I Like a Laugh

On the Extropians mailing list, the usual discussion about the safe introduction of superintelligent AI into the world governing structure was ongoing. Someone opined that a friendly superintelligent machine could advise humans on how to run the world, rather than having to do it directly.

Bob Kaymich had a great response:

We've been attempting a simulation of the prototype where the world leader is a human and his advisor is 100 times as intelligent. In this experiment, we have used a smart human to simulate the android.

This is called the Bush/Rove experiment.

How do you think it has worked out so far?

Yeah, best let the computers run things.

Pretty Damn Good.

I just saw part 1 of the BBC "Hogfather" special, based on Terry Pratchet's book of the same name. Brilliant. I can hardly wait to watch part two tomorrow.

Retrogenetic Vampire Reconstruction.

I just listened to this wonderful lecture which is a very tongue-in-cheek account of how an unethical cyberpunk-style corporation discovered the gene complex that causes vampirism, their attempts to exploit it, and their hopes for profit.

Its all done in flash, and its mostly a voice-over with slides, so be warned. I found it immensely entertaining though. Oh, its also quite long. My guess is about 20 minutes.

Aparently this is background material for a recently released SF novel: Blindsight by Peter Watts. There's a review of the book here.

Diabetes Breakthrough.

Its still all preliminary, of course, and there could be any number of problems that make this treatment fail to work on humans, but scientists in Toronto have managed to devise a treatment for mice that completely 'cures' diabetes for months at a time. Reading the summary, its hard to figure out how this might work, or how it could lead to a permanent cure as some folks are speculating. I suppose one could read the actual journal paper, but I'm certainly not qualified to judge such matters even then.