The Beginnings of Brain Implants & Artificial Intelligence. . .

BBC NEWS | Technology | Mouse brain simulated on computer

This is the first necessary, but not sufficient step towards the creation both of artificial intelligence, but also brain tissue-computer chip interfacing. This last presents the possibility of being able to "download" entire sections of world history, quantum mechanics, or learn a new language relatively effortlessly.

Of course Terminator predicted that AI would spontaneously generate and become a threat to humanity on August 29, 1997. We've made it 10 years past that deadline, and I'm not sure how to feel about the advent of AIs with complex reasoning skills. Its possible that their emergence will cement the current social strata and hinder vertical income movement.

From the BBC article:

US researchers have simulated half a virtual mouse brain on a supercomputer.
The scientists ran a "cortical simulator" that was as big and as complex as half of a mouse brain on the BlueGene L supercomputer.
In other smaller simulations the researchers say they have seen characteristics of thought patterns observed in real mouse brains.
Now the team is tuning the simulation to make it run faster and to make it more like a real mouse brain.

Potentially scary stuff. How do our politics catch up with such potential social change? How will the current faux left-right structure be replace by a dominant, shared national ideology that could be effortlessly transmitted to anyone by virtue of a brain-computer automatic "update." How do such advances interact with advances in biotechnology and is there some type of possible synergy.

Looks like 20th Century Science Fiction may eventually become 21st Century science and consumer goods.

Gotta Love the Post-Modernism of Robotics Ethics Laws Based on Asimov

The tradition of SciFi writers predicting the future continues and has now advanced from Jules Verne to Isaac Asimov. It'll be interesting to see how long it takes to get to some of the things Heinlein predicted.

That said there is something vaguely creepy about an entire national obsession with robots and the need for a nation to actually have a robotic ethics codes. Even the Europeans are getting in on the act. Though it does make practical sense for nations whose populations are imploding. However, it seems premature to establish robotic ethics at all before any of them pass the Turing test.

The most interesting implications of robotics combined w/limited AI are those related to creating sex robots. And all new successful technology from the VCR to the internet has been driven through its applicability to pornography (and making its use more anonymous). If robots are to become commonplace this is the most profitable place for manufacturers/researchers to start. And regardless of what I think, it's only a matter of time before some company starts doing this. Most likely Korea or Japan due to the population pressures mentioned above (which is getting worse due to the aborting of what would be female children in those cultures - we're actually witnessing cultural suicide, from a detached perspective, it would make an excellent PhD thesis).

The positive aspects the spread of sex robots could virtually eliminate trafficking in women and sexual slavery. This has enormous potential to reduce human rights abuses and vastly improve the lives of women around the world since sexual slavery would become comparatively more expensive.

Of course, despite these positive cultural impacts, the christianists likely will rise up in outraged opposition. I'm sure they'll find some obscure Biblical passage to justify opposing another form of sexual release. More likely however, they'll just trot out the chestnut about Onan. Any literate reader of Scripture would realize his punishment was due to "gaming the system" to keep fucking his sister-in-law - which Hebrew law condoned in order to give her a son, but which activity would have to stop once she became pregnant - not for having sex that didn't result in conception (even the Song of Songs praises sexuality) which as become the justification for opposing birth control etc.