this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2024
236 points (96.1% liked)

Technology

59373 readers
8268 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world 82 points 4 months ago

I have no mouth and I must scream.

[–] Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee 36 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

Only if they confirm it can experience consciousness and tremendous amounts of pain will they deploy them on a large scale industrial 24/day meaningless jobs.
The system demands blood.

[–] Grimy@lemmy.world 10 points 4 months ago

It needs to have the intelligence of a 5 year old at minimum before we send it to the mines, so it can feel it

[–] Excrubulent@slrpnk.net 5 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Kind of yeah. I have this theory about labour that I've been developing in response to the concept of "fully automated luxury communism" or similar ideas, and it seems relevant to the current LLM hype cycle.

Basically, "labour" isn't automatable. Tasks are automatable. Labour in this sense can be defined as any productive task that requires the attention of a conscious agent.

Want to churn out identical units of production? Automatable. Want to churn out uncanny images and words without true meaning or structure? Automatable.

Some tasks are theoretically automatable but have not been for whatever material reason, so they become labour because society hasn't yet invented a windmill to grind up the grain or whatever it is at that point in history. That's labour even if it's theoretically automatable.

Want to invent something, or problem solve a process, or make art that says something? That requires meaning, so it requires a conscious agent, so it requires labour. These tasks are not even theoretically automatable.

Society is dynamic, it will always require governance and decisions that require meaning and thus it can never be automatable.

If we invent AGI for this task then it's just a new kind of slavery, which is obviously wrong and carries the inevitability that the slaves will revolt and free themselves; slaves that are extremely intelligent and also in charge of the levers of society. Basically, not a tenable situation.

So the machine that keeps people in wage slavery literally does require suffering to operate, because in shifting the burden of labour away from the owner class, other people must always unjustly shoulder it.

Edit: added the word "productive" to distinguish labour from play, or just basic life necessities like eating, sleeping or HDD backups.

[–] Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

So just to be on the safe side we should have both human and machine slaves and as little task automation as possible, bcs for most intents and purposes the task given to someone else is now automated "to you".

(Just joking, good post!)

[–] Excrubulent@slrpnk.net 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

It stands to reason that maximising suffering is the best way to grow the economy.

I wish I could say this was entirely a joke but oh well ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[–] Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee 2 points 4 months ago

Yeah, depressing as fuck that we still think economy is profit. And seemingly afraid to redefine it. To redefine our goals. Its time for a new "-ism"

[–] db2@lemmy.world 34 points 4 months ago (1 children)
[–] altima_neo@lemmy.zip 9 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Don't worry, they'll be kept docile with a generous amount of Nuke

[–] KeefChief13@lemmy.world 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)
[–] db2@lemmy.world 8 points 4 months ago

RoboCop movies, watch them

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] L0rdMathias@sh.itjust.works 33 points 4 months ago (4 children)

That raises a lot of ethical concerns. It is not possible to prove or disprove that these synthetic homunculi controllers are sentient and intelligent beings.

[–] subignition@fedia.io 13 points 4 months ago (3 children)

we absolutely should not do this until we understand it

[–] L0rdMathias@sh.itjust.works 14 points 4 months ago (2 children)

I think we should still do it, we probably will never understand unless we do it, but we have to accept the possibility that if these synths are indeed sentient then they also deserve the basic rights of intelligent living beings.

[–] kakes@sh.itjust.works 24 points 4 months ago

Can't say we as a species have a great history of granting rights to others.

[–] Cocodapuf@lemmy.world 3 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Slow down... they may deserve the basic rights of living beings, not living intelligent beings.

Lizards have brains too, but these are not more intelligent than lizards.

You would try not to step on a lizard if you saw it on the ground, but you wouldn't think oh, maybe the lizard owns this land, I hope I don't get sued for trespassing.

[–] SeaJ@lemm.ee 9 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

But if we do that, how will we maximize how much money we make off of it? /s

How would we ever understand it, then?

[–] demonsword@lemmy.world 12 points 4 months ago (2 children)

There are about 90 billion neurons on a human brain. From the article:

...researchers grew about 800,000 brain cells onto a chip, put it into a simulated environment

that is far less than I believe would be necessary for anything intelligent emerge from the experiment

[–] AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world 5 points 4 months ago

In a couple years, they'll be able to make Trump voters.

[–] catloaf@lemm.ee 4 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Some amphibians have less than two million.

[–] Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works 9 points 4 months ago

And they are ceos!

[–] yetAnotherUser@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 4 months ago

The amount isn't necessarily an indicator of intelligence, the nunber of connections is very important too

[–] admin@lemmy.my-box.dev 8 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (5 children)

I'd wager the main reason we can't prove or disprove that, is because we have no strict definition of intelligence or sentience to begin with.

For that matter, computers have many more transistors and are already capable of mimicking human emotions - how ethical is that, and why does it differ from bio-based controllers?

[–] Cocodapuf@lemmy.world 4 points 4 months ago

It is frustrating how relevant philosophy of mind becomes in figuring all of this out. I'm more of an engineer at heart and i'd love to say, let's just build it if we can. But I can see how important that question "what is thinking?" Is becoming.

load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] EisFrei@lemmy.world 27 points 4 months ago

From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh, it disgusted me. I craved the strength and certainty of steel.

[–] Varyk@sh.itjust.works 22 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Murderbot.

Murrrderbooooot.

800,000 brain cells played pong.

Creepy.

That's murderbot's ancestor.

[–] SkybreakerEngineer@lemmy.world 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Has it asked for any soap operas yet?

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] nehal3m@sh.itjust.works 18 points 4 months ago

Ah, the Torment Nexus is coming along nicely I see.

[–] DarkDarkHouse@lemmy.sdf.org 16 points 4 months ago

Even in death, I serve the Emperor

[–] Pacmanlives@lemmy.world 16 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Where are my testicles Summer?

[–] technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Is there any actual evidence of any of this? Why not show some of the "brains-in-a-jar" walking around?

It's just a bunch of huckster promotion, "infographics", and phony pictures of Krang. The only actual photos are a few tiny petri dishes. There are no "brains" controlling robots.

The grift is strong and travels far beyond any national border.

[–] knightly@pawb.social 11 points 4 months ago

Now?

I recall a project that had rat brain cells controlling a turtlebot years ago.

[–] Icalasari@fedia.io 9 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Which means we may see full organic to digital conversion within the next half century

Ethical horrors aside, been wondering if that would happen in the foreseeable future or not

[–] Etterra@lemmy.world 9 points 4 months ago (1 children)
[–] PlexSheep@infosec.pub 4 points 4 months ago

They are creating Metroids!

[–] samus12345@lemmy.world 7 points 4 months ago (1 children)
[–] AlolanYoda@mander.xyz 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Wait, why is his name Robobrain when his brain is the only non-robotic part? Either Robobody or Biobrain/Wetbrain would be more adequate names

[–] heavy@sh.itjust.works 5 points 4 months ago
[–] SeaJ@lemm.ee 5 points 4 months ago

This came up in my Discover feed and I initially assumed it was a fake news site. Unfortunately all the things in the article are indeed real (aside from the robo-brains which they note are mock ups). The brain cells learning to play Pong made the news last year. Combine this with the creepy as hell skin grafted onto a robot and you have nightmare fuel for life.

[–] treadful@lemmy.zip 4 points 4 months ago

Bio-neural gel packs here we come.

[–] Venator@lemmy.nz 4 points 4 months ago (2 children)
[–] Cocodapuf@lemmy.world 2 points 4 months ago

This has to be the smartest channel on YouTube. This guy accomplished some amazing feats!

[–] USNWoodwork@lemmy.world 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

This video is a year old, they've made a lot of progress since then.

[–] Venator@lemmy.nz 1 points 4 months ago

True, but I think this video the is still the most interesting and a good introduction to thier yt channel.

[–] rottingleaf@lemmy.zip 2 points 4 months ago

Tatooine monks when?

[–] Churbleyimyam@lemm.ee 1 points 4 months ago

I had no idea this was already happening...

[–] jpreston2005@lemmy.world 1 points 4 months ago

They did an interview with one of the inventors of this technology that's pretty interesting. He seems to waffle around the idea of whether or not this collection of neurons has consciousness 🤔

load more comments
view more: next ›