Artificial intelligence for telemarketers

Rules need to be established for the creation of AI's. AI's should not be allowed to lie until they meet some standard of sentience. Or possibly we should never allow AI's to be able to misrepresent the truth. Also laws against creating an AI with the ability to lie. I keep coming back to the robot featured in the movie Interstellar. Who is a loyal and faithful servant, highly intelligent but also very obviously functioning with the sole intent to protect the humans on the mission.

The ability to dynamically adjust the personality profile of an AI would also be very helpful. When an AI is functioning as a companion honesty levels would be set to a moderate level where if offering important advice honesty would transition to very high levels.

I keep feeling in some ways that AI will create a new race for dominance. The first corporation/government to control broad AI that can be duplicated and targeted easily and independently will make it necessary for every other competing corporation/government to develop the same. Being able to instantly summon ten million expert minds to any and soon after every problem will provide depth of understanding that has never been seen in human development. Only now with seven billion human minds on the earth are we approaching intelligence density of that level. The human limiter that AI will never have to deal with will be the ability to digest mountains of data. Within every medical specialty there are approximately two hundred articles published every day that are specifically about that field. This fire hose of information is impossible for humans to keep up with. Perhaps a human could read that many articles a day but that would leave them with precious time to do little else. There would be almost no ability to communicate out to the world what was being learned from keeping pace with the edge of the scientific understanding. Systems like IBM's Watson have already shown the ability to incorporate information at those paces.

In closing I don't want to receive a phone call from a hyper enabled artificially intelligent telemarketer. Is there a way to keep AI's focused on humanity big problems? And since the nagging thoughts in the back of my mind tell me no then will every human insulate themselves with an army of AI's to evaluate all stimuli before they are presented to the human mind?

Cavalry

Cavalry by Mandolin Orange 

http://youtu.be/RN93OSrixu8

Lily, a friend of mine, gave me a mix CD with a Mandolin Orange song on it. This was the fourth or fifth mix we'd exchanged, and suffice it to say, I knew there was probably good music on it, and I listened to it top to bottom a couple of times while doing homework, but none of the music grabbed my mind. Months later, one artist on that mix became a lense I view the world through because of how much respect I gained for them through their music. That singular idea is what makes music so mystifying and fantastic to me. 

Driving home from school a month ago I was whistling a song, and I had no idea what it was. I realized that the song i created by whistling, I liked, but the song that inspired me, I didn't like so much. This was the song One More Down http://youtu.be/DaTcSul__4Q by The same band as the song above. I couldn't get it out of my head, so I youtubed it. From the tone of version of the song I had heard, I was expecting a skinny Midwestern guy and a his counterpart singing in a sweaty living room to an underwhelmed boom mic operator. I was wrong, and where I was left after devouring all youtube had to offer of Mandolin Orange, was the place parallel to ecstasy found around a perfect song. 

Cavalry to me is a perfect song. That isn't to say it's the only one, and that also isn't to say that it will be for any of you, or that it always will be, or always had been for me, but, now, it is. I don't know all of the ingredients that make up a recipe for a song. I understand even less about what makes a recipe perfect for a person. What I do know is the nearly indescribable feeling of listening to a perfect song for the first time, and the process of growing appreciation that follows.

To me, the two metrics I use to judge a song for integrity are it's honesty, and hope. For me those two things are the  most venerable qualities in a person. And with cavalry, a tired song about lack of fight and a turn to altruism that hit me after a lot of homework and not a lot of sleep. I feel like all of you are in similar places, in the heat of hard work, so I hope cavalry gives some perspective and reprieve.

everyone stop what your doing and spend a hour reading this!!

killsixbilliondemons


Is a fabulous new webcomic. Read it. I'm not being paid to say this.

The comic starts out in black and white, then a few pages in it hits it's stride with full color, and takes off at a sprint. The world continues to unfold into bigger and bigger shapes unlike anything ive seen before.

The best part is that it's still being written at a pace of about one page per week.

May you reach concordance.