[Closed] Humans - Channel 4

To help you change tyres?

Spooky innit

I want that one!

[quote=tyrionl1 ]Synths.. I want one.

for your pleasure?

Lots of inconsistencies but watchable.

To make me delicious meals, clean my bike then deliver oral pleasure..

Edit not necessarily in that order...

Further edit, these ones that 'feel' seem er interesting, one just used the ef word, I wonder if they are supplied with cable ties..

If the operating system is Microsoft I don't want one.

They are a bit like Lady Gaga. Good looking, good body, female yet totally, inexplicably unattractive

I want 10 minutes with number 7

That long?

I want one but a cheaper version with no blue scree of death ... 😆

Blue scree of death? Is that like Sticks Pass?

Anyone else just find it a bit boring?

A little pook, I'll watch the next one tho.

I think it started slowly, but all the best dramas do. Of course it is derivative, The Machines Taking Over is one of the oldest plots in sci-fi.

I quite like the modern examination of gender roles, that's a new twist, and the idea of humans having genuine affection for the machines.

I'm still watching.

S o s l o w.

The subliminal adverts during Kevins show prior, made me reach for the tin foil.

Trouble with these sorts of programmes of course is why go to all the trouble to create a robotic workforce, when we have one already...

NickC,

I said to Mrs G, so if the synths are doing all the menial jobs, then how much of the population is now unemployed and on benefits??

Definitely derivative, but was interesting enough to sit through the whole hour and be intrigued enough to watch another episode.

hmmm it was ok, but i felt the fact it was set in present times took me out of the drama a bit,
i mean if we can invent synths then in that episode :
would we still be using those crappy trains she used at the start
would there still be a human staff member at asda, and a human security guard
would we actually be using such crappy mobile phones
if there were 100million units sold worldwide with no incidents , why do we need a whole special branch of the police to deal with synthetics
would we still have news presenters / tv shows with people in them

in fact
wtf would we all do?

no we have a massive industry building the robots, fixing the robots, auditing their behaviour, auditing the human use of the robots etc 🙂

the human affection for the machine and the holding of memory is the interesting bit

it was ok, but now it's on the recorder box I won't give up other stuff to watch it

What is it to be Human?

A cognitive development mutation that happened 70,000 years ago, and we still can't cope with it. 🙄 yey Homo Sapien Sapien....

Will they end up believing in God and blowing themselves up to destroy all the other synths that don't, or believe in the wrong prophet... 😕

Not everybody likes Thinky Sci-Fi. I call them Star Wars fans.

and the idea of humans having genuine affection for the machines.

they made the interesting point that we'd all have to be artists - they used poetry in the script

Just watch Ex Machina and save yourselves a few hours.

wtf would we all do?

[img] [/img]

I'm in!!!

would we still be using those crappy trains she used at the start

Just realised that the prostitute synth was Emily Berrington who was in The Inbetweeners movie. On that basis I withdraw my previous post and confirm it is possible to think dirty things about synths.

Re crappy trains - does anybody remember the name of the film about access to tech was divided on class lines - all the aristocracy has space ships and the plebs lived in caves. Or maybe it was a book. But anyway I don't see a contradiction there - in our world where invention breeds necessity.

Crappy trains have become a tradition.

wouldn't they all be conscripted ? 😕

Re crappy trains - does anybody remember the name of the film about access to tech was divided on class lines - all the aristocracy has space ships and the plebs lived in caves. Or maybe it was a book. But anyway I don't see a contradiction there - in our world where invention breeds necessity.

hels - Member

Re crappy trains - does anybody remember the name of the film about access to tech was divided on class lines - all the aristocracy has space ships and the plebs lived in caves. Or maybe it was a book. But anyway I don't see a contradiction there - in our world where invention breeds necessity.

Fairly recent film?? Elysium?

It felt a lot like a Dark Mirror episode, so I was half expecting it to reach a conclusion. In fact, it sort of feels like three or four parallel Dark Mirror episodes running side-by-side.

I said to Mrs G, so if the synths are doing all the menial jobs, then how much of the population is now unemployed and on benefits??

Because the great British unemployed don't WANT to do the menial tasks, that's why we need immigrants so much. We have reached the bottom of the barrel where British workers are concerned; those who haven't found a job - and there are loads going - either can't work or just can't be bothered.

I said to Mrs G, so if the synths are doing all the menial jobs, then how much of the population is now unemployed and on benefits??

Well it's already happened, migrant labour does a lot of jobs that we don't want to do (from Humans, the fruit picking, home help, and the oldest profession of them all).

I get the impression the whole series is based on something I read in a science/engineering journal last year about AI/Singularity/Robotics(and as usual I've no idea where I read it). But the script makes a lot of the same references so I'm hypothesising the production team read the paper then wrote a storyline based on it.

The premise was that we replaced farmers with machinery, then we too a little longer to replace other workers (but we largely have now), and now it's the turn of the professional jobs like Lawyers, doctors, engineering etc. All of those jobs take some inputs, go through a process and produce an output. Easy enough for a computer to do (no need for a robot).

But what about poets, artists, playwrights, actors, etc? Well, a computer could do most of that perfectly too, maybe even a little to perfectly (photo Vs Van Gough). But then if a computer can do it, then it can learn your taste, which is probably going to be for a certain type of imperfect. So now you can go to the cinema and see a film that's perfect to you. Think Downton Abbey, but the blokes get to see the war bit and the girls get the costume drama (#everydaysexism). So they're gone too.

The final point was about "hand made" items. Plenty on STW will pay, often a large premium, for a handmade frame. But when it comes to professional services (Dr, lawyer, etc) would you feel the same, an imperfect human or perfect computer to diagnose that illness or write that contract?

You are assuming problem solving is always linear, a computer may be faster to solve problems that are a -> b -> c -> ..... ->x however people can be taught to jump steps and go from a -> x and miss out the middle steps and still get the same result. So some tasks we will always be better suited too.

Some education systems are better than others for creating this type of thinking which is why China and India are looking at Western education to work out why we can do it and they struggle even though they have a lot more brains.

Lawyers, doctors, engineering etc. All of those jobs take some inputs, go through a process and produce an output. Easy enough for a computer to do (no need for a robot).

Whilst I can't speak for Lawyers or Doctors, I admire your confidence regarding how engineering work. I would love there to be a defined process that I could follow to do my job, it always seems to end up with me trying to get the best outcome from a mass of unknowns or (worse) completely contradictory pieces of information.

You are assuming problem solving is always linear, a computer may be faster to solve problems that are a -> b -> c -> ..... ->x however people can be taught to jump steps and go from a -> x and miss out the middle steps and still get the same result. So some tasks we will always be better suited too.

I'm not so convinced, I work in engineering and already my PC probably does more work than a whole team of engineers would have done in the 70's. It (and I) might not be as clever, or be able to see through the problem to the answer quite so immediately, but on shear brute force the computer can resolve problems people can't. And thus 10% of my job is 'managing' my computer, taking data from one program to another, dividing up its time, etc. The other 90% is dealing with people, so a robot/computer would have that advantage for the off!

Whilst I can't speak for Lawyers or Doctors, I admire your confidence regarding how engineering work. I would love there to be a defined process that I could follow to do my job, it always seems to end up with me trying to get the best outcome from a mass of unknowns or (worse) completely contradictory pieces of information.

I agree, it is, but if it was done by a computer program and infinite processing power, would that be the case.

Take my current project as an example, an aromatics plant. It has 1 feedstock (naphtha), 3 products (benzene, PX, Light naphtha). There's very little to define there. It's in the 10,000's bits of equipment inbetween where all the arguments happen. And the solution still won't be right, we fix most of it after about the 6th iteration and live with it. You could tell a computer the inputs and expected outputs and it would whirr away and come up with a near perfect design.

That's because you're getting your requirements from humans. Take them out of the equation and...

But what about poets, artists, playwrights, actors, etc? Well, a computer could do most of that perfectly too, maybe even a little to perfectly (photo Vs Van Gough)

Good luck with getting a computer to devise something like Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism or Cubism?

Good luck with getting a computer to devise something like Surrealism or Cubism?

I guess once they have knocked us off they wouldn't need to bother...

Fair point

I'm not so convinced, I work in engineering and already my PC probably does more work than a whole team of engineers would have done in the 70's. It (and I) might not be as clever, or be able to see through the problem to the answer quite so immediately, but on shear brute force the computer can resolve problems people can't. And thus 10% of my job is 'managing' my computer, taking data from one program to another, dividing up its time, etc. The other 90% is dealing with people, so a robot/computer would have that advantage for the off!

I can certainly relate to this from when I worked in a design house; the trick was to know when stop the analysis. It's also one of the reasons I still write simple calculation by hand as it forces me to think a lesson I sometimes have to force others to learn!

I agree, it is, but if it was done by a computer program and infinite processing power, would that be the case

Paralysis by analysis would be the most likely outcome of that I'd have thought.

[i]Good luck with getting a computer to devise something like Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism or Cubism?[/i]

Don't need to. Those are already devised forms of art, the point of art (surely) is to continue to develop, so once you decide that your synth has 'life' and you teach it the basis of the concept of art, whatever it produces IS art.

no?

Did anyone stick with it? Is it worth trying to catch up with?

Yep, I'm still in, could be better, could be worse, I still want one, anyone guess which? 😉

Gemma Chan?

😉

I'm gonna give it a final go tonight if things don't pick up then I won't bother with the rest.

I thought Extant was slow but this is even slower.