Androids

slim36 wrote:

When would people become replaceable by an AI bot that can accurately produce all the system inputs and responses produced by a selected person.  I think thats the premise of a Turing test.
 

Great point about food orders etc building a personal profile. They already do when people use services like gmail, most online maps, most phones unless you turn off location tracking, etc. The Westworld series took this to the ultimate extreme, with the guests monitored, tracked, psychologically profiled, scanned. Creepy business, but then "get away with anything" would mostly appeal to creepy clients!

Turing test doesn't mean matching a specific person (like T3's "sampling"). Turing Test only means that an ordinary human can't tell whether the conversation is with another human, or an artificial intelligence.

AUphoric wrote:

slim36 wrote:

When would people become replaceable by an AI bot that can accurately produce all the system inputs and responses produced by a selected person.  I think thats the premise of a Turing test.


 

Great point about food orders etc building a personal profile. They already do when people use services like gmail, most online maps, most phones unless you turn off location tracking, etc. The Westworld series took this to the ultimate extreme, with the guests monitored, tracked, psychologically profiled, scanned. Creepy business, but then "get away with anything" would mostly appeal to creepy clients!

Turing test doesn't mean matching a specific person (like T3's "sampling"). Turing Test only means that an ordinary human can't tell whether the conversation is with another human, or an artificial intelligence.

Agree re: Turing test. Pretty basic and some AI systems easily pass this for limited-scope conversations (e.g. simple customer service done via text messages were off-topic exchanges -- politics or religion, etc -- are legitimately refused). 

Bladerunner's Voight-Kampff test for empathy is more discerning. A human-identical looking synthoid that was otherwise flawless when it came to body language and expression might get tripped up on empathy. But that's all SciFi at this point. Which is fine. Try to envision androids in a couple of hundred years. Especially if one of them gets time shifted back to our time. Plausible that they might pass for human in our time, as long as they aren't using special abilities. 

If continuous progress is made on AI, robots, androids, energy sources, actuators, not to mention genetic engineering, then two centuries is a LOT of time for improvements. A convincing superpowered android is not completely off the map by then, presuming someone wanted to make one. 

My personal theory is that humans and androids will be merging into cyborgs by that time, and our abilities will be increased beyond human in various ways.  If so, then it would be feasible that an android or cyborg could be made who would check off a lot of the boxes we like to fantasize about on SWM. 

Here's a visual example from the unboxing and boot-up of your distant progeny's new digital assistant/bodyguard in the 23rd century. Bulletproof and super strong, with many expansion options to fulfill a nearly unlimited list of additional roles, some of them rather obvious given the way she looks. All at extra cost, of course. 

Shadar

 
 

I haven't yet found a computer outside of me that runs perfectly, with no bugs or crashes, no failed updates and no security holes. I'd want to see all that, before even thinking about trying to merge with a computer inside of me!

One of the things I really like about the AU is the fake sci-fi explanation of superpowers as advanced genetic engineering.

We need the comic book pseudosicence premise that modified DNA could make cells that invulnerably convert impact and blasts to energy, that store energy as orgone in expandable breast ducts, that turn stored orgone into super senses, flight, breath, strength, eye beams. No need for technology beyond the super-bodies themselves, except for long travels between wormholes.

If we go with that premise, what are the implications? I like the answers the AU already provides.

I dig into my own take on those premises in upcoming stories, analyzing the genetic engineering premise from the point of view of the Velorians' archenemies, of the Velorians themselves, and of Skietra and Aphrodite. Really fun stuff to think about and come up with some new answers!