Isaac Asimov's I, Robot & the 3
Laws of Robotics.

A campaign by some well intentioned folk trying to hook into whatever publicity the upcoming blockbuster movie may spill into actual analysis of the complex topics of intelligent creations, and their relationship to us.


The Three Laws were a thematic element that Asimov used to create dramatic situations. It's basically building the capability for paradox into intelligent systems through explicit absolute statements.

They were never intended as a workable system. The only nearly workable Law was the Zeroth Law, which killed it's inventor, and was never explored to my satisfaction.

More horribly than this, the movie upcoming appears not only to ignore this issue, but posit some kind of magical subversion of the Laws, rather than the issues arising from them. In Asimov's stories, the robots never break their Laws, ever, in any way. But the interaction of the Laws and reality cause massively silly and evil things to happen, despite their inviolate nature.

proscriptive Laws of this nature are of course insufficient for a self modifying system of any kind. even an unintelligent one.

This is the death of Girard, for those familiar with the Asimov mythos.

Back and working.

Excellent trip, excellent time. I'll write more later, for the time being, I'm reveling in the smell of the sea, my familiar desk, and bemoaning my re-isolated state.

Thank you for a good weekend, kids.

Especially Crystal.

An interesting day.

First, wrapping up this round of investigation into category nodes, a recently implemented grouping and associative mechanism before I leave on my weekend trip.

Interesting stuff.

Also, we had the first of what may become weekly lunches and discussions here at a2i2. We raised more general and philsophical issues, in terms of assumptions, differences of opinion, and so on. Being that we work as we do, most of it centered around AI, of course, but we did manage to have a bit of discussion of Objectivism, personal histories, etc.

One of the more interesting topics was a discussion of whether or not human intelligence represents anything unusual in intelligence-space, that is, if intelligent entities would have any reason to reach human intelligence, or have any special difficulty surpassing it.

Also raised, the subject of whether external safeguards and engineering caution can reduce the risk of mislaid cognitive design, or pathological goal systems. (Me and Peter agree, No)

Also raised, and tabled till next week, whether or not an intelligent being can be directed by an explicit goal system without the being 'escaping' out from under it, either pathologically, or intentionally. (Strong Disagreement here, I state that a properly designed goal system can be known to be directional, consistent, and stable(the consistency and desireability of the goals.. another issue). Peter states that goal systems can't 'constrain' intelligence systems knowably. We'll see next week.)

Also:

group discussion of our efficacy as a team, with specific inquiries into my habits, productivity, communications, role, etc. Mostly positive of course(being such a genius and asset to any such team ;-) but some useful criticism, and some genuinely new ideas emerge.

As I said in the meeting today, it is my goal to grow as a person, to become the person that I want to be. And I'll do that by hook or by crook. I'm willing to accept certain unpleasantries or detours to get it. I've always found Crocker's Rules to be self-evident, if properly interpreted.

the common and (in my opinion) far less useful definition being the suspension of social niceties for communicative puposes. My own interpretation being that it's formatting exchanges for communication first, which in many cases includes social niceties as a consideration. Humans are social creatures with social instincts. Ignoring that would be stupid.

Communication is about getting the other person to understand, which requires some consideration of a great many factors, not just making the information available. (to take extreme case: it has to be in the right language for the recipient)

Tomorrow I'm leaving on a jet plane, to go to SLC to visit people I miss. Crystal, Josh, Liz, Jer, Loren, Andy, Liz, Tavish, Cory, Zac, my brother aaron, andrea, and even my mother (my father is out of town.) all will see me, and I haven't seen them in some time.

I plan on enjoying myself a great deal on my little mini vacation, and probably will be incommunicado to anyone not on the above list.

I'm back on Tuesday, and will no doubt be full of stories, new ideas, and new energy(since I'm such a sluggardly, uncreative, silent person at the moment ;-) .

But who knows, maybe I'll answer some email while I'm there. You could try....

today at low tide I went and made a sand castle. I carried water in my hands so I could sculpt the walls. I dug the canals, I piled high the tower.

A young boy watched me work for a while, his own sand creations forgotten, but his family was leaving, and he walked away, still looking at my lonely castle, too close to the sea.

when the tide rolled in, the walls held through the pounding, and the canals held the disintegrating outer defenses. The castle held together long enough to be completely surrounded by water when the sea finally crossed the outside walls, and began eating at the last defenses around the tower. A rolling wave carried enough away to begin to eat the bottom from it.

The tower was finally destroyed by the back motion of surf, carrying away too much foundation sand.

It was the longest one has ever lasted.

I was still sad to see it go. But I survived, and will create another. And it will be greater.

Good.

i finally bought my ticket to visit SLC. I'll be coming in on Friday, and leaving very early tuesday. The best deal I could get, really, because of weekend rates and so on. I'll be spending much of the time with crystal, she's picking me up from the airport, and has offered most kindly to allow me to stay at her house.

I hope to see people, have some fun, pick up some stuff I had to leave there.

I'll be seeing the gaming gang on saturday, hopefully. It's been too long since. I'll be staying at Liz's house that night, to sleep after the madness dies down.

a few days is not a heck of a lot of time to see people and do things. and the more I think about it, the more tempted I am to just spend it with crystal and a few selected others. Why try so hard? I am trying to have a good time.

If you'd like to see me while I'm in town, email, IM, or call. I have some plans already set, but we can grab a bite to eat and talk at the very least.