* * * * *
                                        
                 I, for one, will welcome our new AI overlords
                                        
> Earlier this year, I was driving in a northern Michigan snowstorm headed to
> Detroit airport. I was worried that, given the storm, my flight might be
> delayed. Thusly, I grabbed my phone and without knowing if it would work I
> said to it: 
> 
> **"OK GOOGLE, what is the status of my flight today?"**
> 
> Within seconds, Googlebot (or maybe it was Larry Page - not sure)
> responded: 
> 
> **"Flight XYZ from Detroit, Michigan to San Francisco, California is
> scheduled to leave on-time at 2:30pm".**
> 
> Pretty cool huh? If you were like me, you're sort of thinking that was cool
> but big deal, it should do that. OF COURSE it should do that - I could have
> done that (had I not been driving). After a lot more thinking about it
> however, I'd like to point out that boy are we a snot-nosed, ungrateful
> species who take amazing things for granted.
> 
> A stunning array of technologies just came together to make that happen. So
> much so I'm convinced I could write a full length blog article just listing
> them. In the name of sticking to the topic (i.e. complete human destruction
> caused by the emergence of AI) let's take for granted the everyday sorcery
> of talking to thousands of computers around the world, I'll just focus on
> the “artificial intelligence” parts. (Where “intelligence” may have a fuzzy
> definition).
> 
> Simply: I spoke to my tiny hand-held computer in English. It heard me start
> with "Ok Google" to know I was addressing it. It then parsed the rest of my
> words and realized I had asked a question (it likely offloaded that work to
> a remote computer). It is also able to recognize the voice of millions of
> others speaking in accents and dialects. I could have likely phrased that
> question many ways and it still would have worked. It parsed my question
> and understood I was asking about a flight. It then scanned my Gmail to
> find my flight reservation I had made months before. From that it examined
> the outbound and return flight and realized the outbound had already
> happened.
> 
> It might have realized my current location was in Michigan near(ish) the
> Detroit airport further understanding I was asking about my return flight.
> It then hit some real-time flight database to know if the flight was still
> on time. It might have checked Detroit Airport in general for delays to
> decide if it should respond in a qualified manner. It then formulated a
> perfect English sentence, maybe with considerations of how I formulated my
> sentence, computer generated the audio in a human voice, and played it
> aloud for me.
> 
> Go ahead, be not impressed - I dare you. Clichés be damned. We truly live
> in amazing times.
> 
> So that's now. What's coming next? How about:
> 
> **"OK Google, what's the probability my flight will crash today?"**
> 

Via Lobsters [1], “Paul Tyma: How Artificial Intelligence Will Really Kill Us
All [2]”

The good news? That Paul Tyma [3] doesn't think we'll face the Terminator
Scenario [4].

The bad news? It's much, much worse.

[1] https://lobste.rs/s/ptdk6e/how_artificial_intelligence_will_really_kill
[2] http://paultyma.blogspot.com/2015/10/how-artificial-intelligence-will-
[3] http://paultyma.blogspot.com/
[4] http://forum.gateworld.net/threads/85303-Could-a-

Email Sean Conner at sean@conman.org

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