Mind children
by Hans Moravec · first published 1988
13mentions
1recommended by
9HN commenters
2010–2026first – last mentioned
11% recommend89% neutral
Affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
Related books
2014–2026Two Faces of Tomorrow
James P. Hogan
Recommended by 7 · mentioned by 97 recommend · 9 mention7 recommend · 97 recommend
2014–2026Superintelligence
Nick Bostrom
Recommended by 92 · mentioned by 17892 recommend · 178 mention92 recommend · 17892 recommend
2007–2026The Machine Stops
E. M. Forster
Recommended by 78 · mentioned by 14078 recommend · 140 mention78 recommend · 14078 recommend
If you want to feel happy again read “Robot” or "Mind Children” by Hans Moravec. He has some pretty good arguments based on human vision that support a AGI around 2030 to 2040 assuming Moore’s Law (the general not specific law) hold.
on “Peter Thiel Is Wrong About the Future” ↗…99.9% FICA, paying social security to everyone at birth. This scenario has been covered by quite a few "post-work" authors, who look at humans returning to a hunter-gather society. See Hans Moravec in _Mind Children_ for example. We used to walk around and these marvelous automated machines produced everything for us: nuts and fruits from trees, free for the picking. In the future, we'll walk around, and robots…
on “This Isn't Capitalism, It's Growthism, and It's Bad for Us” ↗That theme is explored in Hans Moravec's books: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Moravec "In his 1988 book Mind Children (ISBN 0674576187), Moravec outlines Moore's law and predictions about the future of artificial life. Moravec outlines a timeline and a scenario in this regard,[6][7] in that the robots will evolve into…
on “A Simple Algorithm That Ants Use to Build Bridges” ↗…worker supporting 10 retirees, you have 1 robot, or 1 AI supporting hundreds of "retirees" (from birth) using "wages" that are no longer paid to the robot (labor), but to the capitalist. Hans Moravec in _Mind Children_ outlined a version of this 20 years in how increasing productivity from automation will gradually produce a society that looks more like a hunter gather society and less than an industrial one, in that…
on “Economic Inequality: The Simplified Version” ↗…Addictiveness", "A Group is its Own Worst Enemy", "The Cyber Effect", and so on). I spent a year hanging around Hans Moravec's robotics lab (at the CMU Robotics Institute) in the mid 1980s, when he was writing "Mind Children". While he is a brilliant and well-meaning person, my concern became that Mind Children could wipe out humanity like many a stormy adolescent with parental issues and only regret it late. Or, alternatively,…
on “The Last Invention of Man” ↗Hans Moravec wrote a book, _Mind Children_, in which he provided a thought experiment where consciousness could be transfered even by the standards of a process-partisan (as opposed to pattern partisans, for whom every sufficiently like mind…
on “In the Singularity Movement, Humans Are So Yesterday” ↗…up massively on the owners of the robots and other capital to provide all of the retirees a basic income? Hans Moravec, who ran the CMU robotics department, pointed out these trends in his 1988 book _Mind Children_ and what the end game would be. My fear about the unfunded liabilities argument is that it appears to be the new talking point of Trump and Fox News, and rather than see the writing on the wall with…
on “Stocks Off Sharply as Market Upheaval Grows” ↗While that's unkind to philosophers Bostrom is mostly summarizing Moravec's thinking which was published in the 1990 book Mind Children. Moravec is a tech guy who built a robot for his 1980 PhD at Stanford and went on to be a professor of Robotics.
on “How Long Before Superintelligence? (1997)” ↗Interesting, thanks! That is different to the story i remember, but it's possible that i remember incorrectly, or read an incorrect explanation. I believe that i read about this episode in Hans Moravec's book 'Mind Children'. I can see in Google Books that chapter 5 is on 'Wildlife', and there is a section 'Spontaneous Generation', which promises to talk about a "software parasite" which emerged naturally in the ARPAnet…
on “Level 3 Global Outage” ↗Moravec also wrote a book much along these lines in the late 80's (Mind Children). If I recall correctly, a good part of it was also about the idea of "transferring" human consciousness into a machine "host". The idea being that a sufficiently advanced computer would be able to somehow…
on “When will computer hardware match the human brain? (1998)” ↗Hans Moravec had a suggestion on how to do this in Mind Children: instead of examining the whole brain, you measure a layer, then replace it, layer by layer, until the last. There is never a copy and an original, it's just a ship of theseus self where the neurons are…
on “‘With brain preservation, nobody has to die’” ↗Many have predicted the singularity, and I found this to be a useful take. I do note that Hans Moravec predicted in 1988's "Mind Children" that "computers suitable for humanlike robots will appear in the 2020s", which is not completely wrong. He also argued that computing power would continue growing exponentially and that machines would…
on “The Singularity will occur on a Tuesday” ↗…all?) robotics researchers there then thought giving robots guns was a dumb idea. There were also researchers -- especially in Hans' lab -- who thought robots would and even should surpass humanity as "Mind Children". But I wondered if even that positive aspiration would really work out as well as some hoped. Since then, I've spent a lot of time thinking about the future of robotics and humanity, and how to get more…
on “Do You Love Me? [video]” ↗