Friday, February 18, 2011

Watson Wins -- Humans Lose: What's Next?

What is Toronto???
I'll spare you a rehash of the Watson saga.  If you want more background reading, check out his (er, its) Wikipedia page.

What I want to address is what HAL's, excuse me, Watson's, destroying Jeopardy!'s best means for society and, more acutely, the human race.

Let me just cut to the chase, F-word style:  Human existence on this planet has 25-50 years, tops.

First, we, or our children's generation, at the latest, will become transformed, cyber-genetic beings (like Jean Luke, here).

Soon after our cyber-genetic transformation, our computer partitions will overcome our biological flesh, turning us into straight computers -- and so humans, as we know them, will cease to exist.

Resistance is futile.
That or computers will pull a Skynet and completely destroy all human life.

I, for one, welcome our new computer overlords.

I love the red eyes.
HAL: Dave,
although you took very thorough precautions in the pod against my hearing you, I could see your lips move.
Dave Bowman: Alright, HAL. I'll go in through the emergency airlock.
HAL: Without your space helmet, Dave, you're going to find that rather difficult.
Dave Bowman: HAL, I won't argue with you anymore. Open the doors.
Goodbye, humans.
HAL: Dave, this conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye.

Why even try to resist?



3 comments:

Fletch said...

Yes, we are going to loose to AI, however Watson could not take Ken Jennings.

GO KEN!!!

Daniel said...

I thought Watson just cleaned Ken's clock? Or did I miss something?

Not sure said...

Well, sometimes I worry that computers will take over everything. Then I remember what a caller said on Dennis Prager. If a computer could think and do everything a human being can, would he be republicanor democrat? Interesting eh?