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batgirl-87 · 5 years

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MC Character Challenge

Tagged and Created by @cptaincarswell

(If there is another one like this I was never tagging in so…) Thank you so much for tagging me! Honestly this is a lot harder than my Jacob’s one! I hope I did a good job explaining my MC…

Rules: Choose five characters (movie or tv show) that represent your MC/ MC’s different layers.

1. Sirius Black - Harry Potter

Let’s just get the obvious out of the way =p

Where to start…

Dramatic entrances

Just dramatic tendencies

Good hair (even after 12 years in Azkaban, the rest may be a mess but the hair is looking fabulous! =p)

Love Remus Lupin

Okay, a bit more siriusly now 😉

Unwavering loyalty and fiercely protective nature (that may be taken too far…)

Witty and sarcastic (“run along and play with your chemistry set” - classic! =p)

Charming and charismatic (she can probably convince almost anyone to do anything… maybe a bit manipulative too…)

Rebellious and mischievous

Flirtatious and seemingly confident

Secretly really insecure

Dark vengeful side, can be vicious towards those he hates

Sure, we have magic, but you know what’s satisfying? Punching someone in the face!

2. Emma Swan - Once Upon A Time

Forced into be the Savior seems fitting, right? Fine, if she has to do this, she will, because no one else will =p Plus she’s probably the best at it anyway 😉 It may be stressful and a weight on her shoulders but she’ll handle it herself and appear cool and collected while doing it.

A natural leader and hero even though she may not want to be (Have to deal with the Cursed-Vaults and R/Cabal even though this is definitely not what she signed up for)

Strong and independent (but also lonely)

Practical and realistic

Strong sense of justice

Will do anything to protect and save those she cares about

Self-sacrificing (which is easy to do if you don’t care really if you live or not)

Dark Side

Distances herself from others to protect them

Trust issues

Abandonment issues

Very guarded with her feelings (particularly when it comes to love)

Feels like she has to appear strong and keep things together despite how stressed and overwhelmed she is with great responsibility thrust onto her shoulders - probably also feels like she has to handle it all by herself/on her own

Gets Captain Hottie Hook =p

3. Kate Beckett - Castle

I think Kate shows how determined and even obsessed Keira is with finding her brother. She’ll push herself to her limits and doesn’t care about placing herself in dangerous situations, even engaging in reckless behaviors that could severely harm or even kill her to find her brother. And she’ll try to do it all herself. (Also I love Stana Katic!)

Strong sense of justice (even if it’s her own set of morals/ethics)

Strong and independent

Her own savior/hero

Doesn’t like when someone tries to control her or even protect her - she demands respect and wants a partner, not a protector (Keira just doesn’t do well with being told what to do/authority figures - she wants to do what she wants when she wants!)

Determined and hard working

Determined almost to the point of obsession and recklessness - doesn’t care about what happens to her as long as she succeeds and will cross lines to do so

Can be secretive

On a one-woman mission

Speaks multiple languages

Likes to keep her past and personal life/feelings private (Keira doesn’t really talk about herself much to her friends - her mom, life in Canada, etc.)

The loss of her mom drives her - serves as her motivation to become a detective (while Keira lost her mom as well, the loss of Jacob is a strong motivator for her influencing even her career choice as well)

However, wants to be defined more than just by her mother’s death (Keira wants to be defined more than her brother and the Cursed-Vaults)

Struggle to love herself and accept someone else’s love

Survives getting shot to the chest (it’s very difficult getting rid of Keira =p)

4. Mazikeen “Maze” - Lucifer

(Kind of looks like a batarang right?! =D )

She’s beauty, she’s grace, she’ll punch you in the face (and then stab you and rip your throat out). Keira enjoys a good fight but also has a darker side that primarily gets unleashed when people she cares about are threatened or harmed. She can and will cross the line and do what’s necessary especially in difficult and stressful times. And those clothes!

Quick to anger and acting out violently (prefers getting mad than showing she’s actually sad)

Gets a thrill and pleasure from fighting (Duelling is fun and all but Keira does really enjoy physical fighting. May also have a taste/skill for knives - related to Bellatrix afterall 😜)

Confident in her fighting abilities

Sarcastic

Can come off as cold and uncaring

May sometimes act impulsively especially when angered (Keira has a classic fiery Irish temper)

Struggles with showing vulnerability and opening up

Secretly lonely and insecure about her friendships - like she cares more/does more for them and they don’t really care for her - worried about betrayal

Fiercely loyal and protective - so much she easily becomes a sadistic vengeful killer if anyone harms those she cares about (well Maze is a demon =p - Keira definitely has a dark side that hasn’t really needed to come out much but after this Rakepick stuff…. Anyway she’d have no problem torturing or inflicting pain and destroying someone’s life if they hurt those she cares about)

Keira would definitely wear a lot of Maze’s clothing actually - leather, duh =p badass and a little sexy 😜

(Bonus - since you included Eve in yours 😉)

5. Jamie Moriarty - Elementary

Besides the fact that I just love Natalie Dormer, I also want to highlight Keira’s intelligence and manipulative capabilities, as well as her not really being good or evil but as more of a neutral. (If she wanted to run a criminal empire she could =p Who knows what the future will hold? =p) Also could possibly show what she could become if she didn’t have her friends. (More reasons she needs Bill as a partner).

Diabolical mastermind

Clever and cunning

Manipulative - uses people to do her dirty work or distract them from interfering

Likes a challenge/mind games

Likes to feel smarter than others

Likes to be in control/have the upper hand/be one step ahead

Confident (possibly overconfident) in her skills, intellect, and abilities

Gives credit where it’s due and respects other intelligent, manipulative, and clever people

Can view situations as a game (but she’s pretty sure she’ll - and determined to - win)

Focus on benefitting herself and doesn’t care who she has to take down in order to get what she wants

Curious

Will stop at nothing to protect those she cares about (i.e. her daughter)

Doesn’t like to appear/show her vulnerability (aka her daughter)

More dramatic reveals?! Yes please =p Love a good plot twist!

Honorable Mentions: The Witch - Into the Woods; Blair Waldorf - Gossip Girl; Veronica Lodge (or maybe even Cheryl Blossom) - Riverdale; Loki - Marvel; Wolverine - X-men; Selene - Underworld

Summary: (This got long - don’t have to read! You can probably see the running themes here)

Keira comes across as a strong, confident, sarcastic person who actually hides a lot of insecurities, trust issues, and overwhelming stress. While charming and charismatic she actually is quite guarded and doesn’t like to open up or be vulnerable but that also leaves her feeling alone. While appearing even flirtatious at times she is particularly guarded and insecure about the whole ‘love’ thing and struggles with believing anyone would actually accept her for her, flaws and all. Takes awhile for her to feel comfortable around others and a long time for her to feel safe opening up and even then she rarely shows her vulnerability to those close to her. Likes being independent and handling things on her own even if that means struggling and being overwhelmingly stressed - doesn’t like to admit she needs helps or can’t handle things on her own (even though she needs support she prides herself on her independence). Normally pretty cool and calm but definitely has a fiery temper than can easily be set off causing her to lash out angrily and even violently. Also has a flair for the dramatics and can be quite rebellious and mischievous.

Is an incredibly determined and resilient individual, particularly when it comes to finding her brother, but in general when she wants something it’s hard for her to let it go and she’ll cross lines to get it and even push herself to extremes and engage in dangerous and reckless behaviors - doesn’t matter what happens to her as long as she succeeds. Normally likes to take things into her own hands without involving others, in a way to protect them, but also keeps her at a distance from them so maybe also in a way to protect herself from her fear of being betrayed by people she has opened up to and trusted - again leaving her feeling alone, especially when she truly does need support. But she also just doesn’t like being told what to do =p

She has a strong sense of justice, and has a hard time keeping her mouth shut when she sees an injustice, and is fiercely loyal and protective towards those she cares about; however, is a true neutral, living more in a grey area, so her code of ethics may be different than others (she’s not a Death Eater but she totally understands killing Dumbledore, would have done it herself if they asked! And she’ll fight Harry about it! =p). She doesn’t normally get involved in things (such as the second wizarding war) unless necessary and rewarding from her own perspective. She enjoys a good fight and is probably the first to sign up for some dangerous mission (as long as she feels she’ll get something out of it even if it’s just the thrill and adrenaline rush). While she may have insecurities when it comes to her relationships with others, she’s confident, maybe too much so, in her skills, intellect, and capabilities (and therefore does not handle defeat well and does not like being the one be to used and manipulated when she likes to have the upper hand and be one step ahead).

She definitely has a dark side, particularly when anyone she cares about is threatened or harmed or when she feels it’s called for in difficult situations. She can be vicious and has no issues torturing, inflicting pain, and completely destroying someone’s life - quite literally will cut a bitch =p (and if she needs to be a bitch she can be a bitch =p) She can be very manipulative and vengeful, no problems using others has her puppets, although again normally only does so to protect or avenge those she cares about (i.e. doesn’t do so for her own personal amusement). Also I think she’s good at compartmentalizing. Honestly feels like her friends need her because, let’s face it, they’re too “nice” and “good” and they need a friend willing to do the dirty work and cross that line into the darkness… even if they don’t know about her doing that…because she does try to keep that darkness in her hidden from her friends. (But her friends and that support truly keep her from snapping and acting out more violently and diving into that darkness as easily as she would alone).

Think that’s it =p Hope I explained her well, I don’t know…

Tagging: @wilhelminafujita @bluerosesburnblue @arnyan @callmederok @jadeowl19 @missnight0wl @changeling-fae @sly-vixen-up2nogood @gryffinpuffthunderbird @unforgivablecurse-breaker and anyone else who wants to!I’m sure I’m forgetting people - I’m sorry, it’s not personal I swear! Just please do it and tag me! =)

#hphm #hogwarts mystery #hphm mc #my mc #jacob's sibling #adelyn-keira black #tag game #thanks for tagging me

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pacack · 5 years

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Smash Bros. and Politics

So, I was seeing an argument on twitter that claimed that games have become steeped in politics to the detriment of consumers.

I thought to myself, “Alright, I know a game that spans game history from 1980 to now that we can look at to determine whether games have really gotten more political with time.”

Spoiler: Only 9.375% of the franchises represented by characters in Smash Bros. avoid political themes. Games are intensely political and always have been.

Actual spoiler warning: This includes spoilers for the general plot and themes of basically every game franchise included in Smash Bros.

Trigger warning: The following essay contains references to violence, death, war, emotional abuse, racism, racial and cultural stereotyping, sexism, minority oppression, poverty, gangs, animal cruelty, religious hypocrisy, pollution, and climate change.

Mario: Traditionally avoids complex plotlines entirely (though some games break that tradition,) but even the most barebones plots have “ruler who thirsts for power is a bad person, while ruler who does not is a good person.”

Donkey Kong: The themes are all blatantly environmental. The main characters are heavily intertwined with nature, while the big bad steals natural resources, uses technology that pollutes and disturbs the local area, and evolves over time from a corrupt monarch to a gun-touting pirate to a mad scientist. The evolution of the villain’s technology in the first trilogy is sending the message that oppression evolves over time to become more sophisticated.

Zelda: Varies from game to game but ranges from “bad guy literally is transformed into a pig because he desires power” to “crisis brings grief and makes us contemplate our morality, but that should make us value the connections we have more.”

Metroid: Game revolves around a skilled and wholly independent soldier/mercenary/bounty hunter that happens to be a woman. Laced with themes of “a person who is profoundly and intentionally alone does not need to be dependent on others to define herself” and “scientific progress that is intended for the betterment of mankind can and will be used to wage war by those who seek to do harm.”

Yoshi: “Communities should help and protect even complete strangers from those who would do them harm.”

Kirby: Themes range from “greed of a ruler leaves kingdom in poverty” to “people who band together in friendship can overthrow those who possess power.”

Star Fox: Tyrannical mad scientist plans to form an oppressive empire by using technology. Do I need to explain that?

Pokémon: Treat animals as partners and friends and marvel at the wonders of the natural world. Bad guys include:

an organization that abuses animals

an organization who aims to destroy the environment

an organization that doesn’t appreciate the current world and plans to reshape it into one where emotional attachment doesn’t exist

an organization that criticizes the current state of affairs in legitimate ways to hide their real intentions of stripping the common man from their power to resist their planned dictatorship

an organization that values beauty and power above all else (criticizing the French elite specifically)

A gang that recruits desperate people who feel they don’t have a family

A supposedly humanitarian organization that is headed by a possessive and emotionally abusive mother who is obsessed with owning things, people, and animals rather than loving them.

Earthbound/Mother: Discusses complex themes about love of family, pain of loss of and rejection from that family, the trauma one suffers because of that pain, and the importance of people learning form that pain rather than using it as justification for hurting others.

F-Zero: People meet one-another and trade, develop new social ties, have intellectual exchanges, and share technology, but some begin to abuse the framework of the system that brought everyone together to make themselves lavishly wealthy. These elites then develop dangerous sports for their own entertainment that the common man is enticed to compete in to improve their societal standing.

Ice Climber: Two characters that are coded as Inuit-Yupik enjoy themselves by cooperating and competing with one another in nature. While simple, the theme of connection between people over a shared activity can’t be recognized as completely apolitical when they’re in a minority group.

Fire Emblem: A just ruler is forced into conflict with a neighboring despotic country and must balance their duty to defend their people with their understanding that it is the innocent common folk of the other country that will suffer in place of the unjust rulers who began the conflicts. The game centers around meeting new people, many of them from the other side, who themselves are multi-layered and kind, but who live difficult lives. The unjust rulers are defeated, but a greater threat then brings all the people together, despite their differences, for the common good.

Game and Watch: Man juggles, cooks, and plays games with his friends :)

Kid Icarus: An angel who has a disability that prevents him from flying must save the world when circumstances leave him as the only person capable of resisting. He succeeds and is recognized by being promoted captain of the guard for his ability, courage, and tenacity. From that point on, the support of others allows him to live his life without his mobility defining what he can and cannot do.

WarioWare: The main character (who was conceptualized because artists’ freedom to create was limited by corporate greed and its insistence on maintaining the status quo) is a greedy man who plans on creating a poor, easily made product to sell to people as a get-rich-quick scheme with complete disregard for artistic integrity.

Metal Gear: The entire series began as a political commentary on the manipulation of soldiers by politicians in the Cold War. The series delves deeply into the morality of war and the negative impact that it has on a person, as well as discussing peace, revenge, racial violence, genetic engineering, censorship, societal loss of a person’s knowledge when they die, misrepresentation of history, and generational knowledge and bias. The main character, Solid Snake, is a critical analysis of the action hero trope, and the deconstruction of his character archetype reveals his increasingly broken spirit as he comes to see his life as unavoidably entwined with conflicts and war.

Sonic: Evil scientist destroys and pollutes the environment and abuses animals in his scheme to gain power, leading to the animals themselves revolting and overthrowing him for his actions.

Pikmin: A middle-class working man who cares only about supporting his family is made to work in dangerous conditions and suffers hardships because of his company’s desire to maximize profits.

Animal Crossing: A kind community of people welcomes a stranger and helps them to build a new life with them, teaching them how to survive and thrive on their own.

Mega Man: Society has advanced to the point that robots are used in day to day jobs, and an ambitious scientist hacks into them and uses the technology to throw society into disarray, with hopes of establishing a dictatorship.

Wii Fit: Fitness trainer teaches you how to exercise and become healthier :)

Punch-Out: A poor kid from the Bronx has dreams of becoming a star athlete, and his trainer, a kind, retired black boxer, trains and inspires him to achieve his dreams of having a better life. The international opponents in the game embody both harmless and harmful societal stereotypes of their cultures. The more ridiculous the stereotypes surrounding the group, the more ridiculous the opponent becomes. Ultimately the protagonist, a multiracial kid from one of the most diverse cities in the world, achieves his dreams and is respected globally for his skill and perseverance, reflecting the ideal of cultural harmony.

Mii: Customizable avatar characters play games :)

Pac-Man: Happy man eats food as cute monsters chase him around a maze :)…in a dramatic departure from the norms of the time in the industry, making the uncommon move of advertising to women by using cute, whimsical designs and appealing to and encouraging everyone’s common experience of eating. Avoided common themes of the time like violent space shooters, racing games, and sports titles, which were meant to appeal to young men.

Xenoblade: The plot revolves around predicting where the path you’re on leads you in the future and emphasizes heavily that there is nothing in life that decides your fate for you. Aims to explain that, while hardships in life can lead you to do the wrong thing, you always have the power to change that which seems destined in your life. It condemns those who use the hardships they’ve experienced to excuse wrongdoing and explains that a person has the power to learn and grow from those hardships instead.

Duck Hunt: You’re a duck hunter shooting down ducks with your trusty companion dog :)

Street Fighter: The continuity is a mess, but basically it boils down to an evil man being defeated by the honorable and pure philosophy of the protagonist. It involves different spiritualities that are a part of different martial arts and I’m not going to pretend to be qualified to talk about the cultural implications of them, but it generally discusses the morality of violence.

Final Fantasy VII: A soldier who lost his best friend in a battle long ago joins an ecoterrorist rebellion against a corporation that is draining the life force from the planet at the expense of energy. If I have to spell out the environmental themes there any more clearly you’re a moron.

Bayonetta: Sexual witch with guns sold her soul to demons and literally makes a living killing angels that are obsessed with the impending resurrection of God, the creation of a new world, and the destruction of the current one. Heavily inspired by and critical of Christianity, with the angels being named after virtues that they lack. The five main bosses in the game are the four Cardinal Virtues of Catholicism – Courage, Temperance, Justice, and Prudence – and the final boss is God herself, a self-centered and spoiled character that demands adoration from all. Contrasts the hypocritical, power-hungry, and overzealous forces of religion with the Bayonetta’s honest and unapologetic appreciation for worldly pleasures, her confidence in her autonomy, and her quest to understand her individuality.

Splatoon: Squid kids play paintball :)…except it’s actually a post-apocalyptic world where humanity died off due to climate change and cephalopods became the dominant intelligent life on Earth.

Castlevania: Heavy religious themes debating the worth of humanity as a man treks through a haunted castle to fight Dracula, a vampiric demon who keeps reincarnating and who occasionally quotes the Bible verbatim. Most games in the series center around the theme that, even though human life is fleeting, it is precious.

Persona: High school student goes into alternate world where his darkest subconscious thoughts manifest into a “persona” tied to him. Debates philosophical topics very, very heavily and questions the meaning of identity.

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newstfionline · 7 years

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Elon Musk’s Billion-Dollar Crusade To Stop The A.I. Apocalypse

By Maureen Dowd, Vanity Fair, April 2017

Excerpts of long article

It was just a friendly little argument about the fate of humanity. Demis Hassabis, a leading creator of advanced artificial intelligence, was chatting with Elon Musk, a leading doomsayer, about the perils of artificial intelligence.

They are two of the most consequential and intriguing men in Silicon Valley who don’t live there. Hassabis, a co-founder of the mysterious London laboratory DeepMind, had come to Musk’s SpaceX rocket factory, outside Los Angeles, a few years ago. They were in the canteen, talking, as a massive rocket part traversed overhead. Musk explained that his ultimate goal at SpaceX was the most important project in the world: interplanetary colonization.

Hassabis replied that, in fact, he was working on the most important project in the world: developing artificial super-intelligence. Musk countered that this was one reason we needed to colonize Mars--so that we’ll have a bolt-hole if A.I. goes rogue and turns on humanity. Amused, Hassabis said that A.I. would simply follow humans to Mars.

An unassuming but competitive 40-year-old, Hassabis is regarded as the Merlin who will likely help conjure our A.I. children. The field of A.I. is rapidly developing but still far from the powerful, self-evolving software that haunts Musk. Facebook uses A.I. for targeted advertising, photo tagging, and curated news feeds. Microsoft and Apple use A.I. to power their digital assistants, Cortana and Siri. Google’s search engine from the beginning has been dependent on A.I. All of these small advances are part of the chase to eventually create flexible, self-teaching A.I. that will mirror human learning.

Some in Silicon Valley were intrigued to learn that Hassabis, a skilled chess player and former video-game designer, once came up with a game called Evil Genius, featuring a malevolent scientist who creates a doomsday device to achieve world domination. Peter Thiel, the billionaire venture capitalist and Donald Trump adviser who co-founded PayPal with Musk and others--and who in December helped gather skeptical Silicon Valley titans, including Musk, for a meeting with the president-elect--told me a story about an investor in DeepMind who joked as he left a meeting that he ought to shoot Hassabis on the spot, because it was the last chance to save the human race.

Elon Musk began warning about the possibility of A.I. running amok three years ago. It probably hadn’t eased his mind when one of Hassabis’s partners in DeepMind, Shane Legg, stated flatly, “I think human extinction will probably occur, and technology will likely play a part in this.”

Before DeepMind was gobbled up by Google, in 2014, as part of its A.I. shopping spree, Musk had been an investor in the company. He told me that his involvement was not about a return on his money but rather to keep a wary eye on the arc of A.I.: “It gave me more visibility into the rate at which things were improving, and I think they’re really improving at an accelerating rate, far faster than people realize. Mostly because in everyday life you don’t see robots walking around. Maybe your Roomba or something. But Roombas aren’t going to take over the world.”

In a startling public reproach to his friends and fellow techies, Musk warned that they could be creating the means of their own destruction. He told Bloomberg’s Ashlee Vance, the author of the biography Elon Musk, that he was afraid that his friend Larry Page, a co-founder of Google and now the C.E.O. of its parent company, Alphabet, could have perfectly good intentions but still “produce something evil by accident”--including, possibly, “a fleet of artificial intelligence-enhanced robots capable of destroying mankind.”

At the World Government Summit in Dubai, in February, Musk again cued the scary organ music, evoking the plots of classic horror stories when he noted that “sometimes what will happen is a scientist will get so engrossed in their work that they don’t really realize the ramifications of what they’re doing.” He said that the way to escape human obsolescence, in the end, may be by “having some sort of merger of biological intelligence and machine intelligence.” This Vulcan mind-meld could involve something called a neural lace--an injectable mesh that would literally hardwire your brain to communicate directly with computers. “We’re already cyborgs,” Musk told me in February. “Your phone and your computer are extensions of you, but the interface is through finger movements or speech, which are very slow.” With a neural lace inside your skull you would flash data from your brain, wirelessly, to your digital devices or to virtually unlimited computing power in the cloud. “For a meaningful partial-brain interface, I think we’re roughly four or five years away.”

Musk’s alarming views on the dangers of A.I. first went viral after he spoke at M.I.T. in 2014--speculating that A.I. was probably humanity’s “biggest existential threat.” He added that he was increasingly inclined to think there should be some national or international regulatory oversight--anathema to Silicon Valley--”to make sure that we don’t do something very foolish.” He went on: “With artificial intelligence, we are summoning the demon. You know all those stories where there’s the guy with the pentagram and the holy water and he’s like, yeah, he’s sure he can control the demon? Doesn’t work out.” Some A.I. engineers found Musk’s theatricality so absurdly amusing that they began echoing it. When they would return to the lab after a break, they’d say, “O.K., let’s get back to work summoning.”

Musk wasn’t laughing. “Elon’s crusade” (as one of his friends and fellow tech big shots calls it) against unfettered A.I. had begun.

Musk’s views reflect a dictum from Atlas Shrugged: “Man has the power to act as his own destroyer--and that is the way he has acted through most of his history.” As he told me, “we are the first species capable of self-annihilation.”

Here’s the nagging thought you can’t escape as you drive around from glass box to glass box in Silicon Valley: the Lords of the Cloud love to yammer about turning the world into a better place as they churn out new algorithms, apps, and inventions that, it is claimed, will make our lives easier, healthier, funnier, closer, cooler, longer, and kinder to the planet. And yet there’s a creepy feeling underneath it all, a sense that we’re the mice in their experiments, that they regard us humans as Betamaxes or eight-tracks, old technology that will soon be discarded so that they can get on to enjoying their sleek new world. Many people there have accepted this future: we’ll live to be 150 years old, but we’ll have machine overlords.

Maybe we already have overlords. As Musk slyly told Recode’s annual Code Conference last year in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, we could already be playthings in a simulated-reality world run by an advanced civilization. Reportedly, two Silicon Valley billionaires are working on an algorithm to break us out of the Matrix.

Among the engineers lured by the sweetness of solving the next problem, the prevailing attitude is that empires fall, societies change, and we are marching toward the inevitable phase ahead. They argue not about “whether” but rather about “how close” we are to replicating, and improving on, ourselves. Sam Altman, the 31-year-old president of Y Combinator, the Valley’s top start-up accelerator, believes humanity is on the brink of such invention.

“The hard part of standing on an exponential curve is: when you look backwards, it looks flat, and when you look forward, it looks vertical,” he told me. “And it’s very hard to calibrate how much you are moving because it always looks the same.”

You’d think that anytime Musk, Stephen Hawking, and Bill Gates are all raising the same warning about A.I.--as all of them are--it would be a 10-alarm fire. But, for a long time, the fog of fatalism over the Bay Area was thick. Musk’s crusade was viewed as Sisyphean at best and Luddite at worst. The paradox is this: Many tech oligarchs see everything they are doing to help us, and all their benevolent manifestos, as streetlamps on the road to a future where, as Steve Wozniak says, humans are the family pets.

But Musk is not going gently. He plans on fighting this with every fiber of his carbon-based being.

Musk and others who have raised a warning flag on A.I. have sometimes been treated like drama queens. In January 2016, Musk won the annual Luddite Award, bestowed by a Washington tech-policy think tank. Still, he’s got some pretty good wingmen. Stephen Hawking told the BBC, “I think the development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.” Bill Gates told Charlie Rose that A.I. was potentially more dangerous than a nuclear catastrophe. Nick Bostrom, a 43-year-old Oxford philosophy professor, warned in his 2014 book, Superintelligence, that “once unfriendly superintelligence exists, it would prevent us from replacing it or changing its preferences. Our fate would be sealed.” And, last year, Henry Kissinger jumped on the peril bandwagon, holding a confidential meeting with top A.I. experts at the Brook, a private club in Manhattan, to discuss his concern over how smart robots could cause a rupture in history and unravel the way civilization works.

I drove to San Mateo to meet Ray Kurzweil for coffee. Kurzweil is the author of The Singularity Is Near, a Utopian vision of what an A.I. future holds.

Computers are already “doing many attributes of thinking,” Kurzweil told me. “Just a few years ago, A.I. couldn’t even tell the difference between a dog and cat. Now it can.” At the restaurant, he asked for almond milk but couldn’t get any. The 69-year-old eats strange health concoctions and takes 90 pills a day, eager to achieve immortality--or “indefinite extensions to the existence of our mind file”--which means merging with machines. He has such an urge to merge that he sometimes uses the word “we” when talking about super-intelligent future beings--a far cry from Musk’s more ominous “they.”

I mentioned that Musk had told me he was bewildered that Kurzweil doesn’t seem to have “even 1 percent doubt” about the hazards of our “mind children,” as robotics expert Hans Moravec calls them.

“That’s just not true. I’m the one who articulated the dangers,” Kurzweil said. “The promise and peril are deeply intertwined,” he continued. “Fire kept us warm and cooked our food and also burned down our houses . . . . Furthermore, there are strategies to control the peril, as there have been with biotechnology guidelines.” He summarized the three stages of the human response to new technology as Wow!, Uh-Oh, and What Other Choice Do We Have but to Move Forward? “The list of things humans can do better than computers is getting smaller and smaller,” he said. “But we create these tools to extend our long reach.”

Just as mammalian brains developed a neocortex that eventually enabled humans to “invent language and science and art and technology,” by the 2030s, Kurzweil predicts, we will be cyborgs, with nanobots the size of blood cells connecting us to synthetic neocortices in the cloud, giving us access to virtual reality and augmented reality from within our own nervous systems. “We will be funnier; we will be more musical; we will increase our wisdom,” he said, ultimately, as I understand it, producing a herd of Beethovens and Einsteins. Nanobots in our veins and arteries will cure diseases and heal our bodies from the inside.

He allows that Musk’s bête noire could come true. He notes that our A.I. progeny “may be friendly and may not be” and that “if it’s not friendly, we may have to fight it.” And perhaps the only way to fight it would be “to get an A.I. on your side that’s even smarter.”

Eliezer Yudkowsky is a highly regarded 37-year-old researcher who is trying to figure out whether it’s possible, in practice and not just in theory, to point A.I. in any direction, let alone a good one. I met him at a Japanese restaurant in Berkeley.

“How do you encode the goal functions of an A.I. such that it has an Off switch and it wants there to be an Off switch and it won’t try to eliminate the Off switch and it will let you press the Off switch, but it won’t jump ahead and press the Off switch itself?” he asked.

“If you want a picture of A.I. gone wrong, don’t imagine marching humanoid robots with glowing red eyes. Imagine tiny invisible synthetic bacteria made of diamond, with tiny onboard computers, hiding inside your bloodstream and everyone else’s. And then, simultaneously, they release one microgram of botulinum toxin. Everyone just falls over dead.

“Only it won’t actually happen like that. It’s impossible for me to predict exactly how we’d lose, because the A.I. will be smarter than I am. When you’re building something smarter than you, you have to get it right on the first try.”

I thought back to my conversation with Musk and Altman. Don’t get sidetracked by the idea of killer robots, Musk said, noting, “The thing about A.I. is that it’s not the robot; it’s the computer algorithm in the Net. So the robot would just be an end effector, just a series of sensors and actuators. A.I. is in the Net . . . . The important thing is that if we do get some sort of runaway algorithm, then the human A.I. collective can stop the runaway algorithm. But if there’s large, centralized A.I. that decides, then there’s no stopping it.”

Altman expanded upon the scenario: “An agent that had full control of the Internet could have far more effect on the world than an agent that had full control of a sophisticated robot. Our lives are already so dependent on the Internet that an agent that had no body whatsoever but could use the Internet really well would be far more powerful.”

Even robots with a seemingly benign task could indifferently harm us. “Let’s say you create a self-improving A.I. to pick strawberries,” Musk said, “and it gets better and better at picking strawberries and picks more and more and it is self-improving, so all it really wants to do is pick strawberries. So then it would have all the world be strawberry fields. Strawberry fields forever.”

But can they ever really develop a kill switch? “I’m not sure I’d want to be the one holding the kill switch for some superpowered A.I., because you’d be the first thing it kills,” Musk replied.

Altman tried to capture the chilling grandeur of what’s at stake: “It’s a very exciting time to be alive, because in the next few decades we are either going to head toward self-destruction or toward human descendants eventually colonizing the universe.”

#artificial intelligence #AI #Demis Hassabis #Elon Musk #Ray Kurzweil #robert altman

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too-longanswers · 5 years

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Five Favourite Anime(s)

Apart from Ghost Hunt from the list, all taught me some sort of lesson or just made me question the series and their underlying theme. Also, apart from Gakuen Alice being my all time favourite, the rest are not in order.

Gakuen Alice

This is one of those light-hearted coming of age shoujo anime. It's all innocent and all about friendship.

Ghost Hunt

I love good old ghost stories. One of the very first anime series I've watched.

Full Metal Alchemist and Brotherhood

This anime thought me a lot! No tool is inherintly good or evil; they can be used for both good and evil. Ed originally beleived that alchemy was a force that could only be used for good. Even after his human transmutation, he believed that alchemy was a force was good, believing that he had been punished because he delved into forbidden territory. However, this belief was immediatley shattered after what happened to Nina Tucker.

The value of a human soul is immeasurable. This theme is explored in both FMA and FMAB. When Nina Tucker is brought back to life in FMA, she is essentially a shell of her former self, as her soul couldn’t be brought back even with a philosoher’s stone. In both of the shows this theme is more visible when Ed and Alphonse both fail in trying to bring their mother back to life.

All is one and One is all. This essentially means that everything is connected. This is true in many fields ranging from how nature is, to math.

Hatred gives rise to more hatred. From Scar's story, we learn how hatred only causes more hatred. It's a chain. Only when one has the courage to break it will the entire chain be broken. The one who does not give into the thirst for revenge is the noble one. Atrocities must never be forgiven. They should be endured. There's a difference in the two. To quote FMA, "One who receives pain can still sleep, but one who gives pain can never sleep."

Knowledge is the most powerful weapon. I feel that this is a hidden lesson which many may not have noticed. Many people were puzzled at the end when Ed gave up his gate and Truth said it was the right answer and stuff. What truth was indirectly asking was whether Ed had learnt what would be the biggest sacrifice one can make, one that is even greater than a person's life. Ed answered correctly. He said it was his gate of Alchemy. In other words, all his knowledge about Alchemy itself. He would, therefore, be unable to use Alchemy thus forth. Arakawa, the author of the original Manga, I believe wanted to show that knowledge is the most powerful weapon one can have, through this scene.

A lesson without pain is meaningless:. The last line of the anime - "A lesson without pain is meaningless. You cannot gain something without sacrificing something else in return, but once you have overcome it and made it your own, you will gain an irreplaceable Fullmetal heart." I think the quote speaks for itself.

Naruto

Taught me the importance of friendship, promises, staying true to your words. It doesn’t matter from where you start, you can always change your destiny. Why it is important never to give up and let go of a friend no matter how bad things get. Naruto showed that you can’t reach to the top without the help of your friends. It taught me patience and will. The series tell you that you might be bad at many things, you might not be strong as your friends but if you make up your mind and put your heart into something, you’ll achieve it sooner or later. Also, it tells us how it is okay to love someone with all your heart even if the other person doesn’t reciprocate your feelings. The depth of love and hope is truly one of the most inspiring things from the series. It shows that if you truly love someone, then you can wait for them until the end of time to love you back.

"Believe it!"

Code Geass

"If strength is justice, then is powerlessness a crime?" Central to this question is the core of Code Geass' plot. The story begins with the backdrop of a world largely subdued politically, if not geographically, by the Holy Britannian Empire under the tyrannical rule of King Charles zi Britannia. He rules with an iron scepter, consolidating his nation and suppressing dissension, justifying his actions on the argument that mankind is born unequal, and that his empire seeks to rectify this and build a better future for the human race. Nonetheless, his justification serves nothing but to paint a heroic, utopic picture of his empire when, in actual fact, he despises the weak and exalts no one but himself as the strongest, as evident from his treatment towards the young, insignificant Lelouch and his ultimate aim of challenging "God", the collective unconsciousness of humanity.

Lelouch, in the form of the symbolic Zero, plays a further role in expounding on this question. Throughout the story, Lelouch, with the "Power of Kings" (i.e. the Geass), claims to use his power and influence to uphold justice and fight for the weak and powerless in his father's empire, particularly in Area 11 (Japan). His seemingly righteous cause, masking his true intention to take revenge on his father and to create a better world for his sister Nunally, ends up bringing much suffering and even bloody deaths to countless helpless Elevens (Japanese) as well as Britannians, some of whom are personally related to him. The blood of innocent lives upon his hands in the name of sacrifice for "justice", numerous innocents, powerless in the face of war and dissension, die as a result of his "crimes" in the process of fulfilling his personal ambitions.

It raises numerous ethical questions and dilemmas in its plot. One of the most striking of these comes in the form of a question Lelouch asks, "Suppose there is an evil that justice cannot bring down. What would you do? Would you taint your hands with evil to destroy evil? Or would you carry out your own justice and succumb to that evil?" To rephrase this, "Is it justifiable to oppose evil with evil?" Revolving around this question, we see two of the main characters, Lelouch and Suzaku, locking horns with each other, with the former saying "yes" without winking an eye and the latter giving an indirect "no", stating that he prefers to change evil from within itself. As a result, the both of them, despite being close childhood friends, take their separate ways, with the former choosing to openly defy the Britannian Empire, while the latter preferring to join the Empire, rise up in its ranks and effect change from within. The story also presents several incidences, such as the Zero Requiem and the assassination of Princess Euphemia, whereby questions are raised regarding the justifications behind such actions, and whether there were any alternative methods or decisions that could have been considered at all. Euphemia's death, for instance, brings up the matter as to whether she died a necessary death for a sin she evidently did not commit under her own free will. As for Lelouch's part in her death, the question also comes to mind regarding what form of retribution, if any, is befitting of him for depriving not only an empire of a capable, diplomatic and peacemaking leader, but also a lover of his cheerful partner.

It taught me that everything has two sides. Zero Requiem showed it pretty well. Evil to the general public, but the most selfless plan ever to people who actually know about it; And that great things come with great sacrifice. To create a better world, Lelouch had to abandon his best friend, friends, 2 beloved sisters, potential love interests, liking of the general public.

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