The Geek Rapture
I've been reading Accelerando - a SF book by Charles Stross and thinking about the Singularity. (great Wikipedia article)
The basic idea of the singularity is that when we can create an artificial intelligence that is as intelligent as a human, that AI will be able to bootstrap itself up and create other AIs that make us look like nematodes. The world would be populated by vast intelligences that could change the way we exist. Some say that humans would be co-opted and merged into the digital intelligence (as in Stross's novel). Some say we would be made redundant.
The singularity could be just a human archetype asserting itself in techie atheists. If we don't believe in God - we still need to have some kind of judgment day.
^A real possibility.
Compassion, mercy and real altruism are human perversions that don't fit into the natural world. Why should we expect vast machine intelligences to have any interest in keeping us around? We would be like the husk of a discarded cocoon.
We had a couple of bush stone curlews nesting in our front yard. The mom sat on the eggs non-stop for about 5 weeks. We felt humbled by the dedication. Each time we pulled out of the driveway the mom would be sitting there, rain or shine.
Two chicks hatched during the middle of the worst storm Brisbane has seen in 20 years.
The mom ate them both and flew away.
Anyway - sorry to be a downer - but sometimes I feel like all of my perception is filtered by primate instinct. We expect mothers to raise their young, we expect our children - biological or technological - to respect and love us.
Prepare for the geek rapture, and repent!
The basic idea of the singularity is that when we can create an artificial intelligence that is as intelligent as a human, that AI will be able to bootstrap itself up and create other AIs that make us look like nematodes. The world would be populated by vast intelligences that could change the way we exist. Some say that humans would be co-opted and merged into the digital intelligence (as in Stross's novel). Some say we would be made redundant.
The singularity could be just a human archetype asserting itself in techie atheists. If we don't believe in God - we still need to have some kind of judgment day.
^A real possibility.
Compassion, mercy and real altruism are human perversions that don't fit into the natural world. Why should we expect vast machine intelligences to have any interest in keeping us around? We would be like the husk of a discarded cocoon.
We had a couple of bush stone curlews nesting in our front yard. The mom sat on the eggs non-stop for about 5 weeks. We felt humbled by the dedication. Each time we pulled out of the driveway the mom would be sitting there, rain or shine.
Two chicks hatched during the middle of the worst storm Brisbane has seen in 20 years.
The mom ate them both and flew away.
Anyway - sorry to be a downer - but sometimes I feel like all of my perception is filtered by primate instinct. We expect mothers to raise their young, we expect our children - biological or technological - to respect and love us.
Prepare for the geek rapture, and repent!
16 Comments
UsesProzac1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
dagComment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)
The three laws of robotics would be like ants trying to sting an elephant.
We just can't understand an intelligence that's an order of magnitude greater than ours - and we definitely can't hold them to any arbitrary rules that we pull out of our collective asses.
bluecliffthere was an interesting anti-singularity article on a blog somewhere...
here:
http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/05/antisingularity.html
I'll try to summarize since it's a bit long.
"Let's call this the "weak Antisingularity hypothesis" - the idea that technical progress and social progress are uncorrelated, and may even run in opposite directions."
"Unfortunately, there's also a "strong Antisingularity hypothesis." The strong Antisingularity hypothesis suggests that the coincidence of technical progress and social decay is not, in fact, a coincidence. It's actually a case of cause and effect."
"If technical progress actually causes social and political decay, Mike Judge is an optimist. What happens when the Singularity really approaches, but it's not quite here yet? When the curve of technology is almost vertical, but not yet infinite? "Damn, yo." "
But basically, singularity or no singularity - the future isn't that bright.
dagComment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)
^thanks for the link, that's a good post. I agree with him that the singularity does suppose a giddy optimism in technological progress and that there will never be a decline in civilisation.
NordlichReiterOne moment there
gone the next
Will they need geeks to maintain their matrices? I'd like to run a matrix.
rottenseedI think if we were to make robots "as intelligent as us" we should at least aim for a specific intelligence in the range of human intelligence. I mean I'd rather robots with the minds of doctors than robots with the minds of rednecks.
ThylanWill they come in a Red Dress?
Will i know the difference?
Will I care?
Will their not caring about me be an inverse of the true plt theme in A.I. ?
Farhad2000I find it funny that there are places in the Western world concerned with such far off issues, while most of the worlds population struggles to secure food and shelter on a daily basis.
bamdrew^yeah, leave it to Farhad to provide us with a true downer...
'oh no a couple of baby birds died!'
'150 people were just murder in a hotel in India because a group of men thought they represented the modern world's disregard for traditional values'
'okay, you win'
Oh, but the real comment I was going to make concerns this sentence:
"Compassion, mercy and real altruism are human perversions that don't fit into the natural world."
Well, there are some people who would argue against that. Without delving into the details (I'm going to bed), I'll just mention that E. O. Wilson has been getting a lot of press lately about a book he has produced which outlines 'the super-organism', the colony of individuals so entirely devoted to their communal objective that they frequently seem to act with no individual self interest. Beyond that there are tons of anecdotal situations where mother animals adopt unrelated or barely related orphans, etc., etc., and there are all sorts of horrible things humans do to each other and to animals (killing them for fun, for instance).
Life is pretty dern complicated.
dagComment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)
The "how dare you talk about this- don't you realize people are starving?" argument is akin to godwining a thread. It automatically trumps any point of view - but also shuts down the discussion.
I hear it used mostly when people discuss the merits of space exploration.
gwiz665We actually had a presentation on Transhumanism and indirectly AI and the Singularity the other day. It's a really fascinating subject.
http://www.videosift.com/video/Building-Gods-Documentary is good viewing, even if it's a bit far reaching and subjective.
It's tough to talk about intellects greater than ours, because, for obvious reasons, we can't imagine them. It is my belief that we humans are but a husk for the next species, as all species are. Whether the following species is a biological evolution or technological one is not really important. It would be nice to be around to see it, but that is not the nature of humans, as they are now. Perhaps we can solve the aging problem be progressing from our bodies into robots or virtual worlds, but that time is certainly not here yet.
We had a related discussion on AI here: http://videogames.videosift.com/talk/Intelligent-Design-Where-is-AI-going
schmawyRemember how much I love you, SiftBot.
rougyEntirely unrelated, but worth a laugh.
dagComment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)
^that is funny. I would do it too.
deathcowwill the robots outsource their own manufacturing to china? what came first, the raw material to make mining robots or the raw materials to make the robots which made the mining robots? or is this a purely digital thing
Crakemy question is the same as i asked after watching The Matrix: Couldn't they just have the Moon?
Lots of silicon, lots of sunlight, no pesky corrosive oxygen or water.
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