Lineal v Exponential Technological growth...

[Judas Iscariot]

I was wondering if Traveller 5 still uses a linear model of technological growth considering how badly this turned out for it in regards to CT's predictions of things like communications, computation, and various other associated technologies that would be ubiquitous in an advanced technological society?

[Space Cadet]

A little premature since they don't have artificial intelligence yet. Communications in Traveller is the same as communications today, we use radio. According to the old Traveller tech table, we should now be at TL 10 and experimenting with Jump 1 drives and flitting about in air/rafts, I'd say that prediction has come up short.

[Klaus]

If you assume the Tech Level progression is a relative thing, then we are always at TL8.

That was true in the 70's, and it's true now in the noughties.

That way it is less broken.

[Klaus]

If you assume the Tech Level progression is a relative thing, then we are always at TL8.

That was true in the 70's, and it's true now in the noughties.

That way it is less broken.

[Plankowner]

Air Raft technology is buildable at TL-8, that doesn't mean it is discovered at TL-8. Even Traveller Canon states that Terrans did not discover anti-gravity until contact with the Vilani, which would have been late TL-9 at a minimum.

[Arthur Denger]

Originally posted by Space Cadet:
A little premature since they don't have artificial intelligence yet. Communications in Traveller is the same as communications today, we use radio. According to the old Traveller tech table, we should now be at TL 10 and experimenting with Jump 1 drives and flitting about in air/rafts, I'd say that prediction has come up short.

I beg to differ. At least by some standards (depending on whom you ask), rudimentary AI does exist today. IMTU, starships above TL9 have never used radio frequencies to communicate: tight beam laser, maser, neutrino transceivers, even experimental tachyon technology (beyond normal TLs) was used. And one might argue today we are just one major breakthrough away from contragrav technology...

Years ago, a friend of mine explained Tech Level progression in Traveller to me in this way: it operates like a bell curve, with technological development progressing extremely slowly at low levels, rapidly accelerating at TLs 5-9 then tapering off to a trickle again at the very highest Tech Levels. The rationale was that by the time a civilization reaches TL 13+, most technological applications have already been invented, developed and optimized; discoveries now become rarer, new research more difficult. It is all speculation, of course, but the premise seemed sound to me back then, and it still does today. It's one possible explanation.

[Judas Iscariot]

I can state with ABSOLUTE AUTHORITY (That of Marvin Minsky, Cory Doctorow, Sebastian Thrun (Leader of the Stanford Team that won the DARPA Grand Challenge Desert Race, and current leader in the Urban Challenge), Eliezer Yudowski, and MANY others) that if all of the AI that controls our ociety were to suddenly vanish...

Our society would crumble within days:

No telephone,
No Banking
No getting gas from an automated pump
No internet
No Stock Market (Or Commodities Markets)
No cars can be made

Shipping would cease as scheduling computers and GPS would fail

Credit Companies would bankrupt

Our Government would no longer be able to communicate with its various institutions

I could keep going.

The list of things that we used to say "Only a human ca xxx" has shrunk so rapidly in the last decade that if you really knew how fast things were moving... You would probably have trouble getting to sleep (I know that I still do, and it has been three years since I first stepped into that damned lab).

AI can beat a chess master
AI can drive a car
AI can fly an airplane (Take-off, navigate and land)
AI can pick the best choices for your query on Google
and so on...

Strong AI just needs a couple of things to be realized, and according to FFS2, which I just re-read, it should be available just after TL9, when Fully fucntional Prosthetics hit the scene (The technologies that must be ubiquitous for fully functional Prosthetics include human-neural interfaces, and cellular level resolution scanning technologies. With those, it is possible to directly scan the brain while it is operating to get a model of how it operates, and then construct that model on a digital subtrate, which by TL9, seems to be more than capable)

The only problem with the bell curve theory is that it is not supported by any evidence, and all other evidence points to a continuing and rapidly accelerating pace of technological growth.

Considering that technology has replaced biology as the evolutionary substrate of humanity, it is progressing at the same pace that evolution has progressed to this point, which happens to be exponential (Take a look at ANY map of all history from the emergence of life to the present and you will see that almost EVERYTHING has happend in the last few instants of history)

[Judas Iscariot]

I should point out that if Marc wants to continue to use a lineal model of technological progression, then I can do nothing about it, and will work within that framework.

My only fear is that Traveller will again in a few years look drastically behind the times (as it did in the late 80s when the PC boom began, and PCs were beginning to have more Computing power than teh computers in Traveller, and I can't think of what the other technological faux pas were, but I know that computers weren't the only thing..

[atpollard]

Originally posted by Matthew Bailey:
AI can beat a chess master
AI can drive a car
AI can fly an airplane (Take-off, navigate and land)
AI can pick the best choices for your query on Google
and so on...

Let AI come up with a workable solution to end the violence, hunger and misery in much of Africa, and I will be impressed. Until it reaches that level, it is just a useful toy - like cell phones. Not a part of human evolution.

[Arthur Denger]

Originally posted by atpollard:
Let AI come up with a workable solution to end the violence, hunger and misery in much of Africa...

The hunger and misery present on the African continent today, and the violence it perpetuates, exist because of deep-seated ethnic rivalries, political corruption and unfettered greed (both within Africa and abroad). The only way AI will eliminate these miasmal conditions is through direct AI implantation in the human brain. The solution to the suffering in Africa (and elsewhere) is universal education and the Rule of Law. Get implementation of those and the other problems will largely solve themselves.

The bigger issue relating to artificial intelligence is: Do we as a civilization really want AI working to "solve" human social issues? It's a common enough theme in science fiction; countless sf novels have been written about it, and off-hand, I cannot think of any which turned out favorably for Humaniti. AI technology is a very poor substitute for individual and collective responsibility.