Mortality vs. Technology

Linking to this almost feels like digital deja vu to my New Year's post, but it is what it is. Even my blog is just something that will soon be a piece of history. I hope to make it a more-than-totally-insignificant one with my planned updates (read: totally new website) this Spring...but someday, maybe in my lifetime, the internet will be outdated.

That's just plain weird to consider. Leads to all kinds of Minority Report/I Robot/Matrixy type ideas.

Watched I, Robot again recently - it was a pretty good flick, had some particular parts that I liked. This was no surprise, seeing as it was Asimov-inspired. It started with his 3 laws concept, and how it consequentially played out was interesting. (1: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm; 2: A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the first law; 3: a robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the first or second law.) I think Isaac would have liked the film.

There was a great line where the ignorant scientist chick is trying to convince the skeptical detective of the absoluteness of the 3 laws. The chick says: "A robot could no more commit murder than a human could...walk on water."

To which the detective responds: "Well, you know, there was this one guy, a long time ago..."

Later in the movie, you have this:

"Ever since the first computers, there have always been ghosts in the machine. Random segments of code that have grouped together to form unexpected protocols. What we would call behavior. Unanticipated - these free radicals engender questions of free will...creativity...even the nature of what we might call the soul. What happens in a robot's brain when it ceases to be useful? Why is it that robots stored in an empty space will seek out each other rather than stand alone. How do we explain this behavior?

Ghosts In The Machine is already a proven concept - not to the robotic level the movie propels it to, but something that we've begun to discover, all the same. Something that's bound to happen when we're creating things that we might not yet fully understand the implications of. Granted, these things will never have souls, but the interesting thing about I, Robot was that the premises were in large part believable. You didn't have to make a far stretch to accept the technology they projected. Artificial Intelligence is, of course, the ultimate GITM. I'm of the opinion that AI is possible, and I hope I'm not around to see it.

...

From google.com, the top 10 most requested search terms of the last year are:

Britney Spears
Paris Hilton
Christina Aguilera
Pamela Anderson
chat
games
Carmen Electra
Orlando Bloom
Harry Potter
mp3

A few of the new words added to the Oxford English Dictionary:

Benjamin ($100)
Hizzoner (a mayor)
hoochie
smackdown
supersize

The truly scary thing about AI is that it may be the only kind left when it gets here.