renaissance poisson

sparked by discussion in wcg's journal:

"My forecast is that around 2050, the state of Massachusetts will be the first jurisdiction to legalize marriages with robots," artificial intelligence researcher David Levy at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands told LiveScience.

(i wrote all of the following before actually reading the article.)

side note: he said that about MA being the first while in the netherlands, which beat MA by several years regarding gay marriage. :) a bit US-centric, mr levy? the presence of MIT is gonna move society? *heh*.

i think that timeline is unlikely, because we don't have any AI yet that's even remotely close, 40+ years isn't much time when it comes to changing strong social mores, and this would be a huge change -- acknowledging another life form as equal to humans. gays _are_ humans and STILL can't marry in almost all of the US. and we can't touch polyamorous marriage between humans at all at this point; it is actively illegal, and is used as the bogeyman by anti-gay-marriage agitators. anyway, AI as a field is lagging notoriously behind its predictions.

somebody asked this interesting question [edited]: while it could be possible to program it to specifically like the characteristics of its partner, could it be said that the A.I is then freely giving its consent?

i wonder a lot about free will in general, and at this point think we don't have any such thing, not in the absolute sense the term implies. we are programmed to a great degree by our DNA and our early environmental exposure. now, our DNA is complex enough, and environmental influences are plentiful, so what comes out looks amazingly complicated and able to enact "free will". and yet it has sometimes preferences that i think no sane person would actually choose if they were completely free to choose (pedophilia comes to mind, and some of the really odd paraphilias). really, would you have chosen to be gay 50 years ago? some people fight these orientations / preferences, and fight them with all they have, and yet can't conquer them. i've tried to be "bi" and "not transsexual" much of my life, and it's just not happening.

that's why i think we only have free will within certain parameters that are "programmed" into us. and a robot similarly programmed could still have the ability to give consent, just as we do. just like some women have a preference for "bad boys" that washes away all reason, some robots could have a preferences for other "unpleasant personalities". the only difference would be that for the robots the programming would be guided by humans instead of nature.

but i don't actually think we'll see that, not in the next 50 years. what we'll see instead is robots programmed with "compulsions" rather than anything approaching free will -- and while that will make people with "unpleasant personalities" happy, it won't lead to freely consenting and marriage-capable robots; it'll lead primarily to well-adapted sex toys. and hey, that's fine by me. if pedophiles can have their own little lolita-bots, hopefully they'll leave real children alone.

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instead of amazingly capable robots i am wondering about virtual presence -- how long will it be before we can have virtual experiences that are indistinguishable from real ones? i suspect that the first actual AI might come from that direction. and then it won't have a body. :) will we be able to marry virtual people? would we want to, in real life (as opposed to in the virtual world)? why? will virtual worlds and real world become in some way integrated (can money made in one transfer to the other, for example)? how many of us would basically spend all our time in virtual space?

i am suddenly getting the urge to {re-}read a lot of SF robot stories.

manipulate your data, says paul campos.

The researchers collected data from 527,265 AARP members, who were followed for 10 years. What they found was exactly the same result reported by Flegal and her colleagues: Among both men and women, "overweight" people had the lowest mortality risk. This result, however, was clearly unacceptable. So they began torturing their data.

via firecat.

campos doesn't mention the title nor the researchers in question, but i did a quick search and the study he's referring to must be Overweight, Obesity, and Mortality in a Large Prospective Cohort of Persons 50 to 71 Years Old, by Kenneth F. Adams, Ph.D., Arthur Schatzkin, M.D., Tamara B. Harris, M.D., Victor Kipnis, Ph.D., Traci Mouw, M.P.H., Rachel Ballard-Barbash, M.D., Albert Hollenbeck, Ph.D., and Michael F. Leitzmann, M.D. now to get my hands on the full text.

i notice that in the same issue (what is this, fat week at NEJM? there are 5 items dealing with weight issues) is an article from a baby boomer concerned with his weight that makes reference to this study. anyone here have a subscription to NEJM who can tell me whether that guy noticed the problems with the study?

robot demonstrates self awareness. of a sort.

via ladybirdsleeps.

sweet snacks may decrease stress.

so we're really just self-medicating. :)

reason #7582 to immigrate to canada and study/work at a canadian university: because canadian researchers invest time and effort in such fine subjects as cow tipping.

via boing_boing.

ah, here's what i need to get in better shape while having fun: human-powered hovercraft.

science magazine has just made publicly available a selection of articles related to hurricanes, coastal disasters, and disaster policy.

via janetmk.