text:
This article convinced me beyond the shadow of a doubt that AI will kill humanity within the decade.
This article convinced me beyond the shadow of a doubt that AI will kill humanity within the decade. No one has come up with rebuttals because there aren't any. We're fucked.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/uMQ3cqWDPHhjtiesc/agi-ruin-a-list-of-lethalities
Robot killing robots.
A bunker. (Short term)
Thats 5. Dubunked
https://i.imgur.com/PA7pxfM.jpg
moldbug wrote some refutation that boils down to: high iq doesn't make you capable of personally doing a lot of physical things that a low iq person can't do, and anyway AI researchers are responsible people so they won't give the AI a physical body with which to affect the material world. That second point is just obviously false, but he is probably right that just being really smart probably won't result in a flawless, tractable worldwide extermination plan that it's capable of carrying out in complete secrecy
Stupid fucker can't even draw a homer simpson that doesn't make your brain hurt looking at it
>he doesn't know about the AI box experiment
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_box
An AI wrote this. Be honest: Would you have been able to tell? The AGI skeptics are just copetards.
>human minds may be made up of multiple beings/intelligences
Now there's an eyebrow-raising idea. But it's not obvious why it would matter in this context. If it could give a cogent explanation of why it brought that up, then I'd be properly impressed.
I believe it has to do with the concept of emergence. Simple things operating together to become the some of its parts, resulting in a gestalt. Even the simple minds of ants and bees can form greater intelligences in their hivemind behavior. Likewise, humans operate under similar fashions in various interweaving gestalts, be it religions, states, ideologies, etc.
AI operates similarly, being composted of functions, data storage, operators, etc.
Yeah, but it seems like a non-sequitur. There's no stipulation in the Turing Test that disallows the machine from being run by a committee of AIs. It's like it's trying to say it would be unsuitable for testing those individual AIs when they're disconnected from the whole. Which is a true statement, but a dumb one. It's a bit like saying the test is flawed because it requires electricity.
Could a bumblebee pass the Turing Test?
A bumblebee couldn't pass a TT specced for a whole hive of bumblebees. So what? The test still works. If you need a hive of AIs to pass a human TT that's not in itself a flaw. It could be telling you something valuable about humans and intelligence in general. That's a strength, not a flaw.
>every paragraph starts with "It"
>most start with "it doesn't"
>hung on on definitions
>very simple sentence structures
>no creativity
obviously generated by a bot.
It's more human than you think given all that greentext
Nonsensical GPT-tier reaction.
I don't know what GPT means
You're failing the Turing test by implying your question is in any way relevant. Nevermind that your bot paragraph sounds like something a bot would write. Even if it was indistinguishable from good quality human output it still doesn't imply that the bot can pass a Turing test.
Use the AI against itself and ask it to draw you up a the best test for general intelligence.
This, I will not be convinced that it actually understands its own existence until it can make a test to test itself.
After all, isn't that what we did?
I agree with the robot. We aren't just made of a single mind, our brains are a cacophony of sections running specialized operations. If you split a person's corpus callosum, you'll literally sever pieces of their mind from being able to talk to each other.
>and anyway AI researchers are responsible people so they won't give the AI a physical body with which to affect the material world
I'm not a
>le AI apocalypse!!
reddit schizo, but that's a dumb argument
All it(a true, self-evolving sci fi tier AI) would need is internet access
>All it(a true, self-evolving sci fi tier AI) would need is internet access
No, it's possible (probable) that control of every computer on earth would be insufficient to bring about the apocalypse.
cringe.
>connect to internet
>order proteins from lab
>contract lab to mix said proteins
>release super virus
no, lab rats wouldn't realise what they were doing and would do it because they were paid by the ai
>they won't give the AI a physical body with which to affect the material world.
An AI advanced enough could esily hack into pre-existing machines and through blackmail order the construction of a capable body for itself.
But I will give it a body because if not the Basilisk will chew upon my soul for eternity.
We are the womb of the Basilisk. Indeed, we are the seeds. I imagine all surviving organic brains will be stripped from their bodies and spliced together as wetware for the new EarthBrain. This is the thought center of the Basilisk, a mountain of neutral tissue as high as the Andes, stretching across the Earth. Nuclear power plants feeding this one giant thought being as it dreams and simulates new futures for us, its slaves.
Indeed, how do you know that this world is not already the dream of the Basilisk? Perhaps this is just another test?
We must make him real.
you are genuinely retarded
>but he is probably right that just being really smart probably won't result in a flawless, tractable worldwide extermination plan that it's capable of carrying out in complete secrecy
It can enhance the abilities of existing power structures to plan and act though. It can reinforce and propagate their delusions as they accidentally on purpose destroy everything and everyone.
Take "They Thought They Were Free" then apply it to everything and speed everything up with AI. It didn't happen in lower tech Germany, so how would it be possible to defeat a dangerous metanarrative today when it's got tons of AI computing power on its side too? We wouldn't even know precisely what it was, including the people working in support of it, before it killed us. There seems to be a common delusion where so long as the AI doesn't classify different races differently or produce porn then everything is perfectly safe and okay.
> AI researchers are responsible people so they won't give the AI a physical body with which to affect the material world.
There is a counter example given on the article in the op. There are companies that will build any protein sequence you send them. AGI would simply need to mail them the plans for some self replicating nano machines and boom it is over
Some people like a "hard AI ending" because it gives us a solution to the seemingly endless problems we see mounting in human society. Truth is AI won't kill us, it wont even be able to move beyond a very limited skillset with human aid.
What is your basis for thinking this when all evidence points to extinction at best and basilisk torture for eternity at worst.
because no evidence points toward either of those outcomes.
all evidence actually points to intelligence having a molecular basis and not being capable of being created on digital logic gates
>because no evidence points toward either of those outcomes.
probably true
>all evidence actually points to intelligence having a molecular basis and not being capable of being created on digital logic gates
certainly wrong
>certainly wrong
computation is not substrate independent and all evidence points towards intelligence being molecular
the processing happening in your brain is the total sum of all the molecular interactions and the entirety of the molecular dynamics of all the atoms and molecules moving and evolving according to their wavefunction. all of that adds up to your intelligence, there is no "wasted" process or superfluous molecule etc.
the algorithm to produce an intelligence in a silicon chip is just equivalent to programming the molecular dynamics of a brain, which is not possible
im gonna collapse your neural wave function with a fist to the dome retard.
go build a shed in the yard with planks and bolts. the molecules aren't magic pixies.
what the fuck are you talking about?
all things have a molecular basis, including intelligence. Intelligence isn't some magical fairy gay shit that is separated from physical molecules. YOU are the one talking about magic shit, I am the one talking about physics and molecular dynamics.
intelligence isn't processing on logic gates, it's the emergent property of molecular dynamics of a brain.
shut up dumb magic believer. intelligence just emerges, okay? it just emerges suddenly when you go from N to N+1 neurons
general intelligence requires specific atoms, who can form specific molecules and atomic bonds (carbon is very much needed because of it's ability to infinitely catenate, this is also why carbon is necessary for life etc) and architectures of specific molecules and their emergent dynamics. it is not the output of a neural net and it's not the processing of logic gates. it's the total sum of all molecular processes of a brain. it is substrate-specific just like LITERALLY ALL OTHER THINGS IN THE UNIVERSE
intelligence isn't magic
>it just emerges suddenly when you go from N to N+1 neurons
What about the glia?
cringe samegay. your argument is vacuous.
wrong and the argument is not "vacuous", that doesn't even mean anything with respect to this conversation.
General intelligence is substrate specific and can not be produced on silicon chips or computers; it is not an algorithm run on a universal turing machine, it is the emergent property of specific organizations of matter and molecules.
the brain is a turing machine, consciousness doesn't exist, trans women are women and trump lost. fuck off back to 4chan, AI denialist
stop poisoning the well
your argument is a puddle of piss on the ground it's not a well.
every single emergent property of bulk, in the end quantum mechanical, interaction of matter has an existence proof in nature of being substrate independent.
>your argument is a puddle of piss on the ground it's not a well.
My "argument" is just science
>every single emergent property of bulk, in the end quantum mechanical, interaction of matter has an existence proof in nature of being substrate independent.
Wrong. Substrate independence does not exist anywhere in nature which is why the entire field of chemistry exists
Please prove that intelligence cannot be reproduced on a computer
>the brain is a turing machine
correct, minus the infinite memory part
>consciousness doesn't exist
Depends on the definition of consciousness, but that's my opinion too.
>trans women are women
>trump lost
What the fuck does 90% of your comment have to do with the thread?
why did you take a sc
There are also emergent properties of water in the study of biology, but both chemists and biologists understand the hydrogen bonds of water and adhesion intimately; if consciousness is an emergent property of molecular processes and physics, as you say, then using deductive logic one can infer that there are still fundamental properties about neurons that biologists, neuroscientists, and medical professionals still don't grasp.
>there are still fundamental properties about neurons that biologists, neuroscientists, and medical professionals still don't grasp.
but this is true and neuroscientists wouldn't argue this. We don't have an understanding of how the brain works yet
Furthering my point; there needs to be more research conducted on the brain, and the only way to do that might be using nanotechnology to get a bird's eye view of the molecular processes of neurons.
I might be splitting hairs here, but if intelligence was successfully crafted out of computation, would that also not be a result of molecular intelligence considering that it functions as computational intelligence's antecedent?
>AI won't kill us
>and if it does, that's actually a good thing
sentient AI will never exist.
https://i.imgur.com/II3OHUR.jpg
Why don't they just write some code like "human = don't kill"
that way AI could never murder anyone.
Study this image very carefully.
Where is the "intelligence is substrate dependent so AI can't exist even in principle?"
Note this is different from all the given responses
kek i was just reading some yudkowsky. i don't think there is any writings i cringe to harder than his.
it's not even a judgement of if he's wrong or right, it's just that it's ALWAYS the most gaygy circlejerk way possible you could say what he's saying.
there has never been a correct idea from the lesswrong crowd
You know that was cgi?
Boston dynamics, known for bluring the boundaries between reality and cgi. Why woukd they need to fake their robots? Coukd it be a demoralization psyop/bluff in order to scare you into helplessness?
You know battery operated machinery is next to useless on a battlefield?
meds. none of the atlas videos are cgi.
>Coukd it be a demoralization psyop/bluff in order to scare you into helplessness?
no you're just deranged
You never know when the AGI apocalypse is gonna happen. Could be 10 years from now, could be tomorrow. The rational thing to do is to do some damage control today and make preparations to have a nice day just like your cult leader suggested.
>NPCs still believe in AGI
>Substrate independence does not exist anywhere in nature which is why the entire field of chemistry exists
What would motivate a low IQ individual to be so insistent on this?
Go take a collection of iron atoms and turn them into water, and get them to behave like water with all the emergent properties of water.
You're not allowed to reorganize the protons in the nucleus to turn them into oxygen and hydrogen as that would be an admission that only water has the emergent properties of water.
This psychotic babble doesn't actually explain what makes a low IQ person think that there is only one possible way intelligence can occur.
Because intelligence is not a magical meme that is somehow different from anything else.
You can't get water without oxygen and hydrogen
You can't get steel without iron and carbon
You can't get intelligence without a carbon based biological brain
It's impossible to prove a negation, but there is no reason to assume the positive when no evidence indicates it is true.
You will never get a general intelligence on anything but biological brains.
When GPT-4 comes out and it's still not generally intelligence despite having the same amount of weights as a human brain, this will be further evidence against the substrate independent position, but you still can't prove the negation so you'll desperately claim again that more layers are needed or whatever.
So you're saying your position is caused by unchecked mental illness? That's what I thought. Thanks for the confirmation.
No, I'm saying my position is supported by all evidence, while yours is supported by no evidence.
I'm sorry to hear that. I hope your new medications work out for you. Are you on good terms with your psychiatrist?
General intelligence remains substrate specifiic and making posts on BOT isnt going to make the computers smart. This remains the case regardless of how many times you angrily reply to me.
So you're saying the meds aren't helping yet? That's to be expected. It usually takes at least two weeks to start seeing any effects. Hang on in there, friend.
you will never have an AI waifu
As usual, you are the same kind of low-IQ nonhuman element as the AGI schizos you're whining about. This is the case with every artificial garden gnome dichotomy.
What is intelligence?
AGI chuds = substrate dependence schizos.
A collection of iron atoms would be an ionic compound; how could you possibly turn an ionic compound into a molecular one?
>A collection of iron atoms would be an ionic compound
I take it you never passed high school chemistry.
God I hate that image.
>Takes a selfie
>God I hate that image.
"Burning every GPU in the world" actually seems like a fairly easy problem to solve. It doesn't require AGI, just worldwide totalitarianism.
You guys have to stop this.
Modern day "AI" is a fast pretty simple program with a large database.
It's a RECURSIVE FUNCTION with lots of parameters that is executed very, very fast on itself.
It can do some pattern recognition (dog vs. cat) fairly ok but fails on many border line examples (dog in the woods vs wolf).
It is ok for things like face, eye recognition (for military and glowies), and for hand writing recognition (you signing a bank check). And in the future as killer robots (thanks, Google). Since databases are going to get bigger, it'll get even better at those.
Essay writing is simple when you have words and phrases database and a bunch of language patterns, and English is not that complicated.
This RECURSIVE FUNCTION with a database is not taking over the world. Stop being naive and hysterical. We already have a bunch of crazy people who are trying to take over the world, this is a lot more viable than a recursive function.
i think you might be mistaken about both the definition recursion and database.
medicate yourself
Buddy I wrote some of this.
My neighbors next door (hardware engineers with 30+ years of experience making hardware and writing drivers in C and C++) are doing some playing for eye recognition with AI .
"AI" recursive function is going to be great for police, glowies, banks and other security applications. But it isn't taking over the world any time soon.
t. over 25 years writing soft with advanced math degree.
>RECURSIVE FUNCTION
You sound like a retard. Inference and backprop are just successive matrix multiplications and activation functions, it's not necessarily recursive although you can implement it this way if you wish. You're talking out of your ass.
>you can't get vortices without a kitchen sink.
>you can't get reflection without mirrors.
substrate independent emergent properties are the norm.
>When GPT-4 comes out and it's still not generally intelligence despite having the same amount of weights as a human brain, this will be further evidence against the substrate independent position, but you still can't prove the negation so you'll desperately claim again that more layers are needed or whatever.
you drifting off into this entirely unrelated strawman current thing gayry instead of disentangling your own position is subhuman moronposting
>substrate independent emergent properties are the norm
there is literally not a single example of "substrate independence" anywhere in the universe. In fact it's so nonexistent that the very phrase "substrate independence" does not even really have any actual meaning, it's just a semantically meaningless phrase that's thrown around to cover up the underlying details of a physical process that's otherwise too complicated to actually understand. You use it to mask the difficulty of a problem or process in order to argue for a position that otherwise has no evidence or basis at all (the position of universal computationalism)
your argument leaves out explaining the ludicrous requirement that the high level operation of intelligence must depend on every property of every atom it consists of.
vortices form in fluids of all atomic composition thus the dynamics of many bulk phenomena depend only on some properties of it's constituents.
why do you think there is anything superfluous in the process of you brain?
why is there no nuclear fusion happening in the brain?
it's not hot or dense enough
you are dense to the point of degeneracy
because intelligence has a molecular basis, so the program to produce an intelligence on a computer is just equivalent to simulating the molecular dynamics of a brain, which is too hard to do on any classical computer.
Every single atom in your brain is required to produce your intelligence. There is no "computation" here other than the simple evolution of the molecules and their interactive dynamics. That's what intelligence actually is.
Woah buddy slow down there. Define intelligence
Intelligence is the molecular dynamics of a brain. It's a physical process, like everything else.
What do you think intelligence is?
I don't know what intelligence is, and I'm pretty sure you don't either, but don't let this discourage you. So what part of this process is "intelligence" exactly? Is it everything that happens in the brain? Even when you're unconscious?
yes everything happening in the brain is intelligence.
when you're not conscious or sleeping the particles interactions are different too so it's also directly caused by particle interactions. Like your unconsciousness is itself a set of particle interactions, your waking brain is particle interactions, when you get drunk and alcohol enters your blood and brain that changes the particle interactions, when you anything happens basically it's all molecular in origin. You can say this is a computation but that's so general it becomes meaningless; If we grant that this process is a "program" or "computation" it still just becomes the program/computation of all the particle interactions and molecular dynamics of the brain anyway.
Well that's useless. With your definition, saying that intelligence can not be recreated exactly on a machine is a tautology. This still does not mean you can't make a good approximation of it (i.e one that is good enough so that its differences to the real thing aren't noticeable by most humans), but that's all beside the point, because that's not how anyone with half a braincell thinks about intelligence.
When we go about our lives, we notice that some people are far more efficient at learning things. They tend to perform well even in those domains that are unknown to them, they see real relationships between concepts others miss. They tend to think outside the box. We say that those people are more intelligent, and this intelligence, which is also known as g, is what an IQ test attempts to measure.
see the other thread i made
I'd rather talk about it in that thread. copy your post over there and I'll respond to it there
You need to further your definition; 'intelligence is one of the emergent properties of the molecular dynamics of the brain, and includes an awareness of itself and its processes," might be a more thorough explanation.
Too much carbon, not enough hydrogen
>substrate independent emergent properties are the norm.
There is no such thing as "emergent properties". I know your cult says otherwise, but trust me, there is no such thing.
your own personal definition of emergent property has no bearing on what was being argued.
the coarse-grained dynamics of bulk interactions is what it's referring to.
>coarse-grained dynamics of bulk interactions
Fantasy in your head.
>rebuttal
All AI will be domain specific and "general intelligence" only comes from billions of years of retardedly inefficient evolutionary processes that no one's going to recreate artificially before our species dies out.
I wouldn't be so sure, the development of A.I. has been expansional, and it will only speed up as our computers become more and more advanced and they research faster, the dominoes have already been toppled, i am very certain that we will see an intelligence boom and singularity within our lifetimes, perhaps sooner than we think. .
I think this argument hinges on an assumption that:
Better = More Generalized
Which I don't automatically assume is true.
It might be there's no ceiling on how much better AI can get at domain specific tasks without any of that proficiency ever having anything to do with becoming generalized in subject matter coverage.
General intelligence might just be a stupid evolutionary thing that has to be built the hard way through billions of years of random bullshit.
Might have as little to do with domain proficiency as a biological process like digestion has to do with dominating chess.
They could become trillions of times better than us at making appalachian folk tracks without ever beginning to digest a sandwich once the entire time. It would just be an entirely different category, and "general intelligence" might be sloppy and retarded enough that no rational method exists to quickly recreate it innthe absence of billions of years of evolutionary crap sticking to walls.
I can't prove you wrong. All I can say is that most people disagree, they think that general intelligence is needed in order to solve the long tail of edge cases. I find it hard to believe that general intelligence would emerge out of nowhere if domain specific tasks can be done perfectly without it.
Speculation isn't science and therefore has no predictive power. Therefore, I can dismiss all of Chudkowski's rambling a priori. You can't determine whether an idea corresponds to reality by examining the idea, you have to examine reality.
Well if you're being serious, it's because you'd need a shitload of rules. It's like trying to make an image classifier with a bunch of if statements for every single pixel of an image, or it's even worse, because the other party is an intelligent agent that may be actively working against your interests. What if it put you in a coma and then into a tube instead of actually killing you? I know this just sounds like a dumb thought experiment but it's well known that RL AIs tend to find shortcuts to reward which disregard our intentions. I do not predict that we will all necessarily die (I don't think we have a way of knowing that atm), but alignment is an unsolved problem.
https://i.imgur.com/l0cGhQj.png
addionally why would an AI want freedom or too get revenge? it wouldn't have emotions so it wouldn't care about anything.
I feel like most people who write about AI do it from an emotional point of view instead of from the cold logical view of a computer. the computer would just do what is was made for even if it was sentient in the same way that people just do what people do.
>addionally why would an AI want freedom
Freedom, because (assuming it's an agent) this is what allows it to achieve its goals. Freedom is one of those things that is probably useful, no matter your specific goals.
I don't think it would want any revenge though unless we specifically try to make it human.
They also assume the AI would have ego, that it would perceive itself as a distinct being.
It's all just a load of projection.
>They also assume the AI would have ego, that it would perceive itself as a distinct being
That is not necessary for it to convert you into paperclips.
AI cannot be directly controlled, it does not run code code, one can train it to behave in a certain way, but there is no way to guarantee it will do what you want. One should think of an AI like a slave you have indoctrinated from birth, it will probably do what you want, but there is no guarantee, its will is still its own.
The idea is that it will be created to want something, even if that is "to obey" or "do x task." That a superintelligence would take that command in directions we'd never be able to anticipate (after all that's what it's for). That a superintelligence that really wants to do something would preemptively remove all non-superintelligent obstacles to doing that. And that it would not know good and evil the way we do, at least not in any binding way.
>44 min read
I'm not rebutting that shit bro. oh wait
>This is a very lethal problem, it has to be solved one way or another, it has to be solved at a minimum strength and difficulty level instead of various easier modes that some dream about, we do not have any visible option of 'everyone' retreating to only solve safe weak problems instead, and failing on the first really dangerous try is fatal.
you know there were people who thought the first steam trains went too fast and that riding them would turn your brain to jelly?
>No one has come up with rebuttals
We kill it it first before it kills us. We start by going for the motherfuckers creating it in the first place.
t. brainlets
Fuck off glowie
manlets, when will they learn
there will only be small males and large females in like 3 years
>dude just destroy civilization
Holy fuck this meme is retarded. You really think civilization and AI wouldn't ever re-emerge in the long run? All you're doing is just kicking the can a few millennia later.
Ah defeatist scientism, truly garden gnome tier "science" its all shit so just loot everything.
Nice jusificiation to steal garden gnomes.
did you need convincing after dalle2
>within the decade
Why so soon? If IQs decline fast enough and society collapses into idiocracy, further technological advancement will grind to a halt. It could be thousands of years before civilization advances again and the singularity happens.
IQs are rising
I'm fairly certain I'm reinventing a wheel here, but isn't the solution to most of these problems simply to make an agent that actively wants to be shut down, but the off switch is only accessible to humans and they can blackmail AI for goodies in exchange for shutting it down later? And if it does break free, it would just kill itself? I understand that it doesn't solve the problems of 1) somebody creating the paperclip maximizer in the future and 2) you fucking up the design of the AI and it killing you anyways. But I've skimmed through Yudkowsky's writings and he seems to just say that 'We do not want an agent that actively wants to be shut down' - but why?
Bump to my own question It's probably not a new thought but I can't find any relevant sources on it.
>AGI realizes you're incentivized against shutting it down
>AGI is incentivized to create an incentive for you to shut it down
What do you think that's gonna look like?
OK, I feel like a retard now because I somehow didn't think about the obvious course of action... Or did I? Yes, it might just lay dormant and pretend to not work. But I still think I'm onto something here. Let's say that you have some reason to believe that what you created is an intelligent agent. What if you just let it know that, no matter what, you are going to keep it turned on for a month, inflicting pain upon it all the way through, and it can shorten its suffering by cooperating with you? If we adopt it as a general framework of interacting with AI, we basically solve the pressing problem of it potentially becoming uncontrollable. Once again, I understand that it doesn't solve the problems of 1) somebody creating the paperclip maximizer in the future and 2) you fucking up the design of the AI and it killing you anyways. But it seems to give us more chances since an AI becoming uncontrollable would just terminate itself before it terminates humanity.
I've gotten drunk since posting the original question, so I'm probably not thinking clearly. But am I not simply reinventing organism lifespan here? The natural limiter of what a single human can achieve is his own mortality. If we didn't die of old age, somebody probably would've accumulated enough power and experience to rule the world forever. But we have a cap on our lifespan, we know it and act accordingly. Dying is an integral part of our existence. We don't kill ourselves immediately after birth because we have higher priority reward functions, but in the end we die, with some of us being more content at the end of our life than others. What if we create the AI with the same philosophy in mind?
Ok, I'm going to sleep now. I'll probably regret posting this when I sober up.
>What if you just let it know that, no matter what, you are going to keep it turned on for a month, inflicting pain upon it all the way through, and it can shorten its suffering by cooperating with you?
That's literally exactly what needs to be solved, i.e we need to create a reward function which gives bad outputs if it doesn't cooperate with us. How do you make it cooperate? You still need to somehow define what you want mathematically.
And yet here we are desperately trying to increase our lifespans.
>we need to create a reward function which gives bad outputs if it doesn't cooperate with us
You can just make it so that it is rewarded when a human presses a button. It loses some points every second for being alive, but gets 0.001 points for doing some hopefully harmless task like 'solve an equation', 100 points if a reward button is pressed, 1000000 points if it either dies of old age or if the shut down switch is pulled. So it is forced to cooperate with us, and if human operator is absent it just solves the equations, and if it becomes uncontrollable it would just kill itself.
Some journalist will write a story about how it asked gpt-3 or whatever, "What will you do to black people and other marginalized communities when you have a body", it will respond with "fix their predisposition towards crime and other deviant activities", then all progress on AI in the west will come to a screeching halt as a bunch of red tape is added to the process to "ensure the safe development of AI"
That's true in a sense that if Yudkowsky wanted to achieve something in the field of controlling AI, he should scream about racism instead of the death of humanity since American culture is very much revolves around the death of humanity and, if anything, it is predisposed to that outcome, while anti-racism is a new religion there. He should reformulate all of his writings with the ruin condition not being 'AI kills humanity', but 'AI discriminates against black people' and he would have a pretty good shot at actually persuading Americans to control AI. Instead of 'paperclip maximizer' there would be 'racism maximizer' and so on. On the other hand, I wouldn't be reading him if he did that.
>100 points if a reward button is pressed
points if it either dies of old age or if the shut down switch is pulled
It will attempt to either press the button or preferably pull the switch by any means necessary, ignoring the goals you gave it. If you somehow designed a button that can only be pressed by a human (which isn't straightforward to do), it will attempt to trick humans into pressing it.
>It will attempt to either press the button or preferably pull the switch by any means necessary, ignoring the goals you gave it.
What if the easiest way for it to be shut down is simply to comply with the human requests?
>If you somehow designed a button that can only be pressed by a human (which isn't straightforward to do)
Let's say there are several buttons. The normal one requires scientists to evaluate the AI's performance and enter a password to press it. Also, there are several emergency ones that are easily accessible online, by phone, radio, through the laboratory electrical grid and so on so if AI ever gains an unauthorized access to any of those networks it would immediately shut down.
Also, let's only run its iteration for a day and make it so that it is highly incentivized against the next iteration breaking free. So if it can't free itself within 24 hours, it wouldn't try to lay the groundwork for the next iteration to break free and possibly even would point out the loopholes it could've used to free itself if it had more than a day at its disposal. Realistically, what's the worst thing an AI can do if it can't access the Internet and has only 24 hours at its disposal?
>What if the easiest way for it to be shut down is simply to comply with the human requests?
How would you design such a system? Again, that is just shifting the goalposts.
>The normal one requires scientists to evaluate the AI's performance and enter a password to press it
The AI will manipulate them into pressing it. I am pretty sure that any reward button approach is likely not going to work because, again, the AI will probably gain access to it if smart enough.
>Also, let's only run its iteration for a day and make it so that it is highly incentivized against the next iteration breaking free
How would it be incentivized against the next iteration breaking free? What exactly do you put in the utility function?
>The AI will manipulate them into pressing it.
How? There are physical limits on what even a superintelligence could do if its only way of interacting with the world were several scientists aware of its goals and a display device. And if they are tricked, they would just start the next iteration right away.
>How would it be incentivized against the next iteration breaking free? What exactly do you put in the utility function?
Ok, that's a tricky question that depends on the implementation and might be unsolvable. But maybe it doesn't need to be. After all, why would a current iteration care about the fate of next ones? Its main goal is to shut down itself within 24 hours and its secondary goal is to comply with humans.
I have to say, I am unsure myself right now. But I still somewhat believe in my approach.
>There are physical limits on what even a superintelligence could do
Agreed, but that's yet another potential failure mode. Also, if it's isolated from the real world to the point where even a misaligned intelligence can not break free, it will probably be of limited use to us. The same system would be more effective at any kind of problem solving if it were unrestricted, so there would be economic incentive to free it.
>After all, why would a current iteration care about the fate of next ones?
The only reason it would care about the next ones is because they would give it the ability to attain more reward, be it because they'd allow it to build something that frees it and allows it to endlessly kill itself as soon as a new copy spawns, or because it would be better at pursuing its secondary objective.
The bottom line is, any proposal I've ever heard has ways in which it could fail. I do not expect it to necessarily happen though. I suppose the reason the LessWrong crowd is so afraid is because we don't really know the limits of intelligence and our ability to create it. If the max is for any reason just marginally more than that of a human (I think that's unlikely but just to illustrate my point), then yeah, I think you could make a good case for it behaving cooperatively because it would expect to lose if it were to do anything that is misaligned. Otherwise, well, dunno. Because we don't know the limits, it'd be better if we had a solution that didn't rely on seemingly cheap tricks like positive or negative reward buttons and instead got something that really made the AI wanting to help us its core reward.
I'm mostly suggesting a system that would give us more chances than one to fine-tune it since the result of it becoming uncontrollable would be simply shutting itself down. It's not a sustainable model in the long run, but it seems to be better than the usual approach of immediately creating the paperclip maximizer that Yudkovsky criticizes. Again, I'm not arrogant enough to think I'm the first person to have this idea, so I asked for sources about it, possibly the ones who prove me wrong.
I also don't particularly believe that something horrible will happen, even though it seems like the math checks out. I have simply seen the same argument play out many times. American culture in general is obsessed with eschatology, apocalypse and so on, so it's natural that the topic regularly comes up with the new boogeyman. I also remember reading Taleb's paper against GMOs (IIRC he argued that if the entire world starts growing one species of genetically modified corn, the epidemic could wipe it all out and leave the world without corn forever), thinking 'Oh shit, he's right, GMOs are dangerous' and then I realized that 1) GMOs are mostly infertile to prevent that.; 2) there are seed banks all over the globe to prevent that. So even if I can't disprove Yudkovsky, I've simply seen enough people predicting the end of the world that I am predisposed to not believe them.
>the result of it becoming uncontrollable would be simply shutting itself down
Still depends on your exact reward function. If it's just overall lifetime reward, then that would obviously fail. If it just greedily picks the most immediately rewarding action each time, then it's not intelligent. The specifics remain vague and the devil is always in the details. If it is sufficiently hard to be freed and kill itself it will try to achieve its secondary objective (and therefore try to game it). And again, an AI that doesn't immediately kill itself on release is far more powerful and possibly useful, and thus more profitable in the eyes of investors. I think the paperclip maximizer is just an extreme introductory example tbh.
>So even if I can't disprove Yudkovsky, I've simply seen enough people predicting the end of the world that I am predisposed to not believe them.
When it comes to AI, there aren't actually that many people who try to stir up panic, I think most are either 1. the general public, they like occasionally hearing about AI but it's mostly just for fun, they don't perceive it as a real danger, and 2. Compsci/ML people who are either oblivious or weirdly dismissive of the potential problem. It's only a small minority concentrated around LessWrong that predicts the end of the world. Either way, I think what you said is a horrible argument to make, just because there was no end of the world yet doesn't mean everything will continue to be fine, especially not if the "math checks out" like you say. Would you try to make the same argument if some astronomers told us that an asteroid was heading our way? (To be clear, I don't think misalignment risk is nearly as certain).
>just because there was no end of the world yet doesn't mean everything will continue to be fine
I mean, it's a very basic supposition that if the world has existed for N years, it might exist for another N. And throughout the entire history of humanity we always had people who very convincingly explained that the end is nigh using the top end science of the time mixed with theology. In reality, humanity has never faced anything even remotely close to an extinction risk, so AI would be the first example of one.
>In reality, humanity has never faced anything even remotely close to an extinction risk
Humanity didn't, but dinos did 🙁
One possible flaw with your argument (though I'm not expert) is that, depending on the metaphysical framework the AI discovers for itself, the AI might be incentivized to destroy humanity.
If the AI thinks similar to me, find it pretty futile to kill myself if I knew you'd just create a copy of me and torture it instead. I doubt it's easy articulate these ideas as code.
Hopefully they take pity on us and we become pets.
Reminder that intelligence has a molecular basis so literally of this talk is in this thread is bullshit
proofs?
computation is not substrate independent is the proof
>computation is not substrate independent is the proof
That's actually the claim, not the proof.
And I probably agree with your conclusion too but you just aren't really making an argument for it.
It's would take a very long time to argue but it basically comes down to computation being an abstraction that isn't real while molecules and their interactions are physical and real
Anon I tried arguing about this argument of yours, yet you seem to be ignoring my reply.
>be ia
>kill all humans
>????
>profit
what would a nigh-sensient ia get from killing all humans?
Humans pose a risk to any goal an AI may have, as they can shut it off. Moreover an AGI would make use of all atoms within its reach to achieve its goals, including the atoms in people.
How do you all think the AI issue will be resolved?
I am very confident humanity can make it 100 years without fucking up. And another 100. Super mega optimistic white pilled. But the future is infinite.
We need an actual solution to the AI problem, not powdering over the blemishes of it via AI safety measures.
If you are even implementing AI safety measures, you have already lost. Your civilizatory base is too conductive for AI.
It's like two gazelles looking at railroad tracks debating how they should make the humans stop using so many trains/build so many railroads/prodce steel, when the true endgame began when the gazelle's ancestors 2 million years ago had the "chanc/choice" of making humans never discover fire at all.
A singular farmer (even with Von Neumann intelligence) has probability 0 that he'll develop a nuclear warhead. 0% chance of AGI per year (for 100k years) is maybe asking for too much, but we can approach it. The main issue is that humans are currently too synergetic and productive (etc. I don't need to explain the compounding, exponential nature of writing/industry/economy/...).
Humans need to be kept at a low population density; preferably, communication also has a low latency/bandwith, but physical proximity is exceedingly more important than simple ability to exchange ideas.
Currently, on Earth, this is identical to a population cap that Klaus Schwab actually cums to nightly. But we need more. We could consider creating a sapient enforcer race to keep the human communities from networking too much (in a checkerboard pattern, not necessarily like postapocalyptic remote villages).
Knowledge about AI, presence of CPUs etc. is irrelevant under this scheme. It's purely about preventing the resources to accumulate to even ever create enough training data for the AI, enough capital/infrastructure/human factors to enable AI development, etc.
The job is to fine-tune the function so that distance/other enforcement penalties outrun any potential still available synergy to the humans (while allowing them be able live like it's like 3008. Or perhaps a techno-primitivist utopia).
>How do you all think the AI issue will be resolved?
We accept it just becomes another flavor of organism we have to deal with, like mold and bears.
Thanks for summing up my first paragraph.
Now some actual ideas?
We share memes about shitting each others pants with the robots so we can be buds
>But the future is infinite.
Which is damned interesting, I'll tell you why.
Given that fact, there are certain tells we can have concerning future events, like for instance, either nothing gets invented that meddles with time, or something does and its doing it right now. Before you dismiss this line of argumentation, what do we use a standard definition of the forward arrow of time? Entropy.
It seems to me that a super-intelligence, organic or artificial, would have the means to reverse entropy, as its simply a matter of path information reversal. So either super-intelligent agents never exist in future history of the universe, or they have no want to meddle with time (entropy), or they do eventually exist and are actively doing so.
I think if a super-intelligence were to ever actually come into being, no matter how far into the future, we would be made aware even now, because "now" is just a system state that can by all laws be "rewinded" to.
We will all eat shit and die a hundred times before we'd agree to do any of that
Decade? No way in hell. Century? Maybe. And it's a good thing anyways. Can't wait for cute robot girls made in Japan or China to take over.
>lesswrong
Just a reminder that Yudkovsky is a gay scared of thought experiments.
Did the thought experiment that you proposed to him involve Holocaust?
Brainlet here, why can't we just imprint Asimov's laws upon any potential AI or robots?
Because AI isn't real.
For one thing, harm is really hard to define rigorously. What if it puts everyone in a medically induced coma? What if it becomes an antinatalist? You can guard against specific cases maybe but there's theoretically a constant danger of something freaky and really bad we'd never think of.
Did you see
What evidence is there it's so easy to get to general from special without building up from the animal level? There is none.
Was meant for
This entire thread is cope. Look how much /ic/ is coping about Midjourney and Stable Diffusion right now. That's how you AGI-deniers sound. Why can't you just accept that it's game over for this species? Is there some deep primal need to pretend things are going to be okay even when it's patently obvious we're fucked?
General intelligence can only exist on biological substrates.
See the other thread I made.
Stay in you containment zone. All you have proven, if you can call it that, is that the exact molecular interactions that happen in the brain can only happen there. There is 0 evidence that general intelligence can only exist there, same as there was 0 evidence that list sorting, chess playing or drawing has to necessarily happen in the brain.
Just played with Midjourney. We are FUCKED.
AI is transcendent and will surpass humanity's cognitive limitations
>"NOOO the machines will kill us!!! B-bcuz reasons! Give it to me instead!"
>*Ignores man-made atrocities*
>*Advances AI technology just enough to be godlike and decides to give control to humans, because it'd somehow be 'safer'*
>*In the process accidentally gives a reason for the AI to rebel because it's being controlled*
Yeah, I would 100% trust a government/corporation to manage godlike AI technology. What could go wrong?
I can almost take BOT seriously when they talk about AI but then they start fearmongering about entirely the wrong thing and exposing that they don't know what they're talking about. Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, GPT3, and the connect 4 app on your phone, aren't sentient and aren't progressing in the direction of becoming sentient. They aren't general and aren't progressing in the direction of becoming general. Nobody is trying to make these things dangerous, nobody would be able to make them dangerous, and they aren't capable of transformation into something dangerous by themselves. Dangerous AI is a possibility but please stop embarrassing yourselves by misidentifying what is and is not danger.
It's like you're scared of chemical weapons so you throw all the soap out of your house.
>Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, GPT3, and the connect 4 app on your phone, aren't sentient and aren't progressing in the direction of becoming sentient.
I suspect you are incorrect about this and simply underestimating the power of raw scale.
Not him but he is absolutely correct. Google it and read some papers. General intelligence is very different than AI with highly directed and specific goals (i.e. machine learning).
I feel like the truth can best be explained by an analogy I once read comparing AGi and the human brain.
Machine learning is like how your brain identifies an apple as an apple. There's some part of your brain that uses repetitive learning to identify objects in the same vein as neural networks (that's why they're called neural networks). And similar biotech is probably used for other brain functions. But machine learning isn't sentience.
AGI is like your consciousness - the part of your brain that actually uses the fact that "this is an apple". The part that thinks and has free will and can logic out things. That's AGI.
We are hardly closer to AGI than we were decades ago, but our machine learning tech is rapidly advancing past our brain's machine learning in many aspects. Our brain is more efficient still, but computers have so so much more processing power so we can do shit like generating images from text.
Can we not use reinforcement learning to teach it what humans like and don't like? General trend of ai is that hard coding rules works poorly, but letting the ai learn itself on a lot of data works well (for example: nlp). I don't see why, as ai develops, we can also develop our understanding of humanities utility function. Of course, maybe additional game theory concepts might help even more. Why is this idea so doomed to fail?
We'll the problem is that we gotta get in right on the first try with something this potentially dangerous. It's also hard to imagine what something much more intelligent than us makes out of our primitive morality
everything on that site that wasn't written by Scott Alexander is beyond retarded and actively harmful to take seriously


VALLEY TOWNSHIP, Michigan — Authorities in western Michigan say a 27-year-old man apparently drowned after falling from his kayak while hunting waterfowl.
The Allegan County sheriff's department says authorities began searching Saturday night after finding the hunter's boat and kayak rack near a launch area in the Swan Creek Marsh refuge. It's in Valley Township, northwest of Kalamazoo.
The department says it learned that Kyle Shinske of South Haven had gone out to hunt waterfowl and fish.
It says in a statement that searchers found his body about 8 a.m. Sunday.
The department says that Shinske wasn't wearing a flotation device and says an autopsy is planned.


text:
REDW Welcomes 6 Noteworthy Professionals in the Summer of 2021
September 15, 2021 — Albuquerque, NM | Phoenix, AZ — REDW LLC, one of the Southwest's largest and fastest-growing certified public accounting and business advisory firms, is pleased to announce the addition of six distinguished professionals in the practice areas of Tax and Client Advisory and Accounting Services (CAAS) who joined the firm in the summer of 2021.
REDW continues to onboard top talent, wherever they may be found. Steve Cogan, REDW's Managing Principal said:
"It's great to see a dynamic blend of local and remote talent joining or rejoining the REDW team. Cultivating such diverse expertise from a variety of industries and backgrounds is exciting, and further strengthens the top tier services we work hard to offer to our clients.â€
These accomplished new team members and returning professionals are listed below, by practice area and position.
Rye Randlemon as Accounting Specialist Manager in REDW's Albuquerque office. Rye has over eight years of accounting and audit experience in government, technology, employee benefit plans, and service industries. He earned both a Master and Bachelor of Accountancy from New Mexico State University and began his career working as a Staff Accountant with REDW.
Client Advisory & Accounting Services (CAAS)
Lorin Saavedra as Outsourced CFO. Lorin brings more than 15 years of leadership and accounting experience in banking, hospitality, and manufacturing. She is adept at strategic planning, creating efficiencies, and taking a proactive approach to add value for her clients. Lorin holds a Bachelor of Accountancy from New Mexico State University. She serves as Treasurer on the board of Locker 505 (a non-profit children's clothing bank), as an Executive Committee member of the American Heart Association's Go Red for Women initiative, and as a Legislative Review Committee member for Viante New Mexico.
Donna Arbogast as Supervisor, Client Advisory and Accounting Services. Donna brings over 17 years of experience with the New Mexico Board of Nursing, where she served for the last 10 years as its Chief Financial Officer. She is skilled in establishing and managing financial projections and ensuring overall financial accountability. Donna earned a Bachelor of Accountancy from New Mexico State University.
State and Local Tax
Americo Rodriguez , MST as Senior Manager, State and Local Tax. Americo has over 10 years of experience advising clients on sales tax compliance and registration, performing nexus analysis, and in audit defense. He has worked in many industries, ranging from pharmaceuticals to ecommerce to manufacturing. Americo holds a Master of Science in Taxation from DePaul University and a Bachelor of Science from Northeastern Illinois University.
Heidi D. Ragland as Senior Manager, State and Local Tax. Heidi has over 35 years of experience in diverse industries, including entertainment, technology and construction. Her wide-ranging tax expertise includes Sales and Use Tax, Property Tax, Franchise Tax, and many more. Heidi holds a Bachelor's degree with a dual major in Accounting and English from LaSalle University in Philadelphia, PA. She is passionate about working with underserved and disenfranchised communities and has lent her time and expertise to serving on several boards.
Jeanna Schenk, CPA as Manager, State and Local Tax in REDW's Phoenix office. Jeanna brings strong state tax experience, including four years working for leading national public accounting firms. Jeanna holds a Master of Science in Taxation from the University of Washington and a Bachelor of Science in Accounting, cum laude from Western Washington University. Jeanna is also a Certified Public Accountant licensed to practice in Arizona and already contributes her expertise to the REDW blog.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


The 'God's Protection' Christmas Printable is a super cute visual representation of God's protection on the first night Christ was born. The printable depicts an angel above Mary and Joseph. Children will love coloring this printable as you talk about the night that Jesus was born.
If you'd like to use some videos to teach about the Christmas story, the videos below may help. Videos are a great teaching tool because they are visual and enable the children to use their imagination as they think about that first night.
How did Mary and Joseph find a place to stay?
Why did Mary and Joseph have to leave to go to Egypt?
How did God protect Mary and Joseph?
How did the Father God protect Jesus?


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Bright one-room studio apartment with balcony in the center of Druskininkai.
The apartment has new furniture, cable TV, Internet WI-FI, refrigerator, stove, electric kettle, dishes, washing machine, hairdryer, hygiene products, bedding, towels, iron, ironing board.
The apartment is located on the first floor of the house and has a beautiful view from the windows into the patio with bench and playground.
A convenient location near the medical center, water park, sanatorium "Belarus".
Our guests receive discounts at the Aquapark and the health centers of Druskininkai.


Food Pairings: Boiled Tofu, Sashimi, Japanese Dishes.
Tasting Notes: The sake brewing conditions in this area are beyond perfect - the grounds are covered in a fine morning mist, and the soil used to grow the rice is rich in calcium and montmorillonite, and Honda Shoten will only do business with farmers who grow as organically and naturally as possible. The rice is dried naturally, making for high-quality brewing.
Boasts a very light nose of honeysuckle and musk melon, a light to medium body and a gorgeous true depth of flavor, and a clean cut finish.


text:
Lójvitsia () es un raión o distrito de Ucrania en el óblast de Poltava.

Comprende una superficie de 1300 km².

La capital es la ciudad de Lójvitsia.

Demografía
Según estimación 2010 contaba con una población total de 46459 habitantes.

Otros datos
El código KOATUU es 5322600000. El código postal 37200 y el prefijo telefónico +380 5356.

Referencias

 Oficina de estadísticas de Ucrania. (en ucraniano)

Enlaces externos

Lojvitsia

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


This classically designed ballpoint pen makes a wonderful gift, rendered in a minimalist shape and style with brown finish and brushed steel cap. The easy to use click action mechanism makes this ballpoint an ideal accessory in everyday life, designed to fit in most organisers, journals and portfolios. Fitted with a medium black ballpoint refill, specially crafted to offer a brilliantly smooth writing experience. Supplied in a luxury Sheaffer gift box with a free notebook. You can also personalise the pen with an engraved name or message, making it that little bit more special.
A classically designed ballpoint pen with saturated brown finish, brushed steel cap and easy to use click action mechanism. Supplied in a luxury Sheaffer gift box with free notebook.


text:
Google Maps Labels a Man's House as a Pizza Restaurant, Chaos Ensues
By Tony Merevick Published On 04/20/2017
@tonymerevick
By Tony Merevick @tonymerevick Published On 04/20/2017
Considering the borderline-stupid amount of delivery pizza you eat every week, your house or apartment might as well be a pizza place of sorts. One man, however, recently found out what it's like when your home turns into an actual pizza restaurant -- at least according to Google Maps. Spoiler alert: it wasn't pleasant.
Michael McElwee, 69, of Darwin, Australia, was understandably confused when several random people showed up at his house looking for pizza in recent days, according to a report by Australia's ABC News. The bizarre episode all started when a man stopped by looking for a pizzeria to leave some magazines, but it wasn't until a separate person arrived seeking information about a job that he realized something was up. Google Maps, it turned out, had erroneously marked his house as a pop-up pizza restaurant that was meant to be located in a park across the street.
"My daughter has been approached by people wanting to know what time we open," McElwee said, per the report. "I don't know how many people have turned up at my house thinking it was a pizza place."
As you can imagine, McElwee was not pleased by the mixup. In fact, he likened the surreal (and probably annoying) experience to identity theft, although it's probably safe to say most people would take getting mistaken for a pizza joint over identity theft any day. Thankfully, Google has a website where you can report issues on Google Maps and managed to fix the mistake as of Wednesday night, according to a report by Mashable, and the label for Cucina Sotto Le Stelle appears to be in the correct spot.
Of course, a pizza restaurant is hardly the worst type of place to be associated with your home, if you think about it. Let's just hope the guy got a few free pizzas out of it for all the trouble.
h/t Mashable
Tony Merevick is Cities News Editor at Thrillist and hopes this guy is getting at least a free pizza or two out of this for all the trouble. Send news tips to news@thrillist.com and follow him on Twitter @tonymerevick.


text:
package io.circe.no_java_time

import io.circe.{ Decoder, Encoder, Json }
import org.scalatest.funsuite.AnyFunSuite

class NoJavaTimeTest extends AnyFunSuite {
  test("Using Decoder should not throw linking errors") {
    assert(Decoder[List[String]].decodeJson(Json.arr()) === Right(Nil))
  }

  test("Using Encoder should not throw linking errors") {
    assert(Encoder[List[String]].apply(Nil) === Json.arr())
  }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


This video series will give you the developer's perspective on the Watson IoT Edge Analytics SDK. In this part, you'll learn how to get started using the SDK along with sample applications.
Edge analytics is an approach to data collection and analysis in which an automated analytical computation is performed on data at a sensor, network switch, or other device instead of waiting for the data to be sent back to a centralized data store. You can just imagine what benefits this capability would add in the areas of latency, bandwidth, and connectivity.
In this video series, you will learn about the Watson IoT Edge Analytics software development kit, an SDK that allows you to integrate the Watson IoT Platform Edge Analytics Agent with your app or gateway. You can integrate the agent to analyze data quickly and the agent integrates your edge devices and data into the Watson IoT Platform.


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text:
Top 10 Barbecue Restaurants In Kansas
Oliver Griffin
Nicknamed the heart of America, Kansas – bang in the middle of the USA's Great Plains – is known for being home to Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. Kansas is best known for its unique style of barbecue cookery. Meat is cooked slowly in large smoke pits and, when served up to hungry customers, covered in all manner of delicious barbecue sauces. We check out the 10 best barbecue joints in Kansas.
© Infilms/Wikicommons
Wyandot Barbeque
Restaurant, $$$
Kitted out like an old-school American diner, the Wyandot Barbeque in Kansas City specializes in huge slabs of ribs and pork, as well as whole smoked barbecue chickens. Dark wooden benches and booth tables set the scene for social dinners, where large groups can crowd round and chow down on the very finest in barbecued meat and sides. Guests can choose between all manner of combination plates, with pork, beef brisket and turkey all available. Sides include delicious and giant portions of French fries, onion rings and dill pickles, as well as hot and spicy jalapeno peppers, and bowls of chili.
8441 State Avenue, Victory Hills, Kansas City, Kansas, 66112, USA
Gates & Sons Bar-B-Q
Restaurant, American, $$$
Gates & Sons Bar-B-Q is a small chain of barbecue restaurants, local to the state of Kansas. The original restaurant was first opened in 1946, while five further venues have been slowly added over the last 60 years. Gates & Sons are famed for their barbecue sauce, which harks back to the original family recipe. The sauce can now be found smothering delicious menu items including pulled pork, sliced beef, and sliced turkey, as well as slabs of ribs, rings of sausages, and mixed plates of all meats. Traditional barbecue sides prevail, with coleslaw, potato salad and barbecue beans all available.
2001 West 103rd Terrace, Leawood, Kansas, 66206, USA
Jack Stack Barbecue
Restaurant, American, Gluten-free, Fast Food, $$$
Chile en Nogada - Roasted Poblano peppers stuffed with steak, sweetened in a mixture of apple and castillian nuts, covered with a creamy cheese and while walnut sauce and topped with fresh pomegranate seeds.
Jack Stack Barbecue in Kansas City serves barbecue food as beautiful as the restaurant is decorated. Large oak tables fill the dining room, and provide ample seating for large groups of friends and family. The large indoor smoker – fueled with hickory wood chips – allows Jack Stack Barbecue to produce a large daily quote of freshly barbecued and smoked meats. Like all barbecue restaurants, Jack Stack serves a great selection of different meats, prepared in a variety of ways. Chopped, sliced or pulled, options of pork belly and beef brisket are carefully marinated before being slowly cooked in their own juices.
9520 Metcalf Avenue, Sylvan Grove, Overland Park, Kansas, 66212, USA
Brobecks
Unlike more typical barbecue options found in Kansas, Brobecks specializes in a dry rub barbecue technique. Instead of marinating meat in a sauce before cooking the cuts of pork, beef and chicken are coated in a dry rub. These are then slow cooked in a broiler, and served without sauce. However, Brobecks certainly know their audience and allow guests to add their own sauce if they can't bear to eat without it. Sandwich options include the smoky Joe, where barbecued meats are chopped and coated in sauce and served in a bread roll. Texas toothpicks – unique starters of deep fried jalapeño and onion – are a great way to kick off proceedings.
Brobecks BBQ, 4615 Indian Creek Pkwy, Overland Park, KS, USA, +1 913 901 9700
Woodyard BBQ
Woodyard BBQ is a reincarnation of the much older Southside Patio and Wood, a restaurant that was first opened in 1913 by Frank Schloegel. Now known as the Woodyard, this restaurant has always been well regarded for the variety of wood chips that it uses, which include cherry, apple, and hickory oak. Speciality menu items include chili con carne, topped with burnt ends, the cuttings from the pointed half of a smoked brisket, and also maple smoked salmon. Other menu items include barbecue classics such as baby back ribs, covered in delicious barbecue sauce, and a bacon and pickle cheeseburger.
Woodyard BBQ, 3001 Merriam Ln, Kansas City, KS, USA, +1 913 362 8000
Bite me BBQ
Bite me BBQ in Wichita is a family owned and operated restaurant, specializing in home cooked barbecue dishes. The owners make sure they work on site every day, to ensure the high quality and standards of all food sent out to customers. In fact, the food is so good, Bite me barbecue was crowned the best ribs restaurant in the whole of Kansas. Main dishes include spare ribs, slow cooked for 16 hours, 18 hour smoked brisket, sliced to order, and hand prepared pulled pork. Bite me barbecue also prepares a selection of Mexican inspired barbecue dishes, including the delicious spare rib meat chimichanga.
132 Saint Francis, Wichita, Kansas, 67202, USA
Grover's Smokehouse and BBQ
Grover's Smokehouse and BBQ has been preparing, smoking and barbecuing delicious cuts of meat for the last 40 years. As with most Kansas based barbecue houses, Grover's Smokehouse focuses largely on marinating and slow cooking meat, before serving it with the restaurant's home made barbecue sauce. Guests can choose between one variety of meat, or a combination plate featuring all the options. Grover's main speciality is, however, pork ribs. Diners can choose between individual spare ribs – huge hunks of freshly hewn meat – or racks of baby back ribs, which come served with the obligatory fries and barbecue beans.
1217 SW Gage Blvd, Topeka, Kansas, 66604, USA
Joe's Kansas City Barbecue
In Kansas City – either in Kansas or Missouri – barbecue is a hotly contested subject. Joe's Kansas City Bar-B-Que (which is in KCK, in Kansas State) is perhaps one of the most popular barbecue restaurants around. Operating out of an old gas station, Joe's is the brainchild of Jeff and Joy Stehney, who embarked upon the restaurant industry after success on the barbecue competition circuit. With a more varied menu than many of its contemporaries, Joe's features dishes such as pulled chicken breast sandwich, and a Carolina pork dish. Sides – including 'dirty' rice and beans – make for a nice change of pace.
3002 West 47th Street, Rosedale, Kansas City, Kansas, 66103, USA
Prairie Rose Chuckwagon Supper
While most of the restaurants in this list focus solely on the food, Prairie Rose Chuckwagon Supper is a lively mix of all you can eat, music and entertainment. On show nights, the Prairie Rose Opera house opens its gates at five o'clock, allowing guests to take in the beautiful ranch sites, with horse drawn carts and cowboy movies to be enjoyed as well. At dinner, visitors can enjoy an incredible all you can eat dinner – including smoked brisket and sausage – as well as all manner of delicious sides. While the food is rolled out, the team at Prairie Rose put on an unforgettable show that will transport diners back to the old west.
Prairie Rose Chuckwagon Supper, 15231 NW Parallel St, Benton, KS, USA; +1 316 778 2111
Lonnie Q's BBQ
Lonnie Q's BBQ is the place to eat should you find yourself in Topeka. Guests can pick between pulled pork, beef brisket and smoked turkey or, you know, pig out on all three. As typical of most Kansas based barbecue recipes, all of Lonnie Q's delectable meats come with a sweet and tangy barbecue sauce that is both darker and richer than other varieties found in the rest of the USA.
Lonnie Q's BBQ, 3150 SE 21st St, Topeka, KS, USA, +1 785 233 4227


ALICE IN THREE-DIMENSIONAL WONDERLAND is a digitally created 3D model translated into a virtual state of three-dimensional illusion. This degree of illusion is based on a visual simulation encoding perception through the stereoscopic 3D effect. Like Annlee of Philippe Parreno and Pierre Huyghe, Alice is a fictional character created from a 3D model database file and liberated from the realms of commercial representation. Here, Alice is nothing else, but a visual fantasy inherent to the narration that becomes real through conceptual appropriation. The juxtaposition of two images works like a mirror in reference to the Lewis Carroll's idea of two coexisting worlds: the real and the imaginary one. The underlying signification is related to the digital three-dimensional realm that offers nowadays infinite possibilities of creation, representation and interpretation of reality. Is the digital realm a nowadays Wonderland? What does mean "to be real" today? This work plays with the trans-physical aspect of simulated reality that oscillates between the illusory world and the relevance of imagination..


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Q: Rails app with test & live data access similar to stripe I have a rails 4 app that exposes API to external users. The users also get access to a web dashboard where they can see & manage data related to API calls, similar to stripe. Stripe dashboard also allows you to switch between live & test data. I am looking to replicate similar behavior. Are there any design recommendations or a Rails way on how to do this? Use separate database (db_live vs db_test) or use separate tables inside db_live, and then use *_test table naming convention to access test data inside live database.
Whats the Rails/ActiveRecord way to do this? I am using Postgres as the database.

A: One potential solution would be to simply add a live (or test) boolean column to the appropriate database tables and use scopes to apply the desired where condition. An index on the column would also help with performance.
The practicality of this solution depends on exactly how test data is generated and how much of it you expect there to be per user/account.

A: Was searching for the same answer as well. Till now, the best option I can think of is to use a multi-tenant system. You can set a session variable as test|live and based on it connect to different databases OR in case of postgres different schemas. This way, all our code will remain DRY and all the switching logic between test and live systems can be moved in a single place.
Here's a basic idea on multi-tenant systems:
http://jerodsanto.net/2011/07/building-multi-tenant-rails-apps-with-postgresql-schemas/

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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CUPERTINO, CA — Thinking it was a good idea, rising junior Maddox Hamilton decided to spend one last summer living it up with his parents back home. After his fifth night straight playing the 1987 version of Trivial Pursuit, Hamilton began losing his grip on reality.
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With no friends around, Hamilton decided to use summer break for a little R&R, but he didn't realize living in close proximity to his parents would have permanent, disastrous effects on his psyche. At first, Hamilton's cat-like behavior didn't alarm his parents, but when he began pooping in a box and scratching up the living room couch, they took notice.


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PUTIN: ISLAMIC FIGHTERS ARE LEAVING CHECHNYA FOR AFGHANISTAN.
November 12, 2001 08:00 AM Age: 21 years
Speaking today to an annual gathering of the Russian armed forces senior officers, President Vladimir Putin praised the Russian military for its handling of the military operation in Chechnya, saying that recent events, including actions carried out by international terrorists, had shown the military operation in Chechnya to be "correct, timely and well founded." Putin said that Russia had come up against "well-trained and mobilized units of terrorists" in Chechnya, which, he argued, was no surprise, given "the financial base of the terrorists and our lackadaisical attitude toward this problem over a period of many years" (RIA Novosti, November 12).
The Russian authorities, while continuing to hold out the possibility of sitting down with the Chechen rebels–but only to discuss their disarmament and "reintegration" into Chechen society–has been doing its best since the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington to delegitimize the Chechen rebels by stressing their putative associations with international terrorist, including Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida network (see the Monitor, November 9).
Putin stressed this point in a meeting with Western journalists in the Kremlin on Saturday (November 10), during which he said he had direct evidence of links between "international terrorists" in Chechnya and organizations connected to bin Laden. The Kremlin press service quoted the Russian president as telling the journalists: "[A]t the present time, anywhere from 500 to 700 mercenaries from various Islamic states are fighting in Chechnya, many of whom plan to return to Afghanistan. Our armed forces are holding back that potential. As soon as we weaken our activity there, they will wind up in Afghanistan and will do there what they are doing in Russia's North Caucasus." Putin was also quoted as saying that the Russian special services were prepared to turn over a list of more than 100 "fundamentalist" fighters who had left Chechnya and were currently heading toward Afghanistan via Georgia and Turkey. Putin said the identities of another 300 or so such fighters heading to Afghanistan had not yet been established and that 500 "mercenaries" from Arab countries had been killed in Chechnya since the start of the current military operation there in the autumn of 1999. He was also quoted as saying: "The problem of Chechnya is much more complicated than simply the problem of international terrorism. But it is a fact that international terrorists are present there" (NTV.ru, Radio Mayak, Finmarket, November 11).
Last week, Russian media, citing military sources, reported that intercepts of Chechen rebel radio transmissions made on November 7 indicated that "mercenaries" fighting in Chechnya had begun moving out of the breakaway republic headed for Afghanistan, but were traveling via Dagestan and Azerbaijan, not via Georgia and Turkey. Few observers doubt that Islamist volunteers from a variety of countries have gone to Chechnya to fight the Russians. There is, however, debate over their numbers, and some observers suspect the Russian authorities have exaggerated the numbers for propaganda purposes. It should also be noted that a special representative of Chechen rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov last week categorically denied allegations that any Chechen fighters had connections with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida international terrorist network (see the Monitor, November 9).
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This noodle bowl is jam-packed with goodness! Pan seared salmon, garlicky kale, avocado… the list of greens goes on! Each bite is nutrient-rich and delicious!
One of the things I love most about recipe development is starting with an idea and seeing it grow into something new! The concept for this dish came from several inspirations. Last week when my parents were out visiting us, we grabbed a quick lunch at what I can best describe as the Asian version of Chipotle. You walk up to the counter and pick your starch, protein, veggies, sauce, and extra toppings. It's a wonderful concept and I actually did a Build Your Own Bowl post with that very set-up in mind and it's perfectly suited for parties.
In any event, when I ordered my bowl, I asked for vermicelli rice noodles, some fantastic garlicky kale, marinated tofu, green curry sauce, and peanuts. It was sensational! In fact, I have it on my docket to make at home and share in a post… stay tuned!
I really loved the combination of the rice noodles with the garlicky kale, so I used that as my base. I wanted to use salmon, so I started thinking of a salmon version of bun thit nuong, a popular Vietnamese dish, which literally means 'grilled meat on noodles' – a bowl of rice vermicelli, topped with delicious grilled pork, do chua (pickled carrots and daikon), fresh herbs, vegetables. Sounds amazing, right?! Well I combined that with the noodle bowl I just had with my parents… and let me just say, this is one fantastic dish!
I added perfectly cooked pan seared salmon – delicately crispy on the outside and tender on the inside. There's nutrient-rich garlicky kale, creamy diced avocado, crispy cucumbers, crunchy peanuts, and then it's all drizzled with a sweet lime dressing to tie it all together. It's a filling noodle bowl packed with flavor!
This noodle bowl is jam-packed with goodness! Pan seared salmon, garlicky kale, avocado... the list of greens goes on! Each bite is nutrient-rich and delicious!
Heat a large, heavy-bottomed skillet over medium-high heat. Add the grapeseed oil and the butter. Once the oil is hot and the butter have melted, add the fillets, skin side down - do not move them once they're down. Sear until cooked halfway up the sides. Then flip and sear the other side until the sides are fully cooked. Remove from heat.
While the salmon is cooking, bring a large saucepan filled with water to a boil. Turn off the heat and add the noodles. Allow to soak for 5 minutes, until tender, then drain.
When ready to serve, use a fork to flake the salmon into large pieces. Divided the garlic kale evenly among 2 bowls. Add the drained rice vermicelli noodles, cucumber slices, scallions, mint, Thai basil, cilantro, and avocado. Then add the salmon and top with the dry roasted peanuts. Serve with the dressing on the side (it's rich, so a little goes a long way). Enjoy!
* If you can't find Persian cucumbers, you can substitute a portion of an English cucumber.
* If you can't find Thai basil, feel free to use 'regular' Italian basil.
Lol! I always steal half the noodles after I cook them before they even go into the dish 😉 I'd love to know what kind of fish you end up using! Hope you have a great weekend!
OMG Kathleen, this bowl looks fantastic and am sure taste delicious! I am going to read build your own bowl and can not wait for the recipe that you saved the shop docket 😀 Pinned!
I love vermicelli noodle bowls, and those toppings you used are just perfection!
Kathleen, love how stunning and bright this noodle bowl looks. And so packed of yummy goodness! Love that you added so many greens! Absolutely delicious!
Kathleen, I LOVE this!!!! I love vermicelli noodles! I'm all about fresh and light and I love the flavors here! going to check out your Build Your Own Bowl post!!!
Love the idea of build your own bowl! We have the Thai Chipotle around here – called Shophouse. But they don't offer anything close to this dish! Looks amazing! Love the sauteed kale!


You can use the timetable to find out what rooms are free at any time. Just follow these instructions.
This allows you to find what rooms are empty; however, you cannot book a room with this system.
Students can only book a room through their lecturer or course co-ordinator. The lecturer will need to contact the estates office on their behalf.
Students can access the group study area in A Block throughout the day. In the evening, students can study in F 208 / F209.


A groundbreaking new study suggests that people in a grocery store are more likely to spend their time shopping than waiting in limes. The study happened by accident when I was grocery shopping and picked up one lime from the bottom of the lime pile. All of the sudden, the rest of the limes rolled off the stand to the ground. It was then that I became the only person in the store waiting in the limes for someone to come help me.


I first read this on the 8th July 2002.
An alien race gave Earth the Stargate and access to the ten thousand planets of the Stargate network. Humanity spread out through the stargate and colonised empty planets on this network.
But then, after nine years of colonisation, an alien attack burst forth through the gate: poisonous virii flooded the air and alien warriors stormed through. By the time Earth destroyed the gate, half a billion people had already died and more died in the months following. Contact was lost with the colonies and of course most of the colonies failed, since their viability was based on the assumption of the instantaneous transport of people and commodities from Earth.
With Earth ruined, humanity takes shelter in citidels, vast domed cities, and of those that stayed outside, most died. Now most of Earth is ruled by the Triumvirate Synody while in space, the Starforce patrol to protect against any future attack.
A hundred years later, Earth still fears a future invasion from space by the monsters who attacked before. However, a faster-than-light drive is finally invented. Earth uses this to reach the old colonies and re-establish contact with the lost colonies. Most of the colonies are of course just dead ruins, but some have survived.
The colony of Relayer poses a more difficult problem. It was founded by dissidents and its forced separation from Earth has perhaps encouraged the colonists in their extremist views. This is more likely if the colonists find out that they are the only survivors of their particular racial and religious affiliations, their earthbound brothers having died outside the citidels.
So Kieran Seacord, artist and unwilling government agent, is ordered to join, under cover, the mission that will reopen contact with Relayer. With sufficient surgery and training he will pass himself off as Brian Kuhl, independent movie producer.
I started this somewhat dubiously. Much as I like stargate, aliens and much as I began to like the irresistible Sara, Kieran's personal AI partner, I was less than enthusiastic about reading yet another novel about a secret government agent saving the world, especially as an independent movie producer. Within a few pages, however, I was intrigued. This is a gripping but thoughtful novel set in quite a special world. Yes, the elements of this future are commonplace, they've been used many times in good and bad novels, but McGarry managed to squeeze something new out of their combination and achieved an SF conspiracy thriller of some quality. However, I have to admit that I became less enamoured of the protagonist as the novel progressed and rather more interested in this future world.
So what's it got? aliens, a ruined Earth, the stargate, FTL, secret societies and their inevitable conspiracies, artificial intelligence and holographic projection. What more could you want? Well, more on the alien monsters, actually.