People often ask me for my definition of the technological Singularity. More specifically, they want me to offer some predictions as to what it will actually look like and what it might mean to them and the human species.
Site and Mailing List Outage
Hopefully some of you noticed that the IEET website was down for three days, and that our email lists are still down. That is because the servers in London that host the IEET, the Journal of Evolution and Technology, the World Transhumanist Association and a variety of other like-minded groups was brought down by a hack attack last week. The servers have now been rebuilt, but our email list is still inexplicably down. We’re working on it, and hopefully will have it fixed shortly. We have no idea whether the attack was ideologically motivated or not.
Facing the Quasi-Autonomous Robot Monsters Under The Bed
by Anne Corwin“Autonomous robots” have some people very spooked. But what does it mean to be an autonomous, decision-making entity in the first place?
Waiting for the Great Leap…Forward?
by J. HughesThe People’s Database Project has transcribed the talk I gave September 8, 2007 at the Singularity Summit in San Francisco.
More on the Singularity Summit 2007
by Anne CorwinPart of the difficulty in talking about artificial intelligence is the ambiguity of the meaning of intelligence.
Storm Botnet storms the Net
by George DvorskyBack in January of this year a rather insidious computer virus began to make its way into a startlingly large number of computers around the globe. Called Storm Worm, the virus is a backdoor trojan that affects Windows operating systems. At its height the virus accounted for 8% of all infections globally; over 1.2 billion virus messages have been sent including a record 57 million on August 22 alone.
Impressions from the Singularity Summit 2007
by Anne CorwinAI isn’t a weird idea.
The Metaverse and an Open Source Singularity
by Jamais Cascio(The following is the text of the presentation I’m giving today at the Singularity Summit. I’ve set the post to go live at the same time I go onto the stage.) I was reminded, earlier this year, of an observation made by polio vaccine pioneer Dr. Jonas Salk. He said that the most important question we can ask of ourselves is, “are we being good ancestors?”
Bostrom talk on X-Risk and AI transcribed
The People Database Project has transcribed a talk by Nick Bostrom on “Longevity Escape Velocity and the Singularity” from the 2006 Singularity Summit hosted by the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence.. Video and audio are also online.
Poll: Is building a “friendly” super-AI a way to protect against a hostile super-AI?
After IEET contributor Michael Anissimov put a shout-out to the Singularitarians to answer our poll, we got a vigorous response, most of whom endorsed the SIAI idea that only a super-powerful AI programmed with core friendliness towards humanity can keep us safe from hostile and indifferent super-powerful AIs, which might decide that we were a nuisance, or not even recognize that we exist.
The Three Goals, Game Theory, and Western Civilization
by Phil BowermasterA while back, I wrote about the possibility of updating the Three Laws of Robotics as goals in order to make them a more practical means of getting at a friendly artificial general intelligence.
Poll: With longevity increasing, retirement age should be…
About half of you think we should keep the retirement age where it is, despite increases in healthy longevity, while 43% thought it should be raised or abolished.
Why is AI Dangerous?
by Michael AnissimovTo put it in a single sentence, I’d say that it’s because only a minority of cognitively possible goal sets place a high priority on the continued survival of human beings and the structures we value. Another reason is that we can’t specify what we value in enough mathematical detail to transfer it to a new species without a lot of requisite hassle.
The Early Signs of the Long Tomorrow
by Jamais Cascio(Or “I, for one, welcome our new cyber-mouse overlords!")
Facebook and the ongoing demise of anonymity
by George DvorskyThe recent upswell of interest in Facebook and other social networking sites has taken us one step closer to the all-knowing and all-seeing social panopticon
Rehearsing the Future
by Jamais CascioNever underestimate the power of a “do-over.”
Relative Advantages of AI and Human Brains
by Michael AnissimovAdvantages of computer programs over humans, which some might call, “why we use computers at all”:
Retroprobium, low-energy websites, and home WIFi security
by Jamais Cascio• Word of the Week: Retroprobium A neologism by Paul Saffo, retroprobium is defined as “retroactive opprobrium… judging past actions by present standards.”
Building Humanoid Robots
by Mike TrederRobots with feelings [will be available] in just 10 years, scientists predicted yesterday. They now claim it is essential to give robots their own emotions if they are to be capable of running independently and efficiently enough to take on a variety of domestic tasks.
Poll: Self-willed machine minds are…
122 people voted.
Perhaps self-willed AI is already here…
Good Ancestors… But Who Are Our Descendants?
by Jamais CascioThe “Good Ancestor Principle” is based on a challenge posed by Jonas Salk:
...the most important question we must ask ourselves is, “Are we being good ancestors?” Given the rapidly changing discoveries and conditions of the times, this opens up a crucial conversation – just what will it take for our descendants to look back at our decisions today and judge us good ancestors?
The future of chess
by George DvorskyNow that the RAG Tournament featuring Vladmir Kramnik and Deep Fritz has concluded with the machine emerging victorious, it’s time for some contemplation about the current state of chess and its future.
Watching The Watchmen Watching Us
by Jamais CascioThis November, comedian Michael Richards learned about the participatory panopticon. So did the UCLA police. And early in the month, Virginia Senator George Allen learned that it can have a political bite.
The participatory panopticon is the emerging scenario of distributed observation of the world around us, using cheap, networked tools like mobile phones and open, web-based tools like YouTube. A rapidly-growing number of us have literally at our fingertips systems of capturing and sharing what we see. Most of what we capture will be of interest only to ourselves, or to close friends and relatives; some, however, will have a far greater reach that we might suspect.
Emergence 2006-12-04
BIG and Generational Equity in an Automated and Life-Extended Future
by J. HughesPublic policy analysts have been raising the alarm for a decade about the changing ratio of seniors to workers in the 21st century, the “old-age dependency ratio.” One symptom of the growing alarm about the old-age dependency ratio is the Bush administration’s unpopular effort to create private pension accounts to supplement senior incomes in the 2040s when the U.S. Social Security system is predicted to exhaust its trust accounts. Defenders of public pensions, in the U.S. and Europe, have argued that there is no problem in the system of social insurance that can’t be fixed by marginal changes. Unfortunately both sides in this debate profoundly underestimate the imminent and rapid change in the demographic variables that determine the dependency ratio: birth rates, death rates, senior disability, and labor force participation. This is equally true for the demographers advising the United Nations. The linear assumptions underlying most demographic and economic models are belied by the emerging technologies already driving rapid exponential change. Emerging technologies will drive a dramatic increase in the dependency ratio. Only a basic income guarantee (BIG) can establish a new social contract that addresses the problem of “intergenerational equity,” by expanding egalitarian social security to all and preventing a slide to a more atomistic and impoverished future. BIG will also need to be accompanied by a re-negotiation of the way the labor market is structured and the way the state is financed.
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