Robo-Souls ... more
Afterthoughts of the Event & 'robo-soul' review
( - Ceptual Institute)
of
"Will Spiritual Robots Replace Humanity by
2100?"
A Symposium at Stanford
April 1, 2000
A symposium organized and headed by Douglas
Hofstadter. Participants included:
Ray Kurzweil, Hans Moravec, Bill Joy, John Holland, Ralph Merkle,
Kevin Kelly, Frank Drake, John Koza.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
April 6: "Thanks for your report on the symposium. Best wishes, Douglas
Hofstadter"
April 7: "Thanks. It's a worthy report. --kk" [Kevin Kelly]
April 8: [NECSI] Complexity Digest 2000 #13.9. Gottfried Mayer-Kress (Santa Fe Inst) current moderator.
Notes compiled by Craig Kaplan:
"Will Robots Replace Humans by 2100?, Conference Notes. Excerpts:
Douglas Hofstadter:(...) AI had made great strides as evidenced, for example, by achievements in the area of computerized music composition. He noted that David Cope has developed a computer program that can compose work that is good enough to have been judged the work of human composers. (...)- the "High IQ" and the "Low IQ" route to destruction of the planet. The ""High IQ" scenario involved intelligent machines taking over the earth and perhaps eliminating the human race. The "Low IQ" scenario involved nanotechnology consuming the earth in an out-of-control replication process that could turn everything into gray goo. (...)
Ray Kurzweil:(...) plotted "paradigm shifts" over a historical period and found that every time one paradigm seemed to run out of steam, another paradigm appeared to take its place. He mentioned the replacement of vacuum tubes with transistors, just at the moment when it looked as if we were
getting as far as we could get with the tube technology. (...) by the year 2050, for $1,000, one could buy a computer at least as powerful as the combined power of all the human brains on earth. (...) human communication -- for example via the Internet -- can function as a type of immune system to guard against misuse of technology. (...)
Bill Joy: (...) main threats to our survival: 1) The threat of genetic engineering, 2) the threat of nanotechnology, and 3) the threat of robotics/AI. (See also Wired Article) (...) production of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons -- the WMDs of the past -- have required concentrated effort by lots of very smart people with lots of funding and expensive raw materials. In contrast, genetically engineered pathogens, self-replicating nanotechnology that could turn us into gray goo, and super-intelligent robots that could destroy us, all depend primarily on knowledge rather than on expensive raw materials. (...) only realistic approach was to stop development of these dangerous technologies -- a strategy that he called "relinquishment." (...)
Hans Moravec: (...) felt that precisely because technology could be so easily developed, relinquishment was not a viable option. Rather, he suggested that people must discuss and work together to avoid the potential negative consequences of technology. (...) developing commercial robots that could do such things as vacuum one's house. (...) early versions of these robots (...) having a processing power of roughly 1000 MIPs and being able to process 3-D snapshots of their environment once per second. (...) intelligence of a guppy. (...) predicted an exponential increase in
processing power due to Moore's law and predicted intelligences that would outstrip human intelligence in the next century.
John Holland:(...) suggested that the complex problems faced by a lizard, for example, are much more complicated than games like Chess or Go. (...) seemed convinced that software effectiveness is not following anything close to a doubling of functionality every 18 months. (...) same types of dangers were present during the Manhattan project and that the way to deal with them was to form various bodies that served to regulate and promote discussion of the dangers in order to figure out ways to avoid making disastrous moves. (...) major thing is not to make BIG, i.e. unrecoverable, mistakes.
Kevin Kelly:(...) robots as our "mind children." As with any children he sees the role of parents as letting them go their own way eventually. (...) suggested that a major aim might be to train our technology to be good citizens. (...) there will be multiple intelligences in the future, but humans will be made freer by them, and will not be replaced by them.
Frank Drake: SETI -- the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence. (...) cost of a radio telescope is, pound for pound, approximately the same as the cost of hamburger. Apparently this relationship has held constant for many years. However, since the cost of electronics is decreasing faster than the cost of building large radio dishes, the current trend is towards building arrays of small radio telescope dishes that are electronically interconnected to form one powerful telescope. (...)
Ralph Merkle: (...)reasons why relinquishment was a bad idea: 1) Without research, people don't understand what they are talking about and there is a lot of misinformation. 2) Bad guys will get the technology anyway. (...). 3) Technology can save lives. (...) suggested two broad classes of danger:
accidents or deliberate misuse. (...) consideration of whether a technology was primarily an offensive technology, such as nuclear weapons, or a defensive technology, such as castles. (...)
John Koza: (...) discussed issues related to computational power and complexity. He pointed out that the human brain has something on the order of 10 to the 12th neural connections, each of which can process information in about a millisecond. (...) Brain-Second, which has a computational power
of 10 to the 15th operations per second. (...) various genetic programming experiments (...) began producing interesting results, comparable to human performance, when the computational power reached between 1 and 3 Brain-Seconds.* Unofficial Notes - Symposium: Will Spiritual Robots Replace Humanity by 2100?,
April 1, 2000 Stanford, Compiled by Craig Kaplan , PhD
* See also: Report by
ceptualinstitute.com/nuc/robo-souls.htm, Ceptual Institute
* See also: Why the future doesn't need us.
http://wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy.html, Bill Joy, Wired 8.04
April 9: to from J.R.Molloy
"Hi Jamie, Thank you for your synopsis of the Stanford Symposium.
While at the conference (yes, I attended), a response to the question, "Will Spiritual Robots Replace Humanity by 2100?" occurred to me.
Some very smart people work day and night to build intelligent robots ("the next step in evolution," according to Ray Kurzweil). How sad that people have so little respect for themselves that they would rather build machines to do what they will not permit themselves to do: Evolve to higher consciousness.
Whenever you can, for as long as you can, meditate. --J. R."
April 10: reply to J.R.Molloy from
"Good morning, J.R.,
The thoughtpath that allows accepting atypical and artificial aids to achieve enlightenment is really built into our physical being, it seems to me. A mind or organism encountering new information from what it is used to doesn't question the source. It deals with the information .. absorbing, assimilating, coming to terms with, incorporating, evaluating, or whatever the reaction. As Heisenberg intoned .. no event leaves its participants unaffected. That may be an empirical 'science' precept now, though I've always been happy realizing it as a sentient organic living phenomenon instead. (or 'too'.) It's an
'experience'.
I liken what humanity is going through to the age-old imagery of a caterpillar morphing into butterfly ... but with a shift of persepective: image the SENSATIONS of YOUR body, YOUR comfortable
experiences-history, YOUR being, suddenly and unstoppably 'mutating' into something unfamiliar, never experienced before, relentless,driving you into stretches and destructions and creations you never felt, let alone had time to 'understand', before.
Too, looking at the historical experience-evidence, humanity has been ingesting substances, meditating, eating sugar and caffeine for millenia to affect personal sensations and moods .. insights and abilities. What's the difference - some say - between those 'artificial' methods and some others ... like cochlear implants .. or alternate information handling devices that open new windows of experience? which just happen to be made of silicon and handles energy and information a little
differently than what we're used to?
Natural vs artificial diamonds. If natural beings manipulate natural materials using natural processes, aren't 'artificial' diamonds really, in an essential sense, 'natural' too? Atypical, yes. Rarely found in
past process situations, yes. Even slightly different from whatever came before, yes. But still having the potential to become part of the whole future environment.
I do take your point however, J.R. My sensibilities rest with yours. 'Natural' process are those which really run on automatic pilot. Systems require little or no 'pre-DECISION' aforethought to play out encounters and events and life. They take no conscious effort to come about. And so, are reliable, enduring ... alive and 'natural'. Conceptual and spiritual achievments have been gained by this route ... and its been good. Whatever enlightenments gained this way, who's to say that it's run its course? That it's no longer fertile? That higher consciousness is not nascent still in its unexperienced potential?
The thing that worries _me_, J.R. is that all the tech-consciousness scenarios paint a picture of 'more' experiences and 'more' stimulations, when really, they are the opposite. They will remove and isolate organic sentience from its billions of years information base: tactile physical being. I may be prematurely wrong, but that evolution path insulates and numbs, it removes mind-from-world.
Also, tech-mind separates container from contained - hardware distinct from software - as the vernacular terms are used. Natural involved/evolved sentience is quite different. Every aspect of form IS an experiential entity. And the integrated affecting/effected universe shows this .. at every scale and in every way. The container IS the contained. That's why there can be 'mysterious' self-healing of cancer and the like.
Anyway, to your comment about the tech-scientists' state of mind about all this, I don't castigate their desire to achieve conceptual or functional advancements through technology. I just bemoan - with you - that more than a few don't appreciate the fuller sets of relationships and involvements that exist.
I know that personally and individually we have no choice but to pass on to other states of being .. evolving personal consciousness in that way. But there is another stream of being that is present. It's the evolution of physicality into new consciousness abilities and plateaus of connection. And that evolution depends upon changing the perception set of those involved .. opening up their horizons to understand better exactly the nature of what they are dealing with and why their current value-bases are troublesome as they exist now.
We don't need to fear their views, we need to help them mature into something better .. something life affirming .. not just capability affirming in the limited sense. Jamie"
.. items to be added, as received ....
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