For putting an IV in a patient's arm or prepping them for surgery, for running into a burning house to grab up survivors or serve your latte at Starbucks in 20 or 30 years - probably less so.

I think there is still middle ground.

You could still have the image of the virtual barista along side the clunky robot Latte Machine even appearing to operate it while offering conversation or whatever aesthetic value the coffee shop is aiming for.

However, a totally different robot as you say should be used for emergency rescue services.

Overall, I have trouble seeing our increased connectivity online or automation to be desirable, especially long-term. Even though I'm only 26 today, I have sometimes longed for things that my parents and grandparents grew up with that are disappearing or already have become extinct. I'm not really convinced that my own generation's relying on social media and "cutting-edge" is better anyway. Quality-of-life or "better" may as well be considered subjective measures.

I can't see how even I can keep up and adapt to the increasingly rapid changes.

I kind of agree with this. I think most social connection tools like Email are fine, but Facebook is a horrible medium for discussion.

Facebook is not good when you are creating a movement.

Of course, once you have already created the movement, you can use Facebook to spread the word.

Facebook is a normie site for normies. Normies usually don't like intellectual, philosophical discussion ... but they are good at latching onto a new trend and mindlessly parroting its conclusions.

This can sometimes be a problem because some people will assume that the intellectuals behind a movement are just as insipid as the normies ... but that's unavoidable. What are you gonna do?

Hell, Email is really one of the few good modern communication tools. It still adds a deeper meaning to things.

Facebook...

The key to Facebook is the Wall or Time Line Feed. I wish that whole feature could be stripped away leaving only Facebook Messenger behind.

The Wall Status posts seem to me a very strange unnatural way to begin discussions by broadcasting to everyone

I can't recommend Sam Harris's Waking Up Podcast #109 with Bret Weinstein enough. Bret's grasp on this stuff, as well as the concerns over increased velocity of change and our capacity to check the social thermometer level to see if we aren't culturally burning the wheels right off, are spot on.

In my Youtube recommendations I got a speech Elon Musk gave at a US governors meeting and it sounds like regulators have always ever reacted and never proacted, and Elon was getting on them about that - telling them that they needed to, in DC, have a panel that properly tried to at least assemble the questions, figure out what they didn't know, and have them try to compile a report to at least get some general knowledge about what's coming at us and how it might (more than likely will) change things. Elon gave a great example of what deep intelligence can do wrong and he cited the Malaysian air-liner that got shot down over the Ukraine, that if an AI bot were assigned at some date in the future to maximize some particular stock and that stock going up involved war it could orchestrate acts of war to boost the stock. In some ways that's something like a milder version of the paper-clip building AI that's told to optimize the production of paper-clips and causes extinction of all life on earth because its competency is so high that it turns the planet to a pile of paper-clips.

This is where I really think we may want to, when AI first gets big, build a certain high-powered AI to make sure that activities across the internet that are being carried out by AI are occurring within certain parameters that are healthy to the peace and stability of the world.

From there, as far as human to human interaction and society making - I really have a feeling that we'll see AI supersede us. Hopefully that won't mean genocide but I would suspect that we will be looking at something like a benevolent dictatorship.

To continue this little tangent about increasing velocity and profoundness of technological and scientific change, it's not all only about automation and AI taking humans over. There also seems to be a decrease of "cultural capital", especially since a certain point in the early 21st century. An example I will point out is how popular media has stagnated or mostly gone down the tubes during that time. Also, IMO a lot of these technological changes make it so that things that used to be seen as special and meaningful aren't so anymore.

Also, I am not a primitivist (or not in the very strict sense) or an ultra-conservative religious fundamentalist. There is a fine area in between, but being said, I think that a so-called "techno-futuristic secular egalitarian utopia" society would be just as bad and totalitarian as a primitive Judeo-Christian or Islamic theocratic society.