Break it all down
Joe A senior Pentagon official was quoted yesterday saying “We’re going to invest in autonomous killer robots.” That is, perhaps, an alarming sentence to hear. The real threat is not the robots, however, but the autonomy. Quote in full: This administration cares about weapon systems and business systems and not ‘technologies.’ We’re not going to be … Read more
Richard Hanania wrote an excellent post today covering the fear that AI will take human jobs. I found it intriguing enough that it prompted me to write up my own thoughts. This post, however…is not about jobs. In a way, neither was Hanania’s. I like his section headings, though, so I’m just going to keep … Read more
Last year, I joined the communications team at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute. Before this, I spent several hundred hours introducing lay audiences to the basic science of modern artificial intelligence. Below, I’ll share what I’ve been working on and thinking about these past few years, and why I think it matters to all of … Read more
In a recent bonus episode of the Bayesian Conspiracy podcast, Eneasz Brodski shared a thought experiment that caused no small amount of anguish. In the hypothetical, some eccentric but trustworthy entity is offering to give you an escalating amount of money for your fingers, starting at $10,000 for the first one and increasing 10x per … Read more
Recently someone asked me: “If you build a automaton, and it goes out and kills someone by following your preloaded inputs, is it put on trial for murder, or are you?” Good question. Disclaimer: In all the EXTREMELY FICTIONAL cases below, the judge is following Joe’s ethical framework rather than any actual legal precedent. Any … Read more
I dreamed a stupid story, so now I’m inflicting it on you. One became two. Two became one. One became two again. The Lightning Brothers had arrived at Castle Grey. They bore the fabled weapons, and they were here to slay a legend. The Dread Nor’thuulbarax the Second, Lord of Darkness, Eldritch Necromancer, and Lord … Read more
Like Encounter at Farpoint, this episode is actually two distinct plotlines that happen at the same time, but that only sort of interact with one another. The opening exposition sequence tells us the first plotline: The Enterprise is to deliver delegates from two warring species to a peace talk at a “neutral conference planet” called … Read more
The Original Series said “where no man has gone before.” Huzzah for slowly getting less sexist! The TNG episode is actually called “Where No One Have Gone Before.” Boo for terrible grammar! We begin this episode with a puzzle. A scientist, one Kosinski, is going to visit the Enterprise for some propulsion tests. Naturally, he … Read more
In this episode, we finally meet the mysterious Ferengi. One of their ships stole a “T9 energy converter” from a Federation outpost, so the Enterprise has been asked to chase them down. As they approach an unfamiliar planet, some unknown force grabs the Enterprise and holds it fast. Its power seems to increase to match … Read more
…Joe drifts dramatically back to the ship, hand outstretched, by the power of the Force… Oh wait, I’m supposed to be making fun of a different series. Sorry, my bad. Don’t worry, I won’t spend the rest of the rewatch in a coma. Anyway, the episode. We open with a fairly straightforward mission. The Enterprise … Read more