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jschell wrote: Future being what exactly?
Sometime after now. 
jschell wrote: Development of "AI" started in the 1950s.
If you haven't noticed, human technological advancement a) sometimes happens in leaps and b) is escalating at a geometric rate not linear. In the 1950's there was severely limited hardware* and only a handful of developers working on AI. Now we have exaflop super computers and thousands of very well financed developers working on AI.
If you don't see AI becoming radically better over the short term (ie. the next few decades) then you might want to open your eyes.
*The 1960 Cray CDC1604 was the fastest super computer ever made at the time. It was 48bit, 192kB of memory and operated at 0.1 MIPS.
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fgs1963 wrote: sometimes happens in leaps and
No I haven't noticed that. Actually, since I am more aware of it now, I am come to be aware that it never happens that way. It just seems like that since people are not looking at the full process.
Technology is not built on the shoulders of giants. It is built on the shoulders of very normal size people who made incrementally improved perhaps just one thing.
Moreover technology is never what drives that. Rather businesses do.
Ford (the person) did not invent anything. He put an bunch of bits and pieces (some at least decades old) and then publicized it for very specific business reasons. Same for Edison.
Cell phones have a very specific progression from the utility of satellite phones.
Computers have a very smooth transition from larger computers and the very real need and demand by businesses as the saw the benifits.
Applying technology to agriculture has been something that has been going on since agriculture existed.
The Wright brothers were absolutely not even close to being the first ones to 'fly'. They were not even the first ones to put a human on a motor propelled flying machine (that happened in France.) For close to one hundred years that was how it was depicted though.
Look even at the following which specifically mentions that they used a wind tunnel but in fact that was invented by someone else.
1903 Wright Flyer | National Air and Space Museum[^]
Cell phones have had so much impact not because of the technology but rather because it is just so cheap to put up the towers. Businesses world wide could see the need and desire to communicate and providing that was so cheap and profitable that they did it. The technology allows it but it does not do it. If it was just a matter of technology then the first Mars-Earth war would have already happened.
fgs1963 wrote: In the 1950's there was severely limited hardware*
And yet there was significant investments in that hardware made just so AI research could go on. It wasn't faltering due a lack of hardware.
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No, but I still worry about the stupid people that continue to take over the world. It's not the AI I'm worried about, it's the NS - Natural Stupidity.
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I wonder if there's a stupid gene or does it take practice? 
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Mike Hankey wrote: I wonder if there's a stupid gene or does it take practice?
As a serious reply, I think neither - it's a complex problem of culture, education, media (news and social), environmental factors, prenatal care, nutrition, economic situation, and so forth, in no particular order. The sad thing is, all of those factors could be addressed at least to the extent that infants => children => adults could at least have a decent opportunity in life. But I'm biased in my views of the sad situation most kids are dealing with, so take all that with the due amount of sodium intake.
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I totally agree.
I won't go into any more, it would probably start a big hullabaloo!
The apply above was tongue in cheek...so to speak!
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Some are born stupid, some achieve stupidity, and some have stupidity thrust upon then.
(With apologies to William Shakespeare)
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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To be fair there is stupidity, ignorance and foolishness.
And then those are impacted by other factors like arrogance, elitism, laziness, etc.
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Since I posted th4e message I started reading "How the mind works" by Pinker and it goes into a lot of the reasons why people act the way they do.
Interesting read.
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It was asked recently if the need for software developers would ever go away. After some debate 2 schools of thought emerged. The 1st group thought that artificial intelligence would supplant developers and that project managers and sales & marketing would become the more important fields in software. The 2nd Group (consisting mostly of software developers) couldn't articulate a coherent response - they were laughing too hard.
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Neither group is entirely right but Group 1 is nearest the mark.
My prediction: Within 50 years (probably a bit less) a LARGE percentage of today's software development jobs will be gone. A few "wizards" will remain to mind the AI but the mundane stuff that the vast majority of today's devs do will be gone. That being said - project managers and sales/marketing drones will also be gone. The CEOs will deal directly with the wizards.
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Logically, that would make me a witch.
I can live with that.🧙♀️
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fgs1963 wrote: My prediction: Within 50 years (probably a bit less) a LARGE percentage of today's software development jobs will be gone
Will that be before or after self driving cars actually work?
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Just bury your head a little deeper. I'm sure everything will work out just fine for you.
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Yep.
Just like flying cars.
And autonomous robots (Asimov not roomba)
And mars colonies.
And faster than light drives
And planetary alignment catastrophes
And year 2000 meltdown
etc...
Even that Stephen Hawking would not live to see 25.
So very, very many predictions about the future and so very, very few that are even close and usually only then by stretching to find a correlation.
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Says a guy on the world wide web (the same web that 5 billion other people will use this year) that barely existed 30 years ago. The same guy that probably has a smart phone that has 5000x more computing power than the fastest super computers of the 1980's in 1/5000th the space. Most 12 year old kids have the same smart phone...
Never mind other AMAZING things our parents never dreamed of as kids: flash drives, SSDs, fiber optics, the human genome project, graphene, WiFi & Bluetooth, Large Hadron Collider, AbioCor artificial hearts, artificial joints, stem cells, gene editing (CRISPR), laser/robotic surgery, GPS, MRIs, facial recognition, cheap drones, 3D printing, etc...
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fgs1963 wrote: Says a guy on the world wide web
One success does not mean that every other prediction is also a success.
Cars did not exist two hundred years ago. But flying cars (the ones and usage actually predicted) do not and never will.
fgs1963 wrote: Never mind other AMAZING things our parents never dreamed of as kids
I gave you a long list of other predictions that do not, and are unlikely to, ever exist.
Betting on one stock which makes one a millionaire does not mean that betting on all will make everyone a millionaire. That is why people do those seminars to teach others how to invest. Because getting paid for those seminars does make one wealthy.
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fgs1963 wrote: Says a guy on the world wide we
Another way to say what I said...
Hindsight does not make one a genius at predicting the future.
fgs1963 wrote: Never mind other AMAZING things our parents never dreamed of as kids
Naming the past does not have anything do with assuring that a future prediction will come to pass. And it definitely does not mean all future predictions will come true.
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Nor do any of your examples assure that AI will fail.
My point is that technology is advancing at an alarming rate and AI is likely to be part of that advancement. If you disagree... that's fine. I won't be alive in the time frames I've mentioned (~50 years) so unless it happens a lot sooner I'll never know if I'm right or wrong.
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Self driving cars will work when they don't have to deal with human drivers on the roads.
Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend; inside of a dog, it's too dark to read. -- Groucho Marx
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Even easier if nothing else moved either. No pedestrians, no pets, no cows, no deer, no blowing trash.
Even no other self driving cars.
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Self-driving cars will last exactly as long as it takes the Great Unwashed to realize that they're buying machines which can choose to kill them based on an algorithm!
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As opposed to driving on roads where other humans can kill them on purpose or by accident. 
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Yes, but you're not choosing to pay the other humans to do it.
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True, but people already die in cars they bought.
Most cars already have things like throttle by wire, cruise control, power steering, power brakes, anti-lock brakes, etc... High end cars are adding automatic collision avoidance, lane centering and automatic parking to manual drive cars. High end pickups will automatically center your tow ball to your trailer hitch. Full self drive is the ultimate goal. It will get here eventually - its just harder than most people think.
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