ThirstyFish

Another one from the NYC LGBT Pride Parade, 2015.

These days people and scientists are debating "technological singularity", where computers or robots would theoretically be capable of recursive self-improvement, meaning they'll have have intelligence exceeding human intellectual capacity and control. Stephen Hawking is warning that robots could take over in 100 years. Steve Wozniak is saying, humans will be robots' pets. I'm not convinced.

For machines to make rational decisions on their own, they would need to be autonomous, or better yet, have consciousness. As "smart" as machines seem today, without humans, they are as dumb as ever. The human brain is more than just a calculator, and no machines has come close to exhibiting any form of consciousness. Even if a machine were to pass the Turing test, that still would not make it conscious.

On the other hand, we have to be vary of computationally capable machines, as they are utilized by technology owners. Technology is inherently authoritarian. The consumers of technology will become increasingly dependent on the producers of technology who control the means of producing even higher technology in a recursive fashion. It's already happening - think Google. And it's about to get a whole lot worse.