Automatic attack choice for you

[Elvish_Pillager]

In that case, every unit's default attack should be first on the list!

[Jetrel]

FWIW I personally don't think that computers will ever be developed that can legitimately called 'intelligent'.

And man will never be able to fly or travel to the moon, or cure death by aging. I'm not sure that it will happen - mankind could make itself extinct in a few years for all we know. I *do* think though, that it is eventually inevitable if nothing major changes to the current structure of the world.

And I am quite afraid that whoever does make it will make some terrible, but unintended mistakes - making it in man's mental image would likely have disastrous implications.

I also don't think that being able to operate in parallel has much at all to do with intelligence.

Yeah - heinlen wrote a book where having massive parallelism gave rise to intelligence in a machine, which is completely bogus, I think. I do think that it is a necessary prerequisite, though, else whatever is made will be doing a *lot* of process switching.


but back on topic. I was just goofing around with this comment in the first place

[Dave]

FWIW I personally don't think that computers will ever be developed that can legitimately called 'intelligent'.

And man will never be able to fly or travel to the moon, or cure death by aging.

Sure, but there are just as many counter-examples.

It was widely predicted in the AI community that by 2000 there would be robots running around that were smarter than humans. Not only didn't it happen, but there were virtually no advancements at all that made it even a tiny bit closer. The few improvements that did occur in 'AI' was due to improvements in hardware.

We were also meant to be flying around in cars, and hardly having to work at all. Oh, and disease was going to be erradicated...

I also don't think that being able to operate in parallel has much at all to do with intelligence.

Yeah - heinlen wrote a book where having massive parallelism gave rise to intelligence in a machine, which is completely bogus, I think. I do think that it is a necessary prerequisite, though, else whatever is made will be doing a *lot* of process switching.

So? Whether you had a single CPU that was incredibly powerful doing lots of switching, or many less powerful CPUs operating in parallel, I don't see how there's much difference.

David

[Jetrel]

It was widely predicted in the AI community that by 2000 there would be robots running around that were smarter than humans. Not only didn't it happen, but there were virtually no advancements at all that made it even a tiny bit closer. The few improvements that did occur in 'AI' was due to improvements in hardware.

We were also meant to be flying around in cars, and hardly having to work at all. Oh, and disease was going to be erradicated...

Not exactly true. One part of the brain - autonomous control of musculature and balance is having quite a bit of progress made. The latest version of Honda's Asimo robot has little more reasoning capability than the average Wesnoth unit, but it has balance that is ... quite impressive actually.

I'm sure a good shove would knock it off its feet, but the mere accomplishment of having a robot that can walk up any set of stairs on two legs is quite a step.

And it is my educated opinion that we have exceeded the operating complexity of insects like ants, in AI development thus far. I like ants, and I spent a lot of time studying them and their behaviour. You can really screw with those things by artificially stimulating them with their own pheromones - they respond like clockwork, nearly.


We've also made some staggering developments in medicine - we can now grow replacement skin in petri dishes, amongst other simple tissues. We are doing significant genetic engineering, though it will pale in light of things to come.


My point is that however slowly, it will come eventually (which I believe to mean within the next few hundred years), given that there is no dissolution of the current scientific community/system. Whether in our civilization or another, as long as scientific progress does not get interrupted, and their current pace not befouled, I think a number of wonderous and frightening things are in store for us.


The current scientific community basically runs on open source. And thank god for that, really. Things moved quite slowly a few hundred years ago when scientists did not commonly share ideas.


And we have eradicated the majority of diseases. If/when you have children, I imagine you expect them to live to adulthood. In 1900, about 5/8 children died before they reached the age of 20.

We only run into stuff like cancer because the majority of people are now living to unprecedented ages. I'm sure there will be many other killers of mankind over time that are hardly a blip on the map now that we will run headlong into in the future. And eventually, break through.

So? Whether you had a single CPU that was incredibly powerful doing lots of switching, or many less powerful CPUs operating in parallel, I don't see how there's much difference.

Details of implementation. You're absolutely right - the point that I am making is that the machine would have to effectively manage things in parallel. How it does so is irrelevant.

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The catch with all of this is that I am neither optimistic nor pessimistic about it. Given the continuation of certain condititions, it will happen. However, I am not sure that is a good thing, in fact, I have a good deal of foreboding about it.