9 minutes ago, Oberon_Command said:

13 trillion / 323 million is a bit over 40k. I'm not aware of any UBI concepts where participants are to be paid $40k per year. Pilot programs are typically paying something in the $16-24k range (eg, the one currently underway in Ontario) and I would assume that a full-scale program would be similar. I don't know where you got that $40k number, but I suggest that your dismissal of the concept is founded in this assumption and not any realistic conception of how UBI would actually be implemented.

Well, it would have to be implemented in a way that gives a decent quality of life in a situation where there's massive unemployment, right? Add in the fact that health insurance in the USA is prohibitively expensive when not employed (My wife has an ER bill for $30,000+ I've been refusing to pay for years now), Adjust it for inflation for a decade, and assume it's for the "typical" household of 2 adults 2 children (replacement rate, basically), and $40k~ is way closer to it. If there was mass unemployment and only $24k~ guaranteed income, there would be mass riots/revolution.

This is also speculative to the future, population will be higher if/when it's actually implemented, so there's even greater costs than with the 323 million people estimate. Currently you could knock off around 40m~ people from that estimate for underage/illegal immigrants.

23 minutes ago, conquestor3 said:

Well, it would have to be implemented in a way that gives a decent quality of life in a situation where there's massive unemployment, right? Add in the fact that health insurance in the USA is prohibitively expensive when not employed (My wife has an ER bill for $30,000+ I've been refusing to pay for years now), Adjust it for inflation for a decade, and assume it's for the "typical" household of 2 adults 2 children (replacement rate, basically), and $40k~ is way closer to it. If there was mass unemployment and only $24k~ guaranteed income, there would be mass riots/revolution.

It seems reasonable to assume that in a world where the US actually implements UBI, it has also implemented universal healthcare, just like every other developed nation, so the costs would be significantly lower. I don't think anyone would disagree that universal healthcare is politically more likely than UBI.

(Seriously, $30k for an ER visit if you're uninsured? In Canada, even if for some reason you don't have provincial health insurance, an ER visit would be at most $600. What the hell is your country smoking?)

Anyway, this thread isn't just about the US and it's myopic to pretend that assumptions that apply to the US as it is right now invalidate a concept that would be applied world-wide in the future. I also doubt that UBI would actually be implemented at above poverty level numbers regardless of the quality of life that provides.

Setting aside the whole spirituality/soul angle, "human-like" AI exists because humans exist; we are walking examples of ourselves.

If the human body is sufficient to create a human being, then we can clearly create AI.  That's not to say it's a guarantee that souls don't exist or can be emulated, but to assert that would take us outside the bounds of provability and into belief.

Mind you, there's a far cry from creating people and creating the whole "self-improving superhumans" that most quacks "futurists" worry about.  In that regard I wouldn't call it "impossible", but I certainly see no reason to believe such a thing is possible.

4 minutes ago, ChaosEngine said:

That makes no sense at all. Unless you're going to redefine AI to include organic intelligence, at which point this conversation becomes pointless.

If I created a human being from whole cloth in a lab, I would have created an artificial intelligence.  Whether AI is "organic" or "mechanical" has no bearing over whether or not it is AI.  Aren't you an Atheist?  I would think that outside of spiritual beliefs, everyone ought to think creating an AI is possible this way, even if we can't realistically do it now.

I don't think it's a terribly interesting observation, honestly.  It's kind of axiomatic, even.

The argument in this thread assumes some form of vitalism. I don't understand the appeal of this way of thinking. All the evidence we have is that there is nothing special about living organisms: They follow the same laws of Physics as everything else.

If we reject vitalism --as we should--, the existence of human beings is proof that intelligence can be achieved by physical means, so there is no a priori reason why a machine couldn't be intelligent.

EDIT: I found a Wikipedia page about the subject: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness. The last paragraph quotes Stanislas Dehaene drawing a parallel to vitalism. I wholeheartedly agree with him.