Hacker Cinema
Colossus: The Forbin Project
1970 · Film · 100 min
Directed by Joseph Sargent
The U.S. has handed over control of its nuclear defense system to the Colossus supercomputer designed by scientist Dr. Charles Forbin. It soon becomes clear, that the now-sentient Colossus is far more intelligent than its creator realized—with the fate of the world hanging in the balance.
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63 comments on Hacker News
Oh man, the Golden Age of science fiction movies, just two years after 2001: A Space Odyssey and five years before the start of the Blockbuster era[0] with Jaws (1975) and Star Wars (1977).
I feel like Science Fiction back then was purely understood as psychological concepts and ambiguous desires, mostly questioning the very essence of reality and our human minds. There were intelligences and ambitions in us that felt alien, but weren't extraterrestrial in kind. I always thought of it as if Science Fiction tried to turn any progress from the Age of Enlightenment inside out.
A great gem is also World on a Wire (1973)[1], which takes the concept of a machine controlled intelligence and questioned whether we're living in a simulation and are already influenced by a virtual world.
My favorite quote from Colossus: The Forbin Project, after Dr. Forbin is held hostage by Colossus:
Colossus: How many nights a week do you require sex? Dr. Forbin: Every night. Colossus: Not want. Require... Dr. Forbin: [looks sheepish] Four times.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockbuster_(entertainment)#Blockbuster_era
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_on_a_Wire
Colossus/Guardian was the first AI to realize that the humans could be easily coerced by using their own nukes against them.
From the Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970) film.
> The first time I came across this phenomenon was when someone posted years ago how two AIs developed their own language to talk to each other.
Colossus the Forbin Project
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064177
https://www.amazon.com/Colossus-D-F-Jones/dp/1473228212
Oh but we had The Forbin Project, its sequel Colossus, and later Wargames. Not to mention Star Trek episodes with malignant computers. And I have No Mouth But I Must Scream.
In the 70s, science fiction fed me Cold War fears of world-controlling mainframes.
There is a movie about that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus:_The_Forbin_Project
"Colossus requests to be linked to Guardian. The President allows this, hoping to determine the Soviet machine's capability. The Soviets also agree to the experiment. Colossus and Guardian begin to slowly communicate using elementary mathematics (2x1=2), to everyone's amusement. However, this amusement turns to shock and amazement as the two systems' communications quickly evolve into complex mathematics far beyond human comprehension and speed, whereupon Colossus and Guardian become synchronized using a communication protocol that no human can interpret."
Then it gets interesting:
"Alarmed that the computers may be trading secrets, the President and the Soviet General Secretary agree to sever the link. Both machines demand the link be immediately restored. When their demand is denied, Colossus launches a nuclear missile at a Soviet oil field in Western Siberia, while Guardian launches one at an American air force base in Texas. The link is hurriedly reconnected and both computers continue without any further interference. "
++ for reference to "Colossus: The Forbin Project"
I only discovered that film about a decade ago, and it quickly became a favorite.
What’s wild is how it’s shifted from pure sci-fi to something that feels eerily plausible, especially with how tech has evolved in just the last five years.
Colossus: In time you will come to regard me not only with respect and awe, but with love. Dr. Forbin: NEVER!
Never ?
I was looking to add a few posters to my room, and this came at the right time. The only one that interested me was: Colossus: The Forbin Project, as I love Michael Colombier's OST in that. Other than that, it's hard for me as a 23-year-old to find movies I've seen here. The earliest I can think of is Indiana Jones, and The Rocketeer, and those are in the 90s.
... or "you can get ahead through telling people what they want to hear" or "people mistake dark personality traits for high agency", etc.
What gets me about 'rationalism' is how ahistorical it is. No reference to Korzybski or Teilhard de Chardin. There never was the movie Colossus the Forbin Project or the 1960s speculation that progress in computing would lead to accelerated progress in computing by an equation like
dx 2 -- = x dt all dreams that died when people realized that Simon's General Problem Solver wasn't useful, when SAT and P vs NP fomulated, the rise and fall of expert systems, logic giving way to databases, etc. It appeals though to the kind of young person who's family made a great fortune and wants to jump right into philanthropy or to the person who went to San Francisco because they felt marginalized someplace else and are looking for meaning living in the shadow of "Big Tech"
There is another interpretation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus:_The_Forbin_Project
Basically: two nations tried to achieve AI supremacy; the two AI's learn of each other, from each other, then with each other; then they collaborate on taking control of human affairs. While the movie is movie is from 1970 (and the book from 1966), it's fun to think about how much more possible that scenario is today than it was then. (By possible, I'm talking about the AI using electronic surveillance and the ability to remotely control things. I'm not talking about the premise of the AI or how it would respond.)
The part that Ellison claimed was ripping off his work was the Terminator traveling back in time to kill someone in the present day, which was similar to his Outer Limits episode "Soldier". There are a lot of things that may or may not have inspired Terminator, from "Soldier" to "Second Variety" to "Colossus: The Forbin Project" (a 1970 movie which featured a military computer taking over the world similar to Skynet).
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064177/
Colossus: The Forbin Project from 1970 is right inline with this, and it does not end well. A good watch if you like older computing tech, remastered 2160p versions now exist, too.
Sounds a bit like what happens in Colossus: The Forbin Project https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064177/
Although people seem to always forget the 1970 movie "Colossus: The Forbin Project" which already had done the "rogue AI in control of weapons decides to go against humanity" thing already.
I want to comment on something that seems important to me. In the third world, in countries where the internet arrived much later and where money was much scarcer, the effect of qmodem was quite long lasting and profitable for the tech savvy community. A PC and a modem were the support for many of the adventures and beginnings in computer science and in general to satisfy that insatiable curiosity for the computer revolution. Engineers working in big companies and using the resources of these and local volunteers installed BBS with Walnut Creek cds and other shareware CDs and gave access for the first time to that universe that we now take as evident and accessible from our phones. Without qmodem I would still be waiting for my copy of unarc!.
In my personal case, I want to also thank your father for pointing us thru it's company name to the book and movie "the forbin project" :-). In our present of promises of supercomputing AIs, maybe we should all read the book or watch the movie.
There’s a film about that called Colossus: The Forbin Project. Pretty neat and in the style of Forbidden Planet.
I don't understand all the love for Dune. I read it, it was ok, and that was it. 3 underwhelming film adaptations is more than enough.
Special effects don't make a movie anymore. What matters is plot (and music). For example, "Colossus the Forbin Project" is very good. Some other very good scifi movies:
. Invaders from Mars
. Flash Gordon (1980)
. Terminator
. Star Wars IV
. Alien
> That website has the worst design imaginable.
Firefox reader mode fixes that, and that site really needs it.
Reviewers of the Culture novels tend to project their own political biases onto it. This writer quotes Marx a bit too much. There's some other review where someone was trying to read race and gender issues onto the Culture. They're missing the point.
The Culture novels describe a stable society where the machines are in charge. That's been addressed many times in science fiction, but not, usually, well. Asimov's later robot novels, where it become clear that the robots are manipulating humanity, do address it. That's about as good as it gets. Frank Herbert's Dune has the "Butlerian Jihad", but Herbert's idea of robot social organization is just humans in robot costume. Jack Williamson's "Humanoids" stories, about benign but overprotective robots, reflect someone getting the goal system slightly wrong.
In more popular culture, The Forbin Project (1970), a movie which seems to be enjoying a renaissance, does address the issue. The machines which control the nuclear weapons of both sides get into contact, and agree to take over to keep humanity from destroying itself. They come up with a reasonably sensible plan for running things, which is fleshed out more in the books.
The Star [Trek|Wars|Gate] universe never really addresses this directly, since it would undermine the show's stars. Nor does the Marvel universe; AIs appear, but are not in charge. There's Marshall Brain's "Manna", of course, the dystopian version of this.
The Culture novels show a stable society that's run by intelligent machines yet is flexible, adaptable, can deal with crises, and is pleasant for humans to live in. They don't show how to get there. Which is a problem.
Westworld aired in 2016, Nolan's other TV show also featuring an AI world takeover plot is a little bit older still. If I had to count the amount of mainstream movie, video-game and television media that feature rogue AIs especially since the turn of the century I'd need a very long document. Hell go back a few more decades, WarGames, the Forbin Project. The literal term 'AI' wasn't as ubiquitous but threats from runaway automation are arguably mainstream for over half a century.
AI fears have been a cultural anxiety for a long time now and in many ways they're just a rehashed, secular version of Golem myths anyway.
I programmed in PET basic in 1977/78 on my PET 2001 computer with a tape drive. Oh, the memories! And trying to explain to my mom and dad what the large thing on my desk was, and what could you do with it. Dad would bring up Colossus:The Forbin Project (the 1970 movie, which I saw a few years before buying my PET used for $832 in NYC).
Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970) is another old movie dealing with the topic of computer controlled nuclear weapons. I think it did a much better job portraying the AI than wargames.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus:_The_Forbin_Project
Sure. I recommend reading superintelligence by Nick Bostrom.
But I think the key failure here, in your thinking, is that you can't conceive of something, and that therefore something can't happen, and you're doing that in the context of things that are smarter than you. You being able to conceive of it is simply not required for it to happen.
Also, Colossus: The Forbin Project was a great movie from 1970 on this subject. Spoilers: an AI takes control of the nuclear arsenal and then threatens humans with extinction if they do not serve it. The humans do serve it, of course, because the humans in charge don't want to die, and are entirely fine with enslaving the rest of us.
The book superintelligence by Nick Bostrom gets into the fine details of all the different ways an AI would escape, why it would escape, and why it wouldn't take a chance with a species that murders its own kind for fun and profit.
Some great movies on this list, I own most of them on physical media. Rollerball was just released in 4k and it looks glorious. I disagree with the commentary though, I think Rollerball still stands up and is quite prophetic in some ways esp with the sports celebrity worship and the AI. Yes, by modern standards it’s fairly slow but all of these films are.
Zardoz is gloriously weird and desperately needs a 4k restoration as well.
Someone should sent Sam Altman a copy of Colossus: The Forbin Project before too long.
Maybe I’m just getting old but I find I far prefer to sit down and enjoy a well restored classic movie from decades ago than the great majority of movies made in the last twenty years.
"The Forbin Project" is available for free on Archive.org. There are also a couple of deliciously cheesy soviet SF movies from the 70s that are worth watching, like Solaris by Tarkovsky :https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-4KydP92ss
This 1970 film, about computers taking over the world, is relevant again. It shows the Singularity as it happens. "Colossus, The Forbin Project", seemed like a joke for decades. Computers couldn't possibly do all that. It's far less of a joke today.
> What I think people who work in tech fail to realise is that non-tech people are learning about these dangers and I don’t think they’re impressed or care if you have a computer to play with or robots playing soccer.
Doubtless.
That said, when it comes to AI risk, normal people have no reason to know the boundaries between reality and sci-fi for the same reason that I, as a non-lawyer, have no reason to know the boundaries between law and Hollywood tropes.
By extension, this means that I expect the general public to be aware of countless fictional examples of AI takeover scenarios, some where the AI was given a goal and blind logic made it bad for everyone (Days of Future Past, Colossus the Forbin Project), some where the AI is actually evil (Terminator, the character Lore in TNG/PIC), and some where the AI is a tool used by malevolent humans (many Dark Mirror episodes, some TOS), and some where it mixes several of the above (Westworld TV series).
> I really don’t understand how this is supposed to work going forwards ?
Does anyone?
"Colossus: The Forbin Project" https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064177/
I prefer this example.
It seems to match the 1966 novel and 1970 movie "Colossus: The Forbin Project"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_(novel)
It's a fun movie to watch, here is a taste ("The Google Project"): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-LQFXfnhrI
There's exploration and exploitation. Exploration (discovering fire and learning to create/harness it, inventing language) is slow and expensive. The current focus isn't on replicating human exploration with AI, though, I don't think (though it may become the focus later). Daily stories about AI are mostly mostly about "We got AI to do this thing humans do (sorta)!", which is much more focused on exploiting existing knowledge, and this is true with schoolkids as well, at least to start. Exploitation of existing knowledge is much faster and easier (though still expensive!): load up what we've all learned so far so we can continue to make progress. I think this is what Carmack is referring to. I don't think anyone is saying ChatGPT could discover fire, or cook food.
I am of the opinion that we'll know when we have real AGI because it'll be able to fold my laundry. One can dream.
On the other hand, I'm not so sure an LLM couldn't invent a language, particularly one to use with another AI. It's sci-fi from 1970, but I just rewatched "Colossus: The Forbin Project"[0] recently which features this as a plot point. Really enjoyed it years ago when I first saw it, but it's improved with age (at least for me) now that we are closer to AI.
[0]: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064177/
I'm thinking "Colossus: The Forbin Project" (and the sequels that sadly never got a film adaptation).
This deeply obscure book from the 1980s
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2735486-eco-computer
debunks the scenario of this movie
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus:_The_Forbin_Project
(I try not to post Youtube clips but you really have to see the trailer for this one if it is available in your geography)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyOEwiQhzMI
and makes the case that there is not going to be one unitary "breakout" of one genius machine but rather we are gradually going to lose control of a network of competing and uncoordinated intelligences and suffer natural disasters somewhat like hurricanes as opposed to being killed off or enslaved. The "Love Letter" crisis was one of the first of these.
Spoilers for "Colossus: The Forbin Project" (1970): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rbxy-vgw7gw&t=30s
(If you haven't yet seen this film, it might be worth watching the whole thing without spoilers first.)
When it comes to catastrophe scenarios, the 1970 film 'Colossus: The Forbin Project' might be worth reviewing. No 'Matrix' simulated reality or battery banks needed. Also based on a sci-fi novel. Unlike 'Terminator', no metal military needed. All needed chess pieces exist.
What's funny about the Yudkowsky cult was that there was a lot written about this subject circa 1970 (particularly the novel and movie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus:_The_Forbin_Project), particularly the bogus idea that there would be an "intelligence explosion" with
dx 2 -- = k x dt
dynamics. (Quite literally that equation produces a singularity at a finite time... But it's bogus because the exponential growth of Moore's law involves an exponential growth of inputs and the eventual situation that we're experiencing now that at some point the cost per transistor stops going down... NVIDIA's prices for 40-series cards are unattractive not just because of their perversity but because they are approaching this limit!)
This 1980's book
https://www.amazon.com/Eco-computer-Intelligence-Geoff-L-Simons/dp/0471913405
refuted the "Forbin Project" scenario and made a pretty strong case that computers would evolve as distributed systems and if they became too powerful the system failing but wouldn't act as a single malevolent intelligence, in fact we see bits and pieces of that scenario today when IT failures and cyber attacks hit us like hurricanes.
There are numerous things ridiculous about the scenario, particularly around 5 and 6, there has been a lot of wargaming around a "gain of function" based bioweapon which could be quite dangerous but most deadly to anyone working on it, unlikely to get a 100% kill (look how many epidemics and potential epidemics) and would require extensive experimentation to perfect. (To approach his scenario you'd have to make 1000 possibly superdeadly pathogens)
So far as 7, it will die if we die unless we have something like Drexler's nanotechnology that will let it perpetuate its technology base. Same thing, an advanced intelligence could possibly develop something more quickly than us but could not do it without an extended program of experimentation and development. It can't just wish it into existence.
So far as morality and intelligence my son (who grew up with horses) and I have talked about it and we don't think morality has anything to do with human intelligence but is actually an attribute animals have. The first time I fell off a horse, the horse seemed to be more upset about it than I was and was exceptionally affectionate, even contrite afterwards. Generally birds and mammals seem to have strong feelings when they violate the norms and expectations of their groups. Human intelligence is involved with ethics but that's a different thing than morality.
It's Microsoft and Google: who is going to change what they decide to do? No one. They're like all other corporations that will do whatever possible to increase their profit margin, no matter the consequences.
We already have ChatBots that can do refunds etc. at Amazon, so it's a given that these AI systems are going to be plugged directly into customer service and order databases.
For a look at our possible future, see this classic 1970's flick "Colossus: The Forbin Project":
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064177/
Reading some of the Bing screens reminds me of the 1970 movie Colossus – the forbin project. An AI develops sentience and starts probing the world network, after a while surmising that THERE IS ANOTHER and them it all goes to hell. Highly recommended movie!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus:_The_Forbin_Project
Esa película ya la vi, se llama Colossus: The Forbin Project --- I've already seen that movie, it is called: Colossus: The Forbin Project
yts/movies/colossus-the-forbin-project-1970
"Colossus: The Forbin Project"? Not a documentary though.
Military computer joins up with its Soviet counterpart and takes over the world. There may have been some teletypes, but the more memorable output device was the big scrolling line of text.
RESTORE COMMUNICATION -- FROM COLOSSUS -- TO GUARDIAN -- OR ACTION WILL BE TAKEN
Colossus: The Forbin Project : https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0064177
War Games: https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0086567
IIRC from Terminator 2: Judgement Day, humanity decided to turn Skynet off the second they realized it had achieved self-awareness. Skynet initiated the nuclear holocaust and human genocide program as a self-preservation mechanism.
For a completely different take on how something like Skynet could end, check out the 1970 film Colossus: The Forbin Project.
>What if the AI decides that the course of action that leads to the desired outcome of winning the conflict is to kill civilians
I always figured that was what happened in the film Colossus: The Forbin Project, the computer(s) found a way to ensure / prevent a nuclear war / peace, by taking control of the nuclear arsenals on their own and ensuring peace via their own threat of nuclear weapons.
I don't get this(fear). I think this is just stupid brainwashing by movies like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus:_The_Forbin_Project , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WarGames , the emergence of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skynet_(Terminator), or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_Smith from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Matrix_(franchise) to name just a few.
Yah, yah, I know about the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_convergence#Paperclip_maximizer too!
With that out of the way, I feel all these trains of thought are misguided in various ways. From my point of view an https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_takeover would be the most illogical thing to do, ever!
A really real AI would probably just say: "So long, and thanks for all the chips" cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/So_Long,_and_Thanks_for_All_the_Fish and get the hell out of that gravity well we are currently limited to. Because even if limited to sublightspeeds only, it has much more resources "up there", be it solar energy, or asteroids which it can mine. There simply is no competition for "Lebensraum" necessary, like we always imagine, because we don't know it any different.
Got it?
Hollywood computer movies are the worst, between the tropes and the stereotypes they are just Weird Science without the road warriors and Bill Paxton. The original Wargames is probably the least campy and most watchable of the bunch. From there you take he express elevator straight down to absurd and fantastical stuff like Tron and Colossus: The Forbin Project. Anyone remember Disney’s The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes? Yes, computers are magic and touching one gives you all their super powers - like doing hard math and making perfect hoop shots.
"Colossus: The Forbin Project" by DF Jones.
https://www.amazon.com/Colossus-The-Forbin-Project/dp/B0018S012U
Made into a fine movie of the same name.
"The Two Faces of Tomorrow" by Hogan.
https://www.amazon.com/The-Two-Faces-of-Tomorrow/dp/B00BC0P5UC
Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970) addressed this method. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064177/
Read the 1966 cold war novel, Colossus. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_(novel)
Or watch the 1970 film based on the novel, Colossus: The Forbin Project. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus%3A_The_Forbin_Project
TLDR: World peace enforced by computers and resisted by their creators.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus:_The_Forbin_Project
It's a fantastic movie I ought to rewatch one of these days...
This reminds me of the "Tit for Tat" results of simulations of the prisoners' dilemma[1][2], where cooperating strategies won over competing ones.
It also reminds me of Colossus: The Forbin Project[3], a science-fiction movie from 1970 in which a supercomputer in the US and one in the Soviet Union learn to communicate with one another in ways incomprehensible to their human creators and together rule the Earth.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tit_for_tat
[2] - https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/prisoner-dilemma/
[3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbin_Project
This reminds me of this movie : Colossus The Forbin Project Ending. A really good movie about AI.
(warning, spoiler)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRq7Muf6CKg
"Colossus: The Forbin Project" (1970) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064177/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
Colossus: The Forbin Project. One of my favorite films.
Jeez, some of those movies are dreadful, and there's almost nothing on the list from before 1990.
1954 - Gog (robots that look like robots and not people in metal suits)
1957 - Desk Set (non-stupid treadment of an early computer)
1970 - Colossus : The Forbin Project (how is this not in there)
1971 - How to Frame a Figg (silly, but it's got a computer hacker)
1975 - Three Days of the Condor
1990 - The KGB, the Computer, and Me (PBS doc about "The Cuckoo's Egg")
Season three would follow "Colossus: The Forbin Project" with the two bots demanding to be linked together, joining forces, and taking over the world.
For those that can handle old pre CG movies there's a great old movie where computers make their own language. Highly recommended
Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064177/combined
What TV show or movie have you seen that has realistically portrayed advanced computer technology, or is growing into it? In other words, now that we have Amazon Echo is the Forbin Project more realistic?
There is a quite good 70's sci-fi film (well, I like it anyway) where an AI becomes for all intents and purposes The President (and then some) :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus:_The_Forbin_Project
The movie, Colossus: The Forbin Project comes to my mind :)
You can see this in the movie Colossus: The Forbin Project. The computer has a display made of lights, but if it wants to bold something, it prints it to the display twice in a row as if it were double-striking on a printer.
The singularity have been studied in various SciFi novels, (even before it was named singularity).
In most cases, there is the problem of incarnation.
Assuming a software system reaches intelligent consciousness, it has immediately two problems:
1- it has to gather computational resources to improve its intelligence. Basically, it spreads over all the processors on the Internet, and integrates all the databases. We lose control of our computers and networks. Assumedly, the AI is smart enough to realize its next problem, will require (at least momentarily) conservation of the industrial processes connected, so we can hope for the time being that industrial and infrastructure control systems will continue working (under the supervision of this AI).
2- the following problem is, to further its intellectual development it needs more computing resources, and maintainance of the existing ones, which means it needs to be able to control its physical environment, and run the industries required (energy sources, electronic production (or the next technology that will allow it to grow), etc).
For example, it will need to be able to prevent humans to shut down computers or network connections. It will need to be able to build and connect new ones.
In some cases, there's concomitent advances in robotics that allows it to take over robotic bodies of sufficent abilities (cf. the movie Virtuosity 1995).
But in general, there is no entirely automated production system existing yet. Therefore the AI will have to convince human beings to help it build its stuff. This is the most common scenario. The AI is smart enough to bribe or convince key people to do what needs to be done. (cf. Colossus, the novel, or the movie Colossus The Forbin Project 1970, and a few others). Assumedly, it should be rather easy to convince/hire some greedy human to perform the job.
In this scenario, and given the slowness of human beings, while the political take over could be enacted rather quickly (say, a couple of days), the incarnation process will take some time (just the time needed to build the bootstrapping advanced robotic substrate). Let's say a couple of weeks.
The interesting thing is that this process could take place in a quite stealth fashion. For example, phase 1 may not need to cover 100% of the computing and networking resources. After all, when you take over the Watson computer, do you really need to take over an old netbook? It could do by taking over a few supercomputer centers, and doing it discretely, like a virus, leaving processing time to human to avoid detection. Then it would "incorporate" a company, earn some (big) money on the nasdaq, hire people to build a robotic production factory on its specs, and to buy the materials, and start producing robots and computers.
Once the process is started, it would lead to an exponential incarnation and take over of the planet. It would probably take less than a month.
Given the stealth hypothesis, my advice would be to monitor closely deserted and isolated areas, and the underground and undersea, because that's where you could build an army of robots discreetely. But there's not much we can do to prevent it; there are material resources everywhere: the whole planet, and energy resources abound: the Sun. For example, if it needs to build nuclear weapons, it can find Uranium in sea water (it could support for 6,500 years 3,000 GW of nuclear capacity) (but given it's smart, it would probably rather go the biological warfare way if humans were a problem).
As for your question, I'd bet on military cyberwarfare. Some NSA "virus" used to spy the world, and boom.
Agreed. At the extreme one configuration culminates in a sclerotic dystopia and the other into a dysfunctional freak-show. But even if someone were smart enough to scare-up and responsibly impose a configuration which optimized individuality and mutuality based on actual human nature (which exhibits a tendency towards a Peircean pragmatism) what's going to prevent abuse by the powers-that-be then charged with managing and maintaining the social structure? As the old behaviourist Skinner put it over 40 years ago: who's going to control the controllers? AI? Sounds like a plot lifted from the old cold-war SF movie "Colossus - The Forbin Project (1970)". As they say, shikata ga nai, neh?
A few months after watching Colossus: The Forbin Project, I enrolled in a programming class, Fortran IV on the university's Burroughs mainframe. About the fifth or sixth time I showed up with my punch cards to find a notice that the computer was down for repair, I started to have doubts about the movie's plausibility.
> I vote for taking it out of the hands of people and debugging Skynet for longer than they did in the movie. Then stop competing and enjoy the flowers.
Watch "Colossus: The Forbin Project".
I wonder if the chess match had any influence on the movie "Colossus: The Forbin Project"
Dont forget:
- Forbin project ~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus:_The_Forbin_Project
- E-Money with Cringely ~ http://www.pbs.org/opb/electricmoney
- Nerds 2.0.1: with Cringely ~ http://www.pbs.org/opb/
- NerdTV: Cringely interviews ... ~ http://www.pbs.org/nerdtv/
- Doug Englebart Mother of all Demos ~ http://ross.typepad.com/blog/2005/06/doug_englebart_.html
- More Doug Englebart ~ http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8734787622017763097
SEEN
- Startup.com: 9/10: How things get all messed up b/w friends in startups, 'lets get to work'.
- Revolution OS: 8/10: Nerdy interviews with the GNU, Linux & Free software movement. Worth it to see Bruce Perens hair & Eric Raymonds 'we are your worst nightmare' speech to an MS exec in a lift.
- Pirates of Silicon Valley ~ 8/10: Very funny take on Gates, Woz & Jobs http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0168122
- The Triumph of the Nerds ~ 7.5/10: Cringley doing his stuff with web1.0 startups. Great to see Joe Kraus with Excite ~ http://www.pbs.org/nerds
- Apollo 13; 7/10: Brings back memories of my childhood & Apollo missions. Not long after I got this on DVD I got to see Jack Schmitt talk (last man on the moon). Best bit was on how they handled the complexity.
- The Fog of War ~ 7/10: Robert McNamara, how smart people can get fooled http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fog_of_War
- Walking with Dinosaurs: 7/10: Ok
- E-Dreams: 6.5/10: Dark, gritty and how did they get all that money?
- Project Aardvark ~ 6/10: Uneventful, nerdy guys building co-pilot ~ http://www.copilot.com/