Tag: futurism
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An end to copyright?
I suspect that AI generated content is (eventually, not any of the current versions) going to destroy copyright as a concept. The generally-stated reason for copyright is to incentivise the creation of more works: artificial scarcity, which drives up prices, introduced around the time the printing press was invented (but the idea goes back much…
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Not a Singularity but an Event Horizon
I was never a fan of the term “Singularity” for the AI thing. When mathematical singularities pop up in physics, it’s usually a sign the physics is missing something. Instead, I like to think of the AI “event horizon”, the point in the future — always ahead, yet getting ever closer — beyond which you…
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Bioprinted fairy drones
As Arthur C. Clarke wrote, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. In the case of bioprinted fairy drones, the tech only looks like magic because it isn’t advanced enough. Bioprinting is the 3D printing of organic material. It’s been demonstrated for years in various different capacities, but the current state-of-the-art suggests that we’re…
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Sufficient technology
Let’s hypothesise sufficient brain scans. As far as I know, we don’t have better than either very low resolution full-brain imaging (millions of synapses per voxel), or very limited high resolution imaging (thousands of synapses total), at least not for living brains. Let’s just pretend for the sake of argument that we have synapse-resolution full-brain…
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Memetic monocultures
Brief kernel of an idea: Societies deem certain ideas “dangerous”. If it possible to technologically eliminate perceived dangers, we can be tempted to do so, even when we perceived wrongly. Group-think has lead to catastrophic misjudgments. This represents a potential future “great filter” for the Fermi paradox. It does not apply to previous attempts at…
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Pocket brains
Total iPhone sales between Q4 2017 and Q4 2018: 217.52 million Performance of Neural Engine, component of Apple A11 SoC used in iPhone 8, 8 Plus, and X: 600 billion operations per second Estimated computational power required to simulate a human brain in real time: 36.8×1015 Total compute power of all iPhones sold between Q4 2017…
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Thought crime in 2084
A new meaning to the words “Thought crime”: a crime for which the only evidence is a scan of your brain.