More capable machines will certainly be a boon.
Google is building a car with no steering wheel or breaks. Totally autonomous. Today.
Will advances in intelligent machines be considered an unmitigated good as was, say, the plow and the pill. Or will there be a threat with Luddites fighting against the future. Corn was once the size of rye, but through genetic selection we now have corn plants with multiple giant ears and is very productive. GMOs speed up the process, yet are resisted in some camps. Did the sexual revolution that followed the pill result in good or bad? I personally liked it when woman wore dresses, had long hair, wore heels, and tended house. You may have different views. There is no sunshine without shadows.
Household appliances changed society, generally considered good and progressive. Instead of spending all-day washing on Monday, and if it rained so that clothes could not be hung out to dry, they went into the frig to prevent mildew. Today we toss a load in the machine when needed, rain or shine. What will the robotic housekeeper, scheduler, and sex mate do to change society?
The mechanics of sex dolls have been around for years. The latest trick is to add conversation. Some now come loaded with information on all sorts of topics, in addition to sports statistics. "How was your day" is a good start. When the house robot can massage the feet of a woman or the back of a man, they will become common appliances that exceed the capabilities of many spouses. [duck]
A sympathetic fembot (female robot) will be cheap just for the peace of mind that her lawyers will not send a sheriff around to serve you with papers while in the middle of teaching a class on programming.
Progress is not without issues. Will there be a backlash? Justified or not?
Some in this class will cry out that evil capitalists will make filthy riches and the poor will be out of work and barely survive, while the wealthy, rich businessmen, politicians, and generals will get the human augmentation, the toys, the benefits of the new technology first and perhaps exclusively. My issue today is not of social issues, but of technology and its ultimate effect on all of mankind. Though the subject is not without a bit of ethics included for you to ponder.
Part of a Steven Hawking interview about Artificial Intelligence.
SH. Your average robot could simply design improvements to itself and outsmart us all.
xx. Should we be excited about fighting with robots, like in the movies?
SH. Hawking offered a very scientific response: "You would lose."
Consider a chess playing robot. We have previously posted that an intelligent robot designed for a task may very well determine that humans interfere with its mission and neutralize that obstacle.
Isn't that a principle element in 2001, a Space Odyssey (1968)? Really, 45 years ago, al'ready?
Mathamatica used to advertize a 10% reduction in size and a 10% increase in speed of its programs every year. I was impressed before working for Fisher and found how easy that is to accomplish. Diagnostical programs can now improve other programs. Every time it runs, is makes further improvements, and then again. A computer program does not need to run on an annual budget cycle, but can make iterations one after another resulting in very rapid progress. If the program it is improving is itself, then we have progress on top of progress, and a very rapid recursive self-improvement -- exponential growth of capabilities.
Linear growth; 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
Geometric: 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128
Exponential: 1, 2, 4, 16, 256, 65,536, 4.2 billion, ∞
Solar energy, which has been a national disappointment (and a personal stock loss) is now 1% of energy production, but has doubled every two years, even though not reaching our hopes. Solar now provides 1% of national need. By simple geometric doubling: 2%, 4%, 8%, 16% , 32%. In the next decade, the energy crisis and global warming are solved.
If I were to moderate a Friday discussion group session, it would begin : "Something interesting is going to happen in 26 years. We may not see it, but our children will see it and it may start changing their lives, and certainly our grand children's world will be very much different. Our discussion today is to consider how it will change society,
Or, actually ... change all of what we know of as civilization"
Computers. Over the next couple of decades we will see increased use of computer for making life better. The fields of Artificial Intelligence, robotics, genetic engineering, nanotechnology will spill forth results that are now underway. Technology will start to fulfill its promise upon mankind.
For the near future will see the pace of technological change so rapidly, its impact so deep, that human life will be irreversibly transformed. One might say that about every century and every decade, and it is true. But changes coming include machines and biology becoming indistinguishable. Virtual worlds will be more vivid and captivating then reality. Nanotechnology will enable manufacturing on demand, ending hunger and poverty and delivering cures for all of mankind's diseases. Stop body aging, even reverse it. Allow greater intellectual achievement than ever before.
Consider the Harry Potter stories. They are imaginary, but are not unreasonable visions of our world in the next few decades -- all the "magic" will be realized through these technologies. The holodeck of Star Trek will be reproduced by Goggle glasses directly on the retina of your eye. Or directly to your brain
Artificial Intelligence. The topic today is entitled The Singularity. This is based upon Artificial Intelligence and some other things. A formal definition might be: "a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its chances of success." We can think of it as computers and software that interaction with humans. The central problems addressed by AI research include reasoning, knowledge, planning, learning, natural language processing (communication), perception and the ability to move and manipulate objects. AI research is deeply divided into subfields and multi-disciplines including computer science, psychology, linguistics, philosophy and neuroscience.
Practical applications are called expert systems to replace or exceed performance of once-human tasks. Popular tasks today are to play chess, to drive vehicles in city traffic, to win at Jeopardy, to provide the 3D body motion interfaces in X-Box, and the voice interface with iPhone's Siri. And new this week,
Nokia “Cortana” smart phone
AI problem solving involves logical deduction from a store of information, and step by step reasoning, that a human does unthinkingly in solving a puzzle, but requires massive amounts of computer resources. Optimizing programming algorithms is a priority. Once a sub-task has been solved (such as handing of time, dates, chronology), then that module can be installed in other algorithms and further optimized in an ongoing basis.
Natural language processing gives machines the ability to understand the meanings that humans use in speech, writing, motions ... including facial expression.
Affective computing is development of systems that can recognize, interpret, process, and simulate human emotions. Important in that an expected early use of robotics is in service, support, and personal care applications. This may be our class' chief interface with robotic in nursing homes.
Machine creativity is still in the study stages, is at the level of trying to understand and support human creativity. When machines become creative ... then what?
Machines create new music by following rules uncovered by analyzing existing music. A computer generates Associated Press reports on U.S. corporate earnings stories. Would you believe that a company in Durham, NC generated 100,000 automatically written sports articles for towns not covered by journalists. Sports scores are not stimulating prose, but are entirely undetectable as not by a human. “Bobcats down West Marshall 20 to 14 in a home game."
Some TV shows are so routine that a machine might uncover a pattern of story lines. You can also see the level of accomplishment required for a machine to interpret and create human speech. Ahh, “Watson” has been created by IBM.
Genetics
and Human
Augmentation. Lets skip these for now, but are major parts of
The Singularity.
NanoTechnology is manipulation of matter at the molecular level. Quantum mechanical effects are important at this level. Areas of interest include: phase intersections (surface technology), organic chemistry, molecular biology, semiconductor physics, microfabrication, and developing new materials with direct control of matter on the atomic scale.
For our purposes, nanotech is involved with manipulating DNA. I know little about the bio-side leading to The Singularity. But a 3D printer can mix ingredients to create dinner.
This report covered way too much territory and the original 30 pages of notes have drastically truncated out the topics of Human Enhancement, Genetic Engineering, and NanoTechnolgy and concentrates on the subtopics of Robotics and Artificial Intelligence, about which both you and I think we might know something. A fuller report is available at our Creative Retirement website at http://www.manorweb.com/creative/2014/singularity.html
(Didn't know we had a website, did you.)
One big name predicts the singularity to occur around 2045 whereas another predicts some time before 2030. Singularity Summit is a multi-day program addressing the latest developments and disruptive influences of exponentially growing technologies. The 2012 Singularity Summit, included a query of advanced AI and found a wide range of predicted dates, with a median value of 2040. (Range between 2015! and 2045) Thus, a child born today will be just reaching his career competence, 5-years out of college.
Together the world's thought leaders along with participants explore areas such as biotechnology & bioinformatics, energy & environmental systems, networks & computing systems, AI & robotics, medicine & neuroscience, and nanotechnology.
Singularity University. http://SingularityU.org/ . Mission is to educate, inspire and empower leaders to apply exponential technologies to address humanity’s grand challenges. It takes an optimistic view up through The Singularity
Do you watch the TV show Person of Interest?. That started out as fiction, then we found that it is actually commonplace NSA activity. The self-improving, independent thinking aspect of the story may just be something that has not leaked to the press yet. Where is the next Snowden?
When I subscribed to "Futurist" back in the 1960s, this was next century stuff. No more : We are in that next century --. with only 20-30 years to go.
(a) Is general world intelligence growing? Birth control among the knowledgeable and unrestricted population growth by the lower classes, suggests that world IQ - | will fall | is falling | has fallen | .
(b) And people are worrying about climate change that will be barely noticeable by the end of the century.
(c) You could still be alive during The Singularity.
I would like to think through the impact of all this with you, how it will start to be used, by whom, for what? There is so little thought by a dumbed-down society, that some rational smarts, even if by machines, must be for the better. But will it? I like to think that engineering applications for the betterment of the world would be first, such as for safer, cheaper travel ; more productivity ; more leisure (or sloth). The finance people on Wall Street will no doubt corner the newest machines and programs for self-enrichment. Government will big brother it to stay in power. How will that be done? (Is Person of Interest a guide?). Will machine independence allow Artificial Intelligence to decide that mankind is a primacy . , , or that it is a problem?
If a problem, how will it address it? It the olden days we would have wars to kill off the riff-raft as cannon fodder. Will the machine(s) have a meeting online and plot the reduction of excess population If so, of whom : a percentage at random, by some metric, empty out prisons, hospitals, and slums like Hitler and Castro did?
If it determines that mankind is a primacy (a'la Isaac Asimov) how will it proceed? Will they have a Bilderberg Group-like meeting to decides how to optimize the world? Or improve mankind? What to optimize? How to accomplish? What will be the reaction of the public? Will the masses be fed benefits and kept in the dark until it is accomplished (or till it becomes too late to interfere?).
Will the machines have input from human counterparts to provide a balance, adding hopes and dreams to the machine-based, rational decision making? What will become of government? -- the machines can run a decent bureaucracy. (I may have lost blind faith in democracy and capitalism, which are better than any other forms ; only free enterprise works, but is anything really free?) What about planning and direction of major efforts of society? Of civilization?
Will the machines take on a religious and ecumenical tone? Will it create a virtual President, a Josiah Bartlet (Martin Sheen) to lead the way from the West Wing? Should our children welcome AI or be suspicious?
Endless discussion points. Other than war with the robots, popular fiction has not significantly addressed the subject since George Orwell in 1949 looked 35 years into his future, 1984.
We have less time than that, only 26 years.
There will be two 20 minute videos.
FriRndTbl THE SINGLULARITY 29Aug2014
Web page Outline
0.
INTRODUCTION. This
memo
I. THE NOW -5 - +5 years. 2010-2019
A. Robotics
B. Artificial Intelligence
C. Augmentation / Genetics / Eugenics
D. Nanotechnology
E. Projects
II. NEAR FUTURE 5 to 25 years 2020--2039
A Robotic servants
Auto, Home
B AI / robotics
C Genetics
D Nanomedical
E Automated War
III THE SINGULARITY 26 years 2040
Turing test
Philosophy
IV. AFTER THE SINGULARITY 27- 36 years 2041-205_?
Golden Age
Smarter than man.
How it will happen
V. WHAT NEXT? 205_? until the end of humanity
Goals
Self Awareness - if not, might as well be
The experience with inferior races.
Human condition Walmart people, war
Does it matter?
They servants or us slaves.
End of the human era
"My desire to be well informed is at odds with
my desire to remain sane."
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http://www.manorweb.com/creative/2014/singularity.html