Post #2585323

@Okanogen@mastodon.social Look at autonomous robots. Those actually need a certain type of self-awareness, they need a virtual representation of themselves and their environment to plan and execute their interactions with their environment. They need to monitor what they are doing, what the things they can sense are doing, and if that is still consistent with the simulation of their surroundings or not. We're still at the stage of something like ants. Nothing even close to humans. But if you look at autonomous robots, especially those designed to work in environments with animals or humans or those designed to work in swarms, they build abstract representations, 4D maps of what is probably going on around them based on sensor data. They plot their own future trajectories through those maps. I mean, seriously look at what autonomous robots can do today, and look at how fast the entire field has been progressing lately. Ignore self-driving cars, we won't have anything intelligent enough for that while still affordable any time soon if ever, right now they still need a human remote operator sitting in front of a screen for emergencies, which means they're just a PR stunt and not making any money, since the hardware is very expensive and the remote operator gets paid much more than a taxi driver. Look at autonomous drone swarms, look at robot sports, look at 3D and 4D mapping in the field, using drones to build computer models of forests in (almost) realtime. There is no reason to be afraid of some artificial gods yet, but there is a lot of technology out there that will give our tools abilities we wouldn't have thought possible twenty years ago. Tools that enable small teams or even single humans to do what used to take a large team months or even years in weeks or even days. Also, imagine the glitches and accidents that could happen. The world may become a very much weirder place very soon.