SORRY. LATE AGAIN. WELL, I

sorry. late again. well, i had a bunch of things i wanted to mention, but i forget all but one. this sunday’s new york times magazine featured an article (NOTE: this link will probably only be active for a week) about hugo de garis, a specialist in the field of artificial intelligence. he’s working on building one of the most advanced synthetic brains ever created, to be placed in a toy cat called Robokoneko. Robokoneko should be able to display emotions and perform pet like tasks like some other recently introduced robotic pets, but Robokoneko’s advanced, more life-life brain will also allow it to learn. but it’s this de garis guy that piqued my interest. he’s sort of an eccentric freak who forsees a matrix-like conflict between human skin tubes and “artilects” (artificial intellects) sometime in the 21st century. it’s like science fiction, except he’s serious about it. not to discredit him or anything. he is a legitimate researcher and engineer. he’s been called an alarmist, but hey, who knows. i, being a scientifically ignorant layman who latches on to any scifi concept that pushes it’s way into reality, think he’s got a point.

he’s written a short paper entitled The 21st Century Artilect: Moral Dilemmas Concerning the Ultra Intelligent Machine, that i’m in the proccess of reading (it’s summer. i read at a rate of 2 word per minute). it’s interesting, and perhaps a bit premature. but i do think that this subject, however far fetched, will be a serious topic of debate in the years to come.