GF 2045: First Sunday Session

Kurzweil is up...  Talking about exponentials and acceleration.  He's kind of sloppy - talking about social media and blogs taking only three years to spread (FB founded in 2004, blogs before 2000) .

Has a graph of microprocessor clock speed that doesn't seem to show the fact that clock speed has plateaud (we've moved to having many cores instead).

Kurzweil is explicit that the singularity metaphor is drawn from black holes (rather than mathematical singularities more abstractly).

GF 2045: Section 3

Back from lunch with 70% battery, so I'm going to return to live-blogging.

First up is Marvin Minsky, who is of course a god in computer science.  I'm very intrigued to know what he has to say on these subjects.

He thinks we're going to run out of workers due to increasing lifespan and low fertility!  Don't think he's looked at the data on employment/population ratio, which show the reverse.  This is his case for the need for smart robots and it's based on a total lack of knowledge of the relevant economic statistics!

Smart robots have not made a whole lot of progress since the 1970s, in his view.  Humans are resourceful and complex (extended example on object recognition in vision) and it's been hard to duplicate that.

AI has split into different approaches that work on particular subfields.  In the sixties/seventies, quite a lot of progress was made on algorithms that could solve basic math problems (high school/college algebra/calculus).  So seemed easy to solve highly technical problems.  But extremely difficult to get computers to solve "common sense" things that even young children can do.

Minsky believes that understanding of the brain is very limited at the large scale.  Know a great deal about individual neurons, a little about connections between neurons, and almost nothing about how large assemblies of neurons collaborate to solve problems.  Know that different brain regions do different things, but very little about how they are done.

Shouts out to Freud for an early theory of learning being due to strengthening neural connections, fifty years ahead of time.  Also draws on Freudian ideas of inner critics.  Wants to see more money diverted to top-down analysis of thinking/brain, versus bottom-up neuroscience in order to make better progress on AI.

"My prediction for the 2040s is that this will happen more slowly than most of us think, but that eventually it will happen".

Next up are Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff.  They are famously AI sceptics and have a completely different theory than most people of how brain/consciousness work.

Hameroff is talking in person, Penrose by video.  Hameroff's life is devoted to "What is consciousness".  Defines consciousness as subjective awareness - objective correlates are not know scientifically.  Eastern view is consciousness pervades universe.  Western view is brain produces consciousness as some kind of excitation of neurons in a network of connections.

Outlining his microtubule theory of consciousness - too complex to liveblog but pretty interesting stuff - more plausible on first exposure than I would have guessed.

Means brain does 10²⁷ operations per second instead of 10¹⁶ per second.  Puts the singularity back a good ways (if you think the latter is tied to mere computation speed, anyway).

Now Penrose up - big gap in quantum mechanics where Schrodinger equation and making measurement are foundation principles, but inconsistent (apologies to the non-physicists here).  Obvious place to look for consciousness.  Schrodinger's cat - why don't we see superpositions?  Articulating a new theory of quantum mechanics/consciousness here - I'm not going to follow this without a lot more study.  Rest of the audience must be completely lost (assuming there aren't too many physics PhDs here).  Whoa - their theory of consciousness somehow can accomodate it occurring not tied to the brain and so can accomodate out-of-body experiences etc.

These guys are either crazy or geniuses (or both).

Now Alexander Panov, a Russian physicist.  Outlining the idea of the technological singularity.  Kurzweil prediction of date of singularity is based on comparing computational capacity of brains and computers, with brains approximated as number of synapses times switching frequency of about 100Hz, with computation extrapolated using Moore's Law.

Points out that software progress is not tied all that closely to hardware progress. Computer translation sucked in the eighties and sucks now, despite a million-fold increase in computer power.  No indications that we understand how to program a strong AI.  Claims the problem of simulating nervous system of the simple worm C. elegans (with only a few hundred neurons) is unsolved.

Also, individual neurons have been shown to be stateful and learn - so brain is more than just the neuronal interactions.  More discussion of possibility of quantum effects in brain.

Martine Rothblatt

"The Purpose of Biotechnology Is the End of Death".  Talking about mindclones - talking about duplication of consciousness, thinks "Humans will have no trouble getting used to being in two places at the same time".  Speculating about "mindware" - software that can interact with a "mindfile" - an uploaded consciousness.  Yawn - not happening soon.  Very glib shallow defense of the idea that it's inevitable that we will be able to upload minds (given we still have no real idea how the brain/mind works, I don't see how this can possibly be certain).

Problem of mindclone civil rights.  Does a mindclone have rights - while biological form still exists?  Afterwards?  "The cause celebre of the 21st century".

Are you legally responsible for the actions of your mind-clones?

What about mind-clone procreation?  Do combinations of mind-clones that have never been biologically alive have rights?

Anders Sandberg

Ethics of mind uploading.  Analogy with animals - what moral consideration do they deserve?  Long philosophical discussion of rights of software.

Having said this, it's clear there will be a legal/practical minefield if we ever could upload minds.  Who owns the upload?  What happens if multiple uploads are running - can they all vote?  What happens if somebody runs bootleg copies of you?

Snowden and the Toxicity of the Internet

I think we are still operating with very partial information here.  Glenn Greenwald has promised that he has thousands of documents from Snowden still, dozens of which are newsworthy.  It's still very unclear how Snowden came to have access to the documents he seems to have, who he really is, whether his testimony is 100% accurate, or where he has gone now.  I assume a lot more will come out in coming days and weeks.

With that caveat, here are a few thoughts: this case illustrates some long-standing concerns I have about the direction of society.

A Couple of Notes on Global Futures 2045

The link in this morning's links posts to Dmitry Itskov led me to a big conference in Manhattan that he is putting on June 15/16th.  The speaker's list involves a bunch of eminent singularity/AI thinkers, as well as various spiritual thinkers.

I am increasingly struck by the overtly spiritual language being used by techno-optimist singularity thinkers.  From the conference's "About" page:

The main goals of the 2045 Initiative: the creation and realization of a new strategy for the development of humanity which meets global civilization challenges; the creation of optimale conditions promoting the spiritual enlightenment of humanity; and the realization of a new futuristic reality based on 5 principles: high spirituality, high culture, high ethics, high science and high technologies.

The main science mega-project of the 2045 Initiative aims to create technologies enabling the transfer of a individual’s personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier, and extending life, including to the point of immortality. We devote particular attention to enabling the fullest possible dialogue between the world’s major spiritual traditions, science and society.

A large-scale transformation of humanity, comparable to some of the major spiritual and sci-tech revolutions in history, will require a new strategy. We believe this to be necessary to overcome existing crises, which threaten our planetary habitat and the continued existence of humanity as a species. With the 2045 Initiative, we hope to realize a new strategy for humanity's development, and in so doing, create a more productive, fulfilling, and satisfying future.

Weekend Links

• No clear evidence that tornadoes are likely to get worse under climate change.  Well, that's something.
• How a big bank failure could unfold.
• The jet stream - what it is and how it's changing.  This is a very good, long, primer on the changes in the weather that appear to be occurring as a result of the melting arctic.  I blogged about this last April.
• Could Europe surprise to the upside?
• Suicide on the rise.  I expect the causes are complex, but at a minimum this is consistent with something I would predict as we continue to move towards the singularity: humans need a sense of meaning, and in the industrial west, a lot of us are used to this coming from work.  As the economy starts to need fewer of us, I expect more depression and suicide.
• China contemplating economic reform, and perhaps slower growth.
• Climate change creates some high-class problems too.

Tuesday Links

• The above is the Yen/$ exchange rate since 1970.  The uptick on the far right is the initial effects of Abenomics (essentially making somewhat credible threats to increase inflation by increasing the money supply).  Some more interesting charts here from Edward Hugh, along with a rather sceptical take.  I'm inclined to think it's a bit too soon to draw any firm conclusions.
• Someone may be studying how to perform destructive cyber-attacks on energy infrastructure.
• The children of the upper class and upper middle class are increasingly stressed out by the process of being prepared for today's hyper-competitive globalized society.
• Related: student debt and the crushing of the American dream.
• There are severe financial consequences to firmly predicting global doom and being wrong.
• Kevin Drum has a very good piece about the economic consequences of approach to singularity. His views and mine are rather similar in the short to medium term (and he even uses one of my graphs).  In the long term, I'm rather less optimistic about the "robotic paradise of leisure and contemplation" than he is.  That assumes that a highly intelligent economic system with no need at all for humans will continue to prioritize their welfare for many generations.  Building the system to guarantee that strikes me as very hard to do.
• This Bertrand Russell essay on the value of idleness was written in 1932, but still seems trenchant today (I'm personally struggling with how to think about these issues in the context of the approaching singularity).  H/T Ran Prieur.

Tuesday Links

• Risks of a large solar storm (Carrington event).  The worst case is months-long, continent-wide, power outages, though that's considered unlikely.
• The Internet is a surveillance state.
• North Dakota oil production.
• Interesting discussion of the Gauss state-sponsored malware, which has a secret payload that still hasn't been cracked.
• Shale gas impacts on surface water resources in Pennsylvania.
• European Union also spending massively to accelerate the singularity.
• National Academy of Sciences says US could cut vehicle carbon emissions 80% by 2050 if we try harder.

Obama to Accelerate Towards Singularity

NYT sez:

The Obama administration is planning a decade-long scientific effort to examine the workings of the human brain and build a comprehensive map of its activity, seeking to do for the brain what the Human Genome Project did for genetics.

George M. Church, a molecular biologist at Harvard, said he was helping to plan the project, the Brain Activity Map. The project, which the administration has been looking to unveil as early as March, will include federal agencies, private foundations and teams of neuroscientists and nanoscientists in a concerted effort to advance the knowledge of the brain’s billions of neurons and gain greater insights into perception, actions and, ultimately, consciousness.

Scientists with the highest hopes for the project also see it as a way to develop the technology essential to understanding diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, as well as to find new therapies for a variety of mental illnesses.

Moreover, the project holds the potential of paving the way for advances in artificial intelligence.

Indeed it does.

This illustrates exactly why I claimed that the approach to the singularity is ultimately the greatest threat to us; we are completely culturally blind to the idea that innovation could be bad for us, across the political spectrum.

Tuesday Links

• Above is Chinese coal consumption vs the rest of the world.  Read it and weep.
• New York Time is cautiously opening up to the idea that being prepared for a risk of major disaster may not be crazy.  I'm in agreement.  While I think the risk of a serious civilizational collapse is small, I don't think it's zero.  And certainly the risk of living through major regional weather disasters is just going to keep getting higher.
• A philosopher buys into the singularity as an existential risk.
• Maybe we should rethink our concerns about nuclear waste.  Apparently it's not nearly as bad for wildlife as humans are.
• Cellulosic ethanol fail (although I'd really love to see Robert Rapier on a unicorn - somebody should totally get on that with Photoshop).

Global Robot Population

Size of the US Underground Economy

Taking "Singularity" Apart

The term "singularity" as applied to the medium-term future of technology/humanity bundles together a variety of predictions for purposes that suit advocates of continued technological development, but don't necessarily have to occur together.  In this post, I want to briefly point out the different pieces, and comment on the strength of the connections.  For readers wanting some more background on the concept, the Wiki article is a good place to start.

Morning Singularity Watch

Working Age Employment/Population Ratios

US Productivity Turning Points

Approach to Singularity

Education and Jobs Through 2018

Violin Playing Robot

Singularity > Climate Change > Peak Oil > Financial Crisis

While lying awake late at night worrying about what kind of world my children will inherit, I find it helpful to come up with schemas for the most obvious and inevitable of the large societal problems.  It makes them seem slightly more manageable to place them in order of importance, or time.  Further, being clear on what are the biggest and most important problems is an essential prerequisite to thinking about solutions: these problems all interact, and solutions to the smaller of them may not be radical enough to address the larger of them.

In this post, I would like to argue for the above ordering of problems.  I mean the '>' symbol in two senses: "A > B" meaning both "The main impact of A will fall later in time than the main impact of B", and also "A is a more serious and fundamental threat to humanity than B".  While a full explication of the arguments would occupy a number of books, today you are going to have to make do with a single measly blog post, albeit longer than usual.

When Does Surplus = Resilience?