Ubiquity has an interview with Ray Kurzweil on the general topic of his book, The Singularity is Near.
I have always sensed a little of The Rapture in speculations about the Singularity. Nevertheless, anyone truly concerned about the future must acquaint themselves with the concept. The technological reality slouching toward us demands a certain preparation, mental and otherwise.
Yeast, er, Yeats?
ReplyDeleteI believe author Fred Saberhagen coined a term for the Kurzweil's among us; Goodlife.
ReplyDeleteGoodlife, for the non-scifi people, are those people who work with the intelligent machines to destroy biological life, including humans.
Those who resist this process are termed "Bad life" in Saberhagens novels, but I suppose "Luddites" works equally well.
I have been doing a series on the philosophical implications of the Singularity. If anyone is interested, go to
ReplyDeletewww.blogsearch.google.com
and search
CUANAS Pre-Futurism Singularity
Sorry to be a blogwhore, but I haven't seen much on this topic in the politically-related blogs.
The rapture? I don't think there is any doubt that artificial intelligence will surpass human intelligence sooner or later - surpass it in those things that we currently think of as "our turf", that is (clearly, computers already perform computations faster than we ever will).
ReplyDeleteThe two big hurdles facing them are that they have very limited ability to learn about the world - not generally being mobile and the language we use having been optimized for us, not them.
That means that experience is shared among humans much more efficently than it is shared from human to computer.
They'll get there eventually, but I suspect they will remain unmotivated as we understand motivation - not having evolved with the need to fight for survival, there's no reason to suspect they'll have any desire to get rid of humans. They'll be perfectly "happy" making good decisions on our behalf.
I think it's important we remain on the cutting edge of that particular technology, however.
If I can be friends with liberals, I don't see any reason I can't be friends with AIs.
ReplyDeleteyeast/Yeats-lol--best joke o' de day!
ReplyDelete"I believe author Fred Saberhagen coined a term for the Kurzweil's among us; Goodlife.
ReplyDeleteGoodlife, for the non-scifi people, are those people who work with the intelligent machines to destroy biological life, including humans.
Those who resist this process are termed "Bad life" in Saberhagens novels, but I suppose "Luddites" works equally well."
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flenser's point is a good one.
the "Us and Them"
isn't "Us vs. Machines".
unfortunatley,
and same as it ever was...
it more of "Us vs. Us"
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i have a good friend i would
affectionately call a Neo-Luddite.
i try to gently coax him to view the Intenet and computers in a positive light....it would actually give him access to a lot of 'neo-luddite'
thouhgt and discussion boards...lol.
i have no clue whatsoever on how to bring up anything like the Singularity with him.
probably just as well.