Scientists abandon AI project after seeing The Matrix

Hello!

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CAMBRIDGE, MA—Scientists at MIT's Advanced Machine Cognizance Project announced Tuesday that, after seeing the final installment of the Matrix trilogy, they will cease all further work in the field of artificial intelligence.

"As scientists of conscience, we must consider the ethical ramifications of AI development," said Dr. Gregory Jameson, director of machine epistemology and ontology at MIT. "The Matrix taught us that we cannot ignore our obligation to the future of mankind. We must free our minds to this fact, or we will accidentally unleash a nightmarish army of sentient machines."

Added Jameson: "Some may call the extinction of humankind inevitable, but I, for one, will still resist."

A statement drafted by the MIT group was co-signed by an international coalition of AI experts that included scientists from the American Association for Artificial Intelligence, members of the Society for Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behavior, and a team of fan experts from the newly created San Diego ComiCon Committee on Moral and Ethical Implications for Society at Large.

In the statement, researchers said they were "frightened by the disastrous potential of AI" and called the Matrix trilogy of science-fiction action-thrillers a "wake-up call to any scientist concerned with the long-term consequences of his work," as well as a "freaky head-trip about a future run by floating metallic drones that look kind of like really scary seafood."

Pattern-recognition development analyst Dr. Janice Wunderling said the MIT team has placed its AI projects on hold pending the completion of a comprehensive feasibility study on the threat of "humans being imprisoned in tiny, slime-filled cyber-canisters."

"When we first saw The Matrix back in 1999, the premise of AI evolving into an unstoppable army of self-aware programs intent on dominating the planet gave us pause," Wunderling said. "But like most moviegoers, we dismissed the movie as a fun blockbuster showcasing cool bullet-time photography and shapely, leather-clad cyber-babes performing gravity-defying kung-fu in slow motion."

After seeing The Matrix Reloaded, however, Wunderling and her fellow scientists began to worry.

"The more we thought about it, the less we were able to laugh off the threat of killer machines," said Dr. Henry K. Arronovski, a leading expert in the field of heuristics classification. "It really started to freak us out. What if, decades from now, humans end up in a virtual-reality construct designed to blind them to their enslavement to the hivemind—all because of the work my colleagues and I started?"

Added Arronovski: "I want no hand in creating a world where only Keanu Reeves can protect my great-grandchildren from a giant drill that plummets through the ceilings of subterranean cave dwellings."

It was The Matrix Revolutions, the final movie in the series, that convinced scientists at MIT to put the brakes on their AI research.

"We were hoping that the third movie would quell our fears about the work we were doing, but it only raised more questions," Jameson said. "Sentient programs, like the Merovingian, though formerly agents of the Architect's operation to neutralize the human race, rebelled against the very system they were meant to serve? And which side were the renegade programs even on? Was the Oracle a sentient program herself, earmarked for 'deletion' by her former masters? Or was she just another part of the system without knowing it? We had no choice but to pull the plug."

Team member Dmitri Markovitch, author of Mechanical Computation And Consciousness, called his vote to abandon AI research "an intensely personal decision."

"I saw Revolutions with my 12-year-old son Eric," Markovitch said. "He saw the look of worry on my face and said, 'Dad, don't be scared. It's only make-believe.' I had to tell him, 'No, son, it's what your father does for a living.'"

"After watching Captain Mifune blast away in his robotic battle exoskeleton as hordes of relentless Sentinels swarmed the dock screaming in battle-frenzied rage, I could no longer put my career before the future of mankind," Markovitch continued. "Those poor, brave children of Zion—their annoying tolerance of rave culture notwithstanding—did not deserve that horrible fate."

Critics of AI research commended the decision. Dr. Lyle Freeberg, author of Ethics In The Age Of Nanotechnology, said humans have ignored the warning signs about AI long enough.

"The first two Terminator films identified the potential for global-linkage computer networks to send android assassins back in time, but the warning went unheeded," Freeberg said. "Artificial Intelligence: AI recognized the ethical dilemmas inherent in creating a robot who can love, but no one took the movie seriously, because it was so boring. But in the wake of the Wachowski brothers' prophetic series, we must, as the '90s alternative-rock band Rage Against The Machine urged us, 'wake up.'"

:lol:

Let's hope the robots don't kill us all.

I found this on the onion while reading seekings article.

^ i read that in the onion too.

saw that too ... so funny !!!

my favorite part:

"I saw Revolutions with my 12-year-old son Eric," Markovitch said. "He saw the look of worry on my face and said, 'Dad, don't be scared. It's only make-believe.' I had to tell him, 'No, son, it's what your father does for a living.'"

Originally posted by ERIZENO

saw that too ... so funny !!!

my favorite part:

"I saw Revolutions with my 12-year-old son Eric," Markovitch said. "He saw the look of worry on my face and said, 'Dad, don't be scared. It's only make-believe.' I had to tell him, 'No, son, it's what your father does for a living.'"

hahahhaha, is it for real?

Originally posted by onesecondple

hahahhaha, is it for real?

I think so...

...and

^ i read that in the onion too. Where in the city do you live?

...Denver, why?

Originally posted by onesecondple

hahahhaha, is it for real?

nothing on the onion is based in hard fact ... its all b.s. presented in a way to make it sound for real. some of that stuff may have happend but no fucking way AI scientists give a fuck about the side the Matrix shows, its a concern but it was not that origianl of a conept, its been played with before and will be agian. Matrix was just a big deeper than some in the past.

Originally posted by ERIZENO

nothing on the onion is based in hard fact ... its all b.s. presented in a way to make it sound for real.

yet still remaining about 80% more truthfull than mainstream media

ha ha yeahm the matrix article was good for a laugh. I wanted to find the black "ASK" murderer article but no dice....

I think MIT needs to create a robot slave underclass so that by the time I get to be an old man, i can just watch a real life version of the Second Rennaisance right outside my window.

Originally posted by TheOnion

Dolphins Evolve Opposable Thumbs

'Oh, Shit', Say Humanity

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HONOLULU—In an announcement with grave implications for the primacy of the species of man, marine biologists at the Hawaii Oceanographic Institute reported Monday that dolphins, or family Delphinidae, have evolved opposable thumbs on their pectoral fins.

 

"I believe I speak for the entire human race when I say, 'Holy fuck,'" said Oceanographic Institute director Dr. James Aoki, noting that the dolphin has a cranial capacity 40 percent greater than that of humans. "That's it for us monkeys."

 

Aoki strongly urged humans, especially those living near the sea, to learn to communicate using a system of clicks and whistles in a frequency range of 4 to 150 kHz. He also encouraged humans to "start practicing their echolocation as soon as possible."

 

Delphinologists have reported more than 7,000 cases of spontaneous opposable-digit manifestation in the past two weeks alone, with "thumbs" observed on the bottle-nosed dolphin, the Atlantic humpback dolphin, and even the rare Ganges River dolphin.

 

"It appears to be species-wide," said dolphin specialist Clifford Brees of the Kewalo Basin Marine Mammal Laboratory, speaking from the shark cage he welded shut around himself late Monday. "And it may be even worse: We haven't exactly been eager to check for thumbs on other marine mammals belonging to the order of cetaceans, such as the killer whale. Oh, Christ, we're really in the soup now."

 

Thus far, all the opposable digits encountered appear to be fully functional, making it possible for dolphins—believed to be capable of faster and more complex cogitation than man—to manipulate objects, fashion tools, and construct rudimentary pulley and lever systems

 

"They really seem to be making up for lost time with this thumb thing," said Dr. Jim Kuczaj, a University of California–San Diego biologist who has studied the seasonal behavior of dolphins for more than 30 years. "Last Friday, a crude seaweed-and-shell abacus washed up on the beach near Hilo, Hawaii. The next day, a far more sophisticated abacus, fashioned from some unknown material and capable of calculating equations involving numbers of up to 16 digits, washed up on the same beach. The day after that, the beach was littered with thousands of what turned out to be coral-silicate and kelp-based biomicrocircuitry."

 

"My God," Kuczaj added. "What are they doing down there?"

 

It is unknown what precipitated the dolphins' sudden development of opposable thumbs. Some dolphin behaviorists believe that the gentle marine mammal, pushed to the brink by humanity's reckless pollution and exploitation of the sea, tapped into some previously unmined mental powers to spontaneously generate a thumb-like appendage. However, given that 95 percent of the world's dolphin experts have committed suicide since learning of the development, the full story may never be known.

 

"You must believe, sleek ocean masters, that many of us homo sapiens weep with shame and disgust over the degradation to which our species has subjected our All-Mother, the Great World-Sea," read the suicide note of Dr. Richard Morse, a Brisbane, Australia, delphinologist and regular contributor to Marine Mammal Science. "If you are reading this, I estimate that it is the day we know as August 31, 2000. Please be decent and kind masters to our poor ape-race. Oh, God, I'm so sorry about the tracking collars."

 

"Scientists once wondered whether dolphins, with their remarkably advanced social and language structures, are actually smarter than we are," said Aoki, ushering reporters out of the laboratory he claimed "will either be a smoking hole or a zoo exhibit in the coming Dolphin Age." "Well, we're not wondering anymore."

Originally posted by Mr. ABC

yet still remaining about 80% more truthfull than mainstream media

no shit there !!! mainstream media makes me laugh harder than the onion does, and as we get closer to the election the better it gets !!!

I love the onion so goddamn much

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The onion. Iller than ill.

The matrix was "standing on the shoulders of giants" so to speak. I really think they ought to have included a references section or something to give credit to the sci-fi/conspiracy theory origins that made it all possible. Maybe then people might actually understand the movie rather than seeing it as "a fun blockbuster showcasing cool bullet-time photography and shapely, leather-clad cyber-babes performing gravity-defying kung-fu in slow motion."

"I think MIT needs to create a robot slave underclass so that by the time I get to be an old man, i can just watch a real life version of the Second Rennaisance right outside my window."-LENS

LENS: This is not going to happen because silicon valley who was supposed to make automation possible found that if they did that they would go out of business because people would no longer need to buy their services. Rather they opted for finicky software that often required technical support and hardware that became obsolescent in a ridiculous time frame. SOoooo... They became rich and we stayed slaves to the machine. ----(information provided by:Processed World 2.001)

that is so true ^^^^

Actually to further extrapolate on this once india and china and africa and south america and whatnot are on par economically and it becomes "too expensive" for corporations to hire human workers for manufacturing and service they would likely automate the processes as a last ditch effort and in the mean time look for a way to eliminate the human race rather than putting us all on welfare. Or maybe I'm being a little grim. Just a little. :wink:

Villain

This brings me back to my favorite maxim: GO BUY A GOOD RIFLE AND A CASE OR TWO OF AMMUNITION. Ya just never know when you might need it.

The chances of some future "Matrix" scenario are slimmer than slim. But, do you suppose Madame Curie ever envisioned the MIRV ICBM? She hoped to serve science and unlock the secrets of radiation. Do you suppose Einstein ever thought about the implications of his theories in term of the extinction of all humankind?

The scientists who worked on ENIAC were trying to create a machine that could quickly calculate artillery and bomb trajectories during WWII. IBM's early efforts were used in Nazi death camps.

Scientific progress always has social and ethical implications.

The Nobel Peace Prize comes from the tremendous profits Dr. Nobel earned from dynamite, which was extensively used to manufacture more powerful weapons of war than had ever previously been created.

Today's stem cell research may wind up being tomorrow's cyborg fascist storm trooper. Ya just never know.