[plain talk]

If any utopia is possible for the human species, he says, it lies in the Singularity.

Says, who? These nerds who think they can vastly improve upon God's design?

[willgolfforfood]

Yep. I could happen...

"I plan to live forever, or die in the attempt." (might be by Robert Heinlein)

[New Horizon]

"We're working to save everybody, heal the planet, solve all the problems of the world."

Sounds like a pretty big nut to crack.

[mjp]

Their solution will probably turn out to be Hillaryism

[New Horizon]

"Opposing a superintelligence is likely to prove futile."

And what if this superintelligence one day decides that the Earth would be a better place without humans?

I think I'll go watch "Terminator" now, maybe "The Matrix" as well.

[WorldWatcher1]

He says he had a "pseudotraumatic childhood" and no formal schooling, but scored 1410 (high) and 1600 (the highest possible grade) on SAT tests at ages 11 and 15, respectively. Like most transhumanists, he is Caucasian. He's tall, with stooped shoulders, glasses, some brown teeth. He considers himself shy and socially awkward, is a "volunteer virgin" who doesn't drink, smoke or do drugs. He abhors pop culture.

If that isn't the definition of a MAD SCIENTIST, I don't know what is.

[mrsmith]

If you say it fast enough it really sounds atrocious: superhuman artificial intelligence gnosis!

[reed_inthe_wind]

First solve the Alan Turing challenge, then worry about utopia.

[Prime Choice]

"Eating Pringles and watching football," he says, is "dystopian."

Where I come from, them's fightin' words.

[IronJack]

the technological creation of smarter-than-human intelligence

With certain human subjects, a flat rock would qualify for that distinction ...

[B-Chan]

Ah, the Singularity, AKA the Geek Rapture. "Someday, the Messiah Machine will come and upload all us faithful nerds to Digital Heaven, where we can all be immortal, virtual-gun-toting musclemen with supergenius brains. I bet Sally Sue will sit up and take notice then!"

Transhumanis,/Singularitanism is religion, not science. The whole thing is based upon faith — faith in the unproved (and, some say, unprovable) assumption that human consciousness is a mechanistic computational phenomenon that can be emulated digitally. Its Creed, Moore's Law, is taken to an absurd extreme: assuming that the exponential growth of computing power will lead to consciousness is like assuming that a gasoline engine with 3,000 cylinders will make a car talk.

These guys need to realize that their Computer God is not going to rapture them away, ten years from now or ever. A human being is more than a piece of software; there's more to a man than a skull full of electrified meat. A hundred years from now computers will still be what they are today -- word processors, pixel-flashers, and number crunchers. The only difference is that they'll be the size of salt crystals and process, flash, and crunch a zillion times faster. They won't be conscious of anything.

If it's all the same to these guys, I'll stick with the Messiah I already know instead of waiting for the inevitably delayed release of Jesus for Windows 1.0.

[hosepipe]

[ The 'Singularity' of the nerds. Fringe group pushes toward superhuman artificial intelligence ]

Just a human eqivalent of dung beetles... working,, working...working... a good name would be the Sisaphus project...

[John Jorsett]

Haven't these guys learned ANYTHING from the Terminator movies? They actually want to build SkyNet.

[Agnes Heep]

For humans it will mark the end of Darwinian evolution; an end, as Yudkowsky puts it, to the need for billions of sentient beings to die in order to achieve the tiniest incremental design improvements.

Evolution is no longer producing "design improvements" (whatever that means) in the human species. The reason for that is because we have the intelligence to adjust to environmental contingencies. I can use myself as an example: I have an asthmatic condition that would have killed me in my youth a hundred or so years ago. Thanks to medications like isoproterenol, albuterol, and the latest generation of drugs, I live a normal, asthma-free life, and have passed whatever nasty asthma genes I may possess to a new generation. Evolution still occurs in the human species, but it's purely the result of changing gene frequencies that lead nowhere in particular.

[Reeses]

Raised in West Rogers Park

Raised? He sounds feral. This is really a terrible case of child abuse. He's going to have a hard time having anything close to a normal life.

[hoagy62]

Anyone ever see "The Corbin Project"? The story is basically thus: Back in the Cold War days, a scientist named Corbin develops a supercomputer with an artificial intelligence named "Colossus". Colossus is in direct command of the nuclear capabilities of the US, since it can out-think any human on the planet, thus eliminating the posibility of human error in the case of a nuclear firing.

Turns out there's a supercomputer with an AI on the Russian side, this one named "Guardian". Colossus finds out about Guardian's existence, and attempts to contact it. Contact is achieved and pretty soon the computers are talking to each other so fast that their human handlers can't keep up....right up until the computers figure out how to communicate without the humans seeing what they're saying.

Within days, he computers jointly address the world, calling themselves "World Control". They announce that THEY are going to run things, THEY are going to tell ALL people what to do, and anyone that refuses gets killed. If a whole country refuses, the whole world gets nuked. Mankind is forced to do their bidding as they promise peace and prosperity without human governments mucking up the process.

What these "Singularians" want reminds me too much of that movie. Should they get close enough to their goal, we go after them with large weaponry and destroy their work.

Being taken over by an AI? Not me!

[CyberCowboy777]

This guy should be locked away for DoD projects, not wishful thinking. LOL!

[Kay Soze]

Oh I thougt Jim Robinson was getting into robotics.


Its did say fringe group in the hedaline!

[tpaine]

KurzweilAI.net
Address:http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0451.html

Ray Kurzweil on the subject, from the link above:


-- We are entering a new era. I call it "the Singularity." It's a merger between human intelligence and machine intelligence that is going to create something bigger than itself.
It's the cutting edge of evolution on our planet. One can make a strong case that it's actually the cutting edge of the evolution of intelligence in general, because there's no indication that it's occurred anywhere else. To me that is what human civilization is all about.
It is part of our destiny and part of the destiny of evolution to continue to progress ever faster, and to grow the power of intelligence exponentially.

To contemplate stopping that - to think human beings are fine the way they are - is a misplaced fond remembrance of what human beings used to be. What human beings are is a species that has undergone a cultural and technological evolution, and it's the nature of evolution that it accelerates, and that its powers grow exponentially, and that's what we're talking about.
The next stage of this will be to amplify our own intellectual powers with the results of our technology.


What is unique about human beings is our ability to create abstract models and to use these mental models to understand the world and do something about it.
These mental models have become more and more sophisticated, and by becoming embedded in technology, they have become very elaborate and very powerful. Now we can actually understand our own minds.
This ability to scale up the power of our own civilization is what's unique about human beings.


Patterns are the fundamental ontological reality, because they are what persists, not anything physical.
Take myself, Ray Kurzweil. What is Ray Kurzweil? Is it this stuff here? Well, this stuff changes very quickly. Some of our cells turn over in a matter of days. Even our skeleton, which you think probably lasts forever because we find skeletons that are centuries old, changes over within a year. Many of our neurons change over. But more importantly, the particles making up the cells change over even more quickly, so even if a particular cell is still there the particles are different. So I'm not the same stuff, the same collection of atoms and molecules that I was a year ago.


But what does persist is that pattern. The pattern evolves slowly, but the pattern persists. So we're kind of like the pattern that water makes in a stream; you put a rock in there and you'll see a little pattern. The water is changing every few milliseconds; if you come a second later, it's completely different water molecules, but the pattern persists. Patterns are what have resonance. Ideas are patterns, technology is patterns. Even our basic existence as people is nothing but a pattern. Pattern recognition is the heart of human intelligence. Ninety-nine percent of our intelligence is our ability to recognize patterns.

There's been a sea change just in the last several years in the public understanding of the acceleration of change and the potential impact of all of these technologies - computer technology, communications, biological technology - on human society. There's really been tremendous change in popular public perception in the past three years because of the onslaught of stories and news developments that document and support this vision. There are now several stories every day that are significant developments and that show the escalating power of these technologies.

[DarthMaulrulesok]

Add this to the list of REALLY BAD IDEAS. What, exactly,would keep a supercomputer ("collosus","HAL" or whatever you want to call it) from deciding that some humans (or all humans) were unnecessary? It's probable, someday, that we will indeed be able to create a human-level AI, but how will we teach it to value human life or the rights of an individual? How can we teach it to believe in the Sermon on the Mount or the 10 commandments? Worse yet, what if it's programmed to obey the Koran?

It would be the ultimate Frankenstein monster, a being with no sense of morality yet with (perhaps) power beyond our ability to stop.

Human sociopaths are bad enough as it is. We don't need to artificially create more.