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geekhack Community => Off Topic => Topic started by: Aseral on Sun, 23 October 2011, 13:23:05
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For those of you who don't know The Singularity is the point in the future(which according Ray Kurzweil is around 2030-2040) when AIs will become smart enough that will surpass human intelligence and will keep improving, becoming even thousands of times smarter. It's also the point where nanotechnology will have advanced enough that we will have small robots in the size of blood shells that will be travelling through our bodies, not only keeping us healthy but also increasing our physical capabilities. Neuroscience will allow us to find out excactly how our brains work, reverse engineer them, manipulate them and even improve our own intelligence.
We will be able to slow down aging and by merging with machines(becoming cyborgs) even achieve immortality.
All this is based on the fact that technology increases exponentially(accelerating) and at a point we will have to "overclock" our brains to keep up with it and even be a match to those "god-like" robots of the future.
I know this sounds like science fiction and not even a happy scenario for many but I've been searching around and I find this quite intresting with more and more people getting into it. Last week The Singularity Summit 2011 took place in NYC and many people gave speeches about technology in the future, dangers we might face and also what progress we've made by now. There are many books and documentaries about this(some of them can be found here http://www.singularitysymposium.com/singularity-documentaries.html ) and I must say they are quite intresting to watch.
The Singularity university(http://singularityu.org/) has launched a couple of years ago with many important people being among the founders and is suposed to train "the leaders of the future" by teaching AI, nanotech, biotech and more.
So any fellow singularitarians around here?
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Limitless was pretty cool ;p Expanded memory is one of the first things that we will achieve.
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I haven't seen Inception yet.
(http://assets.yodawgpics.com/hashed_silo_content/silo_content/30595/resized/yodawg.jpg)
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I'll be skeptic to this and predict that the perceived exponential curve won't stay consistent nor will we reach the proposed technological advancement for another 100-150 years.
Oh the joy.
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If this happens in our lifetimes, it could pretty amazing. A Ghost in the Shell-esque future would be interesting to live in.
I just hope that the advances in brain technology aren't utilized in a negative way... I don't want the government changing my memories, for instance.
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Yeah, I'm pretty sceptical also. You can't just apply Moore's Law to technology indiscriminately, but most transhumanists, life-extension guys and the like have got some sort of computer science background and thus these kind of unrealistic expectations. If you look at other technological fields you can see many that have remained the same or only had minor advancements in decades, or centuries.
Not to mention previous generations have repeatedly had overly optimistic expectations of the future and technology that have failed to come to fruition. I don't see many flying cars, clean cheap nuclear energy, space colonies, household androids, hydroponic farms, arcologies etc. Those kind of predictions were made in the mid 20th century based on the massive advancements in engineering and industrial technology from WWII and the Cold War, which have slowed down since. Similarly the huge improvements in microcomputers from the 70's onwards triggers ideas about a singularity, AI comparable to a human brains, merging humans with technology, and so on. I think it's too far-fetched, frankly.
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Yes it's true about previous generations being very optimistic but not seing stuff happen after all. I guesse I hope I'll live long enough to see it, but like it was said in this year's singularity summit, more people need to actually try to get involved in researching and innovating instead of just talking about it. Personally I have found some videos and books being very inspirational to the point where I wanna get my masters on AI when the time comes!
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Do people really want this kind of altercation done to themselves? Can't we just enjoy our 75 year ride and die like everyone that came before us? This just sounds too much like a way for Coca Cola to put ads in our heads every waking moment.
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Well I've only been on this planet for 22 years now, so only time will tell how I feel about it when I'm that old, but at this point even 75 years seems too short. Beyond that, I imagine that many people are not fond of the idea of death.
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I am hoping for genetic modification. I am so eager for the day when those who enhance themselves establish themsleves as a dominant ruling class. I would love to be, or even be ruled by, a dragon.
Okay, evidently too much Shadowrun....
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Okay, evidently too much Shadowrun....
I have a bad feeling it will be closer to BattleLords... where everything is just another target waiting to get shot.
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I am hoping for genetic modification. I am so eager for the day when those who enhance themselves establish themsleves as a dominant ruling class. I would love to be, or even be ruled by, a dragon.
Okay, evidently too much Shadowrun....
Reminds me of Gundam Wing. Barring the giant robots that everyone knows the series for, it's actually about the controversy and politics between humans and "coordinators" who are genetically improved humans.
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Oh dear. Transhumanism is another religion like macro-evolution. A lie wrapped up in "modern science" to alleviate the fear of death.
It's fantastic how humans can exaggerate the limitations of technology and science. Although it's nothing new, we were supposed to have robots cutting our lawn already. And what about those "predications" on another ice-age before this global warming crap came? Boy, humans forget easily and succumb to the same lie in a different wrapper.
EDIT:
also the whole thing about AI gaining characteristics of humans? It's just impossible. Animals and machines cannot say "I exist" like humans.
AI is just a mindless set of on and off switches. It doesn't "know" what it does.
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Maby you're right, maby you're wrong. I guesse we'll find out at one point.
As for AI, its true that at the moment -like someone I was watching said- its more like AS, Artificial Stupidity, with our progress being pretty small(even though Watson owned Jeopardy, mad props to IBM) and still not getting passed basic problems.
Everything we are is in our brain, the way we understand things and our combinatorial(i think that's the word) thinking. No matter how awesome our brain is, it has limitations, even its size is relatively small. We keep learning more and more about how brains work but neuroscience is still a new field and can't tell us much yet. The more we learn about how our brains work, the easier it becomes to create them and apply the same rules on artificial ones.
Maby this never happens but I can't help to wonder. I'm going to be around for quite some time so I'll see what happens eventually.
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Oh dear. Transhumanism is another religion like macro-evolution. A lie wrapped up in "modern science" to alleviate the fear of death.
Oh god, people still say things like "global warming crap", in this century? *facepalm* And macro-evolution is mainly just used as a distinction exaggerated by creationists as a strategy to dismiss the fact evolution is plainly visible and correct, by defining evolutionary changes we can observe as micro-evolution and then the larger picture as macro-evolution, when they're just the same thing over a longer timespan.
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Even if computer technology doesn't advance that quickly, various anti-aging treatments coming into existence within the next 30-40 years seems very likely. We've already pinpointed a number of the primary causes of aging and have prevented at least one form of it in mice.
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Aubrey de Grey is a gerontologist that has dedicated his life to fight aging and is quite popular among futurists. I think he also teaches at the Singularity University at this point. Here is a sample of him talking on TED
[video]http://www.ted.com/talks/aubrey_de_grey_says_we_can_avoid_aging.html[/video]
and this is an interview he gave to this guy who has a website with news and info about the singularity
[video=youtube;EjiOop1NMxU]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjiOop1NMxU[/video]
EDIT: Bet he is using HHKB also lol
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Does anyone really want to live forever?
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Aubrey de Grey is exactly the kind of guy I was talking about in my first post. He's from a computing background where there's been incredibly fast development over the last however many decades and it's when you apply that mindset to other fields like geroscience that you get unrealistic ideas like transhumanism.
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I used to think that living forever would suck big time but this makes me think. I would def wanna live for like 150 years though I guesse that can be considered a random number cos i wont know if I would be happy with my life.
It would surely be awesome if we could fight diseases and extend lifespam though, having more options is always good, even though the ability of immortality could bring some obvious issues in society.
Plus even if u have accepted death, it doesent make it right for ur loved ones to lose u if they are not ready. Obviously like I said it depends on how ur life is like.
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@Malphas I think the point is technology transcending biology. Technology is accelerating and is way faster than biology. Looking at all this from just a biology perspective, they do seem impossible
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for those of you who don't know the singularity is the point in the future(which according ray kurzweil is around 2030-2040) when ais will become, bla, bla ....
..., have small robots in the size of blood shells that will be travelling through our bodies, not only keeping us healthy but also increasing our physical capabilities... bla bla ...
We will be able to slow down aging and by merging with machines(becoming cyborgs) even achieve immortality.
....
LOL!
Even if computer technology doesn't advance that quickly, various anti-aging treatments coming into existence within the next 30-40 years seems very likely. We've already pinpointed a number of the primary causes of aging and have prevented at least one form of it in mice.
LOL!
The best way to do anti-aging is to get out into the nature and not sit at a comuter 24/7!
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The best way to die early is hand-sorting 40k+ doubleshot keys for a group buy.
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The best way to die early is hand-sorting 40k+ doubleshot keys for a group buy.
iMav can be so lucky that he had only to hand-sort 52k key caps!
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Couldn't someone make a robot for next time? ;D
Computers are strange field, they scale so well on the low level, and with scaling the speed does also which allows faster transmission. Most other fields are doing refiment, minimising cost and material.
Still, might be we end everything in next few years, not by the engineers, but with the economist and others...
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@Malphas I think the point is technology transcending biology. Technology is accelerating and is way faster than biology. Looking at all this from just a biology perspective, they do seem impossible
Yeah but that doesn't work, smaller semiconductors aren't going to help you live forever. And it's not all technology that's accelerating, plenty technologies haven't really progressed since the 19th century.
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Here's why we aren't going to have much in the way of tech inside our bodies... HEAT.
I think you can figure it out from there.
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You must never have visited Rio, Ripster.
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After watching that video on Aubrey de Grey and then seeing Elmo post, I can't help but to think of Mr. Snuffleupagus.
As for the Transformerist thing, I would like to have a biomechanical pony, thank you.
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Aah...Aubrey De Grey, Kurzweil et al. Its like my first marriage all over again.
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I know this sounds like science fiction
[SIZE=-91]yep[/SIZE]
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I think we will have advances in AI but not the super smart AI thinking 1000's of times faster and 1000's of times smarter than normal humans. I think AI will probably end up being a P versus np type problem. I think that as AI and transhumanist technologies develop the more interesting questions will be ethical, and in redefining what we think Intelligence really is.
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2030-2040? you #$%^^%$ kidding me?they can barely get them to carry on a small conversation in a limited topic with very specific phrases. they taught one robot to navigate a room,but it wasn't "thinking",it was running down a list of things to do when it encountered an obstacle.
but,they have made little robots that can fit inside your veins........i thought that was cool and scary at the same time.
also,they have "http://www.geekologie.com/2011/01/what_could_go_wrong_new_contac.php" which i thought was very interesting.