
The merging of machine capability and human consciousness is already happening - Adambeachnau
http://www.wired.co.uk/article/darpa-arati-prabhakar-humans-machines
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jeffmcmahan
"The distinction between us (humans) and them (the machines) will become
almost imperceptible."

... Absolutely nothing in the text substantiates any of the very strong
claims.

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foota
I would recommend anyone that is fascinated by this to read books from two
universes; the Revelation Space universe, and the Culture novels. These
feature two different looks at how AI & computers integrate or coexist with
humans.

~~~
arethuza
The Culture novels have both what is probably the best case for human-AI
interaction in the Culture itself and what is possibly the worst case -
societies using technology to implement virtual hells where uploads are
tortured for eternity...

Edit: Are there any SF stories that give a more positive view of AI than the
Culture novels?

~~~
taneq
I don't know if it's possible to have a more positive view of AI than the
Culture books - the weakly godlike, (almost-)universally benevolent Minds are
a bit too Mary Sue-ish and make Banks work hard to find interesting stories in
the setting (which he does, and well, but he's forced to stick to the fringes
of the Culture because most of it is too boringly perfect.)

I'm not sure that the Hells were particularly AI-heavy - the demons seemed to
operate on a quite human level compared to the often-ineffable Minds.

~~~
arethuza
Yes, one valid criticism is "one of the problems with the Culture novels as
novels is that the central characters, the Minds, are too powerful and, to put
it bluntly, too good."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture#Overview](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture#Overview)

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abalone
And you thought Silicon Valley was a free market Capitalist system. As the
article notes, many of the big innovations have come out of Big Government
spending of taxpayer dollars through agencies like DARPA. Yet most of the
profits stay in private hands.

~~~
clydethefrog
See the book The Entrepreneurial State by Mariana Mazzucato who covers this
topic.

 _" Her book comprehensively debunks the myth of a lumbering, bureaucratic
state versus a dynamic, innovative private sector. In a series of case
studies—including IT, biotech and nanotech—Professor Mazzucato shows that the
opposite is true: the private sector only finds the courage to invest after an
entrepreneurial state has made the high-risk investments. In an intensely
researched chapter, she reveals that every technology that makes the iPhone so
‘smart’ was government funded: the Internet, GPS, its touch-screen display and
the voice-activated Siri. And in another chapter she argues that the green
revolution is today is missing the kind of patient public sector financing,
and de-financialized private sector, that got the IT revolution off the
ground."_

[http://marianamazzucato.com/projects/the-entrepreneurial-
sta...](http://marianamazzucato.com/projects/the-entrepreneurial-state/the-
entrepreneurial-state-usa/)

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hyperpallium
The specifics - molecular simulation feedback and prosthetic touch - are cool,
but title is overblown. e.g. We've had REPLs and cochlear implants for
decades.

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EternalData
This seems to talk about a weak form of human-machine integration.

Nevertheless, there are some fascinating examples. I remember how a Wired
article talked about how advanced computing has made chess players like Magnus
Carlsen so much better because he now fights against a computer that can
overpower most if not all humans. It's made the marginal cost of practice so
much lower as a result: you don't need the best grandmasters in the room to
play against something that thinks like them.

As a result, similar to how better nutrition and health practices have
augmented sports performance, I can see even this weak form of human-machine
integration leading to incredible spurts in cognitive proficiency -- though
perhaps it will be domain-limited for now.

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truncheon
The title of this article is click-baity in its abuse of the vague, subjective
word "consciousness."

" _[blank] is already happening_ " is a trope, in wired's headlines, that gets
reused frequently, to provoke exasperation. Wired probably advises writers
with an internal style guide, since their tone has remained pretty consistent
over the years.

The article is a lot of hype. There's a mix of several separate concepts
brought into play, with anecdotal details, to produce an emotional effect.

Without explaining the differences between the peripheral nervous system and
the central nervous system, ideas are presented to confuse such
differentiation.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peripheral_nervous_system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peripheral_nervous_system)

The article touches upon advanced ways to interface with the peripheral
nervous system of the body, in particular the extremities, addressing
paralysis and amputation.

The article is not about the brain itself, although witnesses within the
article explain their personal experiences. It isn't about machines becoming
alive. It isn't about replacing the mind with a computer.

It's mostly about advanced ways of restoring sensation and motor control, with
computer systems that remap connections beween damaged nerves. The external
stimulation of nervous tissue does not translate to a migration of human
experience from a biological system to a machine.

~~~
cabirum
Thanks for the summary.

I've noticed I started to avoid clicking links with titles I perceive as
overly dramatic or emotional. I wish there was a browser extension providing
community-sourced alternate titles and tl;drs for every news article on hover.

~~~
yuchi
I’m pretty sure there was one made by a HN member. First result in DDG is
this:
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tldr/giepilabiomhl...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tldr/giepilabiomhlcmlefmbfkgeoccfhhhc)

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puzzlingcaptcha
_and the mysterious hallmark of Homo sapiens - our capacity to experience
insights and apply intuition_

AlphaGo demonstrated that it can find a better solution than players who spent
their whole lives practicing intuition, which is limited by the brain's
"capacity" and "computing power". If the problem is 'asking the right
question', perhaps this can eventually also be brute-forced by machines
faster.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
That's not in any way the hallmark of Homo Sapiens. Animals of all sorts can
improvise solutions in similar ways.

The real hallmark of Homo Sapiens is that culture and knowledge are
externalised and persist outside individuals. So there's a social
bootstrapping effect, because individual insights persist even after the
humans who had the insights die.

Which means other individuals don't have to keep (literally) reinventing the
wheel. Or quantum theory. Or technology in general.

If you take an individual human and don't expose him/her to culture or
language, you get an animal with very ordinary and limited abilities.

This is one reason I think the current ML systems aren't necessarily looking
in the right places. Learning is one thing, but systems teaching systems - or
at least systems communicating insights via a common knowledge/abstraction
framework/protocol might be something else again.

~~~
taneq
> If you take an individual human and don't expose him/her to culture or
> language, you get an animal with very ordinary and limited abilities.

Can you suggest any research worth reading on this topic? I'd assume that a
healthy human who was raised in isolation (if such a human could be considered
healthy) would be seriously handicapped compared to properly raised humans but
would still be significantly above all other animals in mental ability, but
I'm really just guessing.

~~~
foobiekr
You want to read about Genie and other children raised without language.

The problem, however, is that these were also inherently abuse situations and
the victims may also have had other abnormalities.

