James Patterson Quotes

Science-fiction ... can be defined as: Imaginative extrapolation of true natural phenomena, existing now, or likely to exist in the future.

Sometimes ... dreams are all that separate us from the machines.

That machines will surpass us in intelligence is inevitable. What it means is unknowable. Will they be sentient? What will they care about in the sense that determines our human motivations? All the theorizing by the experts and non-experts makes for interesting conversations and dramatic headlines, but it's more likely we will be surprised by how our technology develops and how it is used, as we so often are.

Singularitarians are the munchkins of the real world. We just ignore all the usual dungeons and head straight for the cycle of infinite wish spells.

I'm really interested in the current tech world because of my brother Michael. Since we were little kids, in the 1970s, he was dealing with the first computers. He works for the government. So I know both sides of this world. I found it so interesting and I do seek it out because it's very close to me. It's not a role that existed 15 to 20 years ago.

Sometimes he seems like a droid--or a drone. Fang of Nine. Fang2-D2.

Since I am not actually a real human being, my emotional responses are generally limited to what I have learned to fake.

It couldn't sound like a dog, because K9 isn't a dog, but I made it sound as mechanical as possible.

Am I living in a simulation?

Artificial intelligence would be the ultimate version of Google. The ultimate search engine that would understand everything on the Web. It would understand exactly what you wanted, and it would give you the right thing. We're nowhere near doing that now. However, we can get incrementally closer to that, and that is basically what we work on.

You cannot endow even the best machine with initiative; the jolliest steamroller will not plant flowers.

But just as astronomy succeeded astrology, following Kepler's discovery of planetary regularities, the discoveries of these many principles in empirical explorations of intellectual processes in machines should lead to a science, eventually.

I'll hit anyone who's seriously threatening my life... that's what happened, and that's what sent me to prison.

The illusion of self-awareness. Happy automatons, running on trivial programs. I'll bet you never guess. From the inside, how can you?

The attribution of intelligence to machines, crowds of fragments, or other nerd deities obscures more than it illuminates. When people are told that a computer is intelligent, they become prone to changing themselves in order to make the computer appear to work better, instead of demanding that the computer be changed to become more useful.

From a distance, a clone's luminous eyes are meant to draw in humans and make them feel safe. Up close, the eyes appear hollow. Because of that, humans tend not to look into our eyes too closely, which I've been told is socially preferable, as eyes without souls behind them can be frightening.

Machines don't use machines.

Really unreal world, will you perhaps do the breathing for me while I am away?

The Difference Engine can in reality (as has been already partly explained) do nothing but add; and any other processes, not excepting those of simple subtraction, multiplication and division, can be performed by it only just to that extent in which it is possible, by judicious mathematical arrangement and artifices, to reduce them to a series of additions.

Speech, after all, is in some measure an expression of character, and flexibility in its use is a good way to tell your friends from the robots.

What people don't realize about Donald Trump - and I don't even know if Donald Trump realizes it - is that every tweet he unleashes against you - and maybe this isn't true for everyone, but in my case it certainly was - creates such a crescendo of anger and, in my case, again, threatening behavior that it would send my life into lockdown.

You may not instantly see why I bring the subject up, but that is because my mind works so phenomenally fast, and I am at a rough estimate thirty billion times more intelligent than you. Let me give you an example. Think of a number, any number.” “Er, five,” said the mattress. “Wrong,” said Marvin. “You see?

(...) The new nine muses, Commerce, Operatic Music, Amor, Publicity, Manufacture, Liberty of Specch, Plural Voting, Gastronomy, Private Hygiene, Seaside Concert Entertainments, Painless Obstetrics and Astronomy for the People.

Learning from programmed information always hides reality behind a screen.

Now comes the second machine age. Computers and other digital advances are doing for mental power - the ability to use our brains to understand and shape our environments-what the steam engine and its descendants did for muscle power.