Any progress towards AI at all? was Re: [extropy-chat] FuturesPast

Matus matus at matus1976.com
Mon Oct 10 14:09:09 UTC 2005


Brian Atkins said:

> All the necessary research into having computers work with various
sensing
> systems had been done. The hardware necessary for a success, from
sensors,
> drive-by-wire, computers, etc. was already here years ago. Yet we
didn't
> end up
> with working autonomous offroad vehicles until yesterday. It took a
well-
> funded
> competitive prize to finally get the major universities and groups to
sit
> down
> and write the complete software and do the offroad testing necessary
to
> complete
> the working vehicles. 
...
> Without such organizational efforts? We would not have those vehicles
> right now.
> Who knows how much longer it would have taken.

Excellent point and very well said.
 
> There are tons of other examples where a technology could have
technically
> been
> completed years earlier, but just didn't for various non-technical
> reasons.

I think it's very clear what those 'non-technical' reasons are.  If the
people in the Extropy / Transhumanist / futurist community put 1/10 the
effort into actually accomplishing things as they do in yapping about
how great the future will be a lot more of these things would have been
accomplished.  (Excluding those who actually are working toward these
goals)

I would say that the feasibility and
> prerequisites are more important to figure out rather than simply
trying
> to
> guess a particular year of creation or mass adoption.
> --

Well the former requires work and effort, and might actually compel
someone to work toward those goals.  The latter only requires
daydreaming and patting ourselves on the back once in a while, while
letting everyone else do all the hard work.

Michael F Dickey





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