Re: @Kulumbasik - We are too far away from it
> DARPA already works on robots which can autonomously identify an individual and decide to suppress it with no human interaction or supervision. What can possibly go wrong with that ?
What kind of project DARPA is doing may be not exactly the same as what the media is saying about it. They (DARPA) may be interested to gain more publicity (including with various outlandish stuff), thereby ensuring (directly or indirectly) more funding to it. I know first-hand how it is difficult to get funds -- you need to be creative about this! What they will produce in the end may be even more different thing. I highly doubt that will be on the level of something (robots) depicted, for instance, in "Robocop" movie. You may develop a program that would behave in some situations like a human, e.g. speak with a human voice or recognize your speech (more precisely, convert it into text). But to behave like a human soldier in the field? That seems to me something too much!
Take for instance a lot more modest goal, a software to translate from one human language to another. But what have they achieved so far? Even Google with all its computational power and databases wasn't able to create a decent translator. I frequently need to use one. But what kind of output does it produce? In many cases it is little more than some gibberish unintelligent stuff that without a deep correction cannot be used anywhere. That's because to translate it correctly, ultimately the software needs to understand the meaning of the text. Without similar functionality no truly intelligent robot could exist.
> Now imagine a future when those who programmed this are retired or simply dead.
Modern software projects are not developed by a single person. They are typically well managed, documented an so on. That's the value of that software, not just the lines of code! There's a whole branch of software industry (maybe even larger than AI) dedicated exactly to management of other software projects (that is called "Application Lifecycle Management"). By the way, that actually only stresses how laborious the software development actually is (and, therefore, how far away from AI).
> How about a firmware update going wrong ?
All the same as it is now. What would you do when your "intelligent" vacuum-cleaner isn't working after the last firmware update?
Biting the hand that feeds IT
