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Was watching the trailer for the new movie Robocop (about robots in the future surprisingly enough) today and it got me thinking. Will we produce technology that will one day become too advanced for us to handle? or to a stage where it has a detrimental effect on how we function and think as humans?

When you think about it, you could say technology has already reached a stage where it's having a negative effect on us. Being only 19 I've always been familiar with things like Ipods, internet and other things that weren't around 30 or 40 years ago and it always seems as if life was simpler before we became so obsessed with new gadgets and the improvement of instant communication, etc.

Anyone else think we will bite off more than we can chew?

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Was watching the trailer for the new movie Robocop (about robots in the future surprisingly enough) today and it got me thinking. Will we produce technology that will one day become too advanced for us to handle? or to a stage where it has a detrimental effect on how we function and think as humans?

When you think about it, you could say technology has already reached a stage where it's having a negative effect on us. Being only 19 I've always been familiar with things like Ipods, internet and other things that weren't around 30 or 40 years ago and it always seems as if life was simpler before we became so obsessed with new gadgets and the improvement of instant communication, etc.

Anyone else think we will bite off more than we can chew?

Being 30 I'm of the last generation of children in history who never had access to things like the internet, mobile phones and was able to go out with a gang of pals as kids after school and actually play games that we made up...we never had access to about 95% of the information in the world at the click of a mouse. The amount that technology has advanced since I was about 13 and the first widespread affordable internet and mobiles became available is utterly staggering.

The thought in 1997 of one day being able to have gadgets which are now commonplace was as staggering as it was far fetched. The simple fact that this was available in it's early stages little more than a decade later goes to show that technology is advancing exponentially (Moore's law I believe it is called).

I firmly believe in my lifetime, I'll see fully functioning AI which will either achieve sentience, or be extremely close to it. This in itself, may not be a good thing.

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Was watching the trailer for the new movie Robocop (about robots in the future surprisingly enough) today and it got me thinking. Will we produce technology that will one day become too advanced for us to handle? or to a stage where it has a detrimental effect on how we function and think as humans?

When you think about it, you could say technology has already reached a stage where it's having a negative effect on us. Being only 19 I've always been familiar with things like Ipods, internet and other things that weren't around 30 or 40 years ago and it always seems as if life was simpler before we became so obsessed with new gadgets and the improvement of instant communication, etc.

Anyone else think we will bite off more than we can chew?

Our abilities are only constrained by our minds.

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Would say that smartphones already are having a negative effect on society.

Everyone updating each other that they're somewhere on facebook? I know I'm beside you ffs.

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Would say that smartphones already are having a negative effect on society.

Everyone updating each other that they're somewhere on facebook? I know I'm beside you ffs.

But...but...if they don't then how can you know what GREAT FUN they're having?! How can you know what a GREAT TIME they're having?!

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As a kid i remember the internet first being introduced and not really knowing what it was or how it would change the world but i think it could be predicted the way its gone - the encyclopaedia of information at our fingertips was something that was talked about back then and it obviously took years to master but we are there now. i think its a good thing to some extent but social media went way out of hand a long time ago, i remember being young and looking forward to going home and speaking to my friends on msn more than i looked forward to actually seeing them, also used to talk in great depths with people from school i hardly knew then would never speak to them in school. I eventually got bored of it by about 20 when everyone else in the world was getting more and more obsessed by it. Don't really look on Facebook now as it annoys me too much, occasionally look on twitter but it doesn't really excite me. I was saying the other day to someone i thought that people would eventually get bored of social networking and turn off, that now is the peak time for it and in 10 - 20 years time there will be something else people want to do with their time rather than speak to other people on the net but I'm really not so sure i can stand by it.

A thing i am old enough to remember was when me and my family used to go to glasgow or inverness shopping together and go our separate ways to do stuff we would actually have to arrange a meeting place to go to and if one of us weren't there we would have no idea what to do as phones weren't about, its just crazy to think how people managed to do such simple things like that without phones, we really are so dependant on them.

Another thing an older guy said to me was when it was time for the weekend they would all meet up in the pub on the friday night then get pissed and do what ever then you wouldn't hear or speak to each other til the next friday night and do it all again, nowadays you go out to the pub on friday then folk are checking each other in on Facebook (as if anyone actually cares) posting pics of their nights out then and there, speaking the next day about how their nights were and arranging a different time and place for the next meet and what not. it was only about 15 years ago when this sort of technology could only be dreamed of, I'm not certain its a good thing myself especially when your on nights out most people are on their phones anyway

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I mind the big fucking BBC discs. I mind in school being amazed that we create a wordsearch on one of the old BBC computers. I mind being amazed in 1995 when our class got a P.C. after a mass coupon collecting effort. Once I started using computers regularly it became pretty easy and commonplace. It seems that the technology exponentially increased, but so did comfort in using it do so alongside it.

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I mind the big fucking BBC discs. I mind in school being amazed that we create a wordsearch on one of the old BBC computers. I mind being amazed in 1995 when our class got a P.C. after a mass coupon collecting effort. Once I started using computers regularly it became pretty easy and commonplace. It seems that the technology exponentially increased, but so did comfort in using it do so alongside it.

Primary school flashback.

I remember at the time thinking some of the games on them BBC computers were brilliant.

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It will be Google that f**k us all. They have been buying up AI and tech firms like there's no tomorrow right now, including military tech firms too. They are Skynet but with a more colourful logo.

We should be worried more about us relying too heavily on technology. The "man in the street" has no clue how it all works or is controlled, the recent NSA revelations in the US proves that those in the know have complete power over us mere mortals. Every part of our lives are basically controlled by technology, either overtly or by us simply feeling lost without it (anyone who has lost a phone or not had internet for a few days will testify to this)

Still, you can now see videos of cats playing pianos, so it isn't all bad.

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I don't believe robots or any for of artificial "life form" can ever achieve autonomous sentience. The human brain is completely unique in the way it functions; and I don't think it can be replicated perfectly.

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It will be Google that f**k us all. They have been buying up AI and tech firms like there's no tomorrow right now, including military tech firms too. They are Skynet but with a more colourful logo.

We should be worried more about us relying too heavily on technology. The "man in the street" has no clue how it all works or is controlled, the recent NSA revelations in the US proves that those in the know have complete power over us mere mortals. Every part of our lives are basically controlled by technology, either overtly or by us simply feeling lost without it (anyone who has lost a phone or not had internet for a few days will testify to this)

Still, you can now see videos of cats playing pianos, so it isn't all bad.

^^^^^^ Seething that he dindn't do computing rather than Social Sciences. :P

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