Experts predict emergence of Human-level AI

H+ magazine does an extensive survey attempting to nail down 21 experts on the specific timeline and impact of  true artificial intelligence. Some predict Nobel Prize level scientific work within 30 years (for what that’s worth.) The Turing Test is mentioned. If you’re not familiar, that involves a kind of blindfold question-answer session, and for the machine to pass  it would be required that the human would not be able to tell the respondent is artificial.

Far be it from me to question official experts but this is a the kind of thing that always seems to be 20 years away. The incentive of these experts to promote the possibility cannot be taken into account because then there’d be no story. The responses are interesting and as scary as they’re meant to be but no specifics on how harmful AI will manifest is forthcoming. Science fiction is invoked to provide the atmosphere. 

Applying common sense, which always seems to befuddle experts,  just the question of which approach to take is a give-away that reliance on such experts to find a clear path will get you lost on a hurry. Probability theory came out as the most popular approach? I don’t know why it was even a choice. I supposed there must really be AI researchers out there pursuing a pure probabilities solution to AI, but  I’d think even the least intelligent human is getting it right well inside the margin of error, and the smartest of use are not walking around calculating the odds subconsciously.

For my money than I’d let it ride on one of those nonlinear dynamic systems.

KiTE: A Novel in Earth Orbit

KiTE is a novel set in Earth orbit, by Bill Shears.

See below for synopsis.

You can purchase KiTE at:

Buy Kite at Amazon
Buy Kite at Barnes and Noble
Buy Kite at BooksaMillion
Buy Kite at Booklocker

The image below opens a free sample into a Flash application. You must have a Flash player installed on your computer for it to work. For best results: maximize the new window that will open when you click the link below and put your browser in Full Screen Mode. Press the “1:1″ button for actual size if needed for readability. More detailed reading tips are at the bottom of the cover image.

Kite Free Sample

Kite is available through favorite online outlets.

Dash, doubtful they’ll survive the encounter, would leave them to their fate when the alien, name of Troy, turns up. Troy’s a working stiff too but is authorized to defend himself. His sensors detect a threat and he’s armed with some powerful planet-busting weapons.

Kite: A Novel in Earth Orbit

Mason Dash, operator of Kite, Earth orbit street sweeper, along with beautiful, and virtual, stowaway Sheila face down spacejackers, a revolt inside the ship’s systems and  humankind’s first unearthly visitor. Kite is hard sci-fi with heart.

Kite available in these online bookstores, among others:
Buy Kite at Amazon
Buy Kite at Barnes and Noble
Buy Kite at Booklocker

Front Cover of Kite

Kite Synopsis
Mason Dash, operator of Earth Orbit street sweeper Kite, spots movement in a derelict space station where there should be none. Heading Earthward in his shuttle the last day of his three-month shift he detours, closing with the dark station. Something moving in there spooks him.

Dash, with the help of beautiful virtual personality Sheila, creates a plan to expose suspected hijackers. He believes Sheila is his secret but Janet, his brilliant AI expert spouse, informs him that she and Sheila are chums, and she’s even added some experimental “adaptive” modules. While preparing a simulation “scenario” to carry into orbit next shift, Dash dozes off and Sheila stows away in the code, her new adaptive behaviors kicking in. No way she’ll be left behind this trip.

Back in orbit Dash confirms the presence of intruders on the station, while inside the Kite computer systems there’s turmoil. Emerging from deep in the data depths He_Ra has assembled a powerful force to seize control from the old Main Process.

Sheila splits attention between Dash outside and her own adventure inside Kite, getting a taste of romance and revolution. The tyrant He_Ra has taken a fancy to her and wants to expand to other orbital structures, like the nearby space casino, then perhaps to Earth.

Dash sends Sheila to the space station to scout. She finds not hijackers but a team of inept diplomats, preparing to receive humankind’s first unearthly visitor.

Dash, doubtful they’ll survive the encounter, would leave them to their fate when the alien, name of Troy, turns up. Troy’s a working stiff too but is authorized to defend himself. His sensors detect a threat and he’s armed with some powerful planet-busting weapons.

Earth’s fate is in the balance and only Dash, Sheila, Janet, and Kite, can prevent disaster.

Publisher’s Note
Hard science fiction works, whether they keep you on or around Earth or take you to the farthest reaches of the galaxy, are those that adhere more closely to science fact than not. Much dispute and emotional argument can ensue among fans in attempting to nail down any definition, but the term hard should in no way imply that a work takes itself overly seriously. Kite, with its orbitweary workman co-protagonist and its strong women co-protagonists is one of those stories that builds in the humor with the possibilities, that a time will come when humans will utilize Earth orbit in a mundane, everyday fashion, and that going to space in ships will not be as costly and risky as it is now. The inevitability of this is as sure as the inevitability that wherever people go they tend to make a mess, and someone will still have to be out there doing the rough jobs, and the cleaning up.

Author’s Note
Kite is a story that had been latent for a few years before emerging. The amount of debris in orbit has been building up since the days of the Mercury program, and it seems like every shuttle mission these days generates a news story about a debris encounter. Now that the shuttle program is coming to its long-overdue end, if we’re every going to inhabit the space around Earth, and use it as the platform for leaping out, as Carl Sagan put it, into the nearby neighborhood, the next generation of technology would need to do something about all the junk. A ship like Kite is just one projection of how it might be handled. – Bill S.

Space Elevator: Going up? Way way up

Space Elevator

Watch a video showing how it could be done. The wonders of carbon can make it happen. Materials are often the answer and so they are her; and here’s a practical use for solar panels. Vacations in space will be nice, yes, but once it’s up and running then it becomes the “space freight elevator.” No spacecraft need ever again be built on the surface of Earth. This would be taking a big first step.

Call Bruce Campbell

Crackers have made the Texas highway system their own private First Person Shooter.

Zombies ahead!

Quantum Teleportation

A breakthrough announced in the past few days. A state of information was passed from one atom to another some distance away. I’ll leave the clichès about science fiction becoming science fact to the scribblers in the legacy media. But the implications of this are more significant than can be imagined. There will be many more applications for this phenomenon prior to any Star Trek Transporter. How can two atoms share changes while separated by any distance? The process has yet to be discovered. Even the smartest man who ever lived threw up his hands. On the one hand, it would be easy to attribute some kind of physical mechanism to it. On the other, it would be hard even for a cold-minded scientist not to ponder some sort of METAphysical aspect to it. Think about radio waves. Think if you have a receiver and a transmitter and didn’t know that there were waves carrying signals between. It would be just as mysterious. But we know that radio waves are not magic, don’t we? If we care to think about it we do. But think of the uncounted masses out there who couldn’t care less about the relatively simple concepts that power the radios that bring them their Mariah Carey and TVs that bring them their WWF matches. Now think of the uncountable increase in the uncounted masses that will not care to think about how quantum computing and whatever it will bring works.

It is not this simple, we’re sure, but if it’s not a step into INFINITY we don’t know what is. Think of everything in the world that runs on silicon chips. Then increase their efficiency a near infinite amount. What will it mean for computing and everything that goes along with it? Think what it’ll mean for communications, for weaponry, for entertainment. Think of all the computing power that currently exists in the word, and then put it all in a device the size of a flash drive that you can buy at Radio Shack. Come to think of it, the people who conjure up how to apply the new technologies to do way with Radio Shacks once and for all will likely be the next generation of Quantum Billionaires. Hey, if you’re out there drop me a line.

We may have been present during the first step to infinity on Earth.

Here’re a couple of other informative links:

Caltech: Alice & Bob
IBM Research

David Byrne – Playing the Building

David Byrne with such a simple idea many people must be doing the why-didn’t-I-think-of-that head smack. Many may have thought it but leave it to Byrne to actually do it.

And just for five minutes will you please Stop Making Sense…”Life During Wartime”.