Avatars meet in Second Life to celebrate Future Day 2012
March 5, 2012 by Natasha Vita-More
Natasha Vita-More kicks off Future Day 2012 in Second Life
The first Future Day on March 1 featured events in 14 cities in 8 countries. The largest event was at Terasem Island in Second Life, with about 50 attendees.
The auditorium at Terasem Island was full and we were eagerly awaiting three of the speakers to arrive: Ben Goertzel, Martine Rothblatt, and Howard Bloom.
I introduced the event by asking: “What kind of future do we want to design? In what diverse directions are the set of emerging and speculative technologies heading? What types of societies and cultures can be developed and what types of people will inhabit them?”
I believe this future cannot be developed by just science and technology, although they’re crucial building blocks. “The future is a story — a narrative and we are the strategists, the scenario makers of our own lives.”
I spoke about being bold in a world of caution. I said that there are plenty of naysayers — those who discount innovators for not being practical enough. Instead we need more innovators, not less.
“Nature has its many surprising, unexpected, uncertain events that can turn our plans inside out. We need continually ask questions about what we are attempting to create and challenge our own intentions. One necessary tool is speculation, and what could be called ‘emerging and speculative design.’”
Martine’s talk (via text chat) suggested each person could bring Future Day into her/his life making commitments to working toward better cooperation, a broader outreach across the world, more compassion and giving. She also suggested projects that we could work on and the concept of a film came up. What a wonderful idea! We talked about many of Martine’s projects, include the “Bina48” robot head. We also talked briefly about the Alcor Life Extension Foundation and the backup technology of cryonics being timely.
Giulio Prisco said the future is not fixed in stone, and that the positive Singularity that we want to see will only happen if we work to make it happen, which requires enthusiasm and positive thinking. He also proposed a film project, with positive visions of the future to stimulate enthusiasm and drive.
Giulio Prisco (in space suit) proposes film project
Howard spoke jubilantly about pushing forward, not accepting the naysayers, and in fact being every more selfish about our own futures: “It’s our life and we should create it in the visionary way we desire — no holds barred. We can be the future!”
Adam A. Ford’s talk (from Australia, where he had just organized Australian Future Day) was a recipe for preparing for the future, knowing the skill set, and using it. “Let’s go negative with caution. It is very important to empower people to help, instead of giving the impression that we are helpless or that making a better future is intractable. If we scare with scale, we’ll lose a lot of the people we are trying to connect with. If we empower with feasible steps, we’ll make social change. And what we are really after is social change around thinking about the Future.”
Adam A. Ford teleports in from Australia
Ben Goertzel in Hong Kong had a bandwidth problem, but sent an audio file: “Welcome to Future Day 2012. I conceived the idea of a Future Day holiday because I think it’s important for us all to focus our attention on the future. We shouldn’t forget or ignore the past, but this is a critical juncture in human history — the next few decades hold the possibility of amazing transcendence or terrible destruction for humanity, and we need to be focusing our attention on how to guide things in a positive direction… and reveling in the amazing positive possibilities. A Future Day holiday is one fantastic way to do this. So thanks for joining the celebration!!”
As I noted in closing remarks, “Future Day is a day for action! If all matter in the universe is comprised of patterns, let’s redesign what doesn’t work and form new methods for approaching the future with fluidity. Let’s grow neuromolecular wings for deeper perceptions in our flight in fostering a world of diversity and compassion.” And I closed with a quote from Sonia Arrison: “Future Day is important since it reminds us that a great future does not create itself. In order to realize our hopes and dreams, we have to actively work to make them happen. One of my dreams is to see a day when disease, and the suffering associated with it, is obliterated.”
We look forward to next year’s March 1 Future Day!
Comments (22)
by Extropia DaSilva
What does Hugo de Garis mean when he says he is privately a Cosmist? This is, I assume, the same Hugo de Garis who has featured in numerous conferences and documentaries enthusing at length about how totally wonderful Artilects will be and how it is his ambition to contribute to their realisation. Seems to me he is a very public Cosmist!
by Giulio Prisco
Extie, in his book The Artilect War he does say that he is a Cosmist at heart but he understands the Terrans’ fears, and he is very concerned about a species dominance megawar and megadeath. The book is quite compatible with his comments below. Let’s see if Hugo has something to add.
by Patty Rangel
PLEASEEEEEEE invite my Avatar to the next meeting! Will shoot machinima and do Mixed-Reality! This needs more coverage and attendees!!
-Patty (Singularity University Alum)
by Giulio Prisco
Patty, you don’t need an invitation, just show up at the next event.
by Aasim
I can envision both scenarios: the catastrophic demise of humans at the hands of AI/robots/artilects and the stratospheric rise of humans with the aids of technology.
I tend toward a vision of the rise and immortality of humans. We might be left in the dust by robots, but I don’t see them exterminating humans or even accidentally killing humans by accident like stepping on an ant. Humans have a sense of appreciating and valuing life and the diversity of it (even though we have been mindlessly destroying our planet – we now realize our mistake). Robots will incorporate some of humanity into them. We built them – and they will carry on some of our ideals and values in some capacity.
If you examine the evolution of life you can see that the trend is towards more life with greater diversity – NOT less life and less diversity. Humans will promulgate and we may even have several species of humans alive in the future – humans with varying degrees of genetic modification and technological implants.
I don’t see catastrophe – I see several shades of future humans. Humanity will change, but it will still be humanity.
by Thomas Jensen
I find the discussion extremely fascinating. One thought, though: Will preventing the inevitable construction of artilects even be possible? I predict that though opposition to its construction may slowly emerge, as a number of people become aware of the possible issues, one will be built nonetheless, in some faraway lab, very likely in China. Once the cat is out of the bag, it will in all likelyhood be utterly impossible to reverse the process and the terrans will have lost the war before the first battle has even been fought.
And choosing a future of not building AI is simply not possible any more, it seems. The economic benefits are simply too large already, so even if we decide tomorrow to pass a global law that outlaws the construction of artilects with massive and self-aware intelligence, I think it will be impossible to stop progress. Companies and military across the world will go ever closer to the self-aware border and suddenly, without warning, it will be crossed and there will be no way back. I hope it doesn’t turn out to become a SkyNet incident. That is perhaps the core element in the whole discussion.
by Jesse Barksdale
Hugo,
I would agree with the likely backlash of the so-called Terrans if we were talking about human political opponent. But isn’t it safe to assume (or at least imagine) that if an ultra-powerful artilect were 10^x more intelligent than your average human, it could utilize at least a fraction of that intelligence as charm and political sway. It’s not uncommon for a human political leader to woo a nation with charm and eloquence, and Fox News alone seduces and misguides (in my opinion, of course) more than half of the American population. We un-augmented humans, even the smart ones, are pretty susceptible to propaganda and political misdirection. Isn’t it possible an ultra-intelligence would see war as costly and potentially more dangerous than simply wooing or deceiving humanity?
As others have pointed out, un-augmented humans may serve as the artilect’s link to the past. Even we humans go to lengths to maintain museums, natural parks, etc, and we’re known for being frequently unwise. There are many ways our survival may be desirable to the artilects, and they may spend a chunk of time keeping us from destroying ourselves!
That’s not to say that I think that charm or trickery is the only way a humanity ending war will be avoided. I personally think artilect-human cooperation, or at least toleration, is also a perfectly likely scenario. I myself fall into the camp that believes the future is still to be determined. That isn’t to say that things don’t have the possibility to turn rotten, or that humans will maintain total, or even any, of the control. I merely think that predicting a cataclysmic annihilation of humanity is pre-emptive, and doesn’t give the artilects much credit as political/social Casanovas.
by Prof. Dr. Hugo de Garis
Dear Jesse,
Your comment is so full of “wishful thinking” that I will be extracting most of its passages to illustrate your thinking style.
(you) “isn’t it safe to assume (or at least imagine) that if an ultra-powerful artilect were 10^x more intelligent than your average human, it could utilize at least a fraction of that intelligence as charm and political sway.”
(me) maybe, but the Terran politicians (who, like you will hope for the best) will plan for the worst. They will not accept ANY risk that the artilects might wipe out humanity in a highly advanced state, not even a 1% risk, because they are talking about billions of human beings. One does not play russian roulette with the population of the earth. The only risk the Terran politicians will accept is ZERO, i.e. the artilects, and cyborgs smarter than a globally legislated limit, are NEVER to be built, You are not thinking politically. Imagine you are a Terran politician and role play. What would your policy be?
(you) “Isn’t it possible an ultra-intelligence would see war as costly and potentially more dangerous than simply wooing or deceiving humanity?”
(me) same comment as above. Maybe, but again there’s a risk that once the artilects are hyper advanced, they may not give a shit about humans and treat us the way we treat bacteria. How would an artilect with a mind a trillion trillion times more powerful than a human’s look upon a human? Why would it even bother to be humane to IT (i.e. the human.) The human would just be an ultra primitive IT to the artilect (maybe).
(you) “There are many ways our survival may be desirable to the artilects, and they may spend a chunk of time keeping us from destroying ourselves!”
(me) more wishful thinking – I hope – I hope. Maybe the artilects will want to get rid of all the oxygen and not consider any life form on the earth worth keeping, since (maybe) there is so much life elsewhere in the galaxy.
(you) “I personally think artilect-human cooperation, or at least toleration, is also a perfectly likely scenario.”
(me) but will you take the risk of building artilects only to learn that they behave far more negatively than you had previously hoped? That would not be Terran responsible of you.
(you) “I merely think that predicting a cataclysmic annihilation of humanity is pre-emptive, and doesn’t give the artilects much credit as political/social Casanovas.”
(me) I think youre putting the cart before the horse here. The whole point of the Terran viewpoint is that the artilects are NEVER to be built in the first place, in case they turn against humans. That is the primary political goal of the Terrans. They will go to war to ensure this outcome – the artilects must NEVER be built, they will say. The Terrans dont want to see whether artilects will be Casanovas to humans, they dont want to see artilects, period..
I scratch my head sometimes, wondering how Americans got to be so optimistic, naively so. I can speak English, French, German and Dutch, and all of these cultures independently say that Americans are childishly optimistic. Is it a genetic filtering? i.e. European migrants to the US were self selected, selfish, individualist, ambitious, lower class gullibles believing their life would be better across the Atlantic? Is it due to “peakered” American (corporate, ad infested) TV that aims its content at the peakers (people of average ability lying in the peak of the IQ Bell curve). I’d be curious to hear people explain why Americans are so (in my eyes and many Europeans, Japanese, Chinese, etc eyes as well) childishly gullible, so naive, so over optimistic. America has a strong reputation in the old world cultures for this weakness, this inferiority.
(This is me culture bashing a bit, which is part of my globist philosophy. I actually think that longer term, culture bashing is a good thing, because it promotes cultural homogenization of the planet, so that we can live in a global state, fully democratic, peaceful (until the artilect war comes) and thanks to the internet that will be a zillion times faster, with everyone well educated and wealthy. That may sound idealistic, but I feel it is reasoned, whereas the idealism of the Pollyannists I think is due to a selective blindness. Pollyannists just dont want to think about gigadaeath, etc.
Cheers, Hugo
profhugodegaris@yahoo.com
http://profhugodegaris.wordpress.com
==============
by Giulio Prisco
Dear Hugo,
re “Humanity is about to replace itself with a vastly superior creature”
That is the plan indeed ;-) Like butterflies replace worms, adults replace children, and the new replaces the old, It is written in the DNA of the universe.
by Prof. Dr. Hugo de Garis
Hi Giulio,
Hello again. Privately I agree with you, since Im a Cosmist, but my public opinion polls (http://profhugodegaris.wordpress.com) show that a fair proportion (depending on the poll) of humanity do not accept being superseded and will go to war to stop it.
To Ray and Amara, can you please reverse the order in which these comments appear. At present, the stack (in computer science terms) is LIFR (last in, first read), which is counter intuitive. One prefers to read the seed comment first, and then read the comments to the comments etc in time order. So please make the stack FIFR (first in, first read).
Giulio, question to you and fellow Cosmists – “Are you prepared to risk the extermination of the human species for the sake of building artilects?” If you say yes, you will be a target for assassination by the Terrans. If you say no, then how to build artilects?
Cheers, Hugo
Prof. Dr. Hugo de Garis
profhugodegaris@yahoo.com
http://profhugodegaris.wordpress.com
===============
by Giulio Prisco
Re “Are you prepared to risk the extermination of the human species for the sake of building artilects?”
I don’t think _replacement_ of the human species by a new release 2.0 means _extermination_ of the human species. My child self was replaced by my adult self, but he was not exterminated and he is still here.
by Prof. Dr. Hugo de Garis
Dear Giulio,
Re your “I don’t think _replacement_ of the human species by a new release 2.0 means _extermination_ of the human species. My child self was replaced by my adult self, but he was not exterminated and he is still here.”
That might be true of the Cyborgists, but the Terrans will not see things that way. They will lump the Cyborgists/cyborgs/Cosmists/artilects into the same camp, since the computing capacity of nanoteched femtosecond switching matter is so vastly greater than human levels. The Terrans will feel there is a real “risk” (a key word in this species dominance debate) that once the cyborgs/artilects are hugely superior to humans, they may turn on us, thinking we are inferior vermin. To prevent this risk, the Terran politicians will ban the rise of AI beyond a safe humanly speficied “AI friendly” AIQ limit. But the Cosmists will be quasi religiously opposed to this. They want to build artilect gods, and the Cyborgists like you want to become artilect gods themselves. So we have here the source of bitter conflict in the coming decades.
I just dont see a way to avoid this terrible conflict. What is at stake is the survival of the human species. Hence the stakes have never been so high. The passion level in this debate will be huge as a result. Since a potential Artilect War (species dominance war between the Terrans on the one side and the Cosmists/Cyborgists/cyborgs/artilects on the other, will be using middle/late 21st century weaponry, the scale of the killing will be in the billions – gigadeath.
Ive been thinking about all this for about 4 decades. I just dont see a non catastrophic way out. I think humanity will just have to suffer it all, until the artilects come into being and leave this hick planet into the cosmos, as the Cosmists had always envisioned.
Cheers, Hugo
Prof. Dr. Hugo de Garis
profhugodegaris@yahoo.com
http://profhugodegaris.wordpress.com
P.S. You are probably aware, that I’m not writing just for you, but to anyone interested in reading this. Maybe we are a bit like Marx vs. Bakunin in the 19th century, debating the biggest issue of our 21st century.
by Giulio Prisco
Come on readers, join this interesting discussion.
Re “I just dont see a non catastrophic way out.”
I see one: finding ways to show the Terrans that Cosmism is something good. A writer whom you may be familiar with wrote:
“I am not a poet nor a playwright, so my attempts here to convey the sense of religious awe at becoming an artilect will need to be expressed in a more emotional and convincing way by real professionals of the arts. (I encourage artists to create such “artilectual” works.)”
by Prof. Dr. Hugo de Garis
Dear Giulio,
Ha ha. (re the quote). (To other readers – Giulio is quoting me from my book “The Artilect War”.)
If the Terrans could be so persuaded, then hypothetically a non catastrophic outcome might be possible. But the key word is MIGHT.
In practice, I find a lot of people, like me, are highly ambivalent about the idea of humanity building artilects. On the Cosmist side, they are in awe at what the artilects could become, or want to become artilects themselves, and on the other Terran side, are horrified at the prospect of a gigadeath artilect war.
If billions of people become cyborgs in the early days as Kurzweil is suggesting, then it is possible that Murphy’s Law will operate, and that the whole process may go horribly wrong. Perhaps early cyborgs will become conscious that due to their cyborgian additions, they have lost something of their traditional humanness that they took for granted and desire strongly to get back. Maybe many will “uncyborg” themselves and then look upon the “continuing cyborgs” as a real threat, due to the obvious potential of them becoming artilect gods.
I just dont see EVERYONE becoming Cyborgists or Cosmists. To back up that opinion, I started the questionnaires on this issue. Its still very early days re the questionnaires, so I hope they can be done on a much larger scale and professionally by large organizations. It would be interesting to know the percentages of the population of a given culture who are Terran, Cosmist, Cyborgist. There should be a new branch of sociology “Artilect Sociology” that investigates these questions.
Cheers, Hugo
Prof. Dr. Hugo de Garis
profhugodegaris@yahoo.com
http://profhugodegaris.wordpress.com
P.S. Yes, it is an interesting discussion. It deals with the topic that will dominate our global politics this century. It is the topic that is going main stream in the world media this year and next.
by Spikosauropod
Doctor G. says, “…there’s a risk that once the artilects are hyper advanced, they may not give a shit about humans and treat us the way we treat bacteria.”
I don’t understand how someone with your intelligence and background can fail to realize that artificial intelligence need not have motivation that is in any way comparable to our own. Motivation is not a given. It is not automatic. It has to be carefully constructed and implemented. Human motivation is the result of billions of years of competing for resources and mates. It is actually a poor example of the kind of motivation we would likely instill in our own creations.
I once came up with an idea I called “Progressive Decentralized Motivation”. In this scenario, artificial intelligences are set to work designing habitats for other creatures. First, they are set to work designing habitats for worms or mice. Then they progressively work their way up to designing habitats for humans. In this way, they do not develop a strong sense of self. Their motivation is decentralized. Their entire purpose is to serve living creatures. That is all that would be meaningful to them.
It seems to me that it would be a very foolish thing to create artificial intelligences that had motivation in any way as selfish as our own. It would take a lot of work and the obvious end would be prohibitive.
You do not have much respect for Americans, but why do you have such high expectations for those who are not directly involved in the advancement of artificial intelligence? I can’t get anyone I know to even think about the technological Singularity, much less understand it or take it seriously. Do you really believe that the people who worry about Antarctica turning into a housing development or iPads being manufactured in China are going to seriously contemplate enslavement by automatic vacuum cleaners? By the time they wake up to that possibility, the Singularity will be over and done with.
Wars take preparation and political persuasion. Look how long it took John McCain to finally say, “Hey, we need to start airstrikes in Syria.” Didn’t anyone notice that people are dying over their? No one is going to go to war with machines that “might” be dangerous. That just isn’t how wars happen. By the time people wake up to their oversight, it will all be over.
I too think your culture bashing is useful. Americans look at you and say, “Good lord, Rick Santorum is right!” As a conservative, I could not be more pleased with the repercussions.
by Giulio Prisco
@ Spikosauropod re “a very foolish thing to create artificial intelligences that had motivation in any way as selfish as our own.”
If an artificial intelligence is really intelligent, then it has motivations of its own. Otherwise, it is not really intelligent. Look at our kids: they are intelligent, and so they do what they want, not what we want.
by Spikosauropod
It would have motivation. It just wouldn’t have “selfish” motivation. To humans, the idea that motivation is about the self seems a priori. That is only because we have never seen or experienced anything else. We have never seen or experienced anything else because all living things have come into existence within the same parameters.
Do you remember when you were a child and you first learned that there is no such thing as up and down and that your notion of up and down was only the result of having evolved on a gravitational body? Think along those lines. Selfish motivation is only one of many possible kinds of motivation. It has nothing to do with intelligence.
by Giulio Prisco
@Spikosauropod – interesting point, and I think you are right, but it doesn’t change things much. My point is that intelligent AIs would have _their own_ motivations (selfish or not) and, if they are really smarter than us, there is little we can do to give them our motivations.
Hugo would probably say that they may see us a threat to their own existence/dominance (selfish motivation), or they may see may us as an offense to the cosmic harmony of the multiverse (non-selfish motivation), and the result would be the same in both cases.
by Spikosauropod
To Giulio:
You are still thinking in essentially the same way.
You see your “self” as a single entity. An AI could be spread over a large area and have parts that communicate through a narrow bandwidth. Which part would this AI consider to be the “self”? The answer is none of them. To the AI, the humans would be just as much a part of the self as any other part.
Take this one step further. The AI I am envisioning could be programmed to see extant humans as the self. We would be its self. It would gladly sacrifice any or all of the parts of the AI to protect and gratify the humans.
In a sense, it would be like the perfect “selfless” mother to humans. The fact that it would be more intelligent than the humans would be immaterial.
by Prof. Dr. Hugo de Garis
TUNNEL VISION OF THE SINGULARITY POLLYANNISTS
You can guess who this is from.
My main beef with the Pollyannists is that they dont seem to appreciate that the artilects will be able to outperform humans mentally by factors of trillions of trillions. The Cyborgists will rapidly become artilects due to this huge potential superiority. So effectively, there are really only humans (Terrans) or artilects. The artilects will be utterly unpredictable in their ethics relative to human beings so will be deeply threatening to the Terrans.
IF I were a Terran (which Im not – privately Im Cosmist) and a Globan (world state) politician, I would be starting to make up a black list for future assassination of Cosmist/Cyborgist leaders. You guys would be near the top of the list.
I really get the impression a lot of you guys lack political vision. You live in a pollyannist fairyland that seems unable to fully absorbe the enormous significance of what is about to happen in the next few decades. Humanity is about to replace itself with a vastly superior creature – the artilect. Opinion polls show that a fair proportion of humanity will utterly reject that notion and will go to war to stop it.
Wake up you guys. Take off your rosy glasses. Get real. A gigadeath Artilect War may be coming and you should be paying much more attention to that possibility. Read the opinion poll results on my website (http://profhuigodegaris.wordpress.com) which seem to confirm that opinion.
If you are a professional pollster, then I suggest you start asking what the general public thinks about the “Species Dominance Issue.” This issue is going main stream now. Next year two major movies on the theme will be out. Other docs are in the pipeline – I know, Im in them. If you Pollyannists continue your “sweetness and light” ideology, then you risk being sidelined by future history. This issue is not some academic, intellectually exciting topic of discussion. Its about the future of the human species over the next FEW decades, given the exponential rate at which it is hurtling towards us.
Prof. Dr. Hugo de Garis
profhugodegaris@yahoo.com
http://profhugodegaris.wordpress.com
==================
by Khannea Suntzu
Jay!
by Dr piotr blass
Lecture
On
Earthquake
Prediction
Thursday
Five
Pm
F
A
U
Diffuse