Singularity Countdown

Rudi Hoffman is the man to go to for life insurance to fund a cryonics contract. Last I heard, he had cornered about 95% of the market in this small niche. In light of the recent Mary Robbins case, Rudi has written up a list of choices cryonicists can make to ensure that our hostile relatives don’t try to pull us out of the freezer, valiantly (according to some people, apparently) making our neural structures available for consumption by a variety of worms and bacteria. Here’s the intro:

Several of my clients and friends have asked me for observations regarding securing their cryonics arrangements even with contrary wishes of friends and relatives. Given the recent Mary Robbins case in Colorado, and multiple previous cases available in some detail on the websites of both CI and Alcor, structuring your affairs in the most secure manner currently has top of mind awareness for many who are serious about their cryonics plans.

The purpose of this article is to provide some insight into how serious cryonicists can structure their affairs to assure themselves they have done everything possible regarding funding and legal structures for their optimal suspensions.

I noticed that Rudi missed one thing that several cryonicists have suggested to me: putting a “certificate of religious belief” in your wallet that makes a concrete statement against autopsy for religious reasons. One friend of mine used a lamination machine to attach this directly to his ID. I am especially concerned about this for young cryonicists because I’ve heard that when a young person dies under circumstances even the slightest bit unusual, autopsies are common.

As soon as blood starts to coagulate, vitrification becomes impossible, seriously reducing the quality of the suspension. Though I am hopeful that even the most primitive suspensions will lead to revivals some day, it casually seems to me (as a non-scientist) that suspensions involving vitrification will require lower levels of technology for a successful revival.

Since I’m on the topic of cryonics, why not quote Ben Franklin:

I have seen an instance of common flies…drown’d in Madeira
wine…Having heard it remark’d that drowned flies were capable of
being reviv’d by the rays of the sun, I proposed making the experiment
upon these; they were therefore expos’d to the sun…In less than three
hours, two of them began by degrees to recover life…and soon after
began to fly, finding themselves in Old England, without knowing how
they came thither.

I wish it were possible…to invent a method of embalming drown’d
persons, in such a manner that they may be recall’d to life at any
period, however distant. For having a very ardent desire to see and
observe the state of America a hundred years hence, I should prefer to
any ordinary death, being immers’d in a cask of Madeira wine…to be
later recall’d to life by the solar warmth of my dear country!”

On one occasion, this caused me to remark to Michael Vassar, “do you think there are some people buried in caskets of Madeira wine in the ground that we just haven’t discovered yet?”, to which he replied, “I doubt it.” A pity… I am looking at a quarter right now, and I should think that in the long term, the world would be willing to trade every quarter in circulation (likenesses of Washington) for the actual preserved brain and body of George Washington. Whether he would care to be revived in the present, however, may be a separate question, but if he were, I can only imagine that he would enjoy some level of political influence in US politics.

There’s another media explosion over cryonics, this time having to do with a woman named Mary Robbins. She signed numerous documents indicating she wanted to be cryopreserved at Alcor, then, her family claimed that she changed her mind in her final days. A Colorado court recently ruled in favor of Alcor because no documentation to back up the family’s argument was ever produced, as required by Colorado law. Here is the Associated Press coverage. This ruling sets a good precedent. It sometimes seems as if hostile family members are willing to throw away the law to ensure that their relative rots in the ground in lieu of being cryopreserved. Almost as if their soul would be trapped if they were suspended.

It’s disappointing how many family members freak out when they find out that their mother/father/relatives are signed up for cryonics and going into cryosuspension. Even if I thought cryonics was complete bunkum, I would at least have the decency to respect the wishes of my relative.

Even if I thought revival from a preserved state were impossible, I would still be sympathetic to cryonics because it is based on the principle of preserving rather than destroying a very valuable object — the human brain. This leaves open the possibility of future analysis, imaging, and inferences about the person whose brain it was. If my ancestor’s brains were preserved, there would come a day where it could be possible to analyze them non-invasively and maybe learn something about their neurology. For instance, you might have heard about how blind people acquire a better sense of hearing and vision than everyone else. In the not-too-distant future, it could become possible to scan a brain and determine if someone was blind by the structure of their visual cortex. More and more details would follow as neuroscience progressed, until eventually everything would become determined. The brain, just like everything else in the world, is thoroughly non-mystical.

Preservation is our only window into the past. Imagine the knowledge destroyed when the Library of Alexandria was incinerated. Similar knowledge is destroyed whenever worms and bacteria dissolve a brain, we just don’t have all the tools to look at it yet. Surprisingly, many people are still not clear on the acknowledged fact that all our memories, personality, feelings, and inclinations are encoded in the structure and chemistry of our brains. They believe in a separate metaphysical “mind” somehow independent of the brain. But the mind is simply the structure and function of the brain. Even if revival proved impossible in the long term, the preservation of individual brains today could provide a unique window into the past for future generations to analyze, providing a strong argument for its value.

The human brain is the most remarkable known object in the entire universe. Why throw it out like a bit of moldy hamburger? For a very modest cost, the seats of our consciousness can be preserved after our metabolic death. In fact, the technology already exists to destructively scan brains piece-by-piece — ever heard of ATLUM? This serial sectioning method allows for such precise nanoscale scanning that individual synapses and vesicles are visible using a scanning electron microscope. You can read more about the technology at the brain emulation roadmap. Within a few decades or maybe even less, it will be possible to create a computer file that consists of a nanoscale scan of an entire human brain. It’s only a matter of time before scientists learn how to interpret the patterns of such scans as frozen thoughts, memories, personality, and other complex mental features. It may take a while, but hey — if you’re frozen at liquid nitrogen temperature, your neural molecules ain’t going anywhere fast.

For those who are interested, there is a long article at MillerMcCune.com on Edward Cope, the UC Santa Cruz professor emeritus who has a history of creating AIs that compose music. His latest creation, dubbed Emily Howell, is ready to be unveiled soon, and the article includes a couple samples of “her” work. Here’s an excerpt from the article:

Emmy was once the world’s most advanced artificially intelligent composer, and because he’d managed to breathe a sort of life into her, he became a modern-day musical Dr. Frankenstein. She produced thousands of scores in the style of classical heavyweights, scores so impressive that classical music scholars failed to identify them as computer-created. Cope attracted praise from musicians and computer scientists, but his creation raised troubling questions: If a machine could write a Mozart sonata every bit as good as the originals, then what was so special about Mozart? And was there really any soul behind the great works, or were Beethoven and his ilk just clever mathematical manipulators of notes?

Cope’s answers — not much, and yes — made some people very angry. He was so often criticized for these views that colleagues nicknamed him “The Tin Man,” after the Wizard of Oz character without a heart. For a time, such condemnation fueled his creativity, but eventually, after years of hemming and hawing, Cope dragged Emmy into the trash folder.

This month, he is scheduled to unveil the results of a successor effort that’s already generating the controversy and high expectations that Emmy once drew. Dubbed “Emily Howell,” the daughter program aims to do what many said Emmy couldn’t: create original, modern music. Its compositions are innovative, unique and — according to some in the small community of listeners who’ve heard them performed live — superb.

Cool, huh?

Michael Anissimov: “Don’t Fear the Singularity, but Be Careful: Friendly AI Design” at Foresight 2010 Conference from Foresight Institute on Vimeo.

Here’s my talk from Foresight! If you read this blog, there won’t be much new to you. I probably should have summarized the talk at the beginning. Unfortunately I got cut off at around slide 40 out of 55 due to schedule problems, so I missed the opportunity to summarize some of SIAI’s recent work and ended up mainly talking about 1) generic progress in AI, 2) media coverage of AI and Singularity, 3) the intelligence explosion idea, 4) the AI advantage, and 5) the inherent unconnectedness of morality and intelligence (Hume). Ignore the title; I didn’t really get into Friendly AI design at all. It was more of an introduction to why Friendly AI may be required. (I’m not sure I would have even used the term “Friendly AI” if I were making up the talk title again, because it’s been argued by a number of people that the term sounds silly and unserious.)

If I could redo this talk (I plan to do so on video) I would focus a little more on ideas and less on AI advancements, and throw out all the quotes, just quickly summarizing them instead. I would also try even harder to avoid looking down at my laptop during the talk, and would have removed my nametag. I need to buy one of those remote clicker things. I realize I spent a fair amount of time summarizing other people’s AI research rather than ideas unique to me or SIAI, but at the time it seemed necessary because I assumed that few people in the audience would be familiar with the range of advances in AI over the last year alone. People have to understand that AI is making steady progress, otherwise why worry about more advanced AI? If I thought AI really were stuck in the mud, then I wouldn’t be as frantic about the need for safe AI.

Several people pointed out to me that the talk title also seems odd because I am all about getting people to “fear the Singularity” — or fear a negative Singularity where humanity gets steamrolled by indifferent superintelligence. My idea here was that we don’t have to fear the Singularity if we’re careful. I often get the impression that people’s minds just shut down when considering the prospect of an AI Singularity, even if they don’t object to the plausibility of human-level AI in principle, just because they see it as extremely alien in comparison to a human-sparked Singularity. Part of the idea I was going for was that an AI-sparked Singularity can be managed effectively, but as I mentioned, I didn’t even get around to talking about that.

Thinking about my comment on the superficial mundaneity of analyzing the genetic expression of baker’s yeast, I realize that it may not be considered that mundane to some scientists, but I’m not sure because I’m not a biologist that researches microbial genetic expression. I just figured that since yeast is a model organism, we already know a fair amount about its patterns of genetic expression and that the experiments were mainly for show.

You can follow along with the talk with my slides here.

Peter Norvig, Director of Research at Google, recently sat down and answered some questions contributed by the Reddit community. The top ten questions are listed here. Of particular interest to readers of this blog would be question #4, “Is Google working on strong AI?”

Thanks to Xamdam at Less Wrong for the link.

You can get it on their research page or download the pdf directly. From the preface:

This document is a high-level analysis of the engineering challenges involved in homesteading the high seas. The aim is not to provide a detailed design of a specific seastead, but rather to find answers to general questions, such as the cost per unit area of functional real estate.

H/t to the Seasteading Institute blog for the news.

Lately, I’ve been seeing something interesting — valid criticism of the transhumanist project. The concern is decently articulated by the people who are being paid to attack me and other transhumanists, over at The New Atlantis Futurisms blog, funded by the Ethics and Public Policy Center, “dedicated to applying the Judeo-Christian moral tradition to critical issues of public policy”. To quote Charles T. Rubin’s “What is the Good of Transhumanism?”:

While some will use enforcement costs and lack of complete success at enforcing restraint as an argument for removing it altogether, that is an argument that can be judged on its particular merits – even when the risks of enforcement failures are extremely great. The fact that nuclear non-proliferation efforts have not been entirely successful has not yet created a powerful constituency for putting plans for nuclear weapons on the Web, and allowing free sale of the necessary materials. In the event, transhumanists, like “Bioluddites,” want to make distinctions between legitimate and illegitimate uses of “applied reason,” even if as we will see they want to minimize the number of such distinctions because, as we will note later, they see diversity as a good. Of course, those who want to restrict some technological developments likewise look to some notion of the good. This disagreement about goods is the important one, untouched by “Bioluddite” name-calling. The mom-and-apple-pie defense of reason, science and technology one finds in transhumanism is rhetorically useful, within the framework of modern societies which have already bought into this way of looking at the world, to lend a sense of familiarity and necessity to arguments that are designed eventually to lead in very unfamiliar directions. But it is secondary to ideas of what these enterprises are good for, to which we now turn, and ultimately to questions about the foundation on which transhumanist ideas of the good are built.

Yes, diversity is good. But transhumanists have a problem. Diversity is so darn huge, and contains far far more of what would broadly be considered “hideous” than anything beautiful.

I approach the idea of “diversity” from an information theory based perspective. In such a perspective, “diversity” can be achieved by randomly rearranging molecules to achieve a new, unique, “diverse” state. In this view, if absolute freedom to self-modify became possible in a society with sophisticated molecular nanotechnology, then eventually a very large and exotic collective of wireheaded and partially wireheaded beings could emerge. It could be ugly, not beautiful. For a “real-world” example, look at how everyone had great expectations for SecondLife, then it “degenerated” into a haven of porn and nightclubs. While it’s debatable whether a world of porn and nightclubs is a bad thing, it’s obviously not what many in society would want, and I think that an optimal transhumanist future should be appealing to all, not just a few.

Simplistic libertarian transhumanism simply argues, “anything is possible, and everything should be”. Pursued to its logical conclusion, that means that I should be allowed to manufacture a trillion cyborg nematodes filled with botulism toxin and just chill with them. After all, it’s my own choice, what right do you have to infringe upon it? The problem is that that cluster of nematodes would become a weapon of mass destruction if launched into stratospheric air currents for worldwide distribution, and programmed to fall in clusters on major cities where they would inject their toxins into targets which they would navigate to via thermal sensing. My unlimited “freedom” could become your unlimited doom, overnight. The same applies to people in space with the ability to anonymously cloak and accelerate asteroids towards ground targets. Any substantial magnification in human capability raises the same “civil rights” issues.

Many transhumanist writings advocate simplistic libertarian transhumanism. I won’t bother to list any by name, but they’re all around.

A regular commenter here, Sulfur, recently articulated his objection to transhumanism, responding to my recent statement “The latter makes sense, the former doesn’t.”, with regards to solving the flaws of the Homo sapiens default chassis:

The fundamental problem with that sentence is that transhumanists see human body as a problem to solve and they are quick to judge what is needed and what is not. If that would be for them to decide, we already would have done terrible mistakes in augmenting our bodies (”Hell, we don’t need so many genes! let’s get rid of them!” hype-like attitude). Transhumanism uses imperfect tools to perfect human. That can easily lead to disaster. Besides, the most important issue is not weather small changes correcting some flaws are desirable, needed or wanted, but rather to what extend we can change human and not to commit suicide in ambitious yet funny way thanks to augmentation which would radically change our minds, creating new quality.

It’s true — we do see the human body as a problem to solve. After all, the human body can’t even withstand 5 psi overpressure without our eardrums exploding, or intercept rifle bullets without severe tissue damage, which I consider unacceptable. Moving more in a mainstream direction, many transhumanists (a small group of less than 5,000 people with mainstream intellectual influence far beyond their numbers) agree that solving aging is a major priority. After all, Darwinian evolution did not have our best interests in mind when it designed us. As far as I am concerned, the question of whether the human body is a problem to be solved is obvious: it is. The question is not whether or not we need to solve it, but how.

The “how” question is where things can get sticky. Most of human existence is not so crime-free and kosher as life in the United States or Western Europe. Business as usual in many places in the world, including the country of my grandparents, Russia, is deeply defined by organized crime, physical intimidation, and other primate antics. The many wealthy, comfortable transhumanists living in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Austin, Florida, Boston, New York, London, and similar places tend to forget this. The truth is that most of the world is dominated by the radically evil. Increasing our technological capabilities will only magnify that evil many times over.

The answer to this problem lies not in letting every being do whatever they want, which would lead to chaos. There must be regulations and restrictions on enhancement, to coax it along socially beneficial guidelines. This is not the same as advocating socialist politics in the human world. You can be a radical libertarian when it comes to human societies, but advocate “stringent” top-level regulation for a transhumanist world. The reason why is that the space of possibilities opened up by unlimited self-modification of brains and bodies is absolutely huge. Most of these configurations lack value, by any possible definition, even definitions adopted specifically as contrarian positions to try and refute my hypothesis. This space is much larger than we can imagine, and larger than many naive transhumanists choose to imagine. This is especially relevant when it comes to matters of mind, not just the body. Evolution crafted our minds over millions of years to be sane. More than 999,999 out of every 1,000,000 possible modifications to the human mind would be more likely to lead to insanity than improved intelligence or happiness. Transhumanists who don’t understand this need to study the human mind and looming technological possibilities more closely. The human mind is precisely configured, the space of choice is not, and ignorant spontaneous choices will lead to insane outcomes.

The problem with transhumanism is that it has become, in some quarters, merely a proxy for the idea of Progress. Progress is all well and good. The problem is that the idea isn’t indefinitely extensible. The human world is a small floating platform in a sea of darkness — a design space that we haven’t even begun to understand. In most directions lie Monsters, not happiness. Progress within the human regime is one thing, but the posthuman regime is something else entirely. Imagine having First Contact with a quadrillion different alien species simultaneously. That is what we are looking at, with an uncontrolled hard takeoff Singularity. Just one First Contact would be the most significant event in human history, but transhumanists are talking about that times a billion, or a trillion, all at once.

In the comments, Sulfur referenced the “transhumanist mindset which says that upward change is a dogma”. But there is a portion of transhumanists who resist that dogma. Take Nick Bostrom’s “The Future of Human Evolution” paper, very popular among SIAI staff. I believe that Bostrom’s 2004 publication of this paper was a ground-breaking moment for transhumanism, definitive of a schism that has been ongoing since. The schism is between those who see transhumanism as unqualifiedly good and those who see humanity’s self-enhancement as a challenging project that demands close attention and care. Here’s the abstract:

Evolutionary development is sometimes thought of as exhibiting an inexorable trend towards higher, more complex, and normatively worthwhile forms of life. This paper explores some dystopian scenarios where freewheeling evolutionary developments, while continuing to produce complex and intelligent forms of organization, lead to the gradual elimination of all forms of being that we care about. We then consider how such catastrophic outcomes could be avoided and argue that under certain conditions the only possible remedy would be a globally coordinated policy to control human evolution by modifying the fitness function of future intelligent life forms.

I am strongly attracted to the Singularity Institute, Future of Humanity Institute, and Lifeboat Foundation, because I see these three organizations as the cautious side of transhumanism, exemplified by the concerns aired in the above paper. Many other iterations of transhumanism seem to be awkward fusions between SL2 transhumanism and the boilerplate leftist or rightist politics of the Baby Boomer generation. Though even our new President is attempting to engage in post-Boomer politics, the USA Boomer Politics War is so huge that it sucks in practically everything else. It’s pathetic when transhumanists can’t be intellectually strong enough to transcend that. Really, it is a generational war.

As somewhat of a side note, people misunderstand the SIAI position with respect to this question. SIAI seeks not to impose a superintelligent regime on the world, but rather asks, “given that we believe a hard takeoff is likely, what the heck can we do to preserve Human Value, or structures at least continuous with human value?” The question is not easy, and people often misinterpret the probability assessment of a fast transition as a desire for a fast transition. I would desire nothing more than a slow transition. I just don’t think that the transition from Homo sapiens to recursive self-improvement will be very slow. Still, even if it’s fast, value can probably be retained, if we allocate significant resources and attention to specifically doing so.

I believe that there can be a self-enhancement path that everyone can agree on as beneficial. I think there is enough room in the universe to hold diverse values, but not exponentially diverse in the information theory sense. I doubt that intelligent species throughout the multiverse retain their legacy forms as they spread across the cosmos. Inventing and mastering the technologies of self-modification is not optional for intelligent civilizations — it’s a must. The question is what we use them for, and whether we let society degenerate into a mess of a million of shattered fragments in the process.

The chatter in the background dies down after a couple minutes.

“The people at Oak Ridge were frustrated. They were very fine scientists. They did this work… they tested all these procedures against real nuclear weapons, but the American people weren’t getting any defense.”

Here is the file. Unfortunately, the image scans are crap.

Cross-posted from SIAI blog:

Thanks to generous contributions by our donors, we are only $11,840 away from fulfilling our $100,000 goal for the 2010 Singularity Research Challenge. For every dollar you contribute to SIAI, another dollar is contributed by our matching donors, who have pledged to match all contributions made before February 28th up to $100,000. That means that this Sunday is your final chance to donate for maximum impact.

Funds from the challenge campaign will be used to support all SIAI activities: our core staff, the Singularity Summit, the Visiting Fellows program, and more. Donors can earmark their funds for specific grant proposals, many of which are targeted towards academic paper-writing, or just contribute to our general fund. The grants system makes it easier to bring new researchers into the fold on a part-time basis, widening the pool of thinkers producing quality work on Artificial Intelligence risks and other topics relevant to SIAI’s interests. It also provides transparency so our donor community can directly evaluate the impact of their contributions.

Human-level and smarter Artificial Intelligence will likely have huge impacts on humanity, but only a tiny number of researchers are working to understand how to ensure those impacts are good ones. The role of the Singularity Institute is to fill that void, bringing scholarship and science to bear on challenging questions. Instead of just letting the chips fall where they may, help the Singularity Institute increase the probability of a positive Singularity by contributing financially to our research effort. We depend completely on donors like you for all funding.

2010 marks the 10th year since SIAI’s founding. With your help, SIAI will still exist in 2015, 2020, 2025… however long it takes to get to a positive Singularity. Thank you for your support!

From the Genetic Archaeology blog:

Humanity’s physical design flaws have long been apparent - we have a blind spot in our vision, for instance, and insufficient room for wisdom teeth - but do the imperfections extend to the genetic level?

In his new book, Inside the Human Genome, John Avise examines why - from the perspectives of biochemistry and molecular genetics - flaws exist in the biological world. He explores the many deficiencies of human DNA while recapping recent findings about the human genome.

Distinguished Professor of ecology & evolutionary biology at UC Irvine, Avise also makes the case that overwhelming scientific evidence of genomic defects provides a compelling counterargument to intelligent design.

Here, Avise discusses human imperfection, the importance of understanding our flaws, and why he believes theologians should embrace evolutionary science.

Our brains and bodies are both full of flaws. According to the pre-transhumanist worldview, the plan is just to sit around for the rest of eternity with these flaws, even as we colonize the Galaxy. According to the transhumanist worldview, the plan is to analyze these flaws, debate whether they are flaws or not, and consider fixing them if it seems practical and desirable. The latter makes sense, the former doesn’t.

The New Scientist CultureLab blog has more info on the book.

My friend Tom McCabe has uploaded several essays and papers that may interest Accelerating Future readers:

Failure and Success in AGI Projects
Optimization of Rockets with Variable Exhaust Velocity
Singularity FAQ, with Kaj Sotala
Sales in Startups
How Gold and Glory Led the Roman Republic to Greatness
A Unified Theory of Success
An Alternative Theory of Startups

There is also a short essay by Michael Vassar:

Changes in Class Well-Being Over the Past Century

Contrary to common wisdom among intellectuals, television is not completely useless — it can help us learn about the EEA, that humorously elusive concept. Take some of the program with a grain of salt. After all, it is a dramaticization.

Fun fact: Homo sapiens spent about 70% of its evolutionary history in small bands in the plain/forest mixed environment of sub-Saharan Africa. Extensive water exposure was probably involved as well. The EEA is a complex thing.

The more you understand the EEA, the more non-surprising all types of human behavior are today.

Bonus topic: how did Jesus of Nazareth artfully play to certain human evolutionary desires while downplaying others? Is the Church that Jesus preached about fundamentally a social project or a personal one?

Extra bonus: If Australopithecus existed today, would we justify their enslavement by calling them subhuman, like we do to Sus scrofa and Bos primigenius today?

In this video, Dawkins acknowledges the possibilities of hard takeoff and open-ended recursive self-improvement in Artificial Intelligence.

Robert Freitas has a new idea for a product that could be built using molecular manufacturing — diamond trees designed to sequester carbon dioxide. The concept is fleshed out in technical detail at a paper now available at the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing website. Let’s bring up that abstract!

The future technology of molecular manufacturing will enable long-term sequestration of atmospheric carbon in solid diamond products, along with sequestration of lesser masses of numerous air pollutants, yielding pristine air worldwide ~30 years after implementation. A global population of 143 x 109 20-kg “diamond trees” or tropostats, generating 28.6 TW of thermally non-polluting solar power and covering ~0.1% of the planetary surface, can create and actively maintain compositional atmospheric homeostasis as a key step toward achieving comprehensive human control of Earth’s climate.

On the topic of MNT, I also wonder what it will take for the skeptics to become convinced that the technology is plausible. Positional atomic placement has already been demonstrated, including at room temperature. Will complex rotating 3D nanosystems convince them? I doubt those are far off.

Scientific research indicates human athletic performance has peaked
Corporations, agencies infiltrated by botnet
Dolphin cognitive abilities raise ethical questions, says Emory neuroscientist
Synchronized flying robots could paint pictures in the sky (w/ Video)
Millimeter-scale, energy-harvesting sensor system developed
Nanodiamonds Produce ‘Game Changing Event’ for MRI Imaging Sensitivity
The Onion: U.S. Economy Grinds To Halt As Nation Realizes Money Just A Symbolic, Mutually Shared Illusion
CNN: Bill Gates and the “Nuclear Renaissance”
Telegraph: Christians to debate impact of high-profile atheist scientists
Michael Graham Richard: Science is the Only News

Alcor has some job openings, including CEO for $125,000 a year plus benefits. That’s a lot of moola.

There’s also openings for Technical Coordinator, Readiness Coordinator, paramedics, and emergency technicians.

Come on, people. Those frozen heads aren’t going to beat themselves. Let’s get to work.

(Apologies if anyone is offended by my little joke. Sometimes I think cryonicists are a little too serious and self-important. Full disclosure: I am Alcor member A-2458.)

Cory Doctorow linked the Aaron Diaz article yesterday, which is good for exposure. Doctorow said:

Dresden Codak’s “Artificial Flight and Other Myths (a reasoned examination of A.F. by top birds)” is a superb, spot-on critique of artificial intelligence skeptics (like, ahem, me), comparing the our arguments against the emergence of “real AI” to the arguments a bird might make against “real” artificial flight. I love being made to re-examine my own convictions while laughing my ass off.

The problem with the online hipster culture that Doctorow embodies is that its attention span is so unbelievably short that these sorts of short humorous pieces are the only way to get them to pay attention, ever. The idea of reading papers is absolutely foreign to this huge subculture, which powers Digg, Reddit, and practically every other social news site on the Internet. They are the mainstream media (MSM) of the Internet.

You know the motto of Improbable Research, “research that makes people laugh and then think”? I always think of this motto when I look at the mainstream Internet public, but with a different spin on it. Their motto should be, “make us laugh or we refuse to think”.

Fortunately, BoingBoing linked Futurismic for the news, which prominently mentions me in their article, so people can think about anthropomorphism in AI in more depth. Thanks, Paul Raven!

Via M[C]S. Apparently the Vatican is OK with belief in ETs. But is it OK if we believe God was an ET and we can summon his powers with the right radio signals? Try asking your local pastor that, and his head will explode.

Kevin Warwick, though obviously is a Singularitarian, portrays the same adversarial stance against AI as other human chauvinists, such as James Hughes. I paraphrase it as: “If there’s an entity around that’s smarter and more powerful than me, then I’m going to equate that with me being subservient and freak the fuck out!”

My suggestion: calm down. Let’s do what we can to develop AIs that are nice people. There is no way we are going to outrace AI in the long run, so have to pursue this path, whether we like it or not. We are not going to eliminate all computers in the world, or keep power in the hands of humans forever. The question is not, “will the most powerful and capable entities in the world eventually be AIs?” (the answer is yes), the question is, “what the heck can we do to ensure our continued survival and prosperity once these entities inevitably become more capable than us?”

Sooner or later, positive experiences with AI programs or robots will cause these AI adversaries to understand that AIs could potentially become people too: worthy of our trust and love. The longer they keep up their adversarial attitude, the more time is wasted ignoring the challenge of engineering Friendly AIs. The year is 2010 and the clock is ticking.