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Re:Inmates in Finland are training AI as part of prison labor by rishabhd on Monday April 01, 2019 @08:07AM (#19542481)
My thoughts, exactly. Or even like The Matrix where humans are farmed for energy. Here, they are farmed for their mind to train the next AI, which might in a worst case scenario rule them someday. Somehow reminds me of this beautiful piece [1] by Maciej Cegłowski .

[1] https://idlewords.com/talks/superintelligence.htm

Re:Inmates in Finland are training AI as part of prison labor by ben_w on Monday April 01, 2019 @08:18AM (#19542531)
I once found what looked like an early draft of The Matrix. Instead of body heat being used for power, part of each enslaved human’s brain was used as an organic supercomputer to control the fusion reactors.
Re:Inmates in Finland are training AI as part of prison labor by misnome on Monday April 01, 2019 @09:13AM (#19542875)
The story goes that the studio executives wanted it changed to energy because they thought that viewers wouldn't understand using brains for computing power. Hard references to this fact are hard to find, though https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/19817/was-executiv... seems to collect a couple of secondary sources.
Re:Inmates in Finland are training AI as part of prison labor by jnurmine on Monday April 01, 2019 @02:09PM (#19546267)
Strange that viewers would struggle to understand using captive brains for computing power, but would have no problems with a whole lot of other concepts from the movie...

Then again, the plot is the usual Hero's Journey (Campbell) like the majority of Hollywood blockbusters tends to be, but I guess the devil is in the details (illusory matrix/maya, recursive resurrection/enlightenment of Neo, the Christian theme of consuming an apple (pill) from the tree of knowledge and the subsequent expulsion from "paradise", etc.)

The Matrix trilogy is good on many levels, but I can't buy the "people used as batteries is easier to understand than people as compute accelerators". There are plenty of other, perhaps more relevant, places to dumben down in the Matrix if one goes down that road.

Re:Inmates in Finland are training AI as part of prison labor by ben_w on Monday April 01, 2019 @11:43AM (#19544514)
That looks like it could be the version I read. Thanks for the link!
Re:Inmates in Finland are training AI as part of prison labor by chupasaurus on Monday April 01, 2019 @08:54AM (#19542741)
> like The Matrix where humans are farmed for energy

That's how Morpheus was told or wanted to present the reality. You cannot produce energy by breeding and feeding humans due to the law of conservation of energy.

As later in Animatrix Wachowski sisters showed, the machines were simply conserving humanity.

Re:Inmates in Finland are training AI as part of prison labor by kevinventullo on Monday April 01, 2019 @10:33AM (#19543626)
I forget where I read it, but supposedly in the original script, the machines were using humans for the computing power of their brain. They went with body heat instead because that was something audiences would more easily understand.
Re:Inmates in Finland are training AI as part of prison labor by kurtisc on Monday April 01, 2019 @09:49AM (#19543174)
>which might in a worst case scenario rule them someday

Or, in a more realistic scenario, might learn how to discern between an article about a tech company and an article about an orchard.