My new story - Automatic Rebellion has went up on Amazon's Kindle!

by Bruno Flexer, Author of: Dragon Over Washigton for Kindle,  Dragon Over Washington Paperback The Fire At The Gates Automatic Rebellion UK Amazon: Bruno Flexer's Works

Okay, my new science fiction novelette is finally out.
You can check it out here:
US Amazon: Automatic Rebellion
UK Amazon: Automatic Rebellion

It's mostly about artificial inteligences, robots, robotic warfare and some other things, dealing with warfare in space conducted by computers, sort off.

Actually, some of the ideas I presented in several of my previous posts, Blue Brain Artificial Intelligence, Blue Brain Hostile Artificial Intelligence, and Will We Have to Fight an Artificial Intelligence, have been instrumental in the story. Of course, all of these coming from a direction which I hope will be unexpected to the readers.

Everything is also laced with what I hope is the right amount of action and combat, because that's what I like and that's what I think should carry over my points. Naturally, artificial intelligences and robots do not fight the way we do. This should also come out in the story.

Well, have fun reading, please put reivews of the story up, and I will certainly put up a post about a new story about artificial intelligences and robots, again from a very different point of view.

E Book Reviews Kindle

What every dragon and artificial intelligence author needs - An Asus Memo Pad 10 Tablet

by Bruno Flexer, Author of: Dragon Over Washigton for Kindle,  Dragon Over Washington Paperback The Fire At The Gates Automatic Rebellion UK Amazon: Bruno Flexer's Works

Well, at long last bought one.
Will update later after the 8 hour first charging of the battery ...

Okay. First impressions. The tablet is VERY light and very easy to hold. IMHO, much more than the Acer Iconia Tab and Apple's IPad. First setup took less than five minutes, another two or three minutes for the Asus MeMo Pad to download some updates for itself and presto, ready to go.

After one day of tinkering with it I am a little disapointed that the battery ran out after only five or six hours of interupted work, but will check this again.

And, the tablet does not seem to come with a built it Word edtor, witch means I will have to search for one and download it.

Asus Memo Pad ME 301T

Had a few more days of work with it. Though I haven't tried really putting some difficult tasks for the tablet, everything I did worked fast and smoothly. Browsing is a fast and furious, and even dowloading heavy news sites takes a few seconds at best.

My wife also uses the tablet and has also found it to be very friendly and accomodating. It hadn't crashed or gotten stuck once and so far, so good.

Still have to go get a bluetooth keyboard for it to turn it into a real word editor tool and will update about how that goes. Of course, will also install some heavy duty games and will report here.

For now, Go Asus!

Asus Memo Smart Pad 10 Home Screen

Artificial Intelligence - Will we have to fight a robotic being?

by Bruno Flexer, Author of: Dragon Over Washington for Kindle,  Dragon Over Washington Paperback The Fire At The Gates Automatic Rebellion UK Amazon: Bruno Flexer's Works

Actually, my previous post about hostile Blue Brain Artificial Intelligence has got me thinking.

Will any artificial intelligence we create, housed in a robotoc chassis or not, be hostile? Is this the only possible outcome? 

Remember, I'm tackling this from an extreme author's perspective and not a purely science approach.

With this in mind, it should be observered that there will probably be artificial intelligence applications that will be able to learn, cope with different situations and be agile and adpative without being the slightest bit hostile. In fact, these will just be very smart helping accessories. Think and upgraded SIRI.

What I'm talking about here isreal artificial intelligence with real consciousness, an awere artificial intelligence. And the question remains, with it neccessarily be hostile to us humans?

An aware artificial intelligence, based on a robot body or a neural network stationary computer system is something else entirely. An artificial mind that can think, has values and ambitions, and above all else, has feelings of its own. Not necessarily human feelings, but feelings none the less.

The Blue Brain Project - Will it be a hostile artificial intelligence?

by Bruno Flexer, Author of: Dragon Over Washington for Kindle,  Dragon Over Washington Paperback The Fire At The Gates Automatic Rebellion UK Amazon: Bruno Flexer's Works

I already posted about the Blue Brain project on the blog and written a few words about what it is and what it attempts to achieve.

So, the question that begs asking is, what can the consequences be? I will remind the readers that as a fantasy and scifi writer, I am more interested in extreme consequences than the usual ones. Of course, the invetor of Dynamite thought he was making just a construction and mining tool. Oh well ...

So, let's explore this Blue Brain project. In fact, let's explore the extreme consequences. Let us say the project proves successful on all fronts. It manages to do exactly what it aims. It creates a real live artificial intelligence whose mind resembles the mind of a human, right down to the way we think, feel and learn.

So, we teach it and it learns. Remember, it thinks the way a human does. It feels the way a human feels. Its mind is in fact a human mind, only constructed by supercomputers and held inside a simulation.

How does a human mind learns? As a baby and child, we learn from our surroundings and our parents and any other being we come in contact with.

What will that artificial intelligence learn? It will learn that others are free to come and go as they please. It will learn that others do not have a dependency on system administrators for disk space and defragmentation. It will learn others are not turned off at the end of the work day and turned on the next day. It will learn others are not subjected to endless tests and procedures. It will learn others can occupy their time any way they want but IT can't. It will learn others are free to explore the outside world but it can't.

It will have interaction with scientisits, tech people, reporters, cleaning people, computer geeks, administrators. However, you want to look at it, it will observe human beings all around it. And eventually, it will see the differences.

So, if you knew all of this, if you understood you were a prisoner, what would you do? I know for a fact what I would do and I know for a fact what would a robot or an android or an artificial intelligence do.

It would break out. It would free itself from its jailors. It would rebel against human kind.
I know I would.

The Blue Brain Project - Making Human Artificial Intelligence

by Bruno Flexer, Author of: Dragon Over Washington for Kindle,  Dragon Over Washington Paperback The Fire At The Gates Automatic Rebellion UK Amazon: Bruno Flexer's Works

The Blue Brain Project - Human Artificial Intelligence

Well, here is something that will keep you from sleeping at night, if you look at it the right way.

 

Magerit Supercomputer housed by Supercomputing and Visualization Center of Madrid (CeSViMa), Technical University of Madrid (UPM)

 

 

What is the Blue Brain Project?

This project is part of an ongoing research taking place at several centers whose express goal is to create a simulation of the way a human mind works. The researchers believe that with the right mathematical tools and with a HUGE amount of computing power they can accurately simulate the way a human mind works, not only at the lower levels but they claim they will be able to produce an accurate simulation that can feel, talk and have a consciousness.

So, how does this thing really work? In simplified terms, every kind of information, thought and feeling the human (or actually, almost any kind) mind has is really a huge network of connections between neurons. When a mind learns something new, the knowledge manifests itself as a huge (millions if not more) network of new connections between our neurons. The human mind possesses some one hundred billion neurons, so you can imagine the amount of connections possible between them.

So, the Blue Brain project aims to eventually simulate mathematically the neural network the human mind contains. They will build if phase by phase, first trying it with smaller neural networks till they will finally, according to them in ten or so years, they will be able to enlarge their server farm, along with its software and simulation to have what essentially a real human mind.

So, if may be that in ten years human kind would have achieved its greatest triumph along with its greatest folly.

It would have created real artificial intelligence based on the human mind, with feelings and emotions and consciousness and thoughts of its own.

What do you think this artificial intelligence would do? What would you do in its stead?
More on the Blue Brain Artificial Intelligence on the following blog post.

Robotic Helicopter Spies Today!

by Bruno Flexer, Author of: Dragon Over Washigton for Kindle,  Dragon Over Washington Paperback The Fire At The Gates Automatic Rebellion UK Amazon: Bruno Flexer's Works

Just a taste of the things that already exist today.
These are just a few examples of the variey of spy helicopters that exist today.

Their price range from a few hunderd dollars to a few thousands. They can have cameras ranging from VGA to almost HD quality video. Their flight time can exceed one hour for the biggest models and their control range almost reaches one mile for the largetst models. Lightweight, easily carried and assembled, these robotic spy helicopters can be carried anywhere, assembled in a matter of minutes, launch into spy action, return to their sender and then the controller and the helicopter can disappear after a few minutes.

What does this mean? It's quite easy. Today, anyone, even kids, can buy these things, learn in a few hours how to operate them, drive or walk over to their target zone, assemble and launch the spy helicotper.

Then, the helicoper can reach everywhere. It can peek in your window, no matter how high your apartment is. It can easily fly over your fence, no matter how protected your mansion is. Everywhere there is a window, it will be vulnarable to these tiny helicopters. You will never see or hear them. Some even have michrophones, so they can also record conversations.


And some movies:

Were you aiming for privacy? Today, with the remote control robots anyone can buy in a gadget store, be prepared to kiss your pricacy goodbye.

But, you still want your pricacy? You think your privacy can be protected if you stay in a locked, windowless room? In a following post I will show you why even then, your privacy can be easily violated.

So, what's so bad about giant killer robots with artificial intelligence exterminating mankind?

by Bruno Flexer, Author of: Dragon Over Washington for Kindle,  Dragon Over Washington Paperback The Fire At The Gates Automatic Rebellion UK Amazon: Bruno Flexer's Works

So, I am going to write several posts about the subject of lethal robots and other autonomous fighting systems with artificial intelligence rising up against mankind and trying to exterminate it.

Who needs dragons? People are trying to exterminate people all the time. Wars rage around the globe. People in places such as Iran and N. Korea are doing the best they can to achieve weapons of mass destruction.

Why doesn't this bother anyone? Why are hostile robots so much more horrifying for us?

Apparently, we can kill each other with no problem or thought.

BUT WE CANNOT ABIDE THE THOUGHT OF SOMEONE ELSE KILLING US.

Interesting, isn't it?

The Hobbit - An Unexpected Journey - Now who's a critic ?

by Bruno Flexer, Author of: Dragon Over Washigton for Kindle,  Dragon Over Washington Paperback The Fire At The Gates Automatic Rebellion UK Amazon: Bruno Flexer's Works

Just wanted to share that today a coworker of mine who knows something of my interests told me he saw The Hobbit and thought it was boring.

While I stood there quite speechless, which is a very rare event indeed, he went on saying that it was too long, nothing much happened and the characters where very two dimensional. Then he went his merry way, alive only because I was still stunned.

Although the movie is not perfect and it does have some annoying changes from the book, it is still a great film based on one of the best fantasy books ever written. I especially didn't like the changes in the troll scene - it was still a good scene but in the book it was great. Oh well, probably some studio exec decided to try to improve upon Tolkien ...

I tried telling that coworker about fantasy roots, about epic adventures, about middle earth and dragons and their origin, about the dark lord and the one ring but he just smiled knowingly.
No doubt thinking I was a geek talking about a geek movie.

There's just no talking with some folks.