Sigh.
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... The next step on from Drosophila, the mouse brain, is 560 times larger—never mind a vastly more complex human brain. And to get the murine connectome we'll have to chop up *a lot* of brains: a human upload won't pass any kind of medical ethics review at this point!
But near-term, it's expected to yield "fundamentally new architectural principles for AI systems that are more sample-efficient, more robust, and more capable of behavioral generalization than current approaches"
/5
@cstross
I expect TESCREAL types to dismiss the ethical concerns. If we can improve the lives of trillions of hypothetical future humans, it would justify murdering and dissecting millions of actual contemporary humans. -
... The next step on from Drosophila, the mouse brain, is 560 times larger—never mind a vastly more complex human brain. And to get the murine connectome we'll have to chop up *a lot* of brains: a human upload won't pass any kind of medical ethics review at this point!
But near-term, it's expected to yield "fundamentally new architectural principles for AI systems that are more sample-efficient, more robust, and more capable of behavioral generalization than current approaches"
/5
@cstross
I’ve been wondering about whether they will bother. Drey Dossier has a series that talks about human experimentation possibly already happening with Neuralink., using ICE detainees.
https://thedreydossier.substack.com/p/who-tf-is-in-my-head-part-1-the-neural -
Sigh.
So it turns out we've mapped the neural connectome of Drosophila *and simulated it in silico*.
Pop-sci explainer here:
Key quote: "The step from a complete connectome to a working computational brain model is not trivial." And there's an even more important finding in this screenshot (alt text via OCR):
"The wiring is the computation".
/1
@cstross why the sigh?
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@cstross why the sigh?
@elduvelle Because back in 1997 I started writing a story that ended up as the opening of "Accelerando" which began by exploring *exactly* this sort of process and asking questions about what it would lead to.
I've been waiting for reality to catch up with my imagination for a third of a century, and I'm not happy.
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@solitha @cstross I don't expect ethical guidelines to do very much, I suppose. Not ultimately, anyway. You can only prevent so much suffering by curing illness - after all, we all die eventually. I reckon we could prevent more suffering by having a humane and warm attitude to each other and to other creatures. I do accept that research in general has given us many good things. But.. well I think there's a limit to the benefits of certain paths of research, simply due to how we operate as humans
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@solitha @cstross I don't expect ethical guidelines to do very much, I suppose. Not ultimately, anyway. You can only prevent so much suffering by curing illness - after all, we all die eventually. I reckon we could prevent more suffering by having a humane and warm attitude to each other and to other creatures. I do accept that research in general has given us many good things. But.. well I think there's a limit to the benefits of certain paths of research, simply due to how we operate as humans
@solitha @cstross Like, I don't think that being able to work out how certain things work is necessarily good for *us humans* to understand, because I think we're not good at foreseeing complex consequences and have a strong tendency towards using powerful technology against ourselves. At least as our society is.
I know there are benefits of research in general, I'll not deny that!
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@solitha @cstross Like, I don't think that being able to work out how certain things work is necessarily good for *us humans* to understand, because I think we're not good at foreseeing complex consequences and have a strong tendency towards using powerful technology against ourselves. At least as our society is.
I know there are benefits of research in general, I'll not deny that!
@solitha @cstross But I'm reminded of a frankly disturbing project that used a cockroach like a robot by cutting off and replacing its antennae. Sometimes science is bad and leads to us doing bad things.
I dunno. Its probably genuinely interesting to think about these things but I struggle to handle the doomerism it awakens in me.
I'll keep rescuing the flies.
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@solitha @cstross But I'm reminded of a frankly disturbing project that used a cockroach like a robot by cutting off and replacing its antennae. Sometimes science is bad and leads to us doing bad things.
I dunno. Its probably genuinely interesting to think about these things but I struggle to handle the doomerism it awakens in me.
I'll keep rescuing the flies.
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@cstross To get to applied engineering, though, one has to do the study that shows how to apply it. In this case, cockroach anatomy and function.
@krnlg When I talk about ethical guidelines, it's not about the application so much. It's more about how we treat the creatures we study. Just in my lifetime we've improved ethics in that area immensely.
I disagree that kindness alone would be as good for suffering as medicine, but that is a matter of differing opinions.
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@krnlg @solitha You seem to have forgotten that actual mature engineering disciplines have codes of conduct, oversight bodies, and ethics exams. A lot of what passes for engineering in silicon valley, though, ignores all that. Software engineering in particular simply isn't a serious discipline yet.
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@cstross To get to applied engineering, though, one has to do the study that shows how to apply it. In this case, cockroach anatomy and function.
@krnlg When I talk about ethical guidelines, it's not about the application so much. It's more about how we treat the creatures we study. Just in my lifetime we've improved ethics in that area immensely.
I disagree that kindness alone would be as good for suffering as medicine, but that is a matter of differing opinions.
@solitha
We have the wrong balance, is all I'm saying. Not that science is wrong, far from it. Not that we should sit in caves loving each other while we die young either! 🙂We're an immature civilisation flailing around with power we don't know how to handle. Our philosophy is way behind our science, and we're ruled by bad people who take our science and use it to ruin everything.
Feels like we're already living in sci-fi but I guess that's the power and purpose of fiction!
@cstross -
@krnlg @solitha You seem to have forgotten that actual mature engineering disciplines have codes of conduct, oversight bodies, and ethics exams. A lot of what passes for engineering in silicon valley, though, ignores all that. Software engineering in particular simply isn't a serious discipline yet.
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@krnlg @solitha Therac-25[1] predated most of the problems: the problem is that Therac-25 isn't universally taught in CS classes!
[1] the accidents happened from 1985, but the Therac-25 dates to 1975 and the software was written by one dude using PDP-11 assembler who may well not have understood race conditions.
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La descrizione del profilo Liberapay aveva bisogno di un aggiornamento. Ho scritto una serie di domande-risposte che un donatore potrebbe porsi:
https://liberapay.com/varese.social/
Secondo voi dovrei aggiungere altre domande? Quali info mancano per essere il più trasparente possibile?
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@dillyd 😱 Stay safe.💗
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@dillyd 😀
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@qurlyjoe @AdrianRiskin @devlogic @cR0w @PogoWasRight @SecurityWriter I think there's a distinction here. If you're making an evidentiary claim, surely you would need to cite it, even if the citation is a paper you wrote.
But if you're just using language in a certain way, and you've used language in that way before, do you really need to credit yourself for that turn of phrase? Seems silly...
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@gimulnautti @Vivaldi Come September they're supposed to be pushing a 'security update' that will block any unapproved app from running on Android devices.
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@enzoesco me lo immagino come una sorta di client IRC tipo mIRC @gnulinuxitalia
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@aethernaut You're not wrong.
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@Paulatics YOU! RULE!
I am halfway through your speech here and it is just so enheartening to hear leadership speak up for decency and care of fellow human beings like this
