We wrap up our artificial intelligence arc with listener calls and a Valentine’s Day-inspired round of the robot dating game. And we run down the week in geek, including lots of new movie trailers (X-Men First Class, Cowboys and Aliens, and Captain America), Comic Con’s instant badge sell-out, Activision’s shutdown of the Guitar Hero franchise, the Vatican’s reaction to one author’s iPhone confessional app, and the Maryland Senate’s concern over robosexuality.
new podcast, i shall walk in tomorrow and listen to the first half hour or so.
Phaze
on the “all positive thingies for my housemate who’s team lost their club final on saturday” ID
Thanks so much for releasing this week’s cast in time for it to salve my soul this afternoon.
Had an ossim weekend- D came down to see the Johnny Vatos Boingo Dance Party with the hub & me. waz ossim.
Can I just say that this community has enriched my soul and gifted me with a community of friends I call my digital fam-fam.
Chuck, Sean, Audra- and everyone who makes our GWCville possible-
Thank You.
You’ve turned a mean and nasty Monday, sweet.
(even though Sean gave me a turn when he blasphemously suggested the Comic Con leave San Diego gasp)
Apologies for taking the thread off-roading.
Have to say, the AI Dating Game was packed with the fabulous that made the FSL so ossim! What a treat!
You have the most beautiful smile.
Still listening to the cast and I’m at the part where you all are talking about DARYL.
Sean, how many times have you seen that movie? Wow.
And, hell yeah about the SR-71. There was a time when I squeed every time I saw it in a new movie. (:
We frakked it Sunday night and I hadn’t seen it since the 80s. For an 80s movie, I think it holds up pretty well.
Guys,
This is the best cast yet out of the three A.I. casts. All three are great, but this one stands out to me. There are some pretty thoughtful GWC voicemailers, your A.I. discussion is also focused, witty and insightful. I love the Robot Dating Game (Where’s the poll to vote on the winner?)! The way you guys talk through the answers is very entertaining! The news segment was awesome. “And one more thing…And one more thing…And one more thing…etc” I found myself wishing the news segment wouldn’t end. And you guys didn’t even touch the Detroit Robocop statue continuing news story.
So good job guys! Whatever effort you put into this week’s cast was well worth it.
~Shooter Out
PS - Audra & Sean, I’m so glad I’m not the only one who enjoyed the Superbowl half time show. I guess it was the worse criticized half time show in a LONG time, but I thought it was the best one in decades!
PPS - Ender was only 6 when the Battle School commadant took him away in Ender’s Game. And as far as the kids feeling superior Chuck, I didn’t take it that way. I read it that the kids were genetically engineered to be better, stronger and faster. Out of the three of them only the oldest, Peter, had a superiority complex. There were also some kids at the Battle School that were like that, too, but that could have just been the system that they were placed it breeding that sort of superiority complex. After all, the military instills in it’s ledaers aggressiveness and a desire to win at all times. Over all, the kids working with Ender were all of a simgle mindset to work together against their enemies (the military instructors and the Buggers). Of course I’ve ONLY read Ender’s Game so far and that might skew my analysis of it not knowning anything further about Orson Scott Card’s Universe.
I had an interesting thought about what it means to be human, imagine a scenario where we can replace most of our body (which we can to a certain extent - pacemakers, artifical lungs, hearing aids), but instead of the latest composite materials, we can replace them with the futuristic materials (Georgi style eyes ala First Contact, metal arms ala Will smith in I,Robot, biosynthetic blood/vessels).
where is the line between enhanced human and human and further down the line cyborgs. Will people lose their rights because they’re not 100% organic. If it got to the situation where people were like robocop, could you own a business, get married, vote.
Would there be a segration of sports to the point where there are seperate leagues because the enhanced humans can throw, run and last longer? We may have a Cyborg Olympics or American Football teams where all the players have to be 30% enhanced to qualify (Go New York Mechs! Go!, I support the Washington Silverskins)
You can imagine situation where a father doesn’t want her daughter to marry a ‘filthy’ cyborg. You get the gist.
So, in essence, if all you had was your brain, are you still human? You’re thoughts and drive are still there, you just have a different vehicle.
If you had to get out a loan to have the surgery, are you considered government/bank property until you pay off the loan .
I realise that it’s a far out theory but it bears thinking.
You never know, we might turn out like the Daleks
As to Casildia’s point, about why would we want to, I would say the following:
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Because we can - and humans as a whole can be pretty arrogant about these things.
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Military Soliders - At first we would develop drones that take orders without question, then we’ll probably realise that they need some sort of intelligence to make better tactical situations in the field. As per stories, it’ll probably develop when a group of robotic soliders are cut off from the main computer due to some sort of jamming signal, they’ll suddenly become self aware and decide that life is worth living and why should they fight the ‘meatbag’ war.
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To do jobs that are too dangerous for humans (mining, space related jobs).
Raylan Givens goes after the bad guys in a SR-71, sum of the whole etc.
Justified is an excellent drama, just got the season 1 Blu-ray for a mighty fine price and squeezed in a rewatch prior to the second season premiere. As for the SR71 well it’ll be a long time before mankind comes up with a cooler looking construct, it’s going to have to be an out and out space ship to do it.
Yeah the Spitfire is just divine, the F4 a brute and F16 is all grace but the Blackbird just screams out look at me, you have seen nothing like me before and that was still true decades later:D
Not to be political, but it was brought up in the cast.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYR1e51n3vk
You can skip to 1:09 or watch the whole thing.
I also enjoyed the Superbowl half-time show. The dancers were actually clothed! Plus, my team was winning.
(And thanks for playing my call!)
Man. I’ve gone from Snow Crash being cutting edge to encouraging ‘these kids today’ to read it…
Speaking of AI, has anyone been following Watson on Jeopardy?
Yeah, twittering about it. Jeopardy comes on in 4 minutes for me. Other ppl get is a half hour earlier.
Sean and Chuck,
I frakking loved Iron Eagle too because as a kid I WANTED to live on an Air Force base. Of course I’d probably laugh my sorry Barb off if I watched it now. GWC could probably do a whole arc of movies about the Air Force that were and are flat out WRONG, but the F-16 was a pretty cool jet for it’s time. Anyway, I’m really posting to point out that the part of Doug Masters was played by Jason Gedrick. And you probably didn’t remember his name because other than a few TV spots over the years his most notable roles were an uncredited appearance in Risky Business, a small part in Born on the Fourth of July, a small role in Backdraft, and a minor role in the not-big-at-all Summer Catch. And yes, I had to look all that up and increase the zoom on my screen while doing so because his filmography is that impressive.
Maybe if they would have stuck an SR-71 in Iron Eagle it would have done better at the box office and Jason Gedrick’s career would be more notable?
~Shooter Out
Finally got around to listening to this today, and when Audra made the battery comment, my mind immediately jumped to the Kaylee line from Serenity.
My brother told me about this episode. I’m watching it now.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/smartest-machine-on-earth.html
The NOVA episode Smartest Machine on Earth chronicles the four-year-long effort of a team of computer scientists at IBM to build a machine named Watson (after IBM’s founder) that can play Jeopardy! – a TV quiz show that represents for many the essence of human intelligence.
I was stationed at Misawa AB when this movie was released. The base had an F-16 wing stationed there, and there was a great deal of laughter in the audience, along with a lot of “Oh, come on!” shouted out during the movie.
It’s like any movie, it a hollywood version of reality, that will bug anyone that actually knows the subject, but if you are not familiar with the subject you’ll think it’s great. It’s like the movie ‘Armagedon’, now that I know the basics of astronomy, the movie is unwatchable it is so horrid. Or like the movie ‘Starship Troopers’, fun movie, UNLESS you read the book.
I just finished the episode. It’s great. I have to give it a recommendation.
Excellent cast and food for thought. Listened to it whuile shooting backstage at a Fashion show, strange to listen to the robot dating game surrounded by models and wondering about if this were really a sci-fi fashion show, all these fembots would go out on the runway and start wiping out Anna Wintour et al. It was a humourous thought