The Empirical Future

2011-01-16T08:20:00.000-08:00

Introduction to the Future Prediction Process
Going beyond the standard "wishful thinking and sheer imagination" approach to futurism in order to discern the most probable future.

Advanced Artificial Intelligence Technology
The good news is that advanced AI technology will be amazingly useful, not at all malevolent, and quite knowable. The other side of the coin is that it will be among the most difficult technical feats ever achieved by mankind.

Advanced Robotics Technology
Forget C3-PO and R2-D2. Stunningly realistic droids of the future - both physically and psychologically - will be so compelling that we will consider them indispensable.

Advanced Virtual Reality Technology
Powered by a specialized form of advanced AI, the Hyperreality Engine will go far beyond your current notions of ultra-realistic, immersive experiences.

The Far Future
The far future of humanity, the dark side of the future, and where all all the aliens, anyway?

Analysis of Other Popular Ideas About the Future
Analysis of other widespread notions about the future.

Critique of the Idea of Artificial Neuron Replacement

2011-01-16T08:18:00.000-08:00

There is a popular idea that has been around for a while now, the concept that we can augment our biological brain with nanomachines that take the form and function of artificial neurons.

Let's examine this idea in detail, see how it holds up. The following summarize well this concept:

"drastically alter our selves, by making purposeful changes to the way we operate, combining our selves with engineered systems (including decision-systems), and converting our selves to superintelligent agents."

"Using nanomachines to gradually replace the organic brain cells with synthetic neurons will probably be the first step in truly bridging the gap between man and machine (think Ship of Theseus analogy)."

I have been considering this. Although I appreciate how this route may seem to resolve certain issues such as the conscious identities paradox, there are certain extremely serious problems here.

I will set aside for the moment the flawed notion that digital computers are “superintelligent”, whilst collective computers are somehow an inferior form of computational architecture. I have explained elsewhere why this is not the case, and will suffice to say for now that collective computers are not only inherently massively parallel but also massively interconnected, while digital computers are inherently neither. Digital computers are inherently sequential – they can through arduous effort be made to have some (usually small) degree of parallelism, but they in no wise have anything that reflects massive interconnectedness.

However, that is not the ground I want to cover here. In this post I want to examine in detail the idea that miniaturized electromechanical nanobots would make good piecemeal replacements for biological neurons, that we can dust into our domes and have them slowly replace (or augment) said neurons into a resulting synthetic brain of some kind.

Let’s go back to our newly gained understanding of the pieces of collective computation, and how they are evinced in our own brains. As we now understand, there are two main pieces here. First, the topology of the network, ie how each neuron with its thousands of inputs and outputs is connected to every other. Second, the resistance at each synaptic connection point, which is not a static value in our own brains, but a complex variable function that we have only begun to understand.
These components both individually and together affect the computational result of the collective computer – they are both very important.

Now, let’s introduce one of our hypothetical artificial neurons into the mix. Let’s assume a realistic scenario, where we dust these into someone’s brain and they must adapt to the local conditions of the neuron they end up replacing. In other words, we are not designing specific artificial neurons for specific biological neurons in someone’s individual brain. What must one of these artificial neurons be able to do?
Well, several things, all of them extremely challenging. Once it identifies a neuron that it is going to replace, as a first step it must match its topology exactly, if it is to replace this neuron. That means it must determine how many tendrils it has, and deploy up to 10,000 of these long, thin tendrils itself. Bear in mind that the number of neuronal connections varies tremendously, but 1,000 to 10,000 should cover most cases, to the best of our understanding. And the termini of these “arms” are extraordinarily tiny – the animations showing this replacement, where a big fat artificial neuron replaces a big fat biological neuron are laughably incomplete to capture the complexity of the physical dimension to this problem.

Turns out, that’s probably the easy part.

The next challenge will be to seamlessly replace all of the synaptic connections of our soon-to-be-replaced biological neuron with the artificial synapses of our synthetic neuron – and each of these are interfacing with biological neurons, that have not of course been replaced yet. Bear in mind that how they convey signals is entirely different from what our artificial neuron is likely to be able to do – they are chemical processes, not electronic in the sense we know from our digital technology – complex biochemical neurotransmitters that must be released and/or taken up with incredible precision in order to accurately match the effective neuronal resistance of that synapse in a working brain. The ability to adjust the synaptic resistance with exquisite precision is what gives our bio brain’s collective computer its “programmability” – the collective computer equivalent of what we call software in the digital realm.

Therefore, your artificial neuron must have so much biological capability that it is really hard to imagine what it would bring to the table in terms of simply its being artificial.

Now, assume it can do all of these things – which I do not, but I understand some of you might. What specifically does this newly hooked up artificial neuron bring to the brain that somehow conveys anything special above what our normal neuron could? It can’t fire faster, because it is interfacing with biological neurons that can’t take this. And it is very important to understand that “clock speed” for a collective computer is not nearly as important as clock speed is for a digital computer – precisely because a collective computer can do in 5 or 6 clock cycles what would require a digital computer millions, billions, or even more cycles (it depends on the computational task) to achieve.

Not trying to be negative, not saying all this is impossible or anything. But it’s fun to occasionally think these things through.

Introduction to Neural Networks

2010-10-11T10:52:00.001-07:00

There is considerable misunderstanding with regards to neural networks, how they compute, how they store memories, and so on. Here are some clear and concise explanations of 3 topics that provide a solid foundation:

1. The nature of collective computation (the form of computing that takes place in neural networks), and how it differs from digital computation.

2. How neural nets store and retrieve data via associative memory, and how this differs from digital computers.

3. The correct electronic analogue for a biological neuron. In other words, when we think of what a neuron does, what we should be thinking of translated to the world of electronics.

Your Brain as a Neural Network

2010-10-11T10:46:00.001-07:00

Your brain is a neural network.

One statement that follows immediately from the fact that the brain is a neural network is that every computation performed by the brain is a collective computation, not some other kind of computation. Not a digital computation, not a quantum computation, not some other flavor of computation - collective computation and collective computation exclusively. Even thought processes that seem like they would be digital, such as adding 1 and 1, are in our brains performed via collective computation and associative memory.

An adult human brain has about 100 billion neurons. The number of synaptic connections is not precisely known, but estimates vary from 100 trillion to 500 trillion. Not just what neurons are connected to which others (the “topology” of the neural net), but also the strengths, the “resistance” (in electrical analogue terms), of each of those synaptic connections are also important to the collective computation process. If you vary the connections, you potentially get a different computed result. If you vary the connection strengths, you potentially get a different computed result. If you vary both, you potentially get a still different computed result.

The various neural nets and sub-nets in your brain perform an incredible diversity of processing tasks. They process sensory information; they control the movements of your physical body (your nervous system should be thought of as an extension of your brain’s neural network); they recognize the letter “e”; they perform feats of imagination; and countless other tasks.

The net of nets that is your brain does all these things, and many more, and it does it all exclusively through collective computation and associative memory.

As we learn to develop artificial neural networks that perform ever more complex processing tasks, there is another aspect to our biological brains that we have barely begun to tackle.

That is, that our brain is not just a bunch of neural nets, each doing its own processing functions; these nets are tightly interwoven into a highly synchronized, integrated processing entity. This means that there are neural networks that control other neural networks, which in turn control still other neural networks, and so on. The output of all these collective computations then flow back up the chain of neural nets to execute the “output” of whatever computation is being considered – say, swatting a fly, writing the letter “e”, or simply staying in the brain as a thought. The complexity of designing a neural network to perform even one specialized computational task of nontrivial complexity can quickly become daunting; designing a hierarchical system of nested, hierarchical neural nets that can perform a range of different computational tasks under one hood (so to speak) is far greater still. Our ability to design and build artificial neural nets that control other neural nets in complex yet stable and consistent ways is in its earliest infancy.

Because the outside world is an extremely information-rich and ever-changing place, it is imperative that our brains be able to constantly process, accommodate, and successfully adapt to new information. There are at least two mechanisms to achieve this.

One is adding new neurons. Very recently it has been discovered from detailed experiments with rats that their brains grow about 10,000 new neurons a day, throughout their lives. A further, truly fascinating result is that if the animal is not learning something new, many of these neurons don’t stick around and die off quickly. If the animal is learning something new (the experiments concerned mazes and such, various standard rat intelligence training exercises), that knowledge is incorporated by the wiring up of these new neurons with existing neurons to form a permanent addition to the rat’s brain.

This is a process that is common to at least all mammals (and probably most others creatures with brains as well to some extent) – including of course, humans. Especially humans, since our brains are our main evolutionary survival strategy. The exact rate of neuron production in humans is not known exactly, since that involves direct physical examination of the brain (many rats died to bring us this knowledge, in other words) – but I would venture that a reasonable and perhaps even conservative estimate for the new neurons in humans might be something like 10 times the rat number – say, 100,000 neurons a day.

An interesting additional insight from these studies was that some factors can accelerate this natural rate of neuron production, such as exercise and certain foods. In addition, other agents such as alcohol were shown to inhibit this natural rate of neuron production – so drinking and drugging does reduce your ability to acquire new knowledge, at least to some extent.

Once incorporated into the brain, this neuronal topology of connections seems to be more or less fixed.

In addition to the neuron connection topology, there is the other dimension of neural network flexibility that must be considered – that is, the connection strengths of these myriad connections. If you vary the connection strengths, you potentially alter the computed result – the stable, self-consistent “answer” or response output of the neural net.

While the physical connection topology of the brain may be more or less fixed (with the exception of the new neurons coming on board every day), this is not the case with the connection strengths. These vary widely via the passing of ions across the synaptic channel, which can produce the chemical equivalent of changing the resistance (or voltage drop) in an analogous electronics circuit. This is happening on a grand scale in our brains, where the resistance profiles vary based on the inputs produce a circuit that converges on a self-consistent stable state. This could allow for very efficient neural nets that can, say, recognize many human faces with far fewer neurons than if each face had a dedicated neural network with its own, dedicated neurons.

I don’t want to get too detailed in terms of how a biological brain achieves this, but here is a very brief description. Synapses exhibit a behavior called "spike timing plastic dependency", which is thought to be the possible basis for memory and learning in human and other mammalian brains. The synaptic connection between neurons becomes stronger or weaker, as the time gap between when they are stimulated becomes shorter or longer.

These characteristics – adding new neurons and adjusting the strength of the connections between existing connections – endow the neural network in our head with programmability – the ability to accommodate new information and behaviors, where the brain’s control centers and the inputs from the external world can modify the brain’s “computed result” (which is of course many computed results for even simple tasks) over time.

The human brain is the most complex single object in the universe that we know of (with apologies to any more advanced alien brains that may be out there). The brain is an expensive organ, using something like 30% of the body’s energy budget, but only 7% of its mass.

The complexity of the brain’s processes translates into two main factors – the neural network itself, keeping all those neurons and synapses alive and well, and the “software” to run it, the mechanisms for bringing in new neurons and changing the connection strengths of the existing ones. Without these mechanisms, our brains, no matter how large and complex, would be brittle and limited once they were filled with knowledge (which given the sensory richness of the world would not take long).

Computational Energy Surface

2010-10-06T11:06:00.000-07:00

Essentially, a computational energy surface is an n-dimensional surface that represents the voltage output for any combination of input voltages. A well-designed neural network will have valleys, or self-consistent stable points, at the places that correspond to particular “answers” for a given set of input voltages. The shape of this computational energy surface is determined by the connections between the amplifiers, the strengths (resistance) of each of those connections, and any external currents applied to the amplifiers.

Electronic Neurons

2010-10-01T10:36:00.001-07:00

A biological neuron is an analog computing entity that is modeled in artificial neural networks by another analog component known as an operational amplifier, or saturable amplifier

Neurons are complex, but even a highly simplified model of a neuron when connected with others in an appropriate network, can perform powerful computations. A biological neuron receives information from as many as thousands of other neurons through synaptic connections and passes on signals to as thousands of other neurons. The synapse, or connection between neurons, mediates the “strength” with which a signal crosses from one neuron to another. Artificial “neural” circuits have been built from simple electronic components: operational amplifiers replace the neurons, and wires, resistors and capacitors replace the synaptic connections. The output voltage of the amplifier represents the activity of the model neuron, and currents through the wires and resistors represent the flow of information in the network.

Both the simplified biological model and the artificial network share a common mathematical formulation as a dynamic system - a system of many interacting parts whose state evolves continuously with time. The manner in which a dynamic system evolves depends on the form of the interactions. In any neural network the interactions result from the effects one “neuron” has on another by virtue of the connection between them. Thus it is not surprising that the behavior of the neural circuits depends critically on the details of the connections, and the strengths of each.

The computational behavior exhibited by neural networks is a collective property that results from having many computing elements act on one another in a richly interconnected system. The collective properties can be studied using simplified model neurons based on operational amplifiers, resistors, and capacitors.

Further reading:
Neural Network
Silicon neurons
Biological neural network

Associative Memory

2010-10-01T10:32:00.000-07:00

Neural networks store and retrieve memories and data via associative memory. What is associative memory, and how is it different from digital computer data access?

Associative memory is a concept that originated from the field of psychology, and in that original sense means recalling a previously experienced item by thinking of something that is linked with it, thus invoking the association. Associative memory or associative storage is a data-storage technique by which a location is identified by its informational content rather than by names, addresses, or relative positions, and from which the data may be retrieved. As with many areas where neural networks are highly efficient, associative memory is yet another form of optimization problem, in this case finding the best (optimal) match given partial information.

An associative memory is fundamentally different from a digital computer memory. A conventional computer stores information by assigning addresses, which identify the physical locations where the data will be stored in hardware, such as a sector or track on a hard drive. When the central processor requires a piece of data, it issues an instruction to read the data at a particular address. The address itself contains no information about the nature of the data stored there.

Now reflect for a moment about your own memories. If you think of a particular friend, you will remember many facts – name, age, hair color, height, job, hobbies, schooling, family, house, shared experiences and so on. These facts are somehow combined to form the memory of the individual. There is no notion of storage address in the way you retrieve such information from your memory. Instead pieces of the information itself are used in place of an address.

Fruit flies and garden slugs have associative memories. The fact that such relatively simple nervous systems display the phenomenon suggests that it must be a natural, almost spontaneous property of biological neural networks. Mathematical models of associative memory were developed in the 1970s. The concept of the computational energy surface provides a means to understand and study associative-memory circuits built of saturable amplifiers.

How would one make a collective-decision circuit behave like an associative memory? Think of a space of many Cartesian coordinates in which each axis is labeled with some attribute a person might have. One axis might refer to height, one to sailing experience, one to the first name of the individual, one to city of residence and so on. Any point in the space describes the characteristics of a hypothetical possible individual. Each of your friends is represented by a particular point in the space. Because you have very few friends compared with the set of all possible individuals, if you put a mark at the position of each of the people you know, you will have marked a very few points in a large space. When someone gives you partial information about a person – for example, color of hair and weight but not name – this describes an approximate location in the space of possible people. The idea of an associative memory is to find the friend who best matches the partial data.

A collective-decision circuit such as the one described for the task-assignment problem could perform as an associative memory if the computational energy surface can be shaped to have valleys, or stable points, at the places that correspond to particular memories. A pattern of input voltages corresponding to a partial memory would be supplied to the amplifiers and the circuit would then follow a trajectory to the bottom of a local valley in the computational energy terrain and read out the output state of the amplifiers as the stored memory. Unlike the task-assignment circuit, in which the connections are highly regular because of the simple global rules that constrain the problem, in an associative memory the connections are irregular and the stable points are scattered somewhat at random because the memories need not have any particular relationship among themselves. Therefore, to construct an associative memory one must find connections between amplifiers such that the many desired memories are represented simultaneously by the circuit’s stable states.

Further Reading:
An Associative Memory

Collective Computation

2010-10-01T10:29:00.000-07:00

Like the biological brains that inspired them, neural networks process information in a manner that is both massively parallel AND massively interconnected. What does this mean, and how does this compare to digital computation?

The computational behavior of neural networks is a collective property that results from having many computing elements act on one another in a richly interconnected system. The collective properties have been studied using simplified model neurons for over a quarter century.

To understand how collective circuits work, we must take a wide view of computation. Any computing entity, whether it is a digital or analog device or a collection of nerve cells, begins with an initial state and moves through a series of changes to arrive at a state that corresponds to an “answer”. The process can be visualized as a path, from beginning state to answer, through the physical “configuration space” of the computer as it changes over time.

For a digital computer, this configuration space is defined by the set of voltages for its devices (usually transistors). The input data and program provide starting values for these voltage settings, which change as the computation proceeds and eventually reach a final configuration, which is reported to an output device such as a screen or printer.

For any computer, there are two questions of central importance: How does it determine the overall path through its configuration space? And how does it restore itself to the correct path when physical fluctuations and other “noise” cause the computation to drift off course? In a digital computer the path is broken down into logical steps that are embodied in the computer’s program. In addition, each computing unit protects against voltage fluctuations by treating a range of voltages, rather than just the exact voltage, as being equal to a nominal value; for example, signals between 0.8 volt and 1.2 volts can all be restored to 1.0 volt after each logical step in the computation.

In collective-decision circuits the process of computation is very different. Collective computation is an analog process, not a digital process. The overall progress of the computation is determined not by step-by-step instructions but by the rich structure of connections among computing devices. Instead of advancing and then restoring the computational path at discrete intervals, the circuit channels or focuses it in one continuous process. These two styles of computation are rather like two different approaches by which a committee makes decisions.

In other words, in a neural network the software is the structure - both the pattern of interconnections and the strength of each connection are of importance to the computed result. Each of what could be many, many inputs help determine the output of the neural node. This is very similar to how an operational amplifier works in the world of electronics. Therefore, artificial neural networks are comprised of connected operational amplifiers.

A neural network can be best thought of as a computational energy surface.

Collective computation is well suited to problems that involve global interactions between different parts of the problem. The nature of many of the problems that neural networks excel at can be described as “optimization problems”, such as the task assignment problem.

Perception can also be expressed as an optimization, in that our interpretation of sensory information is constrained by what we already know. Our senses constantly gather great quantities of information about the external world, which is often imprecise and noisy. The edge of an object might be hidden behind another object, for example. However, we know that the edges of objects are continuous, and simply because we can’t see an edge doesn’t make us wonder whether the object has changed its shape. Our interpretation of the information is constrained by what we already know.

This knowledge can often be represented as a set of constraints, similar to those in a task assignment problem, and expressed in a computational energy function.
The perceptual problem then becomes equivalent to finding the deepest valley in the computational energy surface. For example, problems in computer vision can be expressed as an optimization problem and solved by a collective decision circuit in which knowledge of the real world has been imposed as a set of constraints. This approach can be used to take incomplete depth information of a 3-D world and reconstitute missing information such as the location of the edges of objects.

One of the outstanding features of neural networks is that they converge on a good solution rapidly, usually in a few multiples of the response time of the computing devices – often less than a microsecond, for a problem that a digital computer implementing even the most efficient algorithm would require millions of cycles for.

Here we can begin to discern the phenomenal power of neural networks, which again is a result of both their massive parallelism and massive interconnectedness.

Neural Networks

2010-10-01T10:27:00.000-07:00

In terms of achieving advanced AI, neural networks have a critical role to play, both on their own and in combination with digital computers into a seamless computing system.

Despite the fact that our brains are neural networks, that we have had a theoretical framework for understanding neural computation since the 1940s, and we have been building simple neural networks since at least the late 1980s, the collective computation and associative memory that powers neural networks are still not well understood by many.

Introduction to Neural Networks
Definition of collective computation, associative memory, and identification of the correct electronic analogue for a biological neuron

Your Brain as Neural Network
The human brain is a magnificent - and magnificently complex - engine of collective computation.

Critique of the Idea of Gradual Replacement of Biological Neurons with Artificial Neurons
How realistic is the idea that one or millions of artificial neurons could be implanted into someone's brain, hook themselves up, and communicate successfully with biological neurons? Would this actually lead to a "more intelligent" brain anyway?

Paths to Advanced AI - Engineered or Brute-Force Brain Simulation?

2009-04-19T08:21:00.000-07:00

This is an interesting site, a few years old, but Matt Bamberger makes some good comments on the topic of advanced AI, and the various paths thereto.

These are excerpts from this page:
"We will soon develop human-equivalent AI, either by brute-force simulation of the human brain, or by a more traditional engineered approach.

By human-equivalent AI, I mean an AI with cognitive abilities at least equal to those of a human being. It isn't necessary for an AI to be exactly (or even moderately) like a human being. I agree with Eliezer Yudkowsky and others who have argued that a human-like AI would be profoundly dangerous.

Human-like AIs are dangerous for two reasons. Firstly, they will tend to exhibit dangerous human traits such as selfishness and fear as well as benign ones. Secondly, the inner workings of a human-like AI will probably be relatively opaque, just as the workings of an actual human brain are opaque. This makes it much harder to monitor and evaluate an AI, both to prevent it from exhibiting malicious behavior and to detect any serious malfunctions such as the development of aberrant goals."

I like his wording here, "AI with cognitive abilities at least equal to those of a human being." That is what is critical to advanced AI, both to be useful, and to be safe. In other words, it doesn't have to be exactly like a human brain.

These are some excerpts from his page on Brain Simulation:
"There are two basic approaches to building an AI. The traditional approach is to write an artificial intelligence from scratch. A less sophisticated but perhaps more tractable approach is to simply simulate the workings of an actual human brain. For a variety of reasons that I'll detail below, I don't think this is the best approach, but I think it's an excellent fallback. If traditional approaches fail to deliver a working AI in a timely fashion (which they very well may), there's an excellent chance that brain simulation will be able to deliver a good enough AI within the next few decades."

I do not concur with Matt that brute-force human brain simulation is "an excellent fallback" if we can't figure out how to do engineered AI. However, his outlining of the complexities and risks of the brute-force approach is quite lucid.

I have said on numerous occasions that Kurzweil's estimate of 2045 for the Singularity is probably not a bad one, certainly much more reasonable than much nearer term estimates like the next few years. I tend to think of "The Singularity" simply as the point when we have an AI of roughly equivalent cognitive capability of a human brain. I have also said that this estimate reflects his appreciation of the difficulties of engineering the AI software, since really, the raw computing power necessary is probably already here, or very close on the horizon (and the architectural innovations like in the "Googling the Brain" video will make the hardware side of the equation even more tractable, perhaps).

However, I have perhaps misinterpreted Kurzweil to some degree. What he seems to be saying is that engineered AI might be too tough, and favors the "brute force AI," based on the exact copy of a human brain, described above. I am unsure to what degree he actually believes this is the only feasible approach, or if perhaps he is bringing some personal preferences to this, such as having our advanced AI be "spiritual", thinking of advanced AI as a "successor to humanity", things like that.

My perspective is that engineered AI, no matter how difficult it may be or how long it may take, is the only viable approach. I think of advanced AI as a partner to the intellectual pursuits of humanity, not a replacement, or successor, to humanity. This notion is supported by the entire history of technology - and though advanced AI will be special, it will still be a technology product - at least if it is synthetic rather than biological, which I suggest it will be, for many reasons.

However, this comment is interesting:
"It's hard to extend the core capabilities of a simulated brain. One of the advantages of the simulation approach is that it requires very little deep understanding of how human intelligence actually works. The downside of that is that it makes it very hard to improve the AI. Even fairly simple tasks like increasing the AI's memory or directly transferring knowledge or skills from one AI to another become very hard problems. Virtual brains will be super-fast, super-capable people, but they're unlikely to be genuinely superhuman."

This seems like an eminently reasonable comment. A brute-force AI may be far less capable of undertaking a runaway loop of ever increasing intelligence, which of course the Singularity is predicated on. It is therefore unclear to me why Kurzweil seems to favor this approach in the first place. With engineered AI, there are definitely clear paths to increasing the intelligence of that. My favored concepts are hyper-observancy, super-subtlety, and ultra-coordination, which could consume almost unlimited multiples of human intelligence in ways that provide tremendous value, while remaining entirely rational, predictable, and safe. However, there are undoubtedly many other ways to identify measures of "intelligence" that could be improved in clearly value-adding ways. The main point here is that the AI will almost certainly need to be engineered rather than brute-forced in order to identify, manage, and increase those.

This is the biggest challenge I have with Kurzweil's vision: he simply uses Vinge's definition of advanced AI intelligence as "being able to do anything a human can do," which seems to reinforce his notion that brute-force AI is best, I'm not entirely sure. However, there are many things a human can do, and more to the point, many parts of the human brain and its psychological components that there is no need for an advanced AI to have, and would make it exceedingly dangerous if it did. This contention of having to "bake in the dangerous" parts of the human brain as the only path to advanced AI is, I suggest, the main and probably only reason that the Singularity is "unknowable." An engineered AI that is purely rationally controlled, as an engineered AI would almost certainly be, renders the post-Singularity "knowable."

Another comment from Matt's site:
"Simulated people are by definition just like people. That means they're cranky and sneaky and prone to behaving badly. Those are bad properties in an AI."

In other words, using Freudian terminology, they would have an id, superego, and ego. If you don't like Freud, use animal passion, morality, and reason, or whatever parlance you like. These three components, the tripartite nature of the human mind, are universally acknowledged by all of the great thinkers of history, although parlance and emphasis varies widely. For example, in contrast to Freud, Plato argued that reason could, in principle, rule the passions. However, he acknowledged that this usually didn't occur in real life - hence the idealism of his view. The most dangerous of these, of course, is the id. An advanced AI with an id would be unpredictable, because our animal passions are often irrational. This would, I suggest, make it a poor product to introduce into the marketplace, and if it was, would probably result in the manufacturer getting their pants sued off the first time once of these devices knocked someone through the wall because they somehow "offended" the device, or whatever.

A brute-force AI, even if we or they could figure out how to "increase" their intelligence, could easily become more dangerous or unpredictable the more intelligent they became, a very unfavorable trend for a manufactured product.

A brute-force AI would also "bake in" parts of the human brain that are really only suitable for a biological organism. For instance, the sex drive. To bake that into a manufactured product seems not only dangerous, but actually cruel to the advanced AI itself. Simulated sex drive, cool - but you need engineered AI for that.

Intelligent Design

2009-04-16T05:58:00.000-07:00

What is Intelligent Design?

Intelligent design is the assertion that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection." It is a modern form of the traditional teleological argument for the existence of God that avoids specifying the nature or identity of the designer. The idea was developed by a group of American creationists who reformulated their argument in the creation-evolution controversy to circumvent court rulings that prohibit the teaching of creationism as science.

Intelligent design's leading proponents, all of whom are associated with the Discovery Institute, a politically conservative think tank, believe the designer to be the God of Christianity.
Advocates of intelligent design argue that it is a scientific theory, and seek to fundamentally redefine science to accept supernatural explanations. The consensus in the scientific community is that intelligent design is not science. The U.S. National Academy of Sciences has stated that "creationism, intelligent design, and other claims of supernatural intervention in the origin of life or of species are not science because they are not testable by the methods of science." The U.S. National Science Teachers Association and the American Association for the Advancement of Science have termed it pseudoscience. Others in the scientific community have concurred, and some have called it junk science.

Therefore, Intelligent Design is not some augment to evolution - it is a competitive "theory" to evolution.

I concur that natural evolution is compatible with the existence of a higher intelligence. However, there is nothing to suggest that such a higher intelligence is at all required for natural evolution to operate - and therefore, suggesting a higher intelligence violates Occam's Razor in the worst possible way, because it distracts from the valid unraveling of the truly profound intricacies of evolution by introducing what at heart is a metaphysical desire for God.

When we look to the heavens for the answer to what is right before us, all around us, it is not the mystery of evolution that we are trying to solve - it is attempting to feed our deep human need for God. A person's faith is their own, I do not attack that. It can be a source of great inner strength. But do not look to the physical world to bolster those beliefs - if one must do that, it could be suggested that one's faith is fragile. If it provides comfort, consider God the "ultimate scientist" - a rational entity who initiated a universe that follows physical laws, and those laws evince themselves in myriad ways, and some of those ways can be described as various natural processes.

Evolution is a process. That's all it is - like the weather, plate tectonics, star formation, galaxy formation, and many other natural processes we could name. A most amazing process, but just a process.

And suggesting that aliens might have done it, rather than a Christian or other God, there is no difference between these two. If you ponder it, a sufficiently advanced alien race would be indistinguishable from God to us, if that is what they wanted to be. If we make the equally Occam's Razor-violating assumption that "aliens did it", we once again raise our eyes to the stars for the answers to what is all around us.

Natural selection is a most powerful idea - not just because it has been, and continues to be, validated by an ocean of empirical evidence, but because it is simple to grasp. Those who attempt to obfuscate the purity of this idea by introducing metaphysical perspectives do the pursuit of objective truth a grave injustice. Their methods in fact predate the scientific revolution - they use rhetoric and disputation until one becomes convinced of their view. This is not science - this is what the scientific method was specifically designed to correct. Rhetoric and disputation do not lead to the truth, if that rhetorically-derived "truth" runs counter to the book of nature - in other words, if it runs counter to the empirical evidence.

Interestingly, the breakthroughs in genetics and the (much touted here) advances in DNA sequencing and such are helping to unravel how evolution works in greater detail than ever before. These technologies are bolstering the already century and a half of empirical validation of this theory with even more, staggeringly vaster confirmation of this ground-breaking idea.

Sometimes it is suggested that when empirical evidence runs counter to one's deep certainty on some issue, that the empirical evidence must lose. This is the hardest thing about embracing science - to be objective, to let the evidence form one's assessments, not bending the facts to suit one's predetermined beliefs. This is why science, despite hundreds of years of performing incredible feats of knowledge generation and technological progress, still has but a precarious foothold in the minds of most.

Here are a series of articles discussing many of the various aspects of current evolutionary thinking.
http://www.sciam.com/sciammag/?contents=2009-01

Of particular interest might be these:

Testing Natural Selection with Genetics
Biologists working with the most sophisticated genetic tools are demonstrating that natural selection plays a greater role in the evolution of genes than even most evolutionists had thought
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=testing-natura l-selection
Key Concepts:

* Charles Darwin’s theory that evolution is driven by natural selection—by inherited changes that enhance survival—struggled against competing theories for the acceptance it has within biology today.
* Random genetic mutations having neither positive nor negative effects were once thought to drive most changes at the molecular level. But recent experiments show that natural selection of beneficial genetic mutations is quite common.
* Studies in plant genetics show that changes in a single gene sometimes have a large effect on adaptive differences between species.

This is a brief excerpt from the above, focusing on what is meant by natural selection and "fitness":

the idea of natural selection is simplicity itself. Some kinds of organisms survive better in certain conditions than others do; such organisms leave more progeny and so become more common with time. The environment thus “selects” those organisms best adapted to present conditions. If environmental conditions change, organisms that happen to possess the most adaptive characteristics for those new conditions will come to predominate. Darwinism was revolutionary not because it made arcane claims about biology but because it suggested that nature’s underlying logic might be surprisingly simple.

In spite of this simplicity, the theory of natural selection has suffered a long and tortuous history. Darwin’s claim that species evolve was rapidly accepted by biologists, but his separate claim that natural selection drives most of the change was not. Indeed, natural selection was not accepted as a key evolutionary force until well into the 20th century.

The status of natural selection is now secure, reflecting decades of detailed empirical work. But the study of natural selection is by no means complete. Rather—partly because new experimental techniques have been developed and partly because the genetic mechanisms underlying natural selection are now the subject of meticulous empirical analysis—the study of natural selection is a more active area of biology than it was even two decades ago. Much of the recent experimental work on natural selection has focused on three goals: determining how common it is, identifying the precise genetic changes that give rise to the adaptations produced by natural selection, and assessing just how big a role natural selection plays in a key problem of evolutionary biology—the origin of new species.
...
“Fitness,” as used in evolutionary biology, is a technical term for this idea: it is the probability of surviving or reproducing in a given environment.
...
Adaptive evolution is therefore a two-step process, with a strict division of labor between mutation and selection. In each generation, mutation brings new genetic variants into populations. Natural selection then screens them: the rigors of the environment reduce the frequency of “bad” (relatively unfit) variants and increase the frequency of “good” (relatively fit) ones. (It is worth noting that a population can store many genetic variants at once, and those variants can help it to meet changing conditions as they arise.

Diversity Revealed: From Atoms to Traits
Charles Darwin saw that random variations in organisms provide fodder for evolution. Modern scientists are revealing how that diversity arises from changes to DNA and can add up to complex creatures or even cultures
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=from-atoms-to- traits
Key Concepts:

* The idea that nature “selects” favorable variations in organisms was at the heart of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, but how those variations arise was a mystery in Darwin’s time.
* Random changes in DNA can give rise to changes in an organism’s traits, providing a constant source of variation.
* Certain kinds of DNA changes can produce major differences in form and function, providing raw material for the evolution of new species and even new human cultures.

Putting Evolution to Use in the Everyday World
Understanding of evolution is fostering powerful technologies for health care, law enforcement, ecology, and all manner of optimization and design problems
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=evolution-in-t he-everday-world
Key Concepts:

* The theory of evolution provides humankind with more than just a scientific narrative of life’s origins and progression. It also yields invaluable technologies.
* For instance, the concept of molecular clocks—based on the accumulation of mutations in DNA over the eons—underlies applications such as the DNA analyses used in criminal investigations.
* DNA analysis of how pathogens evolve produces useful information for combating the outbreak and spread of disease. Accelerated evolution in laboratories has improved vaccines and other therapeutic proteins.
* Computer scientists have adapted evolution’s mechanisms of mutation and selection to solve problems.

How Evolution Can Lead to Consciousness

2009-04-16T05:26:00.000-07:00

How could an inanimate, "unthinking" process such as evolution lead to consciousness? A most worthy question.

Really, thought is a tool that can enhance the chances of survival - like sight, heart, and lungs. Thought is really just awareness of one's environment, being able to sense and respond in a way that enables you to find food, or to evade becoming food.

In the competitive maelstrom of evolution, awareness is quite a useful tool - the basic plan of our brain evolved quite early, with Cephalaspis.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cephalaspis

For Cephalapsis, it was used as a way to avoid getting eaten.

Our brains are an extension of that basic plan. But, why are we in particular so smart?

Because that is our main tool for survival. Other animals have sharp teeth, fast legs, flight, etc - and those work just fine for them. They are intelligent as well, just not like us.

Being so convinced of our utter uniqueness masks the fact that we are in fact evolved from lower life-forms, that though they are not as smart as us, have the same basic brain-plan as us.

This is an extremely interesting article that explores this:
Animal Intelligence and the Evolution of the Human Mind
Subtle refinements in brain architecture, rather than large-scale alterations, make us smarter than other animals
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=intelligence-e volved
Key Concepts:
* The human brain lacks conspicuous characteristics—such as relative or absolute size—that might account for humans’ superior intellect.
* Researchers have found some clues to humanity’s aptitude on a smaller scale, such as more neurons in our brain’s outermost layer.
* Human intelligence may be best likened to an upgrade of the cognitive capacities of nonhuman primates rather than an exceptionally advanced form of cognition.

In "Walking with Cavemen", part of that series explores the contrast between homo habilis and Paranthropus Boisei. The latter had a larger jaw, and could munch on the tough grass abundant in Africa at the time. Even during the dry season, boisei had abundant food. Habilis, on the other hand, had a much tougher time of it, didn't have the jaw structure to chow down on that, so it pursued a diversity of food sources.

http://predictionboy.blogspot.com/2008/06/walking- with-cavemen-playlist-autoplay.html

When the environment changed, Boisei couldn't adapt, and became extinct. Boisei was overspecialized, in other words. Habilis, on the other hand, was more adaptable, not least because of its larger brain, and survived.

That series also explores how bipedalism led to changes in our chest and such, that led to the possibility of speech, of which Homo Ergaster seems to have been the first to possess. So bipedalism was important, and the main evolutionary selector for this seems to be that as the savannahs expanded in Africa, we could leave our tree-swinging ways. And bipedalism has a tiny energy advantage when walking around in a treeless environment, that over a lifetime might lead to, say, having one extra baby.

With the Homo Ergaster video, it talks about how we "stared our way" into intelligence. As intelligence became our primary survival strategy, it increased over time, favored by natural selection. This is perhaps not too different from the evolution of saber teeth in some big cats. As our intelligence increased, other things, such as our teeth, claws, etc, decreased, which in turn made the intelligence more important as a survival strategy.

After a certain point, especially after we developed the whites of our eyes and hence became more "expressive", much of our increasing intelligence seems to have been a result of needing to understand each other. One can see how this might lead to sort of an "arms race" of expanding brain capacity, as we needed to understand other humans, who were also increasing in intelligence.

The series explores the many accidents of history that made possible the circumstances that eventually led to the rise of human intelligence. For example, when India collided into Asia 8 million years ago, dramatically changing weather patterns. This made Africa drier; up to then, it was pretty much coast to coast forest; after that, the savannah opened up, making moving out of the trees and bipedalism a successful path for our ancestors to take.

Really, the number of unusual circumstances are pretty substantial that led to the rise of our intelligence. To me at least, there was nothing inevitable about it. And considering our brand of intelligence is the only time it has been pursued in 4.5 billion years is one of the main reasons I suggest other advanced alien civilizations might be quite rare.

However, the main point here is that when you look at awareness and consciousness as useful tools for surviving and thriving, and hence in the right circumstances favored by evolution, it is not so mysterious as to how it could have occurred.

But I agree with the thrust of this thread, our brains are damned amazing. But God or aliens are not required to explain them.

This is an interesting article on some of the many artifacts of our fish and amphibian origins still with us today:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=this-old-body
Key Concepts:
* Routing of nerves and fluid pathways in the human body resembles the tangle of wiring and pipes in an aging house, a heritage from fish and amphibian ancestors.
* The tube through which sperm passes forms a roundabout loop that can lead to hernias, a result of major anatomical changes that occurred as we evolved from fish.
* Nerves that are inherited from fish and travel from the brain to the diaphragm can become irritated and trigger hiccups, a closing of the entryway to the windpipe, an action that itself is a hand-me-down from amphibians that breathe with both lungs and gills.

This article has really got me thinking:
How to Save New Brain Cells
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=saving-new-bra in-cells
Fresh neurons arise in the adult brain every day. New research suggests that the cells ultimately help with learning complex tasks—and the more they are challenged, the more they flourish

The studies were done in mice, and it was shown that their brains produce between 5,000 and 10,000 new neurons a day, even in adult brains. It is extremely likely that something similar occurs in most animal brains, at least most mammals.

We don't know what the numbers are for humans. However, as a wild guess, it would not seem unreasonable to suggest that in humans we might generate 10 times this number as that of mice - perhaps 50,000 to 100,000 fresh neurons a day.

This reflects great evidence of the plasticity of even the adult brain of most animals. In the case of humans, with our nominally greater intelligence, we can begin to understand how such plasticity can accommodate things like the structures of civilization, religion, law, as well as technology.

Interesting thing about religious belief. In the Walking with Caveman video entitled "Walking with Cavemen - Part 4 Survivors 1 of 3", available from the Caveman link above, it discusses Homo Heidelbergensis, who lived in Europe about 500,000 years ago. They were quite similar to us in many ways, but they did not have the conception of an afterlife, and hence, presumably no religious beliefs in general. So our capacity for religious belief, or need thereof, came some time afterwards.

The Most Amazing Droid Superpowers That You've Never Heard Of

2009-04-01T08:56:00.001-07:00

The droidian "super-powers" of hyper-observancy, super-subtlety, and ultra-coordination will provide amazing utility to humans, and consume potentially vast multiples of human intelligence (HI).

As a critical set of tools to fulfill the consumer droid's design objectives successfully, over time, immense multiples of HI will congregate around 3 amazing skills. They are so special that they can justifiably be called superpowers.

Now, droids will have some superpowers you have heard of – very strong, very fast, etc. But with the superpowers I’m about to name, these will rarely be needed. So why have them? Well, when you need them, you need them – and it might prove useful to, say, have your droid be able to lift a car off of you, or catch a bullet for you with cobra-like speed.

However, these traditional superpowers will pale compared to these, the most amazing superpowers you’ve never heard of – super-subtlety, hyper-observancy, and ultra-coordination.
To the extent it’s even clear what these are, they may seem kind of lame – but they are not, my friends – they are the keys to the kingdom. With these superpowers, a droid can keep its owner out of trouble without anyone even being aware that it’s doing much.

Let me introduce these very briefly.
Super-Subtlety is the most unusual, and maybe the most powerful. It’s hard to explain, and will manifest itself in different ways, depending on the situation. Basically, defuse or otherwise influence a situation with a touch so deft the humans around it are unaware they are being influenced. This is important, because a droid can't boss its owner around, tell it what to do. And people then, like now, will be of variable characters, and some may have a knack for getting themselves into trouble. It is the job of that person’s droid to prevent that trouble, but in such a way that the owner thinks its his idea.

Another example that comes to mind is from the original Star Wars. When they’re in the alien cantina, and the ugly dude is threatening Luke. Kenobi steps gently in and says, “this little one’s not worth the trouble. Come, let me get you something.” Now, it didn’t work for that alien, who gets a limb dropped as punishment for his carelessness. But I suggest that’s a great line, and would work in many situations here on earth. The droid’s first choice will always be non-violence in resolving any situation, because violence is harder to control once set in motion, and legal and other troubles could result.

Hyper-Observancy is useful for feeding super-subtlety, as well as other uses. Basically, it allows the droid to be a sort of “information telescope”, able not only to take in vast amounts of information, but distill this info quickly into its most actionable form for its owner's benefit.
One example might be walking into a crowded bar, the kind with music blaring so loud you can barely hear yourself think. But the droid can parse and distill every conversation in the room, even with the noise in the way. Not for surveillance, there are ethical constraints for droids that we'll get into, but as far as it can go, for its owner's benefit. Maybe finding the table with the most interesting conversation, to set you up.

Ultra-coordination. Basically, having the droid's brain be able to control its movements with extreme precision. Let me give an example.
Say you're droid is driving your car, you're in the passenger seat. It's raining pretty hard. All of a sudden, an 18-wheeler comes crashing across the highway median, heading straight for your car. To avoid getting creamed, there are two options - swerve to the right, but unavoidably hit a car in the way. To the left, there is just enough clearance for the car - 1/4 inch, let's say, something you as a human would never attempt. This droid does that, while you have a heart attack probably, comes out the other side, and proceeds on its way.
Let's go further, in case that's not impressive enough. Say you're driving, and the droid is in the backseat for some reason, maybe playing with your child, whatever. The same thing happens, the 18-wheeler comes barreling over straight at you. Now you, you are not so composed when faced with certain death. You freeze, holding the steering wheel as tightly as you can. The droid reaches across the back seat, grabs the steering wheel with one hand while you involuntary resist still holding the steering tightly - and the droid does the same thing as in the scenario above.
Now that's ultra-coordination, that's a feature set that will save lives. You will not want to leave home without this device. You will feel naked without it, invincible with it.

Why Droids Will Converge on the Human Form Factor

2009-04-01T04:56:00.001-07:00

What form will these droids take? At first, probably for the next couple of decades, the form they take now, specialized droids like the roomba vacuum and such.
Next will be a generation of metal-men, like C3-PO, probably for another couple of decades.
Next is when things get really interesting. They will start to take the form of realistically human.

Why human?
Several reasons we'll touch on briefly here.
1. Maximum compatibility with the existing infrastructure built for humans.
2. The human form will minimize the communication barrier between humans and computing devices, as low as it can go without being integrated into our bodies. The form of an external droid is actually better in most cases, because it can do chores and such, do more things than a piece of integrated biotech into our bodies. These droids will be realized before such integration of biotech is widespread.
3. Social situations. Yes, there are compelling reasons to want our droid to go with us into many social and public situations. We'll discuss this in detail in a later thread. Suffice for now that when these droids do accompany their owners, it is in the owner's best interest for this droid to be convincingly human to everyone else.

Invasive vs. Non-invasive Augmentation

2009-03-31T07:11:00.000-07:00

The focus of biological technologies will remain on the understanding of ourselves and other lifeforms, treating diseases, and extending high quality lifespans. On the other hand, actual augmentation of our intellectual and physical powers will, for the most part, happen by proxy via non-invasive devices.

In addition to carefully applying existing and well-established trends for understanding the future, there is another characteristic to all of the future technologies in this blog. They are all noninvasive, that is, they do not rely upon directly "plugging in" to the human brain. There are several reasons for this:

1. It is unnecessary. The value-add of these technologies can be achieved without direct connections between the technologies in question and the human brain.

2. Although many aggressive technology enthusiasts (such as frequent futurist forums) seem to be enamored with this idea of direct tech-to-brain interfaces, I do not believe that the vast majority of the consumer base will be anywhere near so enthused. As Woody Allen said in Sleeper, "No one touches my brain - that's my second favorite organ."

3. Direct brain-to-technology interfaces will be subject to far greater legal penalties if something goes wrong. And it would not take many such suits to move the market from such devices.

4. The technologies discussed in this blog are intended to be utilized for an arbitrary period of time, from a few minutes to several hours or more. Even something as simple as 3D glasses start to annoy after a short while. So although the technologies in this blog are completely compatible with such things as 3-D glasses, virtual-reality helmets, etc., and the software would be virtually identical, they do not require such devices to fulfill their design purposes of utility and/or imagination actualization.

5. The technologies in this blog are meant to be utilized or enjoyed alongside "reality", not exclude the real world altogether. For example, a virtual reality-helmet in essence removes you from reality, it's difficult to impossible to know what's going on in the real world while wearing such an enveloping device. The technologies in this blog provide an extremely realistic virtual experience, without shutting out the real world entirely - you can still hear your baby cry, for instance.

6. For a given amount of computational "augmentation", a separate, stand-alone device will generally be more economical than one directly integrated into the human brain. The demonstration of this is somewhat problematic, because Kurzweil keeps what he means by direct augmentation of the human brain quite vague, using terms such as "smarter" that could mean a great variety of things. However, let's pick just one, specific example - calculation of the square root of 2 to 1,000 decimal places. A stand-alone device with little or no AI could do this for an effective cost of a few pennies or less, and is available with even today's computer technology. However, to augment the power of a human brain to allow the calculation of this "in their head" as it were, is an infinitely more arduous and expensive undertaking. It's unclear what the best way to achieve this is, in any case - via a silicon chip implant? This smacks of "unnecessary surgery", and even if established to be feasible, seems like a highly optional procedure. This leads to the next concern:

7. Brain augmentation - and for that matter, transhuman augmentation of any kind - even if proven safe and feasible, seems to fall into the class of "optional therapy" - ie, not life-saving in the sense of treating a chronic ailment that afflict the disease-stricken. Depending on the nature of the enhancement, it also seems like these kinds of augmentations could also be quite expensive. Extrapolating the current trend of the stinginess of health insurers, it seems reasonable, and in fact, quite reasonable, to suggest that they will NOT cover the expense of such optional procedures. This means that any transhuman enhancements will be out-of-pocket for those desiring such enhancements. If this quite likely scenario proves to be the case, this will mean that the economics will keep the procedures expensive and out of reach for all but the well-to-do. Kurzweil seems to suggest that these types of enhancements will become widespread and happily covered by insurers and/or demanded by the marketplace, but there is absolutely no evidence for this. That doesn't mean it's impossible, not saying that, but it is deeply improbable, and in any case Kurzweil gives no detailed explanation as to why this scenario would come to pass in the first place.

8. A standalone device provides greater scope for offloading of tasks and activities than one directly integrated into the human brain. This ties into the key consumer driver of "convenience" and "making life easier" that is a standard part of successful products, technological and otherwise. If it's directly integrated into one's brain, it may make thinking easier, but it's still the human doing most or all of the work.

9. Inputs and outputs can generally be better standardized and communicated via stand-alone technologies than those directly integrated into the human brain. For example, moving beyond the "square root of 2" scenario to something more involved, say, a detailed weather simulation. Again, this is something that current computers can do, even without appreciable AI as part of the software suite. The inputs for the simulation are input in a standard way, and are output to a screen or printer in a standard way (at least for a given software application). If all this is happening inside someone's head, how do you know the inputs are exactly right, and hence trustworthy? How does that person communicate the results of the simulation anyway - do they drive a monitor or a printer with their thoughts? These and other considerations help build a case that for a given computing task, direct integration into the human brain is in most cases vastly complicates the task, makes the results harder to communicate, less reliable, and much more expensive.

10. All of the above considerations are given even more gravitas with the eventual development of sophisticated AI software that has one of its key objectives successful communication with human beings. This is still forthcoming, to be sure, but will be far ahead of direct brain integration of these technologies. As such, by the time such direct integration is feasible, it will prove unnecessary, as well as suboptimal for the above reasons.

11. People, then as now, will value their privacy, and the privacy of one's most intimate thoughts will be guarded most jealously of all. Therefore, projections of a "global mind" composed of actual, commingling human minds is deeply misguided. A "one-off" global mind consisting of advanced, personalized AI systems that reflect the interests of their primary human interactant(s) but that can also precisely control what they share over such a global network will be far more desirable.

12. Assuming that things such as computer viruses still exist, the idea of an actual "global mind" of commingling human brains that gets infected with a computerized pathogen is a nightmare scenario. Far better to have a "one-off", non-invasive system that gets infected with such a virus, simply because it will be simpler to cleanse such a technology-only platform than to cleanse a composite technological-organic brain of such a virus.

Analysis of Other Widespread Ideas About the Future

2009-03-29T14:30:00.000-07:00

Why the Fear of Rogue or Dangerous Artificial Intelligence is Fundamentally Irrational
Examining the real reasons why many fear the prospect of advanced AI - the assumption, propagated by both science fiction writers and many futurists, that high intelligence necessarily converges on more-or-less the exact form in the human brain, a deeply misconceived notion.

What The Singularity Might Really Be Like
Examination of how a "steeply-sloped" technological event might actually play out.

The Prospects for the Computronium Universe
Challenging the idea of the "Intelligent Universe," where mankind or his descendant technologies digest the universe.

What Transhumanism Might Really Be Like
What form of hypothetical human enhancements will really make a difference?

The Prospects for Robots "Taking Over" the Workplace
Why any replacement of human laborers by advanced droids in the future will be piecemeal, demand-driven, and complementary to human intelligence and effort.

Prospects for a Post-Capitalist Economic System Replacing Capitalism
Exploring the question of whether future technologies will actually lead to a different economic system than the predominant one today, Capitalism.

The Far Future

2009-03-29T09:10:00.002-07:00

Exploring some highly non-intuitive ideas about the far future of humanity, the dark side of the future, and where all all the aliens, anyway?

What the Far Future Will Really Be Like
How demographic stabilization and the maturation of sustainability technologies will combine to keep most humans on Earth.

Invasive Biological vs. Synthetically Distinct Advanced Technology Platforms
The many reasons for suggesting that key future technologies will retain a primarily distinct nature from their human consumers.

The Dark Side of the Future for the Individual
Then as now, the trials and tribulations of most people will continue to come from within us, not from external agents.

So, Where Are All the Aliens?
An independent line of analysis that supports the Drake Equation in terms of concluding that advanced alien life (if any) is probably quite rare; hence, any nearby is almost certainly far more ancient. From there, we explore the question of Fermi's Paradox not from the human-centric perspective, but from the possible motivations of the aliens themselves.

Advanced Virtual Reality Technology

2009-03-29T09:10:00.001-07:00

Powered by a specialized form of advanced AI, the Hyperreality Engine will go far beyond your current notions of ultra-realistic, immersive experiences.

Toward the Hyperreality Engine Pt 1: Introduction
The basic ideas and trends behind the Hyperreality Engine.

Toward the Hyperreality Engine Pt 2: The Hardware
The hardware for the hyperreality engine is neither far-fetched, nor far off.

Toward the Hyperreality Engine Pt 3: The Software
The software for the hyperreality engine will be yet another form of specialized AI that in many ways actually be more complex and challenging than "greater-than-human" AI.

Toward the Hyperreality Engine Pt 4: The Applications
Some of the very interesting ways that the hyperreality engine could support the key consumer trend of "imagination actualization."

Advanced Robotics Technology

2009-03-29T09:09:00.001-07:00

Forget C3-PO and R2-D2. Stunningly realistic droids of the future - both physically and psychologically - will be so compelling that we will consider them indispensable

Designing the "Smarter than Human" Droid
How might a product that is smarter than a human being in one or more ways evince that intelligence? What form factor would be optimal for most consumer applications? What useful "powers" might these droids possess?

Why Droids Will Converge on the Human Form Factor
For many segments of the droid market, the hyperrealisitically human form factor will make the most sense, for many reasons.

The Most Amazing Droid Super-Powers You've Never Heard Of
The droidian "super-powers" of hyper-observancy, super-subtlety, and ultra-coordination will provide amazing utility to humans, and consume potentially vast multiples of human intelligence (HI).

Extremely Precise Sensory Awareness of the Artificial Mind
Exploration of key ways in which advanced droids will retain their essentially computer-centric nature.

The Violent Droid
Certain areas of application may require a droid to be violent - such as, soldier and bodyguard. These will be approached in decidedly "non-Terminator" ways.

Advanced Artificial Intelligence Technology

2009-03-29T09:08:00.000-07:00

The good news is that advanced AI technology will be amazingly useful, not at all malevolent, and quite knowable. The other side of the coin is that it will be among the most difficult technical feats ever achieved by mankind.

What Artificial Intelligence (AI) will really be like
Advanced AI, no matter how intelligent, will be purely rationally controlled - and hence, knowable, non-threatening, and eminently useful.

Sigmund Freud and Artificial Intelligence (AI)
(Including audio lectures explaining Freud's concepts of human intelligence)

Paths to Advanced AI - Engineered or Brute-Forced Brain Simulation?
Why engineered AI is the only viable approach to advanced AI

Where is All the AI, Anyway?
Before we get too excited about the coming of advanced AI, we must ask a serious question - where are even the simple forms in widespread use today?

An Empirically-Derived Conceptual Architecture for Artificially Intelligent Systems of Arbitrary Complexity
Exploration of the common attributes of any software deserving of the moniker "artificially intelligent"

How Advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) Will Learn
Advanced AI will depend as much on experience as raw intelligence in order to fulfill its design objectives well.

AI Rational Analogues for Human Emotions
There is great intelligence in human emotions, and unfortunately, great unpredictably as well. One of the keys to safe AI will be to translate human emotions into rational analogues that are far more consistent and predictable in their operation.

Advanced AI in Government
Many suboptimal decisions by political leaders are based upon the sheer vastness of the data and analysis pertaining thereto. How advanced AI could help.

Proposed Traffic Light Artificial Intelligence (AI) System as Part of a Comprehensive Strategy to Minimize Energy Use, Pollution, and Driver Time Wastage
Advanced AI will not be "one thing" - it will vary enormously, depending on the nature of the objectives for which it has been designed. This explores one possible application of a fairly simple AI application that could render tremendous value.

Microsoft Mapping Course to a Future In Line with "The Empirical Future" Blog
Microsoft's Laura is an interesting, early attempt at something like AI intended to interact with humans - and "her" process of observing her human interactants and deducing subtle cues regarding the character and attitude of these humans fits well with my ideas with regards to this technology.

Introduction to the Future Prediction Process

2009-03-29T09:06:00.000-07:00

It is said that those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it. Similarly, ignoring the past and present when predicting the future dooms one to never know it.

The Future in Focus
Introduction to the main themes of this blog.

A Powerful and Comprehensive Process for Understanding and Predicting the Future
Description of the multi-pronged and complementary empirical approach underlying the predictions in this blog.

Imagination Actualization in the Noisy Future
Description of the key assumptions underlying the nature of the future, particularly from the individual consumer standpoint.

The Nature of Future Technologies
The many reasons for suggesting that key future technologies will retain a primarily distinct nature from their human consumers.

Advanced AI in Government

2009-03-28T09:19:00.001-07:00

Many suboptimal decisions by political leaders are based upon the sheer vastness of the data and analysis pertaining thereto. How advanced AI could help.

It continually amazes me how little discussion of how real, advanced forms of AI might be used in specific applications to achieve great benefits for humanity.

Let's focus on one specific scenario for advanced AI in the sphere of government.

However, let's be real here, I don't mean in a position of "leadership". When discussions of this kind are enjoined, often many instantly and in my view quite incorrectly assume that AI of "greater-than-human" intelligence will simply be handed the reins, take over, as it were. This seems deeply unlikely, for the following reasons:

1. Human beings want to be led by other human beings, not by technology. This is a deep thread of human nature; even if an advanced AI were nominally "better" at leadership, this would still be true, I believe.

2. Even if humans were to get past the obstacle above, if an advanced AI were to take the reins of leadership, and messed up in one way or another, made one or more serious mistakes, who's to blame? Interestingly, not the advanced AI - it would be the manufacturer that is on the hook. The buck will not stop with a technology product - it will stop with human beings.

3. If an advanced AI were to take over the reins of leadership, say become The President, think about it - that gives incredible power to the corporation manufacturing that advanced AI, which most people would find a repellent notion, I would suggest.

For these and other reasons, advanced AI will not be in positions of leadership, elected positions in a democracy, if you will - even if they were nominally better than their human counterparts. So I would suggest setting aside those notions, at least for now.

However, there are still vast realms of value-add that advanced AI could render to support efficient, effective governmental operations. Let's focus on just one - regulation.

Currently, there are 150,000+ regulations on the books in the USA, and these grow by some 4,000 per year. Additionally, to understand these, one must also be aware of the body of legal decisions surrounding them, which are also huge.

There are a truly vast number of regulations, covering all manner of things, such as the environment, workplace safety, etc. Some 100,000 employees in about 60 federal agencies administer these regulations.

Estimates vary, but these regulations impose a cost of some $300 billion annually on the economy, mostly in the form of costs on businesses, not out of the federal budget per se.

Now, these regulations vary tremendously in their effectiveness. A good way to examine them is in terms of cost-benefit analysis, and when discussing regulations, a valuable metric here is "cost per life saved". Some regulations are very cheap - $100 per life saved. Some, massively expensive, up to millions of dollars per life saved. Although we can get idealistic and suggest that any regulation, even if it saves one life, is worth it, no matter what the cost, this can be countered by suggesting that in a world of limited resources, a very expensive regulation that in fact saves very few lives, if those costs were allocated to regulations that save many more lives, that is in fact worth doing. It would be equally unrealistic to suggest that all these regulations are worthless, and should simply be swept away.

However, objective rationalization of existing and proposed new regulations is eminently worthwhile.

Currently, the primary responsibility for determining the cost effectiveness of various proposed regulations falls the Office of Management and Budget, the OMB. They have a budget of about $50 million, and a staff of maybe 50 or 60. They can currently assess about a quarter of the annually proposed regulation, 1,000 of the 4,000, and they presumably focus on the bigger ones, of course.

When considering the effectiveness of not just the annually proposed, new regulations, but also the existing, massive body of regulations, and the cost-effectiveness of each one, and also the objective effectiveness of each one in terms of lives saved, species protected, whatever it is, I think we begin to enter an area that exceeds the ability of the human mind to analyze effectively and well.

Enter advanced AI.

What if you could retain, in your mind, the entire body of regulations on the books, all of the legal decisions surrounding those, with additional metadata with regards to total costs to implement, total lives saved, as well as potentially other important dimensions, say, locality and time.

No human mind can do this, of course - but an AI could, because of course, it's really just an advanced computer, and retaining and processing large datasets is one of their core strengths.

When looking at the political decision process, we often blame the "corruption" of lobbyists, politicians, etc. But really, I think most politicians want to make good decisions - however, the objectivity, comprehensiveness, and consistency of the information and resulting analysis that they receive impedes good decision-making. This gap is what is exploited by lobbyists and other special interests toward their own ends.

This advanced AI application, it's just another application really, preferably within a human form factor as soon as technology allows, would work very similarly to the AI architecture I have already described.

Essentially, it's analysis, and the summarizations thereof that it would provide, would vary with the audience with which it is interacting. If it was the head of the OMB, it might be one, higher level of summarization, estimating costs over time for a proposed regulation, possibly by locale, possibly with rough estimates of legal suits that may result, based on other, similar regulations.

However, human domain experts could "drill down" with this AI - exploring each analysis result, each "assumption, all the way down to the raw data, if they so chose - individual legal rulings, specific costs, lives saved, etc.

We come back to this paradigm of advanced AI as "liaison" between human beings and what we would recognize as functional analysis software today. Very important concept, one that I think will provide almost unlimited value in terms of real, live AI potentialities.

This is just one example, of rationalizing the complex welter of government regulations, keeping the good ones, getting rid of the chaff - and possibly saving billions and billions in the process.

There are many, many more examples like this, that we could name:
1. Rationalizing investments in infrastructure, the cost-benefit analysis decisions there.
2. Investments in Research and Development.
3. The optimal way to preserve our remaining natural ecosystems (which can be considered a subset of regulations, perhaps)
4. Etc.

The point is, the sheer volume of data, the costs, lives, productivity enhancements, legal decisions, etc, are so vast that today, they necessarily must be split into literally thousands of individuals to analyze at all. And there, in an important sense, is the problem - having all of this data in one mind, being able to analyze it as one, integrated data set, there are huge advantages there, I'm sure all kinds of interesting insights and patterns could be discerned there.

But, no human can do this - but an advanced AI could, in principle. In this sense, this application could be "smarter-than-human" - but once again, we see that this is in order to assist human partners, to help them make good decisions. Each human interactant with this advanced AI would have different questions, different avenues they might want to explore. The head of OMB, or the President, for that matter, one set of perspectives. A congressman, another. A lawyer, yet another. An economist or government statistician, yet another.

All of these interactions would, in fact, help the advanced AI refine the analyses that it performs, to better assist the decision-making process and recommendations that all these humans make. It's a partnership, not a replacement paradigm, because many of these people aren't going away. Really, we're talking more about achieving much better results within an existing budgetary environment.

How Advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) Will Learn

2009-03-16T07:23:00.000-07:00

Advanced AI will depend as much on experience as raw intelligence in order to fulfill its design objectives well.

I recently received a question whose answer I thought worth sharing:
"Is sentience like my own as a 27 year old man something that can exist in an AI as soon as it is turned on for the first time?

Will it always take trial and error manipulating one's enviroment (to include interacting with other sentient beings) to learn the sentience of an average 27 year old male?"

You pose interesting questions.

I recently read a quote by Hans Moravec that I found interesting, and have been considering at length. I'm paraphrasing here, but it ran along the lines of "robots will eventually have exceedingly detailed models of human psychology.".

Which I agree with. Models and algorithms that allow it to not only to interact with human beings successfully, but of course have awareness of its environment so that it can navigate that environment successfully.

However, the way I heard it, there was something missing from Moravec's description - that is, data. Models and algorithms need data, of course, to do anything useful.

Here's the thing about human intelligence - every single human's intelligence is different from every other's - intelligence, in fact, is far more variable than fingerprints. So one psychological "model" can not instantly know every human mind out of the box, because a successful interaction with one human might be unsuccessful with another. However, I believe that there are good, high-level psychological models of the human mind that do in fact successfully embrace all of humanity. My favored one is the Freudian model of id, superego, and ego. However, I was re-listening to a Teaching Company course over the last few weeks, "Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition", which in 48 hours of lectures covers from the Pre-Socratics to the 20th century, and I was struck by something. Essentially all of them, every last one, struggled with these same 3 components of the human mind. They use a wide variety of terms, and their focus and assumptions vary, but that fundamental similarity across the board is striking.

So I think we have a good start for a psychological model of the human mind - the animal passions, the moral and "instant judgement" portion, and the more or less objectively rational, reasoning portion.

However, the degree, expression, and interaction of these three, especially when coupled with external factors such as education, culture, etc, form a near-infinite variety of specific human minds. I don't use the word "infinite" often, but given that the human brain is the most complex object in the universe that we yet know of, if it is justified anywhere, it would be in this case.

Therefore, when you say, "turned on for the first time", I assume you mean the basic software and hardware are in place, but the experiential data are not yet acquired. If this is the case, I would say no, sentience like your own would not exist in an AI as soon as it is turned on for the first time.

However, the true test of the power of the software and hardware in this device is not its instantaneousness, I would suggest, but rather, how well does it learn.

So, how would it learn?

Depends on what we're talking about. Some things can be learned from books, some things require face-to-face interaction, etc.

I tend to think in terms of the value proposition of one these still hypothetical devices not so much in terms of how it could exactly mimic you (although that could be useful at times), but rather, in terms of how good it is at understanding, communicating with, and interacting with you. Remember, the most likely role these devices will serve is not to replace you, but to serve or assist you.

I discuss at length in my blog why I believe these devices, in all their forms, will be rationally controlled at all times, though capable of simulating emotions, primarily for the benefit of the human(s) with which it interacts.

Here's how I see the nature of their value proposition, as described in more detail here:
"The primary directive of these droids will be to maximize its owner's weal and happiness. Because it is a consumer product, there are very real limitations to how overtly this droid can fulfill that directive. For example, telling its owner what to do, even if it's for his own good? No, not acceptable, a droid can't do that. The droid must have consulting skills, really - it must steer its owner in the best direction, while at all times having the owner believe it's his own idea. This is not a nice to have, it is absolutely critical.

Also, part of the weal maximization mission is to help that owner be the best he can be, in all respects. So the droid will have to be a mentor, able to communicate in the very best way for that particular person. No matter how more intelligent than its owner the droid may be, it will never talk down to him, because that is a manifestation of arrogance, an id-thing. It will also be infinitely patient if that's required, because impatience is also an id-thing.

Over time, the droid's "personality" will mold into a custom fit for its owner's personality, maximizing compatibility while maintaining respect."

I then go on to describe in some detail the droid "superpowers" of hyper-observancy, super-subtlety, and ultra-coordination, which seem like a reasonable model for achieving the ends above.

Because each person is different, initially yes, I would expect there to be some trial-and-error. In fact, early in the relationship, I would suggest that it is perfectly alright as part of the "training" process for the droid to ask clarifying questions, and of course for the human to explicitly give insights into his personality and/or general preferences such as, "I like this, and don't like that."

Over time, there will still be trial-and-error, there will always be that, because not only are no two humans the same, no one person stays the same over time. Sometimes we're cranky, sometimes we're happy, and overall, can be quite unpredictable. However, the level of the trial-and-error, its "delta", as it were, will become steadily less, as the droid gathers more and more experiential data from that human or humans with which it interacts. In initial models, this process may take a while, weeks or months to get to a point where the human feels like, "yeah, this droid knows me pretty well."

However, in more advanced models, this process could become faster, perhaps quite a bit faster, as well as more successful. And of course, unlike us, the experience "database" of these droids will have characteristics similar to computer data today - ie, it will be downloadable, storable, reloadable, etc. As these devices become widespread, and if the experiential data of these devices can be combined into a large database, with proper protections for the consumer identity of course, ie, behaviors with certain demographic attributes, but not their actual name (much like CRM data is handled today), then we could get to a point where advanced versions of these droids could in fact arrive "pre-loaded" with appropriately distilled insights from this larger database that could make them much more psychologically insightful "out of the box", if you will.

I like the idea of the "personal droid", and believe it will converge as rapidly as technology allows on a hyper-realistically human form factor for a number of reasons I describe in my blog.

However, the exact same approach could be imagined for any number of professional applications, such as a droid as an assistant to a scientist. Combined with knowledge gained from books or wherever on the domain knowledge, say, particle physics, and working with a scientist, observing how he frames his hypotheses, questions, etc, while of course providing tremendous value as an advanced AI liaison to the often vast datasets that the scientist utilizes to test his ideas, that droid over time could become quite a useful scientist. And if you go further and imagine a droid that works not with one scientist but with several, and can flexibly mix and match their various approaches to get the best results overall, now you're talking a very useful scientist.

But, no matter how smart the droid, observation and analysis of both the humans around it and the world at large will always be essential. This is true for many reasons. Things simply change from day to day. But also, no matter how great the amount of experiential data, no matter how sophisticated the psychological algorithms running the droidian mind, you can never really know a specific human mind 100%, able to guess it's every thought, what it will say next, what its response will be in every conceivable situation. However, I expect that at some point, in very advanced versions of these devices, the "mistakes" the droid makes will fall below the human's ability to detect in most cases, which might qualify as near "perfection" from the human perspective, though I use that word very guardedly.

What you call trial-and-error I would phrase slightly differently, in terms of hypothesis formulation, experimentation, and testing, with essentially every single human interaction being an opportunity for these. For example, in a given interaction, did the human register:
- Annoyance?
- Seem to understand what the droid just said, or was there confusion there? If so, why? How could the droid better phrase its language to have the human better understand him?
- Approbation, indicating the droid did something especially well?
- etc (there are many more possible examples)

In other words, continually refining its internal models of that human's psychological profile, to achieve higher and higher "interaction success" rates. Interaction success can be defined in various ways, optimization of respect being one. If it's a professional relationship, such as a scientist assistant, in addition to optimization of respect, an additional criteria might be the productivity of the collaboration in terms of science achieved.

The future will tell, I could be wrong. But in my view this seems a probable trajectory for advanced AI that actually understands human behavior and can productively and successfully interact with said humans.

AI Rational Analogues for Human Emotions

2009-03-13T10:02:00.000-07:00

There is great intelligence in human emotions, and unfortunately, great unpredictably as well. One of the keys to safe AI will be to translate human emotions into rational analogues that are far more consistent and predictable in their operation.

I would suggest that, far from being the exception, it is almost universally assumed by most people that advanced AI, as it gets closer to nominally human levels of intelligence, will start evincing all or most of the characteristics of that human intelligence. I disagree strongly with this idea in many specific, self-consistent, logical, and empirically-based ways.

However, I want to share another take on this notion that I have alluded to, but not explored in as much detail as perhaps desirable. Let's focus on emotions. Very interesting topic, have had a lot of good discussions here around that.

Humans have emotions, and we consider them an integral part of what makes us special. However, emotions are almost universally shared with most other complex creatures, so really, in important ways they are the characteristic of our minds that are the most ancient and least special of all, at least in the sense that other animals also employ them in very similar ways.

However, the key question for my purpose is, are emotions as we conceive of them really necessary for an advanced AI to successfully achieve and evince hyperintelligent (ie, greater than human intelligence) behavior? I would say, a rational understanding of the emotions of others is critical, especially the primary human interactant(s) with the AI.

Clearly, emotions serve a useful purpose, which is why we have them. Let's examine a very useful one: fear.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear
"Fear is an emotional response to threats and danger. It is a basic survival mechanism occurring in response to a specific stimulus, such as pain or the threat of pain. Psychologists John B. Watson, Robert Plutchik, and Paul Ekman have suggested that fear is one of a small set of basic or innate emotions. This set also includes such emotions as joy, sadness, and anger. Fear should be distinguished from the related emotional state of anxiety, which typically occurs without any external threat. Additionally, fear is related to the specific behaviors of escape and avoidance, whereas anxiety is the result of threats which are perceived to be uncontrollable or unavoidable."

As with many emotions, below a certain level of intensity fear is not incompatible with rationality. However, as with many or most emotions, above a certain level of intensity it can completely obliterate rational thought processes. This makes them unpredictable. This is critical for consideration of advanced AI. Advanced AI cannot be unpredictable in the same way we are.

Let's examine another emotion: Anger
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anger
"Anger is an emotional state that may range from minor irritation to intense rage. The physical effects of anger include increased heart rate, blood pressure,and levels of adrenaline and noradrenaline. Some view anger as part of the fight or flight brain response to the perceived threat of pain. Anger becomes the predominant feeling behaviorally, cognitively and physiologically when a person makes the conscious choice to take action to immediately stop the threatening behavior of another outside force. The English term originally comes from the term angr of Old Norse language. Anger is usually derived from sadness.

The external expression of anger can be found in facial expressions, body language, physiological responses, and at times in public acts of aggression. Animals and humans for example make loud sounds, attempt to look physically larger, bare their teeth, and stare. Anger is a behavioral pattern designed to warn aggressors to stop their threatening behavior. Rarely does a physical altercation occur without the prior expression of anger by at least one of the participants. While most of those who experience anger explain its arousal as a result of "what has happened to them," psychologists point out that an angry person can be very well mistaken because anger causes a loss in self-monitoring capacity and objective observability.
Modern psychologists view anger as a primary, natural, and mature emotion experienced by all humans at times, and as something that has functional value for survival. Anger can mobilize psychological resources for corrective action. Uncontrolled anger can however negatively affect personal or social well-being. While many philosophers and writers have warned against the spontaneous and uncontrolled fits of anger, there has been disagreement over the intrinsic value of anger. Dealing with anger has been addressed in the writings of earliest philosophers up to modern times. Modern psychologists, in contrast to the earlier writers, have also pointed out the possible harmful effects of suppression of anger. Displays of anger can be used as a manipulation strategy for social influence."

As with fear, below a certain level of intensity, anger has a useful purpose for human beings. However, above a certain level, it often precludes rational thought, and is therefore unpredictable.

A simple example of the inappropriateness of anger as a controlling mechanism can be given if we assume the form factor of a droid for an advanced AI.

If you are the human interactant, and depending on your disposition, you may strike this droid. What should be the droid's response? Well, one response that is NOT permissible is for it to strike you back and knock you through the wall (I expect that these devices will be a good deal stronger than a person, as well as faster, these will be a key part of their value proposition).

Now, maybe the human deserves to get thrown the wall, maybe he's a real a**hole, but that is irrelevant. A device that fights back in this way is unsafe, the manufacturer will get sued, and therefore this type of unpredictable control mechanism will never be designed into a device of this kind. Product safety is a huge and important trend now, and that will continue into the future.

Advanced AI, no matter what its form factor is, can never leave the zone of rational control of every action it takes. If you think about it, this makes perfect sense. Human beings that keep their rational composure, even when someone is attempting to provoke them (this board has lots of examples of this, you don't have to look far), those people that stay in control of their emotions usually stay in control of the situation.

Going back to our example, how should a droid respond in this case? What is the "rational analogue" for anger in this device, in other words? Well, it depends on the situation. If it is responding to its primary human interactant(s), the response should be neither slavish nor intimidating. It should be the response that maximizes the maintenance of respect felt by that human for that device. If this human tends to strike often, the response should perhaps be of a shaming nature, to discourage that human's propensity to strike others, which obviously is probably beneficial for that human anyway. If it is extremely rare, it depends on the circumstances, another potential response might simply be laughter, laughing it off. It is highly unlikely that a human is going to be able to actually injure one of these devices simply by striking it, so the response of the droid can be formulated entirely with the human in mind.

For essentially every emotion, I suggest a "rational analogue" can be envisioned, that fills the role of that emotion, and in fact does it better than that emotion, at least in the context of advanced AI.

How about sadness?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sadness
"Sadness is an emotion characterized by feelings of disadvantage, loss, and helplessness. When sad, people often become quiet, less energetic, and withdrawn. Sadness is considered to be the opposite of happiness, and is similar to the emotions of sorrow, grief, misery, and melancholy. The philosopher Baruch Spinoza defined sadness as the “transfer of a person from a large perfection to a smaller one.” Sadness can be viewed as a temporary lowering of mood (colloquially called "feeling blue"), whereas depression is characterized by a persistent and intense lowered mood, as well as disruption to one's ability to function in day to day matters."

This seems very unlikely to be a valuable control mechanism for an advanced AI. Witness the personality of Marvin the Robot from Hitchhiker's guide - that behavior would be excruciating in an actual droid, and would not be successful, I would suggest.

However, here's a very interesting emotion: Empathy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathy
"Empathy is the capacity to share and understand another's emotion and feelings. It is often characterized as the ability to "put oneself into another's shoes", or in some way experience what the other person is feeling. Empathy does not necessarily imply compassion, sympathy or empathic concern because this capacity can be present in context of compassionate or cruel behavior."

Now we're getting somewhere. This will be very important for successful advanced AI. However, this can very easily be approached by an equivalent rational analogue, whereby observation of its human interactant(s) over time provides a rich topographical picture of that person's personality, and hence a rational strategy for empathy devised that is not too shallow, or too indulgent. I suggest a convincing evincing of empathy will be an important part of droid hyperintelligence. But again, it is not "true" empathy - it is evincing of this emotion, for the benefit of its human interactant(s), to provide comfort to them or whatever.

Here's another vital emotion: Curiosity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curiosity
"Curiosity is an emotion that causes natural inquisitive behaviour such as exploration, investigation, and learning, evident by observation in human and many animal species. The term can also be used to denote the behavior itself being caused by the emotion of curiosity. As this emotion represents a drive to know new things, curiosity is the fuel of science and all other disciplines of human study.

Causes
Although curiosity is an innate capability of many living beings, it cannot be subsumed under category of instinct because it lacks the quality of fixed action pattern; it is rather one of innate basic emotions because it can be expressed in many flexible ways while instinct is always expressed in a fixed way. Curiosity is common to human beings at all ages from infancy to old age, and is easy to observe in many other animal species. These include apes, cats, fish, reptiles, and insects; as well as many others. Many aspects of exploration are shared among all beings, as all known terrestrial beings share similar aspects: limited size and a need to seek out food sources.

Strong curiosity is the main motivation of many scientists. In fact, in its development as wonder or admiration, it is generally curiosity that makes a human being want to become an expert in a field of knowledge. Though humans are sometimes considered particularly very curious, they sometimes seem to miss the obvious when compared to other animals. What seems to happen is that human curiosity about curiosity itself (i.e. meta-curiosity or meta-interest), combined with the ability to think in an abstract way, lead to mimesis, fantasy and imagination - eventually leading to an especially human way of thinking ("human reason"), which is abstract and self aware, or conscious.Some people have the feeling of curiosity to know what is after death.

Morbid Curiosity
A morbid curiosity is an example of addictive curiosity the object of which are death and horrible violence or any other event that may hurt you physically or emotionally (see also: snuff film), the addictive emotion being explainable by meta-emotions exercising pressure on the spontaneous curiosity itself. In a milder form, however, this can be understood as a cathartic form of behavior or as something instinctive within humans. According to Aristotle, in his Poetics we even "enjoy contemplating the most precise images of things whose sight is painful to us." (This aspect of our nature is often referred to as the 'Car Crash Syndrome' or 'Trainwreck Syndrome', derived from the notorious supposed inability of passersby to ignore such accidents.)"

Curiosity is a fundamental tenet of awareness, and forms the backbone of much scientific and technological progress. It is a very valuable emotion, and I would argue that a great deal of human rational intelligence evolved as a way to inform our curiosity more successfully. Therefore, although an "emotion", it is among the most rational of emotions, at least if not taken to extremes (as in the description of "morbid curiosity" above).

Anyway, I'm still figuring this out. Bottom line, what I'm suggesting here is that the implicit, unpredictable, somewhat mysterious operations of emotions in human and other animal brains have "rational analogues" that can be explicitly programmed, are far more predictable, and hence safer for advanced AI.

These rational analogues will form a natural extension of what I have argued elsewhere will be the rational control mechanisms for advanced AI/droids overall. The inherently rational control of these technologies argues for the knowability in their behavior patterns, even when they reach the point of "hyperintelligence", ie, demonstrably greater rational intelligence than humans. This is my central argument against the "unknowability" of the Singularity (actually, one of several, another being the continued involvement of human beings in their design objectives, for example). It is not entirely clear because it's never been explained by anyone to my satisfaction, but this notion of the "unknowability" of the Singularity seems to derive primarily from the idea that they will have essentially a biological nature to their intelligence, which I suggest is not necessary, safe, or really in any way optimal that I can imagine - except that this notion appeals to our heartstrings, which of course not a rational line of argument.

Microsoft Mapping Course to a Future In Line with "The Empirical Future" Blog

2009-03-04T06:05:00.000-08:00

Microsoft's Laura is an interesting, early attempt at something like AI intended to interact with humans - and "her" process of observing her human interactants and deducing subtle cues regarding the character and attitude of these humans fits well with my ideas with regards to this technology.

Here's a most interesting article, discussing Microsoft and Intel's deepening investment in and vision for Artificially Intelligent applications:

Microsoft Mapping Course to a Jetsons-Style Future

As I've indicated many times, Microsoft is quite a logical place to look for widespread AI apps, not just because of their prevalence and wealth, but because that wealth has allowed them to hire tons of top-notch researchers in those fields.

In fact, the dearth of discernably "intelligent" software (as opposed to "functionally rich" software, which although not necessarily in principle different, in execution is in fact completely different) from Microsoft or elsewhere has been a major reason for my reservations about "where's all the AI?" all along. If Microsoft's, Intel's, and eventually other's plans to start to play out along the lines they hope, this could start to address my concerns in a major way.

This article is an indication that, perhaps, purely "functional" software, though still important, may be close to the end of its rapid growth trajectory, and "intelligent" software, that explicitly incorporates AI techniques along the lines below (and, eventually, countless others), are finally coming to the fore as the next big source of software and hardware growth.

And though not described in this article, Microsoft is also contributing importantly to the field of robotics, with the first "operating system" for robotic control (that's been around a while), so that not each robot has to have its own custom operating system.

This supports the point I've made repeatedly that the best place to look for sophisticated AI is not from someone's garage, but from the currently recognizable computer hardware and software industries.

And if that in fact becomes the case, you will NOT see AI that kicks your ass, tries to take over the world, or crap like that. You will see AI that is conceived, designed, and produced as consumer applications, for the purpose of making money.

Some interesting quotes from this article:

"Built by researchers at Microsoft, Laura appears as a talking head on a screen. You can speak to her and ask her to handle basic tasks like booking appointments for meetings or scheduling a flight.

More compelling, however, is Laura’s ability to make sophisticated decisions about the people in front of her, judging things like their attire, whether they seem impatient, their importance and their preferred times for appointments.

Instead of being a relatively dumb terminal, Laura represents a nuanced attempt to recreate the finer aspects of a relationship that can develop between an executive and an assistant over the course of many years."

If "Laura" can do things like the above well, she will be light-years ahead of Ramona, Microsoft's former PC "assistants" such as Bob and the paperclip, or any other chatbot I've seen.

What's Laura doing? Deducing subtle cues from being observant of its human interactant(s), a key aspect of ostensibly intelligent behavior.

I describe a far more advanced version of this same approach, in the context of droids, here:
Envisioning the Hyperintelligent Droid

If you choose to explore this link, scroll near the bottom, where I describe the droid/advanced AI skills of supersubtlety, hyperobservancy, and ultracoordination. The reason for the "super", "hyper", and "ultra" designations is because this is for an ostensibly very advanced, hyperintelligent technology. Of course, before we get to these superlatives, there will simply being able to deduce subtle cues from observant behavior, which the path that Laura, and Microsoft and Intel, are on.

The Prospects for Robots "Taking Over" the Workplace

2009-03-04T05:58:00.000-08:00

Any replacement of human laborers by advanced droids in the future will be piecemeal, demand-driven, and complementary to human intelligence and effort.

I recently got into a dialogue on a discussion forum, that seems worth sharing here (the type in quoted, bold italics are the comments of others):

"more and more machines eliminating more and more jobs untill the capitalistic system collapses due to the fact that not enough workers will produce living wages."

This is phrased more as a death wish for the supposedly "evil and exploitative" capitalist system, rather than a seriously credible prediction. This is another take on the "nanobots making everything free" argument.

The fact is, this dystopian scenario would be death for ANY economic system, not just capitalism. In fact, the human suffering in such an unlikely scenario would be far worse in a centrally controlled economy, because workers are often considered as little more than agents of production there already.

In any case, this is a complex subject, one that I pondered nearly 30 years ago, with the same idea that robots would soon be rapidly replacing large segments of human labor in the economy. But here we are, with stationary robots making big inroads in certain, manufacturing-intensive, capital-intensive industries, such as auto production (which was already the case 30 years ago, and one of the reasons I got the idea in the first place). In the vast realms of labor that would have as a desirable component robots that are mobile, we're still pretty much at the Roomba stage, so it is extremely premature to suggest that robots will displace a huge percentage of the human labor force. It's too early to say what will happen there, and certainly way too early to gleefully predict the destruction of capitalism.

If we look at the auto industry, where robots have been a mainstay for decades, there are still large numbers of human employees there. The massive layoffs in the American auto industry have everything to do with those companies making cars that don't sell (which, in turn, is based more on their reactionary executive culture rather than the skill or competence of the vast body of its workers), and very little to do with the fact that robots are used there.

We must ask, to what degree have any layoffs in those industries been directly due to the use of robots taking over their jobs? Undoubtedly, there has to have been an impact there, because otherwise it's hard to see how the massive investment in those robots was worthwhile in the first place. I don't know those numbers and wasn't able to easily find any credible links on the web. In most cases, companies that make large robotics investments try hard to retrain and reassign valuable workers first, pink slips as a last option.

Therefore, rather than direct layoffs, in many of those companies, the nature of the work of the human laborers has changed. Turns out, there's still plenty for them to do. Quality control, monitoring, maintaining, and programming the robots (the robots definitely need oversight), the work on the cars that goes on between the stationary robotic stations, etc. Often, they are retrained or reassigned, rather than given a pink slip.

Many seem to make the key mistake of assuming that advanced robots will be as good as or better than humans in every conceivable way. This I believe will not come to pass - the partnership of man and droid combined will be more powerful than either alone, into the very far future. Human minds, as a result of the nature of their biologically evolved origins, will have as their strong suits creativity, strategic thinking, and leadership. Droids and Advanced AI, because of their fundamentally rational, hyperprecise minds (these devices, lest we forget, will be computers first, human emulators second) eventually much of everything else, perhaps. For example, a design team that represents a mix of humans and droids and/or advanced AI computers could imagine and engineer a far greater number of prototypes to a greater level of precision before decisions were made as to the actual production of that product.

In most cases, humans prefer jobs that have a strong component of creativity, leadership, and strategic decision-making involved. In this way, much as much of the current workplace in the developed world has moved from manufacturing to knowledge work, we will see a further evolution to the most desirable of the knowledge work for those human workers. This may seem rosy or optimistic, but I would submit that it is in fact eminently logical and empirically derived. I am not a utopian or a dystopian, I eschew both of those extremes, simply because they are never right.

(Note: the bolded, italicized comments in the rest of this post were made by a different forum participant than the comment above)

"What if we impose large taxes on the robotic corporations? The money obtained could be used to fund a pension that begins from birth for everyone. The machines would then have to compete mightily amongst themselves in order to raise the money required to keep them 'alive'. They would have to deliver goods and services that people want."

This is one option that may be employed. Another might be, personal ownership of the robots that are then "hired out" to one or more employers at the discretion of the owners. The owner would buy the robot (for a presumably substantial sum), then recoup that cost via the hiring out of that robot. This could be made mandatory, where personal ownership of some percentage of the robots utilized at a firm is a legal requirement. If you think of it, there are advantages to this approach - the company would not have to make a giant capital outlay for a large number of droids out of its own pocket, then eat that cost if business goes down - they could simply "lay off" whatever droids they needed to, which could then be reemployed elsewhere by their human owners, much like the economy works today. The owners would of course also be on the hook for the repair and upkeep of these droids as well. I could see this being quite attractive to companies as an alternative at least for some potentially sizable fraction of their staff. If a particular droid became instrumental in a role, which would depend on its experience as well as its programming, the company could attempt to "buy" that robot from its owner, and the owner could agree or disagree, at their discretion. If the human hired out its droid(s) in fields with which the human already had experience, I could see a deep synergy of value developing out of this dynamic, because again, the value of these droids will depend on their experience as well as their programmed software and hardware, especially their micro-grained experience at a particular firm or firms, not just that they are instantly smarter and better at everything out of the box.

In this way, in a growing industry, such an arrangement could make huge sense; if a human has valuable skills, he could buy, train, and resell robots to various firms, use that money to invest in another robot(s), in a cycle that in fact leverages the human's knowledge far beyond what is possible today.

"I actually think people will work harder when jobs are obsolete due to the robotic takeover. Why? Because there will no longer be the need to perform a job you dislike, merely to earn a living. The robots do that. People would be free to spend their time doing things they find fulfilling. And because they find it fulfilling, I believe they would happily devote much time and energy to their daily activities."

Hopefully people will be freed up for doing what they love. However, the entire history of technology progress has not led to humans working less, but more, just different kinds of work. I suspect this trend will continue, even after large numbers of droids are in the workplace. In addition, we should remember that the demographics of the future will be different from today, with many in the developed world - and eventually, everywhere in the world - having far fewer young people entering the workforce, so large-scale adoption of robotics may be necessary just to keep the economy working as it does currently. In fact, it is entirely likely that the most demand for robots will in fact be in those industries and places that are hurting for workers. For example, the needs of elderly care in Japan, where because of its strict immigration laws there are not enough young, qualified workers to take care of the rapidly increasing elderly population, is a major driver of robotics, and the one nearest large-scale commercial introduction there is a robot of this type.

Therefore, to suggest that all this will lead to the "collapse of capitalism" is far-fetched - just the opposite will be the case, it could be suggested. Many of the advances in technology, such as the internet, shine the light on poor economic systems, such as Communism, and move those to the capitalist model, not away from it. China comes to mind here - they have far to go, but the booming success of their economy is directly attributable to the degree to which they have adopted capitalist methods into their economy.

Capitalism is certainly not perfect, and must be continually refined by intelligent regulation AND intelligent deregulation (as we're seeing in the banking industry, where the unwise deregulation of previous banking regulations over the past 10-15 years has led to the current crisis). However, capitalism is the very best economic system that humanity has yet devised, not because it is the most just or whatever, but because it is the most aligned with fundamental human nature. Until human nature changes (and there is NO sign of that happening anytime soon), capitalism will thrive.

An Empirically-Derived Conceptual Architecture for Artificially Intelligent Systems of Arbitrary Complexity

2009-01-23T07:44:00.000-08:00

Exploration of the common attributes of any software deserving of the moniker "artificially intelligent"

Since I get lost in terms like "conscious", "super-intelligence", etc, and I struggle when people say they're building systems that have these characteristics, I've been thinking a lot about how to describe and model an AI system in simpler terms. Here is an early iteration of my attempts on this front.

1. Input mechanism(s)- This is simply the way(s) to get raw data into the AI system in the first place. The number and sophistication of these depends greatly on the nature and objective of the application, of course. For a chatbot , it could simply be lines of text; for a an advanced droid, the full complement of human senses will probably eventually all have a place, because each has a potential value-add for its human interactant(s), as I've already described in my blog.

2. Awareness - The ability to filter the raw data gathered by the sensory mechanisms to fulfill the design objective(s) of the system. For a chatbot, this might include colloquialisms and specific nouns used by the user that can be used to determine more customized, relevant responses to that user, while perhaps filtering out common articles such as "the", "a", "an", not dissimilar to what search engines do now.

3. Curiosity/Experimentation - the continuous "motivation" to refine or optimize the performance of an AI system "thinking" algorithms, usually through varying the input parameters that feed that algorithm in some way. Obviously, the degree of freedom with which this can be done depends on the maturity of the algorithm and the safe range of variability of the input parameters. The way that these input parameters are varied would probably be controlled another algorithm of some kind. A far more sophisticated type of machine experimentation might be the development of entirely new algorithms, though if this in time becomes possible it would seem that these might not be "closed form" algorithms, but numerical approximations developed as a result of the optimization parameters over time. An analogue of this might be how a computer determines the strength of an electric field in a certain charge geography via finite-element analysis, as opposed to solutions of Maxwell's equations in closed form. If such an approach proves viable, the advantage would be the automated or semi-automated development of algorithms for a much wider variety of optimization problems than are currently available; the disadvantage might be, these algorithms would not necessarily be describable in "closed form", and hence might defy easy human understanding of these algorithms.

4. Thinking - This is the computation of the output that a given AI system will produce, based on both its inputs, and thereby an assessment of how successful its previous output(s) were based on those inputs. This will often be algorithm-based. For an AI traffic light, this might be as simple as a minimization of cars waiting and pollution emitted, both of which are simple metrics that can be quickly gathered by sensors; for a hyper-intelligent droid, this would likely expand into hundreds or thousands of algorithms, that over time may mirror in some ways the thinking sub-systems in the human brain.

4. Output - the behavior(s) that represent the fulfillment of the AI system's design objectives. For a chatbot, this would be a line of "conversation". For an AI traffic light, the timing of its green-yellow-red pattern. For a droid, the particular service it renders, or response it makes to a query.

5. Understanding - This is the ability of the AI system to evaluate its inputs in such a way as to consistently discern the effects of its outputs on meeting the overall objectives that the AI system is designed to fulfill. This may or may not be a separate subsystem; in many or perhaps most cases, the algorithm(s) that comprise it's "thinking" module would ideally perform this function. However, it is useful to consider "Understanding" as at least a separate logical subsystem.

6. Memory - the retention of all the past interactions for the above 5 characteristics already mentioned. It amazes me how often this is forgotten; I have yet to see a chatbot, for example, that remembers any of its past conversations, or at least that gives any indication of such memory.

This model accommodates the evolution of systems that seem intelligent (or at least, less stupid) from developer skill-sets and programming languages that are functionally oriented. This is critical because functional software represents by far the biggest portion of both in the current software environment.

Despite the use of anthropomorphic terms for certain model elements, such as "Thinking", "Curiosity", and "Understanding", hopefully from their corresponding definitions it is clear that these are not necessarily equivalent to their human-brain analogues in terms of objective or complexity. As with each of the model elements that have a sophistication and complexity that spans a very wide range, and is determined primarily by the objectives that the AI system is designed for. In other words, the result of a successfully executed AI system incorporating all of these elements should be not necessarily be considered "conscious".

Considering this model in terms of more abstract terminology such as "machine consciousness" brings up some ideas. Obviously, a conscious machine that does not include all of the items above would not be valuable for most conceivable applications that deliver real value as consumer or business product. On the other hand, a machine that is conscious that includes all of the above, whatever goes beyond that I am still attempting to understand how that would be described and value-delivering in the context of a real AI system. To be clear, I am absolutely not criticizing anyone who is approaching the problem of advanced AI from a "consciousness" point of view; this could very well be a function of my own limited understanding in terms of what consciousness actually means. On this front, I am not the only one who is perhaps confused; what "consciousness" actually represents is still a hot topic of debate.

Therefore, the main way I can imagine a "conscious machine" being valuable is, if what is meant by that is a generalized "kernel", if you will, that allows the relatively rapid customization and linking together of the above AI system components for a wide variety of AI application types., of varying sophistication, from chatbots to AI traffic lights to advanced multimedia engines to advanced droids, which is my quick and dirty (though certainly not comprehensive) continuum of distinct AI types that I can quickly imagine.

Like all of the ideas in this blog, this model is empirically-based, not declarative or theoretical. In other words, it describes in a consistent way all of the various flavors of AI that I have described, and that I have seen elsewhere. Those informed the development of the model elements, not vice versa . However, it would seem that these model elements are a very useful to envision or describe new or existing types of AI systems that have not yet been considered or vetted against these components.

What Immortality Might Really Be Like

2008-12-29T11:43:00.000-08:00

Jeanne Calment, aged 20, the world's oldest verified human, who died at age 122

Now to address a topic that most everyone on Earth thinks they already know the answer to, but almost literally no one has actually thought much about from a practical perspective: would immortality, either physical immortality in this life or spiritual immortality in the next (for those of faith) actually be desirable?

Almost everyone, with very few exceptions, would say not just yes it would be great, but hell yes it would be the greatest thing ever, bar none, allowing for a couple of caveats:
- For physical immortality, that the quality of life could be preserved, which essentially means, as long as we remain eternally youthful, that living forever would be wholly awesome.
- For spiritual immortality (for those of faith, at least Western faiths), that as long as we went to Heaven, that living forever in the afterlife would be wholly awesome.

I am going to question both of these instinctive assumptions, but in a careful way; I am attacking neither of these outright - I understand them entirely. But I bring new ideas as well.

What Spiritual Immortality Might Be Like

What Physical Immortality Might Really Be Like (Coming Soon)

The Implications of Physical Immortality for Human Civilization (Coming Soon)

What Spiritual Immortality Might Be Like

2008-12-29T11:40:00.000-08:00

Let me address the idea of spiritual immortality first, and I will be brief on that front. I will not address the obviously undesirable prospect of eternal damnation in hell. Rather, if you are a person of faith, that you are a good person, and when you leave this mortal coil, you gain entrance to heaven.

Now, in heaven, you are filled with the love of God, and you can see and talk to the people that you loved that died before you, and eventually, those that will die after you (assume that many or most of these individuals are also good enough to gain entrance to heaven). These are good things.

But, on the other hand, you're no longer made of physical stuff, you can't actually touch or interact with matter anymore. You can't read a book. How do you occupy your 'mind'?

Ponder eternity in this state of being. The future stretching out, not for hundreds or even thousands of years, but millions, billions, trillions, octillions of years, and more. Eternity is endless, these numbers are just markers for a state of utter, endless vastness.

Given this ocean of time, for how long of this would you still have anything to say to your deceased loved ones, that you now again have access to? How long would being filled with the love of God be satisfying, in and of itself?

All I will say is, after a while, it seems not unreasonable to suggest that after a certain point, in the endlessly static state of afterlife, you will run out of things to talk about to even your closest loved one with which you've been reunited. Much less a loved one that didn't make it, and is spending an eternity in 'the other place', pondering their infinite torment, for all of eternity, for transgressions that occurred in the blink of an eye in their earthly, physical life.

The idea that our consciousness, our very 'soul', is in fact bound up in the extraordinarily complex of neurons in our physical brain, and that when we die, our consciousness and 'soul' in fact cease to exist with the cease of operation and physical decay of those neurons, and simple nothingness might be the afterlife, that idea may not be so bad. We don't ponder our state before we were born; our state after we die might be the same, simply nothingness, a state of neither bliss nor torment. Just, the cessation of existence. This is in fact what the preponderance of empirical evidence suggests is the case.

So, Where Are All the Aliens?

2008-12-12T23:23:00.000-08:00

Of all the various portrayals of aliens in movies, from a dispositional perspective E.T. is probably among the most accurate - here to observe, not to conquer - and only overtly "contacting" us by accident (a mistake I doubt real aliens would make). Although even he is far closer to us technologically than real aliens would likely be.

A consistent idea pervading science fiction, as well as actual science endeavors such as SETI is the idea that there are probably civilizations out there more advanced than us, and that naturally these civilizations would want to be contacting us at their earliest convenience. Star Trek has the wonderful vision of many civilizations sprinkled in our close galactic neighborhood, usually within a few hundred years of each other in terms of level of technology attained. This makes for entertaining television, but is almost certainly staggeringly wrong (apologies to Gene Roddenberry, he was brilliant, and Star Trek one of my favorite shows). A fundamental assumption underlying the Fermi Paradox is that if these advanced alien civilizations exist, they would try to contact us. This blog entry will present a solid case that, though there are almost certainly advanced civilizations out there, they are probably quite rare, and even if they were close by, would have very convincing reasons not to overtly contact us, at least not for a very long time.

First of all, it is a common misconception that because the Earth is presently swarming with sentient lifeforms (human beings), that it is therefore reasonable to suppose that swarming, sentient lifeforms must be quite common throughout our galaxy and points beyond. But, let's look at some numbers.

Carl Sagan famously explained one approach to determining the probability of advanced extraterrestrial civilizations in Cosmos (both in the book and the television series), using the Drake Equation. I will present a different approach below, but both approaches are in agreement that advanced extraterrestial civilizations are not numerous.

Anyway you slice it, intelligence of the human degree and kind is a very unpopular evolutionary adaptation, at least on this planet (our only empirical data point at the moment, which must be treated with the greatest respect). It has been pursued once on Earth, by Homo Sapiens and the closely related other hominids that we are descended from. It must be understood that evolution cares about one thing, and one thing only - the propagation of the species, the continuation of genetic material. It does not care in the slightest about how that is achieved. Sharp claws, fast legs, large size, the ability to consume whatever food is available at a given time, all of these are far more reliable, and far more consistently used, than our particular brand of advanced sentience. (Pardon my anthropomorphization of evolution, it is of course an inanimate process, not an objective-driven intelligence).

Earth is 4.5 billion years old. If we are very generous and say that we started out being reasonably sentient some 3 million years ago, that means that Earth has had sentient lifeforms for only 0.0667% of its history. But of course, primitive hominids do not really constitute civilization. That is only 10,000 years old (the dawn of agriculture), or 0.0002% of Earth's entire history.

However, we need to be more discriminating still if we are going to start comparing technological civilization over the incremental version that characterized most of that 10,000 years (short and often individual-based explorations by brilliant Greeks, Romans, Muslims, Chinese, and others aside), and the accelerated version that we are currently familiar with. There are different ways to define it, but my favored definition of the start of true technological civilization begins with the institutionalization of the scientific method on a national scale, as evinced by competitive European nations a mere 500 years ago, or 5% of the 10,000 years of civilization since the dawn of agriculture. Using this definition, Earth has had technological civilization for 0.0000143% of its history.

It's only one data point, but it's the only one we have, and until we have more, we must respect this data point. What this data point is really saying to us is that intelligence of the kind that we humans possess is almost certainly quite rare, not just here on Earth, but throughout the cosmos. Among the many implications of this is that any other advanced civilization is probably separated from us by a great distance, and a large period of time. That's assuming that our brand of advanced sentience is in fact sustainable over a long period of time, and is not a superpredator adaptation (essentially meaning, a species so successful that it makes itself extinct through over-exploitation of its food sources). I will assume that human-level intelligence is not a superpredator adaptation for the sake of this blog entry.

We may be alone in this galaxy, we don't know yet. But it would not be surprising if the nearest advanced civilization is on the other side of the Milky Way, if there's any in this galaxy at all, and I would be very surprised if it was older than ours by less than 10 million years, possibly much longer.

Ponder that for a moment - 10 million years of sustained, technological civilization, compared to our 500. We imagine that we can comprehend millions of years, because we understand how creatures have changed over the last several billion years. But this is deceiving, because evolution works on a timescale of millions, 10s of millions, even billions of years. Technological development by sentient creatures such as ourselves works on a level of acceleration where huge change can be seen in 100 years, much less a million.

The motivations of such an advanced race may seem entirely beyond our ken, and certainly would be deeply inscrutable in all likelihood. However, there is one scenario that is not without promise, and that explains perfectly what we see, or rather, don't see.

For one thing, it seems likely that they will be homebodies as we will be: because their technology of sustainability will exceed the technology of moving "out into the cosmos", and moving out into the cosmos is a half-baked, poorly-thought-out idea in any case (although it makes for good copy and entertaining science fiction). Regardless of the level of technology, the planet where you evolved will always be the best fit, the most comfortable, the most welcoming home for any creatures, sentient or otherwise, that evolved there. And one of the implications of "sustainability" means self-sufficiency on that planet, so the rapacious, material-hungry, "Independence Day" type alien goons are a deeply improbable sci-fi fantasy.

Ask yourself this: what could we humans possibly offer to an ancient race of "old ones" such as these? Well, certainly not our knowledge, at least not in absolute terms. Rather, our transition would be the item of interest, it could be strongly suggested.

Think about it - we are undergoing probably the rarest event in the entire universe, right now, all around us - the transition from creatures that are essentially of nature, into one that is rapidly becoming primarily technological. An event that by all indications will be quite brief, in the big scheme of things, and a transition that for these old ones happened deep in their past.

If an advanced race is technological, they must of necessity be scientific, have something resembling our scientific method in place, because really, that's the only way that sustained, rapid technological progress occurs. And if they are scientific, they are curious.

Here's a cardinal rule: no matter how old the civilization, no matter how advanced the technology at their command, every new place that they (or we) visit in the cosmos will teach them (and us) new things.

The universe will never stop surprising them (or us). Obviously, the more places that are visited, the larger the statistical data set becomes, but from just our very limited experience with telescopes and planetary probes, it can be stated with very high confidence that the variability of the universe, its capacity to surprise and teach, is so great that it can be considered for all practical purposes infinite.

The best thing for this race to do would be to simply observe us, as we pass through this transition. To contact us, to come down and say, "What's up?", would deeply contaminate the experiment, a wonderful natural opportunity. And with millions and millions of years of technological development on us, it would be quite an easy thing for them to observe us without anyone's knowledge.

Not that we shouldn't keep looking, but this line of reasoning would seem to work against the probability that projects such as SETI will be reading anything but cosmic static for a very long time.

Further Reading:

Alien Census: Can We Estimate How Much Life Is Out There?

Carl Sagan explains the Drake Equation

I recently had the opportunity to provide feedback on a forum that is useful for elaborating on the thoughts in my blog entry above:

Comment 1:
From the perspectives being shared here, there's several opportunities for me to be clearer in my blog:
1. I definitely need to describe in more clarity and depth what I mean by the 'technology of sustainability'. That deserves its own blog entry, maybe more than one. But in a nutshell, really what I'm suggesting with this terminology is that we will get smart enough in the next 50 years or so (hopefully less), about the time our population levels off on this planet, to essentially develop the technologies and perhaps more importantly the land and other resource utilization policies to allow the projected population of 8-10 billion to live comfortably on this planet into the foreseeable future - ie, sustainably. There are countless dimensions to sustainability, it's not one thing, really it's everything - recycling, energy use, land management policies, conservation techniques, etc. Now, it may seem that we're spinning our wheels on one or more of these areas, but actually our knowledge along all these fronts has increased tremendously in just the past few decades, and all signs point to even more rapid progress in the future. And the most cogent point, perhaps, is that with the right technologies and policies in place, this planet need not be overburdened with our presence, even at 8-10 billion people.

2. I am absolutely not suggesting a stark choice between sustainability and space exploration, manned or otherwise. I'm a huge space buff, and strongly support continued investment in space exploration. All I'm saying is that by the time the technology is in place for us to economically move millions (or billions?) of people into space, whether the Moon, Mars, Alpha Centauri, wherever, we will by that time have already of necessity mastered the technologies and policies to make the human population on Earth sustainable - able to feed, clothe, shelter, and entertain ourselves into the distant future, without turning the Earth into a smoking ruin. Now, sadly, many species and environments will be compromised between then and now, but life is resilient, and once we reach a certain point, probably around the time our population reaches its maximum around 2050 or so (that's a guesstimate, it will vary widely from region to region, but we'll all get there eventually, I believe), humanity and the rest of Earth's remaining biota should be able to more or less happily coexist.

3. The thoughts around an asteroid strike are well taken. Preventing an asteroid strike I suggest is a special kind of sustainability technology (or preservation technology, if you prefer). I believe that even that problem will be solved before we can economically move and maintain millions of people in space. In any case, watching the Earth incinerated by an asteroid from the comfort of a space station would provide little solace to its passengers - the universe would seem lonely indeed if such an event were to transpire, even if you had a million people on a space station to keep you company.

4. There will be an option here, in the far future - you can leave Earth if you want to pursue a life, career opportunity, adventure, whatever, in space. But, it will be not be a necessity to leave Earth, that's one of my fundamental points. If it becomes a necessity, we have failed as a species, it could be argued. And bottom line, what I'm suggesting is that given the choice, most people will choose to stay home. Short visits, space tourism, things like that, sure - but relatively few will choose to leave Earth forever, which traveling to even the nearest star would probably entail. And with advanced visualization technologies, we'll be able to have our cake and eat it too, so to speak, bringing those distant locales explored by probes or what-not to us in exceedingly realistic detail - without giving up everything we know and everyone we love to do so.

5. Comparing an alien civilization to the Spanish and us to the Inca I'm not sure is very instructive, although it's certainly thought provoking. Taking my nominal, ballpark value of an alien civilization being at least 10 million years older than us, if they wanted to be here, they would be here. If they wanted to overtly contact us, we would hear them. If they wanted to rule us, there would be no contest, no struggle, no 'war', not as we know it. A civilization that old could have expanded to every nook and cranny of even this vast galaxy, 100,000 light-years across, even if they couldn't break the light barrier. But, they're not here, at least there's no objective evidence that they're here. And the reason almost certainly is not multiverses, or whatever - it's motivation, their motivation primarily, they hold the cards. My ideas around their taking advantage of a splendid observational opportunity of a species in technological transition (ie, us) is conjecture, but whatever the reason for their withholding contact, it's in their heads, it's because it's what they want to do. But I am by no means ruling out that we may be alone, at least in this galaxy, it's not improbable.

Comment 2:
Another one of my comments on the aforementioned forum thread, the main subject of which is to explore Fermi's Paradox, which basically asks the same question as the title of this blog entry; that is, if it seems likely that life is abundant throughout the cosmos (which I agree with, by the way, at least simple life seems very likely to be abundant), and some small percentage of these cosmic locales harbor advanced, sentient, technological civilizations, where are all these aliens?

I should have more clearly tied my thoughts around sustainability back to the main point of this thread, the Fermi Paradox, they are in fact closely linked.

The technology (and practice) of sustainability proceeding more rapidly than the technology (and desirability) of fleeing Earth for us humans is not a discussion of merely local interest - it pertains to any alien civilization that manages to progress to a hyper-advanced technological state, and remain there for millions of years, which they would need to do in order for us to be contemporary with them now. In other words, they, like us, will not be driven by the need for material or energy resources to flee their home planet, just as we will not be driven to leave ours out of material necessity. For them, as for us, there is no place like home - their home planet, the one they evolved on, will by any reasonable analysis most likely be the friendliest place for them, probably in the entire universe, forever. We still debate this, but for them, I doubt there will be any question, because they will have studied many places in far more detail than we yet have.

In effect, sustainability technology and practice allowing a steady-state, "homebody" alien civilization, combined with their likely maturity regarding the imprudent intrusion into other life-bearing worlds such as ours due to the deep risk of degrading the scientific value of that world to them in the first place, in fact explains Fermi's paradox. Fermi's paradox harbors the questionable notion that any alien civilization would either want or need to contact us just because we are sentient, but I suggest this reflects our collective desire for a savior, or at least a mentor that can help us solve our problems, more than a careful perusal of what their likely attitudes might be.

Now, there perhaps is a great filter, in the form of the difficulty of maintaining an ancient yet still thriving technological civilization over millions of years. We have no clue as to how hard or easy that is. If it's hard, well, there's your filter - they either go extinct or degrade technologically to the point where they can't contact us, even if they wanted to. But if it's easy, the idea of an alien civilization that does just fine sustaining itself by utilizing the resources of its own planet, relegates the "Spanish Conquistador" or "Independence Day" alien scenario to deep improbability.

Some straightforward deductions explain Fermi's paradox, whether there's just one advanced alien civilization on the other side of the galaxy, or 10 within a hundred light years of us. That is, they won't need to come here for their own material or energy needs, and they will appreciate the scientific value of not overtly contacting us in any case. That sounds strange, but they could actually learn more from us by remote observation, rather than explicit, direct contact. And with millions of years of technological development on us, they would be able to field probes, telescopes, whatever, of truly staggering remote-sensing power, that could capture whatever data at whatever level of detail they felt they needed for their scientific objectives. Perhaps, track the movement of every lifeform on this planet, and maybe even the thoughts of every lifeform on this planet, in real time, over thousands or even millions of years. Whether or not they would choose to do such a thing depends of course on the nature of their scientific inquiries. Usually, the more data the better, but who knows if such a minute level of detail of the activity on this planet would be of interest to them or not. It doesn't really matter - the point is, they would not need to contact us explicitly for their own scientific needs, and our fantasy of them helping us with their advanced knowledge would utterly contaminate the purity of the observation of the technological transition that Earth's civilization is currently undergoing.

The question of "where are all the aliens" almost invariably is approached from our perspective, not theirs. Naturally, we're proud of ourselves, and more or less immediately assume that any advanced alien civilization would want to explicitly contact us, at their earliest convenience. But since they don't, and we assume that they would want to, we get into all kinds of philosophical conundrums of excessive complexity to explain their absence. But, their perspective is really the only one that counts - for all intents and purposes, our perspective is irrelevant.

By the way, I do not concur that sustainability is a "non-issue". It is in fact one of the greatest challenges we as a civilization face. To agree with Phil, it is not primarily a knowledge-bound problem, it is will-bound, discipline-bound, the process usually wrenching. Often, we know the right things to do, we just don't want to change our ways until the resource depletion, environmental degradation, etc, become so apparent that we run out of excuses to avoid doing what we knew all along was the right thing to do. This slow acquisition of civilization-level discipline is in fact an important form of collective wisdom that will serve us well when and if we ever encounter a planet with sentient lifeforms less technologically advanced than us, some thousands or millions of years hence, that perhaps may stay our hand from careless intrusion into their affairs. This is another linkage of the sustainability question with regards to the "Fermi Paradox".

Incidentally, the whole idea of fleeing into space as a gateway to a better, somehow easier life seems entirely without foundation. The considerations of sustainability, energy utilization, etc, are magnified by orders of magnitude for a human living in space as opposed to a human living on Earth. On Earth, air, water, food, protection from deadly cosmic radiation, lots of things, are relatively cheap and abundant. In space, all of these things must be provided, very carefully managed, and absolutely nothing is free. It is extremely unlikely that a human living in space will ever be less expensive than a human living on Earth. Just the opposite - it will almost certainly be much, much more expensive, when all the costs are considered, into the distant future.

Comment 3:
"You still seem to lean heavily on the idea that an alien civilization would be at least 10 million years older than us, but I don't see where your blog remarks adequately support that notion. Perhaps you could elaborate."

10 million years might be too low, I'm actually being conservative. It follows as a direct result of the fact that sentience combined with the ability to technologically manipulate our environment is an evolutionary adaptation that has been pursued exactly once on this planet in its 4.5 billion history, that is, us. And even with us, sentient hominids existed for millions of years before agriculture, and hence 'civilization', began. And even once civilization began, it was another 9,500 years before the scientific method, with its concomitant sustained, relatively rapid, robust rate of advance of scientific and engineering actualization knowledge became possible.

It bears remarking that each of these transitions occurred as a result of a complex set of favorable opportunities, topographical configurations, and other factors that may or may not be common elsewhere.

Given this line of thought, and the many accidents of climate, geological, and faunal change that gave rise to our brand of advanced sentience (Walking with Cavemen is an excellent series in how it explores this, not just for homo sapiens, for many of our precursor hominids as well), civilizational structures (the Fertile Crescent), and scientific institutionalization (competitive European states), to assume that it is common throughout the cosmos, aka the Star Trek model, is empirically unreasonable. We're not unique I don't believe, not saying that, but almost certainly quite rare.

Let me restate the essence of the analysis from my blog:
"Earth is 4.5 billion years old. If we are very generous and say that we started out being reasonably sentient some 3 million years ago, that means that Earth has had sentient lifeforms for only 0.0667% of its history. But of course, primitive hominids do not really constitute civilization. That is only 10,000 years old (the dawn of agriculture), or 0.0002% of Earth's entire history.

However, we need to be more discriminating still if we are going to start comparing technological civilization over the incremental version that characterized most of that 10,000 years (short and often individual-based explorations by brilliant Greeks, Romans, Muslims, Chinese, and others aside), and the accelerated version that we are currently familiar with. There are different ways to define it, but my favored definition of the start of true technological civilization begins with the institutionalization of the scientific method on a national scale, as evinced by competitive European nations a mere 500 years ago, or 5% of the 10,000 years of civilization since the dawn of agriculture. Using this definition, Earth has had technological civilization for 0.0000143% of its history."

In addition to these small percentages, based solely on the time that we've been here vis-a-vis the age of the Earth and/or the time since the rise of complex life, there's another distinct but related statistic to consider, that I haven't mentioned in my blog. That is, out of the millions and millions of species that have lived on the Earth, one has utilized sentience and manipulative technology to achieve its survive and thrive goals - that is, again, us. I'm not going to try to weave that number, yet another very tiny fraction, into the other tiny fractions based on temporal duration of our species stated above, but suffice it to say that it makes the probability of advanced alien civilizations elsewhere even less likely, even more remote, and even more widely spaced in time (that is, even more ancient).

So, 10 million years is very conservative indeed; in fact, it's probably giddily optimistic that they would be even that close to us in time.

The upshot of these tiny percentages of sentient and/or technological civilization on Earth, extrapolated to the rest of the cosmos is that this tiny blip of the rise of sentience elsewhere, the odds of this occurring more or less simultaneously with the rise of sentience on this planet are exceedingly remote. It's not impossible, not saying that, but deeply improbable that they are either close by, or close in time. Hence, the empirically-based and statistically sound proposition that they are far away physically, with a large temporal displacement - ie, much, much older than us. That falls right out from the analysis, there's really little other conclusion that can be reasonably deduced from these numbers.

Now, to make a caveat to my own line of reasoning here, I should perhaps have run a second set of percentages against not just the total age of this planet, but the rise of complex life, say, 300 million years ago. Using 300 million instead of 4.5 billion in the denominator of the fractions used to derive the percentages above, the prospects for sentient life elsewhere on other planets capable of supporting complex life look somewhat better. For example, the last 500 years becomes 0.0001667% of the history of complex life, rather than 0.0000143% of the history of the entire planet. The odds improve somewhat, an order of magnitude greater, but still quite small.

To extend this reckoning from the rise of complex life leads to certain ideas that may be optimistic, but are not without merit. There seems to be a trend throughout evolutionary history of "faster legs". At the dawn of the age of mammals (another good series is "Walking with Prehistoric Beasts", they do a great job of revealing the Eocence and subsequent epochs), running speed was relatively slow. Over time, the "speed of chase", the maximum running speed of various predators and prey have steadily increased.

A very similar idea might pertain to the realm of intelligence. That is, the average intelligence of creatures over time (us being of course the spectacular example) may also be increasing in a similar way, as a response to evolutionary pressures.

If this is true, then even if we pass from the scene from some unhappy event, it may not be another 4 billion years before we see another sentient lifeform like us on this planet. It would be a long time to us, but in the big picture of Earth, maybe not so long - perhaps 50-100 million years, guesstimating here. Much depends on the nature of the unhappy event - a large asteroid strike could reset the clock, as it were, and it might be hundreds of millions of years before another sentient species became a possibility.

If this is true, and this trend is prevalent on all planets with sentient lifeforms, then my very low statistical percentages go up considerably, perhaps an order of magnitude, maybe two orders of magnitude - but they remain quite tiny. Therefore, we're still talking millions of years of likely separation between us and the nearest sentient civilization, either behind or ahead of us, and physically far away, unless we win the cosmic lottery in some way, against all odds.

Yet another dimension to considering the question of the abundance (or lack thereof) of advanced alien civilizations involves exploring the character of the preponderance of life-friendly planets that are out there. An excellent show regarding this is "Extraterrestrial", specifically Aurelia. The great majority of stars in the sky are ones we can't see, small red dwarfs. Because these are the preponderance of suns, the preponderance of life-bearing worlds will probably be found orbiting stars like these. However, in order to be life-friendly, because of a red dwarf's dimness, the planet around such a sun would have to orbit so closely that it would be tidally locked. That is, one side always pointing at the sun, the other in eternal darkness.

An artist's concept of Aurelia, tidally locked to its red dwarf sun. The perpetual hurricane can be seen at the right, the frozen night-side on the left. In between is the habitable zone.

This is not as bad as it seems for life per se; in fact, one of the revelations of this show was that it incorporated state-of-the-art simulations of the climate of such a planet, and instead of the sun-facing side being baked and inhospitable (the prevalent notion up to that time), instead a perpetual hurricane forms at the center of the sun-facing side of this world, and between this perpetual hurricane and the eternally-frozen dark side of the planet is an aureole-shaped zone quite suitable for life.

This is great news for life, but perhaps not sentient life. This planet would be about as strange a world as we can imagine, if we were stand on it. There would be no seasons; wherever you stood on the planet's surface, the sun would never move in the sky. Much of the seasonal and other forms of dynamism that we take for granted and that were absolutely crucial to the rise of our sentience would be wholly absent on such a world.

Not saying that the rise of sentience on such a world would be impossible, but it would seem far less likely in such a scenario. And these planets represent in all likelihood the vast preponderance of theaters for life-bearing worlds throughout this galaxy and beyond. This consideration is not incorporated into the Drake Equation, it's too new for that, but it perhaps should be - that is, the cosmic, seasonal, and geological dynamism of the world in question, whether or not it can inherently support life.

Another consideration to the Aurelia-type planet dynamic question is tidal dynamism. If Earth didn't have a moon, it would have no tides, and the character of life on this planet would in all likelihood be far different - probably, far less dynamic, because simple ocean tides are a huge evolutionary influence on the critical land-to-ocean boundary. It wasn't covered in the show, but could an Aurelia, a planet tidally-locked to its sun, have a moon, and if so, would its orbit be favorable to the elicitation of evolutionary interesting tides?

Having built a case from many different directions to support the idea of the extreme rarity of sentient, advanced alien civilizations, let me restate unequivocally that I do not believe that we are entirely unique in the cosmos. That would be as deeply improbable as suggesting that they inhabit every star system. But, I would not be surprised if there were only one or two, or even none, in this galaxy, they might be that rare. And if there are one or two others in this galaxy, I might guess that one perhaps is in the vicinity of the galactic center (far enough away from the core to be safe, of course), and perhaps the other on the other side of the galaxy.

If this is the case, then we have some time to think about this. Assuming that they gather information about the cosmos primarily through the light and other electromagnetic radiation emitted and/or reflected by various cosmic bodies, if they are there they almost certainly know about Earth and its life-bearing properties already, but it will be another 40,000 years from now before the galactic center knows about our earliest rise of agricultural civilization, even though that light's been traveling for 10,000 years already. It will be 90,000 years before the far reaches of the other side of the galaxy is aware of this event.

This seems like a long time, and it is; but to an advanced alien civilization millions of years old, possibly populated by what would seem to us citizens of essentially immortal age (I will get into that in a future blog entry), this is just another aspect of gathering the knowledge of the cosmos to gain insights that we are only beginning to get the tiniest glimmer of understanding around.

Comment 4:
"But, why 'their perspective', singular? Why should we not expect 'their perspectives', plural?"

My use of 'their', rather than 'theirs' merely refers to the nominally nearest alien civilization to us in time. I by no means put every alien civilization into one big bucket as a simplifying assumption, nothing of the kind. They would be every bit as variable from one another as any of them would be from us.

However, because of the exact same analysis that places the nearest advanced alien civilization from us at many millions of years ahead, the alien civilization 'above' this nearest one would be millions of years ahead of this 'nearest' civilization.

Now, I could be entirely wrong with regards to my suggestions regarding the nature of either of these alien civilizations and their attitudes towards us, or each other. Perhaps instead of arms-length, scientific observation, it is simply indifference. Perhaps it is adhering to their version of the 'Prime Directive'.

Their true motivations are beyond our ken, naturally. Any of the above, and possibly many other explanations, may explain what we see, or rather, don't see. Which is, nothing, at least not so far. Realistically, if there is an advanced alien civilization in this galaxy, the Milky Way, and it is millions of years older than ours, they could be here if they wanted to be here, doing whatever they wanted to do.

However, if the nearest advanced civilization is more distant, say, Andromeda, they may be aware of our potential (2 million years out of date, but there were hominids then, it was probably clear even then that sentience was at least a good possibility on this planet), that may be too far for such a distant civilization to bother visiting us. It may not be worth it to them.

I'm not sure I follow precisely your exponential 3D gradient argument, but it seems to imply that a civilization with sufficiently advanced spacefaring technology would aggressively colonize the cosmos. But, where's the evidence for that, assuming that there's even one advanced civilization in this galaxy?

If we are the first advanced civilization in this neck of the cosmos, you may be right, we may expand aggressively in this way, the future will tell. But we see absolutely nothing to suggest that that is the path that another civilization would take, assuming that they're anywhere close by, in the Milky Way or possibly its swarm of satellite galaxies.

And by the way, I'm not conjuring these concepts out of thin air. Every one of my ideas is empirically-based upon our own (in this case, admittedly limited) experience, carefully reasoned, and self-consistent. That doesn't mean it's correct, lolz. And in the case of advanced alien civilizations (a very small subset of my overall body of work), it explains what we see (or rather, don't see) quite well. But again, that doesn't make it right, not saying that.

It's important to state, this concept of alien motivation is not the one I started out with, and molded my logic to reach this pre-determined destination, none of my thoughts are like that. If they were abundant and here saying "What's up?", I would have a dramatically different interpretation of their motivations and nature. I go where the evidence seems to lead, at all times questioning my own conclusions, my own logic, carefully probing for inconsistencies in the overall logical constructs. I do that at my leisure, sometimes taking months or years to do so, turning the coin over and over, before I share them with anyone else.

What The Far Future Will Really Be Like

2008-12-12T22:32:00.000-08:00

So, if the Intelligent Universe is arguably deeply improbable, what is the probable distant future?

Let's look at the trends, the empirical evidence. Fundamentally, the case is convincing that the technology of sustainability will continue to exceed the technology for moving and maintaining large numbers of people on some place other than Earth, and that this trend will continue well into the deep future.

Population growth, though still large in absolute numbers, is slowing percentage-wise, and is projected to drop to 0%, essentially constant human population, somewhere around the middle of this century (the 21st). Projections vary, but a steady-state human population of somewhere around 8 to 10 billion is about right. Interestingly, recent revisions have been made, toward the lesser of these numbers. In other words, the population growth rate in the third world (where almost all the population growth is) is slowing more quickly than previously estimated - a promising trend, indicating among other things that the sensibilities of the "developed" world are not without impact even in the "Third World". Despite the us vs. them nature of these terms, we are all one world, and what happens in one part touches many others, everything linked together in myriad ways, some obvious, others very subtle.

Now, this sounds like a lot of people, and it is, 2 to 4 billion more than the 6 billion now living here. However, the Earth with sustainable technologies in place can easily support this number. This is critical to realize - 8 to 10 billion people most definitely does not represent an overpopulated, overburdened Earth - not with the right technologies and policies in place, intelligent land use and environmental stewardship policies chief among these. This is no Soylent Green future. This is true even though much of this growth will be in the developing world, with the developed world having challenges with actual population decline. In a future blog entry, I will take this issue on with what I feel should be the primary focus of the foreign policy of the developed world, that is, the ultimate goal of a sustainable economy within the borders of each country on the planet. Not self-sufficient, but sustainable, I will dive into that in another entry.

After this maximum number is reached, it will remain at this number more or less into perpetuity. It may decline due to a sudden catastrophe such as an asteroid strike (the risk of which after the next 100 years or so will be greatly abated by advanced technologies, this being a special flavor of sustainability technology), but a large increase above this number is not really a seriously entertained statistical probability by scientists and demographers who study population trends.

The upshot of this is the science fiction idea that humanity will flee a polluted, overburdened Earth for the other planets and beyond will not be an imperative. In fact, even way cool ideas like a Ringworld (I love the Larry Niven Ringworld books) will not really be necessary by any reasonable, non-science fiction based analytic treatment of this topic.

The above-mentioned trends address the lack of a need to leave Earth; now let's look at the desirability (or lack thereof) of doing this, even if it's not necessary but the technology is there anyway. Like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz said, there's no place like home. Even when we develop the technology to enable the migration of large numbers of people from Earth to points beyond, this will not happen, though I'm not discounting an initial rush due to human curiosity - any such rush will quickly abate after a brief period. Space is deeply hostile; other planets, even after centuries of terraforming, will still be a pale copy of Earth in terms of biotic richness and complexity. To even approach a small percentage of the floral and faunal richness of Earth will require very, very long timeframes, millions of years, not decades or centuries. And because of sustainability technology, it seems very doubtful that we will need to do this for mining materials or energy sources for our needs here. In other words, it will never make economic sense to mine the hydrocarbons on Titan, for example, for the energy needs on Earth. By the time it is economical, we will have almost certainly moved on to other energy alternatives. That will happen with whatever material or energy need we care to contemplate.

Even when we eventually find other planets that seem more or less "ready to move in", that will almost certainly mean that they are already inhabited by existing, alien lifeforms. Colonizing those alien worlds will therefore be charged with ethical, logistical, scientific, and psychological dilemmas. How do you colonize an already-inhabited planet without fundamentally imperiling that planet's biota and hence its scientific value to us, to say nothing of its own inherent right to exist?

On Earth, when biota collide, even with the same microbial substrate, solar budget, etc, that we all share on this planet, mass extinctions usually result. For example, when North and South America merged via Central America 2-3 million years ago, and of course when Europeans contacted the New World 500 years ago, one side wins, the other side perishes in vast numbers, with mass extinction and population reduction the unhappy outcome. For Earth space travelers to contact and settle a planet with a completely alien biota, with probably a different kind of sun, lot of different things, the catastrophe may make the Earth examples look mild by comparison.

And here's the thing: even if we win, we lose. Even if we emerge the successful settlers of some alien planet, much of the scientific value of that amazing discovery will be lost. Plus, a planet with alien biota may not be palatable to us; under an alien sun, our biota may not thrive.

Prediction: no matter how many life-friendly worlds we discover, none will seem anywhere near as welcoming as our own planet Earth. Certainly within our own solar system this is true; once the tech is here to be able to affordably fly to Saturn for a weekend, people will do that in large numbers; but only to visit. But to stay, to live for 20 or 30 years on Enceladus or Titan, or in orbit around Saturn? There will be some, but they will have rock-solid reasons for being there, scientists and employees of tourism companies come to mind. But, those numbers of people will be small, probably in the handful of 1000s at the most. You're not going to have 30 million people living on Titan, even in the distant future.

When the tech first gets here, there may be an initial rush of the starry-eyed or adventurous-minded; but that will quickly abey, and the population outside of Earth will remain a minuscule fraction of the population that remains on Earth.

Now, traveling to Saturn and traveling to the nearest star is like comparing walking across the living room compared to walking from the north pole to the south pole. The same considerations apply, multiplied a million-fold.

The future will tell, but because of confirmed effects like mass dilation, I don't believe that faster-than-light travel for macro-level objects like spaceships and us will happen anytime soon, probably never. Even if a proton were to reach the speed of light, it would attain the mass of the entire observed universe; that is a difficult concept to get one's arms around, but to simply wave it away is irrational, unreasonable. The conservative, empirical approach would be that we will be constrained to something appreciably less than the speed of light forever, or at least a long, long, long time.

What this means is that even if we found a identical copy of Earth around the nearest star, Alpha Centauri, you're talking a 30 to 40 year one-way trip for anyone embarking on that voyage. You talk about homesickness; you can't turn back, and even if you went there and did come back, most likely all your relationships on Earth would be gone or distant memories by the time you got back, even factoring in breakthroughs in longevity tech.

Now, it may seem that I am therefore predicting a glum future, where we are forever locked onto our home planet, and the rest of the universe will remain unexplored and unknown. But that is not at all the case - in fact, we will have our cake and eat it too.

For one thing, just because we human beings may not go abroad (particularly beyond the solar system) in large numbers does not mean that we won't explore these distant realms. Unmanned probes (the show Alien Planet and the Darwin probes are a good example of this) will explore these realms, as well as of course advanced telescopes that eventually may allow us to resolve objects as small as a house (or really, geological formations of that size, not predicting houses around other stars unless we get fabulously lucky) around planets orbiting other stars out to, say, 100 light years from our solar system.

And the advanced form of AI that I predict for the hyper-reality engine will in fact bring us these worlds in detail so vivid that we feel like we're actually there - without sacrificing our entire life, our relationships, and our home planet in order to experience them.

It seems reasonable to suggest that any extra-Earth settlements will have an exponential function that rapidly decays with distance from the Earth. Meaning, there eventually may be a population of perhaps a million people on the moon, perhaps, and maybe another 100,000 beyond that point, some 80-90% of which would most likely be on Mars. Beyond these two close and relatively accessible places, most other points beyond will probably be populated by small teams of scientists and/or tourist destinations, often combined into the same locale, possibly sharing many of the same personnel (what better tourist guide to your visit to Titan than a scientist that has spents years studying it?).

The Prospects for the Computronium Universe

2008-12-05T04:52:00.000-08:00

This is the first of several blog entries addressing the far future - the remote, steady-state future of the human race.

If you think the near future is subject to flights of fancy, that is nothing compared to the incredible leaps of fantasy swirling around the far future. Here is just one, Ray Kurzweil's favored vision of the post-Singularity Earth:

1. At some point, transistor size will no longer be able to shrink. This theoretical minimum size of "transistor" (or whatever form that atomic unit of physical computation takes) is called "computronium". Computronium is also the nomenclature used for macro-level objects that are composed of these atomic units (what we call "chips" now).

2. However, since we will presumably need ever increasing amounts of computational power, the only alternative to provide these computational resources is to start converting more and more physical matter into computronium.

3. First, the Earth would be turned into computronium. Next, the solar system. Once the entire solar system has begun to earn its keep by becoming "thinking matter", our future selves will proceed to convert eventually the ENTIRE UNIVERSE into this substance. This is called converting "dumb matter" into "smart matter".

Kurzweil is absolutely brilliant in some ways, and the fact that this is the predominant vision for the far future proves this. However, this is brilliant visionary marketing only, and there are problems aplenty with this bold idea from a scientific reasonability perspective:

1. For starters, this is easily the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard in my life, and for Kurzweil to serious propound this as an obvious future tests my respect for him deeply.
Why is this apparently bold concept ridiculous?
Let's step back for a moment. As an inventor, Kurzweil is a genius. As a futurist, however, he is essentially an aggregationist, borrowing ideas from science fiction writers (this is where the Singularity comes from), the speculations of various thinkers, and stitching them into firm predictions. The computronium universe idea comes from Jim Gardner and the armchair speculations of physicists regarding very-large scale computational structures, such as the Matrioska Brain, a mega-computer that entirely encircles the Sun (not unlike a Dyson sphere), grabbing all the sun's energy for its computational power requirements. The computronium universe is an extension of these armchair speculations, which were never intended as actual engineering projects by these physicists.

2. As I've noted at some length on various boards, this is the cart before the horse. We currently have absolutely no idea what problem would require such a monster computational engine. Estimates vary, but the computational density of computronium is vast - something like 40,000,000 Pentium IIs on a chip the same size as the ones we're familiar with today. This would allow an individual to have almost infinite computing power in a footprint the size of an iPod . Therefore, scaling this up to the size of asteroids, planets, and the entire universe is an amount of computational power that we have no idea how we might use. Until we do, it's best not to predict the solution when we have no idea what the problem is, and extrapolating certain trends (such as increasing computational use) while ignoring others (such as innovative architectures that keep the footprint of computers constant or shrinking) is not empirically responsible. It's cherry picking the data to support a notion that was predetermined, apparently for its dramatic or elational appeal.

When I have asked the question (and I've asked it many times), "what problem are you trying to solve with a computronium universe?", no one really has a clue, Kurzweil included. However, the reason I hear most often is "in order to simulate the universe." So, the upshot is that we will destroy the universe in order to simulate it. To be polite, that seems unnecessary.

3. There are other points working against this idea. For one thing, as any planetary scientist will tell you, matter is not "dumb" - it is full of stories, full of history, full of insights as to the evolution of the universe, and this holds true if you're talking about a small asteroid or comet, on up to galactic mega-structures. To fully understand and appreciate these stories requires more than a snapshot before you destroy it - er, I mean make it smart by converting it to computronium. There is the element of dynamics, behavior over time, to understand the full complexity and information that that object or objects can impart to our still nascent appreciation of the mysteries of the universe.

4. In any case, an advanced civilization that went around sterilizing everything it encountered into a "thinking" substrate would make the Borg look like Mary Poppins. I would take my chances with the goony aliens from "Independence Day" any day, over the nightmare civilization that Kurzweil happily predicts.

When you go this route, you run into some problems. For one, we are probably not the very first technological civilization to ever exist in the entire universe. I believe technological civilizations are quite rare for reasons i will explain, but to presume that we are the only one is as irrational as assuming that they populate every star system.
Since we are a young technological civilization, any others out there are probably much older. That means they would have encountered their Singularity long ago, and their computronium-building programme must have been well under way or even completed long ago. But, where's all the computronium then? Rather than question the computronium idea, that is left intact, and resort is made to speculations such as "we must be a simulation inside a computronium universe".

Another point that must be invoked to support the computronium universe is that to turn the universe, some 15-billion light years across (that's just the part we can see with our telescopes), implies that we can reach all these remote locales in a reasonable time frame. Kurzweil uses the Singularity as a magic wand to wave away known physical constraints on just how fast physical objects composed of matter can travel. Now, relativity predicts and observations have proven the reality of mass dilation - that is, physical objects increase in mass as they approach the speed of light. Even a speck of matter as tiny as a proton, if it were to attain the speed of light, would increase in mass to a point where it would exceed the size of the known universe. This is one of the strangest phenomena I know of, but it is not speculation - increases in mass for particles in particle accelerators attaining a significant fraction of the speed of light increase in mass to the exact degree predicted by relativity. While I am not stating that it is impossible for this to be overcome in some way at some point, to simply wave it away with the magic wand of the Singularity is highly irresponsible. It is far more likely that this basic physical law will hold, into a future far too distant for anyone now alive to see. I don't claim many things are "impossible", but controlled, safe, faster-than-light travel for macro-level objects like humans and spaceships (or even protons) are one of a handful of things I would comfortably put into the "impossible" bucket, and empirical evidence and theoretical foundation back me up 100% on this.

I have a different view of the far-future. It may not seem glamorous, but I'll lay money down on it as a far more likely framework for the real future than the ideas discussed above. I will present these ideas in a future blog entry.

Further Reading:
Kurzweil's case: Forward to the Intelligent Universe

Wiki Definition of Computronium

The Difference in Sexual Perspective Between Men and Women

2008-11-27T19:15:00.000-08:00

In general, men are stupid about women, and women are stupid about men.

Men think women think about sex in the same terms they do – you know, like guys thinking women are impressed by large penises, that they really look for that. This is usually completely wrong – women do care about that, a man has to be 'big enough', but not nearly to the degree that men find similar endowments in women important.

When I was attending college 25 years ago, a guy in his mid-30s, another engineering student, told this story with complete seriousness:
"If you're a man, you have to live with the knowledge that you may never get laid again. However, if you're a woman, you can always get laid, you can always find some guy that will sleep with you, no matter how homely a woman you might be." The implication being, women have it better than men in terms of sexual relationships. After he told this story, the circle of 5 or 6 other guys listening, all engineering students from their early 20s to mid-30s, all nodded knowingly, in complete agreement with this anecdote, and the supposed dominance of women in sexual relationships.

There's only one problem with this anecdote: that's not the main thing women care about, "getting laid". These guys were thinking women think like they do about sex. However, what most women really care about is finding a considerate, loving partner that will provide for them and treat them well overall. And that, I suggest, is a tougher proposition than an unattractive guy finding someone to have sex with.

(However, please do NOT think that I'm saying that men don't care about long-term relationships, or that women don't care about sex, because neither of those statements would be true. I'm not caricaturing the sexes here, I'm describing misperception of how one gender perceives the attitudes of the other toward sex, that's all, not a sweeping indictment of one gender or the other.)

Women think of sex as much more an act of commitment than a guy often does. In other words, when women make love, they often fall in love, generally to a degree much greater than men, all else being equal. When a man thinks he's doing a woman some favor by making love to her when he has no intention of turning that into a relationship, he is deluding himself - ultimately, he will only hurt her, and the younger that woman is, often the more she will be hurt.

When men are young, they are filled with testosterone, and when their "little man" commands, they must obey. In other words, when we are young, our ids are stronger than when we are old, as a general rule of thumb. The reasons for this are biological in nature.

Men maximize their genetic success by having as many kids as possible, with as many women as possible. Cultures where things like harems exist, the man at the top can have 100s of kids, or more. Wham, bam, thank you ma'am is a successful strategy for men, and so their biology encourages this (although the norms of civilization deeply discourage this, a source of great conflict and tension within us).

For women, on the other hand, it’s about the nurturing, and they look for a man who’s a good provider. Sometimes, women will play tricks that work for them – for instance, marrying an old rich guy but sleeping with the hunky gardener, having his child, who is raised in the support with the old rich guy as the cuckold.

As a man, when you go out and are a wolf, looking for women, often women are repelled by that, for the reason that if you’re a wolf with them, they will usually feel that you are that way with every woman, and so may be unfaithful, an unreliable partner, and so to be avoided.

Men can treat sex as a throwaway activity, love them and leave them, in many cases. However, when a woman makes love, she often falls in love. Therefore, when someone like the husband sleeps around, the wife takes that seriously, because they think the man is necessarily in love - in other words, the woman thinks the man thinks like they do, often incorrectly.

On another note, women do not understand men’s tendency to check out a passing woman without actually intending to go after that stranger, even if given the chance. This is what I call objectification - a man is seeing a strange woman as a sexual abstraction, not a real object of attempted, consummated desire. This passing, fantasy-laden attitude toward an unknown woman, sexy picture, etc, is entirely different from the nature of sexual attraction felt by that very same man toward the woman they have an actual relationship with. Women think when their man looks at another woman, the man is comparing the other woman to them, that that man would pick up stakes and run off with that woman if given half the chance.

Men think that women think about sex with the same frequency they do, another deeply incorrect notion. I read something that said something like, men think of sex once a minute, women once a day. That’s a monumental difference. Women are not in general obsessed with sex (the normal state for even healthy men), and those that are are often dysfunctional (such as sexually abused, things like that) in some way. Those damaged women often use sex as a tool to control men, not as an object of true desire in the same way that men do.

The upshot of all this is that to sleep with a woman represents a substantial risk. Risk that they will fall in love, and get hurt, and the relationship will be damaged. This can be particularly dangerous in situations where you must maintain a relationship with them after that, such as at work.

As a result, it is prudent to be very cautious about having sex with anyone, out of respect for their feelings, and the possible or probable complexities that will result. Older men, if they are not too insecure for one reason or another, generally have an easier time of this, because their testosterone levels are less now than when they were young. A lot of what men call “wisdom” regarding this is because they don’t think with their penis, at least not all the time. But the fantasies are still there, rest assured, even in the most composed male countenance. Men that still bed every woman they can, even later in life, often do so because they are insecure, and sleeping with women reaffirms the man’s virility, but in shallow and temporary ways that are often ultimately unsatisfying, a vicious cycle of desperate sadness.

Once a male, whether old or young has achieved this realization, the world opens up – it’s a different, much more fun, place. Women, even cute ones that you would love to have sex with, can truly be friends, and restraining oneself from making any “moves” indefinitely, or forever, is not a problem. We may flirt, but in an innocuous, funny, and restrained way that doesn’t involve physical contact, just verbal banter. Curiously, not attaining sexual satisfaction actually maximizes the male's power in that relationship, in many cases.

Once a man is in that place, and it can take a long time to get there for some, he can truly deal with women on common ground, with equal sexual power. Actually, more power, quite a bit more power, in fact. For women, sexual attractiveness, physical beauty, etc., are their main levers of power. When a man can calmly appreciate that, without 'making that move', they don't know what to do. But they want more of it, because it is rare for them, in relationships with men, for the most part.

Now, a couple words of advice for the ladies.

If the main lever of power for a woman is physical beauty and attractiveness (really what I'm getting at is apparent sexual fecundity, the appearance that you could bear healthy, numerous children), for a man the main lever of power is the ability to provide for a woman. IE, money, power, attention - that's why that is an aphrodisiac for women, why some ugly dude can get all the ladies he likes if he's rich or famous enough.

However, when a woman is obviously interested in a man's money or power, that has exactly the same effect on the male psyche as when a man stares at a woman's breasts does to that woman's psyche. It's repellent, and it often invites these men to use and throw away women who show such overenthusiasm.

This touches on a fascinating point, a true sexual psychological testing ground. For example, a woman with large breasts may wear a low-cut dress, highlighting those assets. But if a man notices those in an obvious way, he fails the test. A man will often get the flashiest clothes or car he can afford, but if a woman becomes too attracted to his wealth, which the man is obviously trying to highlight, the woman in this case fails the test.

The main fear women have is that their man will leave them, ie, they will lose their nurturer. Perhaps the "chest test" above is testing the man's loyalty - ie, if he stares at my assets too eagerly, he will stare at all women's assets too eagerly, and be unreliable as a partner.

The main fear men have is that their woman will get pregnant by another man. So the "flashy stuff" test may be determining if that woman will sleep with another man too readily - ie, perhaps one with flashier stuff, more wealth, power, whatever.

We begin to see the two sides of the mirror, the very different yet strangely similar misperceptions of men towards women, and women towards men. To bring this back full circle, it is interesting to note that whether you are a man or a woman, the following is true:
1. The incorrect assignment of your own gender's view of sexuality to the opposite sex is usually entirely obscure to your own gender. For example, the male idea that sleeping with a woman of little experience is making her "a woman" is not a quick excuse, but a heartfelt sentiment for many or most men, perhaps.
2. However, the incorrect assignment of the opposite gender's views of sexuality to your own gender is immediately identified and often condemned. For example, a woman with an overenthusiastic drive to find a good provider is a "money-grubber", a man trying too hard to bed a woman is a "wolf".

The two points above are a centroid of the irrationality that rules the human mind, and as you can see is oriented toward genetic continuation, the demands of evolution. The complete obscurity of the misunderstanding of the nature of the opposite sex's reproductive priorities, when a minimal amount of observation and rationality would make it clear, is entirely irrational. Same with the condemnation of the misunderstanding of the opposite sex towards one's own sexual nature. Actually, this bears more thought - this condemnation of the opposite sex's misunderstanding is actually more rational than the obscurity of our own gender towards the opposite sex, but to condemn it or judge it is irrational, because rational observation would make the nature of the opposite sex's misunderstanding immediately apparent, as we've already described.

To put it succinctly, the tension is as follows:
1. Men want sex, because that maximizes their genetic success. Note, although men don't necessarily want to get women pregnant, they want sex, their traditional procreative role.
2. Women want commitment, ie, marriage, because a good provider maximizes the nurturing and successful raising of the much lower number of children they can have, as opposed to the theoretically much larger number of children a man can have (by sleeping with a large number of women).

A man over-pursuing a woman for sexual favors makes that woman skittish, run away.
A woman over-pursuing a man for marriage makes that man skittish, run away.

On the other hand, a woman that tries to adopt an ostensibly male attitude toward sex, is condemned by men, as a "slut". This is probably because such a woman has a greater possibility of getting pregnant by another man, the darkest sexual fear a man has.
A man who is too needy, too ready for commitment, is condemned by women, treated with contempt. This is perhaps because a man too ready for commitment could be seen as too easily swayed by not just the woman he is with, but other women as well, and may be considered therefore an unreliable provider, ie, he might leave the woman he is with too easily.

To tie this blog entry back into my main body of predictions, my main objective here is certainly not to simply hammer away at the unpleasant news of our primarily irrational behavioral drivers as an end in itself. Rather, it is too present a stark contrast between our brains and the likely nature of any artificial minds that we eventually develop. We are irrationally driven, with a rational toolset to achieve those irrational ends. Artificial intelligence, on the other hand, is by its very nature rationally driven, with irrational or emotional simulations as needed to evince a convincing level of humanness to ourselves for the purposes of minimizing the barriers to and maximizing the productivity of the communications that AI has with the human or humans that it interacts with. In order for AI to be irrationally driven, that would have to be explicitly designed in, a most unlikely prospect, because of liability and ethical considerations described exhaustively elsewhere in this blog. This is as unlikely as Intel designing a microchip to explode; it's not done because not only would that be pointless, it would lead to big liability issues, Intel would lose their shirt if they did something like that. And irrationally-driven AI won't spontaneously arise as a result of a bug, because true irrational control is actually an exceedingly complex behavior, and the probability of it arising out of one or more random bugs is vanishingly small.

In other words, accepting the admittedly unpleasant news of our own human irrationality has a big payoff: it deals a very serious blow to the fear of advanced AI, because 99% of that fear is based on the idea that advanced AI will be run the same way as our own brains, a deeply erroneous concept.

Although this subject is quite different from my usual fare of the prediction of future technologies, empiricism can shed light on age-old questions, regardless of what those questions are. In a future post, I will use these same techniques to address some very unusual topics - the likely nature of the far future, steady-state human civilization, and the nature of what extraterrestrial intelligent alien civilizations may be living in this galaxy and beyond.

Further Reading:

Why Do Men Buy Sex?

Why the Fear of Rogue or Dangerous Artificial Intelligence is Fundamentally Irrational

2008-08-07T08:57:00.000-07:00

We humans are driven by primarily irrational control mechanisms to want more than it's fair share (the id), and often unrealistic expectations of oneself and others (the superego). The weakest part of the human psyche is the rational mind, the ego.

The main thing about advanced AI that scares the willies out of a great many people is that simply by achieving an ostensibly human level of intelligence, that this will automatically result in a structure exactly like our evolutionary-derived, biological brains. Really, that's what we're talking about here, that's why we're afraid. Another way of putting this is that many people make the intuitive (yet deeply flawed) assumption that human intelligence is the only kind of advanced intelligence. This is a near-automatic presumption that receives very little subsequent examination. This was the real genius of Freud, that by careful examination of a very large number of patients and others, he was able to discern this tripartite nature correctly, in particular the unconscious nature of the main drivers of human behavior. It is worth pointing out that this tripartite nature of the human mind has been recognized for millenia, and was described by Plato in a very similar way, and Marx as well. The main difference is, Plato and Marx described this tripartite nature in an idealistic, hopeful way, not an empirically-based (ie, scientific) way. Freud was the first to approach the macro-structure of the human mind in a scientific way. However, he was preceded in some ways by older thinkers such as David Hume, who echoed many of Freud's later analyses, especially the dominating (id-driven) nature of human behavior. Freud's biggest insight was the unconscious nature of these dominating drivers, which makes them unfortunately very difficult for most people to therefore understand even their own minds.

The relevant thing to note about all this is that these will NOT be the motivating drivers for AI programming or behavior, no matter how "intelligent". For one thing, to replicate unconscious motivations in a synthetic, man-made product would not only be foolish, I'm not sure it's even possible. Computer scientists don't understand Freud's concepts any better than anyone else for the most part, so the things that would make AI dangerous aren't even on their radar, they're not going to design that kind of thing. Even if they did understand these concepts, to make an irrationally controlled droid or advanced AI would be tended against by liability, ethical, and other concerns that mold the modern consumer marketplace as much as, if not more, than the technology itself.

I'm not passionate about endangering the sanctity of the 'unknowability' of the Singularity, but really, I'm not so sure there's much unknowable about it, as it will really come to pass. This is because the main thing, probably the only thing, making the Singularity unknowable is this confusion about what AI will really be like. When you make the simple assumption that AI will be just like human intelligence, sure the future is unknowable (or rather, I would suggest quite knowable - knowably, extremely dangerous).

But, we've seen that replicating irrational control in a synthetic product is not only foolish and unnecessary, it is no where suggested that this is an even remotely likely trend from any technology evidence available today - software or hardware. Not one iota of evidence supports this contention that AI will be irrational like us.

Therefore, to persist in this guttural fear is just another facet of human irrationality, and is not based on the actual nature of the technological systems that will eventually be designed and built.

I predict with great confidence that this irrational fear will vanish once hyperintelligent systems actually become available and business and consumer users have experience with them. Unfortunately, I believe any system that can be remotely described as hyperintelligent is a ways off. In all likelihood, mobile robots for the home will probably lead the way, because multi-tasking robots in the highly unstructured environment of a home seems the most demanding of the various aspects of intelligence such as sensory awareness and responsiveness, dexterity, vocal communication rather than programming, etc.

The most sophisticated robots in general use in the home now are quite simple and perform one task only - the vacuum-cleaning Roomba, the Robomow Automatic Lawn Mower, and the IRobot Security Guard. The (quite slow) extension of these single-purpose robots into multi-tasking robots that can clear the table and wash the dishes, for example, represents a large increase in intelligence of these devices, and will be the first real step toward the hyperrealistically human droid that I eventually foresee. However, even a droid that can clear the table and do the dishes may still be light years away from anything resembling hyperintelligence, to be sure. However, it will be an important first step for moving the comfort level of consumers from their irrational fear of dangerous AI to the status of any other technology product - a useful device, manufactured product, designed and created for its value in human service.

Hyperrealistically human droids, whenever they arrive, by the time they arrive will have the exact same status.

Prospects for a Future Economic System Replacing Capitalism, and Being More Successful

2008-08-07T08:14:00.001-07:00

A consistent topic explored by many futurists and discussion forums is how the tired and corrupt capitalist economic system that is currently the only truly innovative, highly productive, and motivational economic system on the planet will inevitably be replaced by some imagined number of causes - technological progress, transhumanism, as well as many other supposed reasons.

Capitalism is not the 'best' of several viable economic systems that can be considered truly successful. It is the ONLY economic system that can be considered successful in a way that is independent of luck, as in having ridiculous amounts of oil under your soil, things like that.

Why is that? Why is capitalism the only truly successful economic system that man has figured out? Because, especially and most effectively when combined with personal freedom, it reflects the motivation of human psychology. It aligns with our true nature like nothing else yet devised.

This is fundamental - capitalism is not some externally divined system pulled from thin air, that has stayed too long or something. Marx was deeply incorrect on that point. Rather, capitalism's success reflects a deep alignment and synergy of economics with the fundamental nature of the human mind.

The id wants what it wants - irrationally, everything (although of course it often settles for less). Capitalism, especially when contrasted against the egregious failure of Communism, accommodates the will of the id to own, to have one or more things it can call 'mine'. Whether that's ownership of a company, or a little tract home makes little difference. When a person has something they can call their own, not communally owned, that satisfies a deep tenet of our animal nature.

When something is owned by everyone, as in Communism, pride of ownership and its concomitant motivational power are missing. Even if Communist leaders didn't tend to annihilate their own citizens, usually near the beginning of a Communist regime, this fundamental nature of the misalignment of communal ownership with human nature would doom it to failure.

And of course, support for my point is painted over a hundred years of human history. That I can discern that after history has occurred is not a big deal. That Freud knew what would happen before it happened, that's amazing.

Bottom line, until transhumanism, evolution, or something else changes the deep nature of human psychology, capitalism isn't going anywhere.

What Transhumanism Might Really Be Like

2008-08-06T16:38:00.000-07:00

Much like my future prediction process, understanding the true nature of the human mind as communicated by Freud is a revelation that keeps on giving, the applications nearly infinite.

Let's talk about transhumanism, and see what Freud can inform on that topic.

I want to get specific about transhumanism for a moment, what it will really be like. It always amazes me how vague the discussion is on this widely believed but poorly envisioned and communicated topic. Let's see if Freud can't help us put a finer point on this.

As with the nature of 'greater intelligence', to which ideas of transhumanism are intimately linked, this vagueness is a liability, because it is not actionable. Sometimes it seems like transhumanism might be the ability to solve math problems as fast a computer, while having prehensile tails and kangaroo legs. Of course, this is nonsense.

With Freud's insights, it becomes clear that there is only one meaningful transhuman improvement of importance. With it, other transhuman enhancements are optional; without it, other transhuman enhancements are not only marginally useful, they in fact could be tremendously dangerous, particularly improvements to the human brain.

The only truly meaningful transhuman enhancement that would unequivocally improve the state of humanity are those that assist the Freudian ego in attaining true control over the id and superego.

Even a cursory examination of this idea should indicate that this is indeed 'deep' transhumanism: changing the balance of power of the components of human intelligence.

The implications are staggering. Really, assuming this becomes possible (and I believe it eventually will, but not in our lifetime, no way, forget about that), it would enable us to be as we think already are, but are not: rationally controlled.

I don't believe this will result in the 'elimination' of sexual desire, aggression, or any of the countless emotions that we are heir to. However, the hope would be that it makes them truly controllable by the Freudian ego, our reasoning center. Timid and weak now, it could eventually become the true master of our brains - perhaps.

But, there are few things that I can contemplate that will be more difficult. Hence, why I say not in our lifetime. We're just now, slowly, figuring out where the Freudian centers of power are situated in our brain. We must understand that (extremely well), before we even think about 'improving' those centers by reconfiguring the balance of powers there.

Why would this particular transhuman adaptation be such a big deal?

Quite simply, that enhancement, even if unaccompanied by any other, would change the nature of civilization (if widely adopted of course, lol).

In the second lecture I provided on Civilization and its Discontents, there is detailed explanation of how much of the nature of both government and religion are oriented to controlling the human id, especially the male id, since its aggression seems to be greater than that of females, as a general statement.

If each individual could control their own irrationality, over time it may become feasible for those governmental and religious structures to morph over time to reflect that reality. This is a very sound prediction, because the nature of our economic, governmental, and religious systems are really a complex mirror of our own individual human psychology.

It may even make such systems as Communism, which is a deep failure now because it reflects an idealized and deeply incorrect picture of human psychology, feasible. I'm not predicting that, but that could be one of almost an infinite number of ramifications of such a transhuman enhancement.

But of course, there's a problem - these impacts won't be realized until most or all of humanity, all 10 billion people or however many, have this adaptation. In fact, those without the enhancement might have an advantage, because their unpredictable aggression, their irrationality, may be beyond the ken of those that are rationally controlled.

As an aside, I believe that the demands of civilization already are heading this way. But, evolution being slow, without the aid of technology this process could take hundreds of thousands, or even millions of years.

Prospects for a Post-Capitalist Economic Transition

2008-07-09T12:20:00.001-07:00

The Actual Prospects for Some Economic System Other Than Capitalism Being Instituted, and Being More Successful Than Capitalism

A consistent topic explored here is how the tired and corrupt capitalist economic system that is currently the only truly innovative, highly productive, and motivational economic system on the planet will inevitably be replaced by some imagined number of causes - technological progress, transhumanism, as well as many other supposed reasons.

Capitalism is not the 'best' of several viable economic systems that can be considered truly successful. It is the ONLY economic system that can be considered successful in a way that is independent of luck, as in having ridiculous amounts of oil under your soil, things like that.

Why is that? Why is capitalism the only truly successful economic system that man has figured out? Because, especially and most effectively when combined with personal freedom, it reflects the motivation of human psychology. It aligns with our true nature like nothing else yet devised.

This is fundamental - capitalism is not some externally divined system pulled from thin air, that has stayed too long or something. Marx was deeply incorrect on that point. Rather, capitalism's success reflects a deep alignment and synergy of economics with the fundamental nature of the human mind.

The id wants what it wants - irrationally, everything (although of course it often settles for less). Capitalism, especially when contrasted against the egregious failure of Communism, accommodates the will of the id to own, to have one or more things it can call 'mine'. Whether that's ownership of a company, or a little tract home makes little difference. When a person has something they can call their own, not communally owned, that satisfies a deep tenet of our animal nature.

When something is owned by everyone, as in Communism, pride of ownership and its concomitant motivational power are missing. Even if Communist leaders didn't tend to annihilate their own citizens, usually near the beginning of a Communist regime, this fundamental nature of the misalignment of communal ownership with human nature would doom it to failure.

And of course, support for my point is painted over a hundred years of human history. That I can discern that after history has occurred is not a big deal. That Freud knew what would happen before it happened, that's amazing.

A Proposed Solution to How Video Copyrights are being applied at Youtube and Other Video Sharing Sites

2008-07-06T10:14:00.000-07:00

I have been getting into video uploading lately, and have uploaded vast amounts of my own content.

However, I have also uploaded a couple, few second clips of interviews from talk shows that are years old, and got spanked for it. Basically, just the part where the celebrity is introduced, comes in, and sits down - that's it.

I took some time to ponder how reasonable this is. Let's look at some basic numbers regarding content creation of a show, and the scale of content that can result.

Take for example the Carson Daly show, it has been on the air since 2002.

That means there is roughly 0.5 hours x 5 days x 52 weeks x 6 years = approx. 800 hours of programming. Yet, there is not a single Carson Daly DVD for sale, not even a 'highlights' DVD. Meaning, the entertainment company is not making any effort to allow interested viewers willing to pay a fair price to view the content.

Now, in the example of a private citizen, you could certainly say, well, its my right to not publish my book, music, or whatever content if I don't want to. And that is true. But entertainment companies, those are businesses, obliged to both their viewing public and also their shareholders to realize revenue from their film archives. So, withholding the content just to be withholding it makes absolutely no sense for these companies.

In other words, the current "solution", to simply withhold content from the viewing public, is not a solution at all. In fact, it is the problem for which a solution needs to be crafted, especially for types of content that would be overwhelming if the standard approach of the "DVD Box Set" release, which certainly applies to all talk shows, as well as many other kinds of broadcast content, were followed.

Now, to be fair, if I had to hypothesize, I would say that these companies are trying to avoid some of the problems encountered with Napster and such regarding music. There's a big difference though. All the content on video sharing sites is not as good as the real product in at least a couple of ways:
1. It is shorter. There is usually a 10 minute limit on videos, if not less.
2. It is smaller. YouTube and others reduce all their videos to a very small format, that would certainly not impress anyone watching on, say, a 1080p high definition television.

I am going to present a solution that is a win-win for everyone. Unless stated otherwise, the video hosting website (such as YouTube) would act as the intermediary between user and entertainment company, as is the case today for the rejection scenario.

For an entertainment company "partnered" with YouTube, to deserve that appellation means more than rejecting content. It should be more about identifying promising content that user's have already taken the trouble to upload, and figuring out a way to make money on it in a win-win manner.

Here's how it would work:

1. If a user uploads some content that is in fact a portion of a broadcast show, rather than simply rejecting and threatening the user, the following evaluation would be done:

a. Is the content a small part of the whole interview, or whatever skit, bit, or show is being evaluated.

b. If it is a small and/or low-resolution 'teaser' type clip, in addition to the option of simply rejecting the content, the opportunity to 'partner' with the company would be presented to the user.

c. If the user rejects the offer, then the content is simply removed, as is the procedure today.

2. If the user accepts (the usual case), then the entertainment company could provide a link on the page with that video to a paid, full version of that content, either that particular clip or the whole show from which it was drawn. The entertainment company would probably choose to do this for popular video clips, of course.

3. As the person who identified the promising content in the first place, it would be fair to give that user a fair cut of the proceeds from such click throughs, not unlike AdSense and similar mechanisms today.

What has happened here is that the user has in fact identified potentially popular content for that entertainment company. As such, it would be fair for them to get cut of the sales of the full clip. I don't speculate on the amount of the cut, but essentially they are saving the entertainment company huge amounts of effort, because without this user mechanism, the entertainment company has little choice but to digitize its entire content for that show, make them all available, and hope that something sticks.

This is a win-win for everyone:

1. The entertainment company can make real money off their catalog in ways that are completely beyond their reach today. By "atomizing" their content to some degree, they in fact could have a better revenue model. But fair pricing is essential - in the dollars per clip, rather than $29.95 or something (unless it was actually for the full content of the show on DVD or something, something warranting the higher price). Remember, it presumably would be a high-resolution, full version of a clip in the same size format as video sharing sites support, which is a small format, and hence should not command full size television format prices.

2. Fears of rampant reproduction of this content are baseless, especially if the content is provided in the small size favored by YouTube and others. In addition, targeting a segment of a show rather than the entire show greatly reduces the risk of rampant, unauthorized reproduction, because who's going to do all that for one interview? That would have to be some interview. This is an unreasonable anxiety.

3. Users will be encouraged to find interesting content, because they can make a little money.

Again, the users would have to be aware that a snippet is more tending towards a partnership than the whole interview - because then the entertainment company, what do they sell in that case. However, even in this case, there are opportunities for those companies:

- if the linked-to content provided by the entertainment company is higher quality and/or larger format than the user's youtube clip, people will buy it anyway, if that like that clip enough. The entertainment company would naturally provide this content in such a format that it could be easily replicated, much like the real player .flv format is now.

This would be a way for entertainment companies to 'get with the program' and adopt Internet marketing and profiting practices that smart companies elsewhere are using in other similar contexts.

And the sharing sites, depending on the precise nature of their role and hence possible revenue cut in this content identification and provisioning process, could themselves have a very promising revenue model to work with, one that leverages the heart of their competencies.

Sigmund Freud and Artificial Intelligence

2008-06-02T05:06:00.000-07:00

Intelligence is a very interesting topic. Most smart people think that the way that they personally are smart is the best way to be smart, or even the only way. But that is a notion grounded more in personal confidence than reality. Our human intelligence is as variable as our fingerprints. Each person's intelligence is a complex mixture of natural endowment, motivation, and experience. Instead of one standardized test, if we were advanced enough to devise them, each person would have their own customized test to assess their particular style of intelligence.

However, a much bigger mistake would be to accept the common wisdom that human intelligence is the only possible model for an intelligently behaving AI system. The premise that this is the only path to a well-behaved, "moral" robot is, I suggest, deeply inaccurate, and an AI system modeled exactly on the human mind would be quite undesirable in many ways.

Our human brand of intelligence is actually 3 distinct kinds of intelligence, sometimes cooperating, sometimes competing, and real AI systems will have different mixtures of this combination that make will make them safer and more commercially successful. To understand the different facets of human intelligence, we need to go back to Sigmund Freud. I have found Freud’s characterization of the human mind into components of id, superego, and ego amazingly useful for understanding real people. And as it turns out, Freud’s model turns out to be even more valuable for understanding how AI systems will be architected.

Briefly, Freud describes the human mind in three components which perpetually struggle for dominance: The “id” is the animal brain, the most primal, and is the source of our emotions and also the interpreter of other’s emotions, as well as other creatures, such as assessing if an approaching dog is friendly or not. The id is by far the strongest of the 3 components, and influences mightily almost everything we think and do.

Ironically, the id represents many of the things we consider central to being human – this, the most ancient part of our brain, the one with which we share the most similarities with other animals. It's the wellspring of human creativity. It’s also the source of human strategic thinking. When a CEO determines he wants to double a company’s size, especially without the obvious appearance a major opportunity, that’s an "id thing”. Office politics is an id thing. All the emotions are id things. The ability to recognize faces is there too, most likely. And lots, lots more besides.

The“Superego” is the next most powerful component. Among its important functions seems to be a control mechanism for the human id, which without a control mechanism would rage largely unchecked. It is the product of the values your were raised with by your parents, church, school, and other primary influences. All the opinions that are strong in us, baked in and quite resistant to change, are superego. The important point is that this part of the brain is largely uninfluenced by the rational mind. Ideally, a given opinion is carefully vetted by the rational mind before being committed to superego, yet probably a healthy majority of our superego’s conceptions have not been through an this objective. Whenever you judge instantly and strongly, that is your superego talking, not your rational mind.

Last and perhaps unfortunately least in terms of influence is the “ego," the rational mind, the objectively analyzing and problem-solving brain. It is a distant third to the other two in terms of its power to influence thought processes and resulting human actions and thoughts. In fact, in many ways the ego isn't really a control mechanism at all, in terms of influencing our behavior - rather, it is a tool used by the id to further it's survive, thrive, and procreation objectives. The myriad manifestations of these three objectives permeate almost everything we think, say, and do; sometimes in obvious ways, sometimes very subtle. Thus, the rational ego is relegated to a far less dominant position in the scheme of human consciousness, at least when viewed from the perspective of a control mechanism.

I would suggest that many if not most complex animals have these three components as well - ids, superegos, and egos. Arguably, these are often optimized in different ways, and it seems clear that we have the most advanced egos, ie, rational analysis capability, of any creatures on the planet. This can be explained by considering that rational intelligence has been our major evolutionary strategy for the last several million years and the gray matter invested in this is the greatest of all animals. We don’t give enough respect to our animal brethren in this regard, that the fundamental nature of their intelligence is not so different from ours, but of course molded in myriad ways to make the most sense for their particular evolutionary strategies. Things like fast legs, hard shells, and sharp claws and teeth reduce the need for rational intelligence as a survival mechanism to some degree for the vast preponderance of Earth's creatures during the entire history of life on this planet.

So, loosely put, human intelligence is primarily id-driven, with the superego providing a powerful id-control mechanism as well as "instant" judgment on many topics, and the rational mind helping the id execute its desires as needed. The mistaken notion that we have 1 mind, not 3 working in synchronicity (and often competing with each other) is the reason we consider the total of all that stuff swirling around in our heads as “intelligence”. And since that is what intelligence is, the thinking goes, we assume that an AI-powered droid must also have these same constituents organized in the same way in order to behave intelligently.

This is an excerpt from a very informative lecture explaining the relevant ideas of Freud in more detail. Not only are the id, ego, and superego carefully and clearly described, these are compared and contrasted with the tripartite views of self described by Plato, and of Marx:

This lecture describes the consequences of Freud's psychological components on civilization overall, contrasting his ideas carefully with those of Marx:

Listen carefully, perhaps more than once (it took more than once for me for it to sink in). But the resonance is deep, the insights profound.

The Dark Side of the Future for the Individual

2008-04-12T18:04:00.000-07:00

As I've noted elsewhere, when imagining the future most people, certainly many futurists, seem to fall into one of two camps: that the future will be a utopian heaven, or a dystopian hell. In fact, the idea behind the Singularity's "unknowability" seems to be to leave it up to the reader to decide which one of these two outcomes their individual character prefers. This feeling of either elation (perhaps more common among the young and/or well off?), or dread (more common among the old and/or disadvantaged?) is so widespread it could almost be termed "universal", though I use this term in a relative rather than an absolute sense.

However, in case you the reader subscribe to one of these two stark and opposing visions of the future, ask yourself this: is the present utopia or dystopia? Was the past utopia or dystopia? Whatever your heart says, the true answer is that it depends on your point of view, your station in life, your age, your experiences, and many other factors. However, it is not utopia in the sense that everyone is living on a heaven on Earth currently; nor is it realistic to say that all of us live in the bowels of misery every waking moment either. As M. Scott Peck, author of the wildly successful "Road Less Traveled", and a Freudian if there ever was one says at the very beginning of that book, "Life is difficult". It is difficult for every creature on the planet, and every human. The main ways it is difficult for humans at least are outlined in brilliant ways by Freud and summarized in the "Civilization and Its Discontents" lecture elsewhere in this blog.

And life in the past was every bit as difficult as life now, difficult in some of the same ways and difficult in other ways, the noting of which and reasonably projecting into the future can give us insight into some of the likely difficulties liable to persist into even the far future.

First of all, let's look at the trends in the future.

As I've noted, it will be noisy - bombardment from advertising messages, in fact messages of all kinds, each of us inundated with both wanted and unwanted "communications", constantly. This will make the nesting trend as strong if not stronger than today. Now, the nesting trend to some degree represents a withdrawal from the world. Of course, with the Internet , television, etc., we can still be connected to the world even as we withdraw from it. But the nature of the interaction is not face-to-face; it's very different. In some ways, perhaps better - certainly in terms of volume (if not always quality) of informational content, these media are a massive improvement over the mouth-to-mouth or newsprint-based information technologies of yore.

However, the downside is arguably this: we don't feel as much need to interact with real people. Not saying it's disappeared, but to be clear one of the things that made people 'friendlier' in the past, especially in rural settings, was the hunger for the latest news that a stranger might have. This trend will continue into the future, and some of the techs I've described will be so compellingly vivid and realistic that it is not inconceivable that many people with access to these techs could withdraw from polite society except for compelling needs like employment. This risk is so real that I believe that over time it will become a thrust of the programming of this tech to in fact help us from becoming too isolated from the real world, from other real people, to build and maintain that precious web of relationships that form the lifeblood of an individual's true success in life.

Another trend is toward "knowledge work", which is in many ways positive. It exercises our brain, and is the lifeblood of the modern technical economy, or at least an essential component. However, what does knowledge work typically consist of? Sitting in front of a computer, often all day long, another enemy of face-to-face interaction, the main communication technique that the human species over endless millennia has evolved to be best at.

Also, the non-manual nature of knowledge work also in some ways is alienated from our true, human nature. This can lead to boredom and depression, and with the overall trend toward more free time, has certain implications.

Substance abuse, both legal and illegal, will continue to be a problem in the future, as strong if not stronger than today. And no amount of money spent on the outright banning of every substance (the drug war) will change this. I actually have a most unusual solution to the drug problem, which I will share in a future blog entry.

Part and parcel with boredom and the day-to-day-staring-at-a-computer-screen is loneliness. The future will be as lonely as today, if not lonelier. Chat rooms and message boards can ameliorate this up to a point, but as we know do not completely satisfy our deepest human desires. This likelihood in fact is a strong reason to have faith in the predictions of future droids taking on a hyper-realistically human form factor; not just because this minimizes the communication barrier between humans and droids and maximizes the droidian compatibility with the infrastructure built for humans, but also because this form factor will allow droids to fill our most intimate needs (at least in superficial ways) without the risk of hurting ourselves or hurting others, if you catch my drift.

However, this scenario, though it will come to pass as surely as I am writing this now, is also not without risk, and that risk is non-trivial: over time, when their simulated psychological complexity as well as their convincing physicality reaches a certain level of maturity, for many real relationships (at least of an intimate nature), except for needs of reproduction (I do NOT predict reproductively viable droids, though they will be anatomically correct, those are two entirely different things, don't get confused), will become optional or even deemed unnecessary by many humans. I suggest this risk is greater for men than for women, not because men are shallower than women, but because the nature of their sexuality is certainly more physically-based and thus physically satisfiable as a general rule, than that of women.

This may seem far-fetched; and for a droid of constant appearance, a temporary palliative. However, not sure I've mentioned these yet, let me introduce these briefly now, a class of advanced droid that is as far ahead of the hyper-realistically human droid with the superpowers I've described as these are ahead of the modern desktop computer. I'm referring to what I term the "multi-facade" droid. Essentially, these would also be hyper-realistically human, but via a set of thousands of facial actuators, skin pigment adjusters, height adjusters (within a certain range), hair texture and color modifiers, and last but not least software so advanced it can take on not just one human personality but potentially thousands, these multi-facades, using whatever information available, whether a single, grainy old picture, a movie, a face-to-face meeting, etc, would be able to take on the appearance and personality of whatever individual was desired to a degree of fidelity that to even a longtime friend of whatever person was being modeled would be absolutely indistinguishable from the real thing.

Now, it may sound like I'm about to get into "6th day" type cloning nightmare scenarios but no, these will still be manufactured products subject to even greater ethical and liability concerns than manufactured products today. So you won't be able to off an office rival and have your droid take over its identity, your droid won't do that, and to the degree it is aware, will use every ounce of its hyper-intelligence to prevent you from doing something of this kind.

Though that is where most science fiction writers would go immediately, that's not the danger. The danger is within us, on the human side of the partnership. These droids may be so satisfying on physical, psychological, and intellectual levels, that withdrawal from real relationships, especially of an intimate nature, by that human is the gravest risk. First men will be most susceptible, but in time women as well. This risk is so great that I believe it defines another fine line in the programming of these devices: to satisfy the needs and thereby assuage the loneliness, without the human actually falling in love - a complete surrender to these amazing illusions of humanity. They will do this through hyper-observancy of the character of its human or humans with which it interacts, using great subtlety to toe that fine line between mere satisfaction and true love, by saying and doing the right thing almost all of the time.

They may take on a variety of bizarre roles to achieve this, such as playing matchmaker. This topic will have its own blog entry, so I won't go further here. However, despite their best efforts and most super-subtle programming to keep you "in the game", their success will at most be limited, and as the use of computers as productivity and entertainment tools today draws us away from face-to-face interaction, these future technologies will strengthen that trend, and if we're not careful the entire nature of human-to-human relationships may change in a way that we have not begun to imagine.

There are many dimensions to the dark side of the future - this entry describes that at the level of individual, in developed countries, for the most part, where these trends are in place and these techs are widely available. I will save the larger scale of cultural, national, and religious rivalries for another time.

MindX Classics

2008-03-15T11:49:00.000-07:00

These are some interesting threads from Kurzweil's Mind Exchange forum. The views of the participants are theirs alone. Some of these are included for their entertainment value.

Kurzweil's MindX Forum

The Race for Real-time Photorealism 3/14/2010 PB

The Brain's Dark Energy 3/13/2010 PB

Will SAI be Autonomous? 2/10/2010

Resolving the Conscious Identities Paradox 12/24/2009 PB

Evidence of the 'Knee of the Curve' 8/26/2009

Are you crazy? 8/26/2009

A "Complex" Theory of Consciousness 8/19/2009 PB

Science Fiction's Robotics Laws Need Reality Check 8/19/2009 PB

Black Hole Computers 8/7/2009 PB

Implications of Understanding Actual Quantum Computer Capabilities 7/5/2009 PB

The Singularity is an ill conceived concept 7/4/2009

"ORNL prepares for a 20-petaflops computer in 2011" - that's 2x the human brain. 7/2/2009 (Including analysis of computer power to simulate human brain based on rat sim)

This one is for PB. 7/1/2009 (Including the Forbes AI Report)

/:setAI is gonna bust a nut over this 6/29/2009 (Including what quantum computers will and will not be able to do)

the "conscious identities paradox" 6/25/2009

What's the meaning of death? 6/24/2009

Grassoline: Biofuels Beyond Corn 6/22/2009 PB

What Skepticism Reveals about Science 6/20/2009 PB

I hate the human race. 6/19/2009

The Origin of Life 6/18/2009 PB

to idiots who say stupid shit like resurrection/immortality will lead to overpopulation 6/17/2009

Greed and Evil 5/22/2009

Are we...you...afraid of what AI will bring? 5/1/2009

Genius: The Modern View 5/1/2009 PB

Genes Show Limited Value in Predicting Diseases 4/15/2009 PB

Googling the Brain on a Chip 4/14/2009 (Including discussion of Matt Bamberger site)

the gene of god 4/13/2009

Intelligent Design 3/30/2009

Reading Trends: What r ur predictions? 3/22/2009

Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness 3/5/2009 PB

Sorry Bad news... (Including analysis of Prospects for Robots taking over the Workplace) 3/2/2009

Problem with the "exponential growth of knowledge" 3/1/2009

will money be history after sai (Including detailed analysis of nanobot cost models) 2/10/2009

Analysis of the Singularity (Including discussion of robots as likely path to AI) 2/8/2009 PB

Animal Intelligence and the Evolution of the Human Mind 1/26/2009 PB

Machine Consciousness 1/18/2009

The Age of Spiritual Machines Rediscovered 1/13/2009 PB

A Critical Analysis of Quantum Archaeology 1/11/2009 PB

Programmed Reality: The Singularity Cometh? Or Not? 1/11/2009

NASA Should Stop Investing in Manned Space Flight 9/6/2008 (Including detailed discussion of technological benefits of continuing manned space flight)

Freud's Psychological Components - From an Organ Grinder 7/20/2008 PB

First Detailed Map of the Human Cortex 7/8/2008 PB

Subsidies and the China Price 7/7/2008 PB

Some Thoughts on How Video Copyrights are being applied at Youtube and Other Video Sharing Sites 7/6/2008 PB

The Perfect Woman 6/21/2008

IEEE Spectrum analyzes the Singularity, both pro and con 6/4/2008

Which of these is the truer description of chess-playing software? 6/1/2008

The PURPOSE of the Singularity? (with Tina Turner) 5/24/2008

The Singularity dream is over. 5/23/2008

The Singularity is Near 5/22/2008

Robot Marriage (with the search for the perfect robot song) 5/15/2008

US guiltiness (with Salt n Pepa) 5/14/2008

The Pale Blue Dot (incl Yellowstone eruption discussion and resources) 5/12/2008

Estonian farmers face flatulence tax on cattle 5/9/2008

Emotion 5/6/2008 PB

What will be the nature of SAI sense of humor? 5/3/2008 PB

Saving the Earth with an Umbrella (with Rhianna) 4/29/2008

Paradoxes in Mathematics (incl Lost in Space links) 4/27/2008

Despite Climate Worry, Europe Turns to Coal 4/22/2008 PB

Cool robot turtle 4/22/2008

Will thw Vatican relocate their Headquaters to the USA? 4/19/2008

Is It Possible That We Are In A Simulation? 4/17/2008

10 Ideas that are changing the world... 4/16/2008 PB

Links to Sensoniq's most intelligent threads 4/13/2008

The Violent SAI 4/5/2008 PB

Matrix-style virtual worlds 'a few years away' 4/5/2008 PB

Visions of the future, 2057 4/5/2008

Hyperprecise Sensory Awareness of the Artificial Mind 4/5/2008 PB

Large Synoptic Survey Telescope 4/2/2008 PB

The Limits of Quantum Computers - for Extrasense 3/29/2008

whoo need a nicer forum? 3/29/2008

Closest in time R.K prediction? 3/26/2008

Saturn's Moon Titan May Have Life

Parallel Universe/Many Worlds links... 3/24/2008 PB

Star and Planet formation links... 3/24/2008 PB

X-ray Astronomy links... 3/23/2008

GLAST - The Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope... 3/23/2008

James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) links... 3/23/2008

COBE and/or Microwave Background links... 3/23/2008

Alternative Cosmology links... 3/23/2008

Comet Science links... 3/23/2008

about BLACK HOLES and modern cosmology 3/22/2008

falsification is a myth: science jumps from gestalt to gestalt through a shift of aesthetic attraction and/or belief 3/19/2008

Walking with Cavemen Youtube links... 3/17/2008

Our Ever Changing Earth 3/15/2008 PB

water on Mars 3/13/2008

AI Sex Bots 3/12/2008

Fusion in the core of the earth? 3/9/2008

Plasma Fusion 3/8/2008

INTELLIGENCE & IQ 3/8/2008

Resurrection@Home 3/8/2008

Harnessing the power of supernovas revisited 3/8/2008

Here is proof that SubtillioN is too stubborn for his own good 3/7/2008

"Hot" computing 3/6/2008

Worlds Top 10 most polluted cities 3/1/2008 PB

The End of Cosmology? 3/1/2008 PB

Hinduism, petroglyphs, Z-pinches and plasma cosmology: A convergence of evidence? 3/1/2008

Your Future with Robots 2/29/2008 PB

about orthodox and fringe 2/27/2008

Traffic Cameras: The totalitarian control of the roadways: America's first interaction with robots. 2/27/2008

Dinosaurs found on Titan! 2/17/2008

Looks like 2029 is "go" time 2/16/2008

Progress is slowing down 2/14/2008

A wikiful of Extropia's Quotes 2/13/2008

Kurzweil, the Romans and Bacteria 2/12/2008

Does chimp's DNA prove transhumanism's goal if to 'destroy' humans? 2/11/2008

Whose view of the future is more realistic, Kurzweil's or James Martin's 2/7/2008

Defense Dept ramping up for invasion of the Congo... 2/3/2008 PB (A playful response to Jake Witmer suggesting we should invade the Congo)

Is Capitalism Essential to a Positive Singularity? 1/29/2008 (Including Jake Witmer's plan to invade the Congo)

A New Mind-X 1/28/2008

Why Robots wont Rukle the World: Good Ednburgh Univ Paper 1/25/2008

Open Letter from MINDX to AGI-08 Conference 1/22/2008

Transsizable Televisions 1/09/2008

Ramona talk 1/3/2008

Predictions for 2008 12/31/2007

Anyone know Greg Bear? (incl a surprise visit from Greg Bear) 12/24/2007

Future software developer skillsets as ai gets more autonomous... 12/20/2007 PB

Bird Flu mutates to pigs (incl potential cost models for nanotech) 12/20/2007

The emotional, social, SAI 12/19/2007

How do we build systems that can dynamically and automatically re-configure 12/19/2007

If nanobots can scan the human brain, then.... 12/18/2007

PredictionBoy's droids are taking over!!! 12/17/2007

Get Well Soon Alex Trebek 12/14/2007

Alexander the Great's legacy 12/12/2007

Prediction Boy, check this out... 12/11/2007

Drexler's nanotechnology roadmap is here! 12/9/2007

Will soming technology divide the human race? 12/1/2007

Has Eldras left the building? 11/27/2007 PB

US Navy's robot carier Advances 11/27/2007

PB, your droids are here!... 11/26/2007

Teaching Company excerpt 3 - origins of slavery 11/21/2007 PB

Teaching Company excerpt 2 - struggle for survival in the chesapeake 11/21/2007 PB

Teaching Company excerpt 11/21/2007 PB

SAI W&D Managment system 11/17/2007

A story from the dream world... 11/11/2007 PB

should popele with IQ's over 190 be regarded as a different species 11/9/2007

Was Jesus an advanced AI? 11/5/2007

Gas Giant Planets As Stars? 11/4/2007

The Real Superhumans 11/4/2007

Explain this --- Mouse 11/3/2007

Eep! Creepy grey robot boy. 11/1/2007

Hypothetical: YOU can start SAI... 10/31/2007

friendly AI??? 10/30/2007

839 TFLOPS 10/26/2007

PredictionBoy's "droids" 10/25/2007

What happens immediately BEFORE the Singularity

Death 10/17/2007

What is the current state of AI? 10/16/2007

How does one enjoy benefits of Singularity? Part II 10/15/2007

Immortality tomorrow? 10/9/2007

Would SAI help us? 10/08/2007

Testing Teleporters - Who will volunteer to beam through one first? 10/5/2007

How does one enjoy benefits of Singularity? 9/28/2007

Ray should go away and come back with a skeptical analysis of where AI is heading. 9/26/2007

PredictionBoy's Blog 9/23/2007

Toward Replacement Parts for the Brain (MIT) 9/21/2007

The next 50 years will be the same as today. 8/19/2007

Singularity, Schimngularity. 8/17/2007

Why no alien singularity? 8/8/2007

SpinbitZ published -- FREE ebook 8/7/2007

Re: Foreword to The Intelligent Universe 2/2/2007

Re: Is AI Near a Takeoff Point? 3/28/2006

“STARS” NUCLEAR REACTORS OR ELECTRICAL REACTORS ? 3/15/2006

Re: Biocosm, The New Scientific Theory of Evolution 2/9/2006

Re: The Drexler-Smalley Debate on Molecular Assembly 12/01/2003

Re: Parallel universes, the Matrix, and superintelligence 6/27/2003

Re: The Matrix Loses Its Way: Review of 'Matrix Reloaded' 5/19/2003

Re: Human Body Version 2.0 2/17/2003

The Sorce Theory of Matter 1/19/2003

Re: A myopic perspective on AI 9/2/2002

Re: Essentials of General Intelligence: The direct path to AGI 8/23/2002

Re: Introduction: Are We Spiritual Machines? 7/7/2002

Re: A Computational Foundation for the Study of Cognition 6/11/2002

Re: Consciousness in Human and Robot Minds 6/7/2002

The Technological Singularity 1/21/2002

Re: Arthur C. Clarke Offers His Vision of the Future 12/03/2001

Re: What Is Artificial Intelligence? 11/3/2001

Re: The Age of Intelligent Machines: A (Kind Of) Turing Test 10/01/2001

Toward the Hyperreality Engine Pt 4: The Applications

2008-02-18T06:14:00.000-08:00

With the hyper-reality engine, your imagination truly is the limit.

Now that we’ve discussed the basic technology, what can be done with this technology?
Applications:
- Virtual time-travel
- Virtual space travel
- Virtual micro-environment travel
- Zero-impact exotic game hunting, including animals long extinct
- Fiction or non-fiction scenario simulation
- Role playing in scenarios taken from movies, TV shows, or books
o You can be spock in a specific episode of star trek, with ad-libbed or rigidly scripted lines
- Virtual exploration of pristine, past environments from any time or place

Very sophisticated software: from simply a text description, the hyper-reality engine (HRE) can construct a stunningly realistic world.

The HRE will leverage the future version of the Web in a new, yet recognizable way. Stitching together donated pictures to assemble an arbitrarily realistic person, place, and/or time.
Think Google Earth on steroids.

This is the ultimate technology to unlock the hidden value of the exponentially increasing stockpile of personally and professionally-generated digital content, both still pictures and movies.

Toward the Hyperreality Engine Pt 3: The Software

2008-02-18T06:13:00.001-08:00

The software for the hyperreality engine will be yet another form of specialized AI that in many ways actually be more complex and challenging than "greater-than-human" AI.

Image processing
- the type of content that is growing faster than any other are everyhones collective store of digital content, esp images and movie clips. Gone are the economics of the past, where each pic cost measurable money. Now, its really just the cost of its space on a hard disk, which is already just a fraction of a penny and rides the tech wave, getting cheaper.
- So we can take immense numbers of pictures, hundreds an hour if desired, and with camcorder footage, esp high-definition(got one a while back, 10x improvement over those that came before), but there is still a bottleneck. It’s on the consumption end – despite all the tech, you can really just view an image at a time, a clip at a time.
- That content s/b be put to work to create virtual environments. This will permit greater consumption volume, as several pics could be combined into one, with a short dynamic sequence connecting them – very cool.
- Of course, this would also allow deeper immersion in the content captured. Using footage form today's high-definition camcorders should allow photo-realistic recreations.
- And yes, I know this is tough, very demanding in terms of both software and hardware. it must be photo-realistic, and it must be as close to real time as possible. In this case, real time might be up to an hour, creating the 3D virtual env – if it was interactive enough, that amount of time might be acceptable.

This application will need a lot of AI, of a focused nature. Taking in the new images, matching against previously taken pics, automatically incorporating the new content into the existing virtual reality environment. Proactively, removing some of the time if done manually, so the user can get to experiencing the environment faster and spend more time there. Ideally, the user would modify the environment if needed from w/n the env itself, by saying something like, no, there were more clouds that day, etc. it would be ideal for them to be communicated using the user’s natural language, and this is where this s/w comes closest to hal. Simply understanding these comments, and being able to respond in a similarly natural way. As long as each users comment is remembered and used again where appropriate, this should be fine for the end user.

In other words, it is alright for an AI system to ask “dumb” questions, as long as it only needs to do it once. If it doesn’t, the user will get more annoyed using natl language than from the current ways – it must remember. And if it applies this learning incorrectly in some other case, that’s alright too, as long as when it is corrected it can discriminate between the two cases in future.

Users will be quite patient about this – as long as the software learns rapidly, preferably the first time.

This does not have to happen all at once. In fact, there is a smooth progression in capability, any of which are much more immersive than current tech.
To start with, some limited dynamic motion and sound. If there is a picture of someone at the beach, the water should be making waves, and the sound of the ocean could be played as well.

The path is one of steadily increasing photo-realism and dynamism in the picture stock. Being able to interpolate a person or thing between two photos into a short clip would be very popular. If you have a pic of someone standing up and another sitting down, the clip would move between the two with very natural flow. The person would move from a standing position to a sitting position as realistically as if it were a camcorder clip.

A real breakthrough will be when these avatars can use existing clips and then extend the model into new situations. Conversations that use words not in any clip, for instance.

Toward the Hyperreality Engine Pt 2: The Hardware

2008-02-18T06:11:00.001-08:00

The hardware for the hyper-reality engine is neither far-fetched, nor far off.

Before I descrive the specific h/w of the HRE, lety me point out that this is one of the many potential incarnations to suit this purpose. In other words, this specific flavor of h/w is not the only one possible. However, it was selected for the following reason:

- Does not personally encumber or otherwise ‘enhance’ the human experiencing it. The primary reason for this is that this system is intended to be enjoyed for any arbitrary amt of time, much like a tv set today. Things like helmets, goggles, etc, with me at least, after a short while I start to fatigue with such accoutrements.
The HRE is intended to suspend disbelief for an arbitrary amt of time, perhaps a few minutes, many hours, or longer.

However, the s/w that runs this system can easily accommodate in the guise of a helmet, goggles, or even s/w-driven nanites in a human brain.

Here are the basic components:
- Hi-rez screen of arbitrary size. In particular, a form of this tech that is relatively near-term: extremely thin LCDs, that can be “painted” onto any surface, incl. walls. To keep things simple, let’s say one large, blank wall in a bedroom, den, great room, or some such.
The properties of this are quite remarkable; you can change the color of this room from blue to orange, instantly. Interior decorative alchemy

Now imagine, instead of simple solid color changes, more elaborate, wallpaper patterns, anything u can imagine, including not just diff color patterns, but diff reflectivities, shininess, etc
For example, a wall of beaten gold, with shadows of apparent relief throughout. All illusion woven by the thousands or millions of pixels comprising this screen.

We’ll come back to the many possibilities here, but let’s cover the rest of the h/w first. Behind the scenes is some very serious computer hardware. Just how serious will become more apparent once I describe the capabilities of the software.
For now, think super-advanced movie-rendering engine, like Silicon Graphics on steroids.

From Part I of this series, you might guess among other types of input, various digital source stock is a big one
– photos, both native digitial as well as scanned
- Personal photos, both digital and scanned
- Stock digital photos
This includes movie stock footage as well, both documentary as well as theatrical releases.

So, the basic hardware must be able to input these various media types, process them, and have access to the future version of the web.

All this would be enough to floor the engineers tasked with building it.

But there is one more tough, very important key to hyperrealism. Back in 1982, at a fast-food pizza chain called Showbiz Pizza, there was a demo for a few months of a new projection tech called Showscan.

Toward the Hyperreality Engine Pt 1: Introduction

2007-11-22T18:05:00.000-08:00

The basic ideas and trends behind the Hyperreality Engine.

The "VirtuSphere" is not exactly what I had in mind when I envisioned the Hyper-Reality Engine, but it's intriguing (the link is several years old, I have no idea where this product is at the moment)

The entries in this blog reflect a realistic, if aggressive, vision, to the extent of my knowledge. Regardless of how long it takes, I have no doubt that there will eventually be some amazingly sophisticated manifestations of AI on the marketplace.

As I’ve suggested one major future trend in consumer technology will be “imagination actualization”. This means a lot of things, and droids have an important role, which I describe in another thread. But first, let me describe another kind of advanced imagination actualization set of applications that are perhaps more recognizable in terms of present offerings. These could be available relatively sooner than the droid techs I will describe. However, it could still take a while – these might take a quarter century or more to become available, chiefly because of the massive processing power they will require.

Lets start with the familiar, and go from there, in terms of an increasing level of imagination actualization. I’m a big video and photo enthusiast. I had a traditional analog camcorder, and that was great. However, when my daughter was learning to walk a few years ago I upgraded to a digital camcorder, and the light went off for me in terms of the power of digital imaging over traditional analog techs. In addition to watching the video, you can make movie clips for the computer; you can make video captures of each frame in the movie, and process it like you can any other image.

This camcorder had a 1 MP still camera, which I thought was cool, but when I bought a 4MP camera a couple years later, I was blown away again. When I viewed these on a computer monitor, especially a large, hi-resolution screen, I was again amazed – they were so real, I was there again. The vibrancy of these high-resolution images on a computer monitor to me is much more compelling than when printed out, which is why I would suggest traditional film companies have cause for concern if their revenue models continue to be based on photo-printing revenue.

In fact, the qualitative difference between these digital imaging technologies and the older analog and still film technologies is almost infinite, in many ways. Especially for digital still cameras compared to film still cameras, an individual picture is nearly costless. In the past you might have to carefully managing 5 rolls of film with 35 pictures each for the film camera, send them to get processed, and if some were fuzzy, you would moan, because not only did those cost money, and they might be of one of the subjects you really wanted to keep. you can take hundreds of pictures with the digital, multiple pictures per subject in burst mode, and if half of them are blurry, you simply toss those out without concern about the cost, and usually at least one good pic of each subject that you were interested in.

And my latest acquisition, a true hi-def camcorder, 1080i, is another amazement to me. Not only is the movie resolution stunning, the individual video captures are an order of magnitude greater than traditional digital camcorder vidcaps. So in a busy scene, you can simply point the camera, take hi-rez video, high-quality, and take 30 high-quality still pictures per second, while also being able to take a small number of higher still pictures at the same time.

So that’s cool. Now, what can you do with the images and movies from these? Well, you can watch the movies, you look at the pictures, you can process those pictures, and you can process video captures from the movies like you would any other picture.
That’s great, what then?
For now, pretty much, I think. However, analyzing these technologies against the theme of imagination actualization can get interesting. What we mean here is, how can I use these movies and images to help me actually imagine that I am really there again? Make that scene as vivid as possible, explore it, interact with it in increasingly more immersive and imagination-firing ways?

There are several levels to these possibilities, and the first is already receiving some commercial software offerings. In the context of a still image, the most straightforward idea for making it even more immersive is to make it seem 3 dimensional, and be able to “walk around” within it. Photowoosh (http://www.fotowoosh.com/) has an offering like this, a beta version of which will be forthcoming soon.

Another early but promising incarnation is from Microsoft (if Microsoft is involved, you know your predictions “got game”). Their Photosynth offering http://labs.live.com/photosynth/. I like the tagline from that site: “What if your photo collection was an entry point into the world, like a wormhole that you could jump through and explore…”

Something like that, yes.

Exploring your images is one thing, animating them, bringing them to life, is another.

What if you only have one old, crumbling photograph from decades ago, and it is the only picture of your great-grandmother, who you barely knew but everyone said was a saint?

What if the only voice recording you have of your mom is a few seconds, and she was simply laughing or something?

How can we reconstruct the past and actualize our current imaginations?

The AI-rich vr system must, like our droids, be outstanding at deducing super-subtleties via hyperobservancy.

This means getting the most information out of every picture, and/or movie frame, and being able to augment those with fine-tuning imparted by the memories of those who knew that individual, or who were there, if applicable. It also implies having a large database of human movements, voices, accents, etc, to provide the raw fuel for convincing interpolations and/or extrapolations.

Proposed Traffic Light Artificial Intelligence System as Part of a Comprehensive Strategy to Minimize Energy Use, Pollution, and Driver Time Wastage

2007-10-09T12:20:00.000-07:00

Advanced AI will not be "one thing" - it will vary enormously, depending on the nature of the objectives for which it has been designed. This explores one possible application of a fairly simple AI application that could render tremendous value.

Before we get too caught up in the world of droid AI, which is an exceedingly advanced version of AI, there are undoubtedly all kinds of simpler applications that might be described as reasonably proactive, doing something that is essentially a no-brainer that you almost certainly wanted to have done, without explicitly telling it.

I must admit, I have been caught up in the Kurzweilian spirit of altruism. Therefore, I will will step away from my narrow consumer focus for at least the duration of this post. What is a relatively simple AI application that within its scope of operation could accomplish the following objectives:
1. Reduce time wastage for millions of people, every day.
2. Minimize energy wastage.
3. Minimize pollution

And do all these at the same time, in a non-competitive way.

There are many examples of such low-hanging fruit all around us. Lets look at just one, the staid world of traffic lights.

How many times have you been sitting at a stoplight for 2, 3 minutes, no cars coming from any direction? It seems like an aggravating eternity, and you’re wanting to run that light, but you don’t.

You always think, what’s the deal, I'm the only one here, why doesn’t it turn green? We unreasonably expect it to display that intelligence, every time, for some reason. In my case, its because some lights seem to do this, but this could be coincidence, but that faint expectation persists in the back of my mind for every light. However, at least most the traffic lights are on a preset schedule, that doesn’t take into account individual, moment-by-moment traffic patterns. However, sitting at a traffic light unnecessarily, or even slowing to a red light and having to speed up as it turns green as you’re about to stop, wastes energy, wastes time, adds to pollution, with no benefit.

Let's project a maturity of AI technology that would enable awareness by a traffic light of its intersection. Not amazingly advanced awareness, but well enough to respond differently to different traffic flow situations.

Toward this end, if each light pointing along an intersection quadrant, each pointing along the street that it controls the flow from, could detect what was in front of it, from cars stopped right in front, to approaching cars, say, 1000 feet away, and gauge their approaching speed and acceleration/deceleration. If a car is approaching, and no other cars are coming, even if its been red for only 5 seconds turns green again, before you even start slowing down it turns green again for you, maximizing time and energy conservation.

Also, this approach would allow behaviors that are today quite uncommon. For example, often the left-turn only arrow at an intersection are paired, so that two streams of cars can turn left at once, across the intersection from each other. However, if one left-turn signal runs out of cars, then the opposite side of the street should be allowed to proceed forward.

The main thing to remember is, it's all about keeping as many cars moving through that intersection with as little delay as possible, while still giving everyone a fair chance to proceed without unduly long waits.

Of course, this is the simplest example, and things get quickly more complex with different numbers of cars coming from different directions, and closely spaced intersections, each with its own traffic light.

One light can't let too large a number get by on an individual optimal traffic flow decision, and have them pile up at the next one, a ¼ mile away. It cant be a total energy-minimization and time-minimization decision. If that were the case, one car on a less-busy street might need to wait half and hour before it gets a green, while hundreds of cars on the busy street crossing it go by. However, if that same light turned green just long enough to let that car by, and then immediately turned green for the cross-traffic again, that’s intelligent. Again, we wouldn’t say, what a smart light, but if it didn’t after doing that for a while, you’d be swearing at the incredible lack of intelligence of that light.

Obviously, the case of a single traffic light considered in isolation is the simplest scenario. Really, we want that traffic light to be communicating at least with its nearest neighbors as well, especially if they are in near proximity.

If there is a wreck on the highway nearby, the traffic light needs to become immediately aware of that, and change its behavior accordingly. So that when a large amount of traffic starts flowing off the freeway into the sphere of influence of that traffic light, there aren't ridiculously huge backups simply because that traffic light isn't responding to that changed condition.

So, it will be great when the intelligent traffic light comes along. However, consider this - this seems like a fairly simple AI app, compared to some we will describe. And there is absolutely no way that PredictionBoy is the first one to think of this, so it seems reasonable to suggest that since others almost certanly have, and maybe have even tried to design one, and found it quite tough to do so.

So, that will be a great product, look for it. But until you see it, or other products like it, with even small amounts of intelligence (or slightly lower stupidity), don't be looking for humanoid droids, or even metal men, C3-POs. Remember, we must keep our hard hats on, keep our expectations realistic. It will be a while, these are very tough problems. But get there we will, and it will be worth the wait.

Further reading:

The Application of Artificial Intelligence to Transportation System Design

How does a traffic light work? Is there an A.I. consciousness at work?

new electrosensitive traffic light using fuzzy neural network

Fascinating facts about the invention of the Traffic Light by William L. Potts in 1920

How does a traffic light detect that a car has pulled up and is waiting for the light to change?

What The Singularity Will Really Be Like

2007-10-03T09:12:00.000-07:00

The point at which humanity is able to create an advanced AI that is more or less equal in complexity to our own fills us with both elation at the possibilities and dread at the uncertainties, as I have noted here. The Technological Singularity essentially says that as this level of advanced AI approaches that of one human intelligence, and when instructed to improve upon itself, that will lead to an open-loop, runaway intelligence explosion that will leave, as one reputable source puts it, “humanity far behind.” This common conception of being "left far behind" is due to the equally common belief that the nature of improvement of advanced AI intelligence will be upward, into greater and greater strategic planning and implied world dominance, as opposed to downward, into techniques that will help them be aware of their environment and interact with humans more effectively. The case in this blog is that it will be focused down, because that is the direction of maximum value add to human consumers and businesses.

There are Singularity conferences, and futurist and technology forums hum with what The Singularity will mean for mankind. These discussions are invariably non-specific, and center around either vague elation at a benevolent super-AI taking care of our every need, sort of a God-figure, or vague dread at a malevolent AI, that would enslave or exterminate mankind. With all that discussion, however, there is little exploration of how realistic the Singularity concept actually is, or what a real Singularity would look like on the real planet Earth.

It is important to remember that the Singularity is not an empirically derived extrapolation of current trends; it is a science-fiction concept, developed by Vernor Vinge and later appropriated by Ray Kurzweil, who in typical fashion took an armchair speculation and said, well, now it's real, now it's really going to happen, based on the progression of Moore's law primarily.

This entry will engage the Singularity in a specific and constructive way. There are several challenges with the Singularity concept which are consistently evaded by the true believers that I try to submit them to. These are:

A. It makes the implicit assumption that our future selves will simply turn our backs while this technology performs a runaway intelligence improvement loop.

B. It gives no idea what is meant by "greater intelligence".

C. The sacrosanct "unknowability" of the post-Singularity world is based on the implicit but strong assumption that this hyperintelligence will be driven as our human minds are - ie, irrationally. If this hyperintelligence is in fact rationally controlled, this unknowability conceit dissolves, there's very little evidence to support it.

I don't think the Singularity as currently envisioned is likely, for the above and other reasons, but neither can I rule it out. However, we can put some very real and reasonable boundaries around this "unbounded" event, that make the Singularity (or what I call a "steeply-sloped event") far less unknowable in absolute terms.

The perspective of this blog is that any any hyperintelligence “explosion”, should that scenario prove to be realistic, will take a finite amount of time to complete (not vanishingly small), for the following reasons:

1. Unless the hyperintelligence is infinitely great, the time to solve any problem will be finite, not instantaneous.

2. Even if the design, theoretical, and scientific problems can be resolved in an instant by one of these advanced droids, the engineering actualization will still be of finite duration. In other words, unless these droids are capable of the instantaneous transmutation of matter, factory lines will still need to be retooled, etc, to create the more improved design.

3. These will take the form of consumer and/or business products, and people and businesses have finite abilities to absorb new offerings (even in the future).

4. Humans will still be in charge. For the purposes of this unbounded improvement cycle, even assuming maximum autonomy by the advanced AI tech, humans will still at the very least select the feature sets that are improved in this way.

5. The form of the droid intelligence will be such that self-motivated autonomy will be as alien to them as it is to PCs today – regardless of the level of that intelligence, it’s nature is fundamentally alien to these type of id-driven characteristics. So not only will they not be selecting their own feature-sets to improve, they won't be selecting the problems to be solved with the resulting intelligence "product" - humans will.

6. The nature of the improvements to the identified feature sets will not be a computationally bound problem, but one requiring intense interaction between humans and droids. In particular, the deepening sophistication of hyperobservancy and/or super-subtlety skills.

There are a number of reasons to believe that a improvement loop of this kind will still be of a finite rate of advance and time to fulfill. However, to maximize the vividity of this scenario, we will assume that a significantly advanced advanced AI intelligence tech can improve upon previously identified feature sets essentially unaided, and do so quite rapidly.

Therefore, I won’t assume infinite progress, but something very substantial. Say, when a droid intelligence reaches about 1 human intelligence, it goes through a self-improvement cycle from that level to, say, 1 million times greater in a product that can be actualized in a year. Not infinite, but very substantial. The 1M number is somewhat arbitrary, it can be bigger if you like

For a starting point, I will use the AI architecture I have already described. Not only is this the most realistic one, if you read the trades carefully you will see that it is the only kind ever mentioned. This is simply the most straightforward way to achieve hyperintelligence with today’s computer hardware and software infrastructure.

The likely advanced AI arch will initially be strong in the area of rational and logical reasoning, since that is the core strength of today’s computer architectures. In fact, it is hard to get them out of that sweet spot without difficulty.

These early droids will be good enough to do many chores, basic communication, etc. However, they’re lack of id-simulation sophistication will make them limited in their imagination actualization qualities, ie, we will have no doubt that we are hanging with a droid, regardless of how human it may (or may not, initially) appear.

Therefore, this big swath of functionality will be nascent in the earliest droids, and a definite target for improvement.

Now, as I’ve described in the Envisioning the Hyperintelligent Droid article, these sensory and behavioral sophistication will be manifested as the “superpowers” of supersubltely and hyperobservancy. There will undoubtedly be others, but the value of these are so strong that they will be part of the feature profile of these devices.

I didn’t note this in that thread, but its important to say that one of the most valuable uses of hyperobservancy will be in the detection of super-subtle signals. Even more important, the accurate interpretation of these signals, not just noticing them in the first place. This doesn’t just mean that when the owner twitches his eye in a certain way, it means he wants lunch; it also means the correct identification of subtle meanings hidden in even quite dramatic and well-known events.

Hyperobservancy of super-subtle signals, especially the kind communicated by other humans, is much more a core human skill than droid skill. Even so, most of us do that poorly, I would suggest - if you ponder silently how many times you have misread someone or something, you may concur. So droid tech has quite a challenge cut out for it. It must not only be able to detect these signals, but accurately interpret and act on them correctly, almost all of the time – say, eventually with a success rate above 99%. As I noted in the droid thread, that in effect forms an infinite sink for HI multiples.

I’ll bet you can see where I’m going with this. I will assume that even if this putative, largely unsupervised intelligence self-improvement explosion were aimed at this problem (the one thing we humans get to do in this scenario, name the feature to be improved) and set off with a cycle of progress equal to the force of a nuclear explosion, the main effect would be to rapidly improve these 2 skills, along with perhaps others I haven’t named yet.

And yet, what is the effect of rapidly improving these skills? It makes them even more compatible with, complementary to humans.

In other words, the hyperintelligence explosion will not leave humanity “far behind”, rapidly diminishing specks in the rear view mirror of droid autonomy. (The droids lifting their shades slightly, to smirk at their stranded creators, while we frantically wave our arms for them to come back with our car.)
It will only make them more compatible, more complementary with us, faster.

So even in this most unknowable of all unknowables of some future models, the intelligence explosion, does not leave us behind but draws us closer together, using the architecture described in this blog. And this architecture is simply the one that will be built from the starting point of the current computer hardware and software industry.

This architecture is the one being realized, and therefore the scenario above is the most likely result of any intelligence explosion.

Envisioning the Hyperintelligent Droid

2007-09-25T23:42:00.000-07:00

How might a product that is smarter than a human being in one or more ways evince that intelligence? What form factor would be optimal for most consumer applications? What useful "powers" might these droids possess?

As I noted in my "What AI will really be like" thread, droid intelligence will take a different enough form that comparing them to human intelligence will be apples-to-oranges, almost certainly involving a large number of arcane metrics to approach anything accurate. Really, it may take decades to even realize that a hyperintelligent, or "more intelligent than human" droid has been developed.

The only evidence-based way to approach advanced AI technologies is to treat them in terms of a manufactured product. This does not mean that the product cycle scenario is absolutely true, but it is the most probable if for no other reason it is the only kind that has ever happened. Advanced technologies are created to be purchased by consumers and businesses. Otherwise, they don't get created.

There is the notable exception of the military, and we could imagine all kinds of scary scenarios with that one. They will do as they are doing now, funding research, but I expect that in this space, as with microprocessors today, they will lag the consumer market once this tech reaches critical mass. And even the military will approach this tech in similar ways as consumers and businesses, bounded survival drive and such. Although they are responsible for pollution and such in the past, even they have never had a tech "get away from them", that started autonomously hurting the citizenry. Even though this is a very special technology, let's keep with the evidence until real risk materializes.

A cautious, evidence-constrained approach lets us imagine actually owning one of these devices, and from there, we can start to understand the feature sets that will make these compelling to consumers and businesses. I will only discuss consumer-oriented products in this thread.

I am in concurrence with one very important tenet of Kurzweil's belief system, that is, that computing power will one day equal and eventually greatly exceed that of a human brain. But to be consistent with typical product cycles, we must envision expressions of this vast intelligence that are consumer-friendly, and are in fact a must have for anyone that can afford one. It absolutely must take this form, or no reasonable predictions of any kind can be made, otherwise they start to stray almost immediately into very creative - and completely unrealistic - speculation.

This may seem philosophically mundane, but get ready for a strange ride. Let’s start slow, take care of the basics to begin to make these devices real. I had originally intended this topic to extend over many threads, but let me introduce this as concisely as possible here.

How do we do get to the droid of the future, the hyperintelligent droid?

The first thing is to clear your mind of all preconceptions. Back away from a 2-hour movie where a metal man like C3-PO seems kind of cool. Your personal droid is going to be with you 24/7, for years on end – the rest of your life, probably. A nelly, clinking droid like C3-PO would get old very quickly; we’d soon be treating it meaner than Han Solo ever did.

Really, what is the main danger to a great customer experience with a product that can walk around, interact with you, and such? It’s not physical danger, conspiratorial designs, or anything like that - we’ve covered that.

The biggest danger will in effect form one of the several thin lines that droids will have to walk with great precision. The biggest danger is annoyance, having our droid annoy us. Human companions of course annoy us, but they are independent people, that is to be expected. But a purchased product does not have carte blanche for this effect on its owner; eliminating any tendency of that kind will be a competitive differentiator for these offerings.

Therefore, this thin line is that the owner can neither intimated by their droid, but also should not feel contempt for it either, which quickly leads to annoyance or worse. So, the droid can't be too subservient or slavish.

What does this mean? Simply put, our droid will have to have our respect. We’ll see that this is necessary for many reasons; several of the ways they will add value to their owner’s life will require that owner’s respect to achieve.

Of course, these droids will do all kinds of chores and such. Not just doing the dishes and mowing the lawn, but when needed, reshingling the roof – it could download the how-to or simply watch a crew do it at another house somewhere. I don't know the economics of these droids, but I would guesstimate about the price of a car. Even so, they should quickly pay for themselves in minimizing the need to call in specialists for various jobs around the house, as is necessary now.

So physical work will be one of their roles, and probably many of the tasks we use computers for now as well, assuming access to an external monitor. However, remember that one of the important trends in future consumer products is imagination actualization, and these droids will have an important role to play there as well. Over time, it will become increasingly important in terms of how droid's intelligence and capabilities are increased by their manufacturers in a competitive market.

This role will be filled in ways that may be obvious, but also in ways I suggest are not. We'll discuss this in much more detail later. Just bear in mind that this is a driver in their feature-set enhancement, as well as simply doing chores and acting as a computer.

The primary directive of these droids will be, as I've said, maximize its owner's weal and happiness. Because it is a consumer product, there are very real limitations to how overtly this droid can fulfill that directive. For example, telling its owner what to do, even if it's for his own good? No, not acceptable, a droid can't do that. The droid must have consulting skills, really - it must steer its owner in the best direction, while at all times having the owner believe its his own idea. This is not a nice to have, it is absolutely critical.

Also, part of the weal maximization mission is to help that owner be the best he can be, in all respects. So the droid will have to be a mentor, able to communicate in the very best way for that particular person. No matter how more intelligent than its owner the droid may be, it will never talk down to him, because that is a manifestation of arrogance, an id-thing. It will also be infinitely patient if that's required, because impatience is also an id-thing.

Over time, the droid's "personality" will mold into a custom fit for its owner's personality, maximizing compatibility while maintaining respect.

Very complex mission, these advanced droids will have. These missions are so complex that they will consume vast multiples of HI. Fulfilling all of its missions with a very high success rate, 99% or more, in fact forms an almost infinite sink for HI multiples, as described in the entry on droid superpowers.

Further Reading:

Rise of the Machines

Hyperprecise Sensory Awareness of the Artificial Mind

2007-09-21T03:44:00.000-07:00

Let's explore how a device powered by an artificial mind would actually behave, what it would actually do. One important difference between AI and HI (human intelligence) is the explicitness of the thought processes. There are many things that require thought but apparently, for human beings, not conscious thought. This probably keeps us from going crazy, the subconscious, implicit nature of these thought processes.

When it comes to advanced AI and droid technology, on the other hand, one thing that it is important to understand, there are all kinds of clues as to how they will think from exploring the current nature of computers.

Let us examine first the nature of sensory inputs and awareness of the world in general, the differences there between biological and artificial minds. Many human translations are in fuzzy terms, some amazingly precise, such as another human face, most not, such as distances, shades of color, illumination intensity, etc.

For example, if you look at a tree from across the street, how tall is that tree? How far away is it? A human might say, looks like its about 40 feet tall, 100 feet away. However, a hyperintelligent droid would say, from a glimpse no longer than a human's, that the tree is actually 32.5 feet tall, 76.3 feet away. In other words, not fuzzy, but precise measurements.

Keeping droid sensory measurements in their native, precise state will actually be easier than translating this into human-like, fuzzy terms. And also far more useful. Why?

What is really happening here is that the world is being translated not into a fuzzy representation, but a precise model, that is then carried around in that device’s mind (which is, after all, simply an advanced computer) for reference or manipulation as needed.

Take the example of driving a car. Say you are in the desert southwest, driving over a crest on a hill, and can see miles down the road. That’s great, nice view, but you're not going to take your eyes off the road just because you saw all that road from the crest of the hill.

But, an artificial mind could do the following, if it was driving:

From the top of the same hill, with a glimpse that would seem short to a human, perhaps a second or two, build a 3D model of that scene.

Ignoring for the moment other cars, animals crossing the road, etc, dynamic elements like that. What that AI driver could do, is after that short glimpse, it could drive that entire stretch of road, maybe 10 miles, with its eyes closed, knowing precisely where it is along that stretch of road at all times, knowing how fast it was going at all times.

You could say, don’t open your eyes until the end of the 10 miles. But at 3.5 miles, slow down 10% briefly. At 7.3 miles, speed up 10% briefly, then resume your cruising speed.

And it could do all that, with its eyes closed the entire way.

So, first difference, the world is rendered into a precise internal mental model, as precise as possible, rather than our fuzzy model.

But, mostly this will be because it will be easier to do this, than simulate human ‘fuzzy’ sensory translation processes.

Another example: hearing.

Say a droid has been tasked with developing a talent at playing the piano. Using hyperprecise mental models, they could pick this up quite quickly.

And once achieved, it could be at a concert watching a great pianist playing a most difficult piece. After listening to it once, without ever seeing the sheet music, it could sit down and perfectly play the same number at the piano, even including the great pianist’s personal touches.

It could even do something very few humans could ever successfully attempt. Say the concert it was watching involved a well-tuned piano, as one would hope one would find at a concert.

But, the droid is asked to play on a poorly tuned piano. The droid could actually take the nature of the different tuning of this piano into account, and modify the piece appropriately to maximize its resemblance of the concert version on the out of tune piano.

A third example: smell

Humans have a sense of smell that isn’t bad, considering it is not our dominant sense. But a droid could not only have the sensitive nose of a bloodhound, but the analysis capability of a high-precision mass spectrometer.

Same with taste, they will be able to ‘taste’ what we do, but rather than fuzzy impressions of sweet, sour, etc, they will be capable of breaking down those tastes into precise molecular percentages, detailed composition analysis, and store this information for later retrieval, losing none of this detail upon recall.

Why will this computer-centric detailed precision of sense and recall be preferable? Two reasons: it will be easier to do this than to replicate the ‘fuzzy’ thinking of human sensory awareness. Second, there will be immense value in not replicating this fuzzy thinking in the first place.

Hyperprecise sensory awareness enables ultracoordination. Precisely detailed environmental models both enable ultracoordinated manipulation thereof, and also allow an extremely finely detailed feedback loop between what is observed and what is manipulated.

These are just a few examples of what will be the artificial mind's sensory capabilities. I'm not saying that the main purpose of advanced AI is to drive with its eyes closed, or play on poorly tuned pianos. Think not about the literalism of the examples, but the power such interpretation of the world could bring in terms of capabilities that humans could never emulate well (or without risk), but would nevertheless be of great value were it to be available.

There are many examples, here's another one:

Say you are visiting Carlsbad Caverns. You and your droid are on a tour, going deep into the catacombs. Then there's some problem, and all the electricity in the entire cavern system goes out. And no one has a flashlight.

If you've ever been in a cave where they turned off the lights for a moment, it is the blackest, most disorienting darkness there is.

But not to a droid. Even if you are miles deep in the catacombs, it could lead you out, retracing the exact steps used to come in.

This implies not only hyperprecise sensory awareness skills, but an internal compass-like sense of direction. An internal GPS may also be used, but it will be an augmenting skill to its sensory awareness tech. (a GPS system, even one quite precise, would probably not be precise enough to get you out of the catacombs on its own. But as an additional point of ref, internal GPS would undoubtedly be quite valuable in many situations).

All these capabilities do not assume sensory abilities really much different from ours. Although to the extent they will can fit within a hyperrealistically human form factor, senses with increased abilities could be accommodated. Really, its the way the data that comes in is analyzed, that's where the difference is.

We construct models in our brain, but they are mostly fuzzy, imprecise. Except for things like recognizing human faces, those are amazingly precise, honed by evolution to be a core competency of human thinking. This hyperprecise sensory awareness capability will be complementary to humans. Once again, the recurring them of complementarity, not competition.

Where is all the AI, anyway?

2007-09-17T14:15:00.000-07:00

Before we get too excited about the coming of advanced AI, we must ask a serious question - where are even the simple forms in widespread use today?

The thread "What AI will really be like" is the good news – that advanced AI is knowable, and will be non-malevolent. Now, for the less than good news – AI software maturity appear to be nowhere near the level needed to support many of the prognostications in this area. If you predict fantastic advances in 10 years, there should be at least some simple ones now, preferably with robust trends of consumer adoption, so the key predictive tool of "consumer behavior" can be employed to solidify understanding of what form(s) this technology will actually take.

One challenge with much of the treatment of this field is that we go from nothing to the most advanced applications imaginable – forms that seem exactly human, or even exceed human-level intelligence. There are few if any near-term, intermediate manifestations of this technology, only the ultimate culmination of it. If we can’t imagine a rich set of intermediate applications, we may be hard-pressed to make it to this ultimate objective. No other technology has gone from zero to super advanced in this way, so let’s not presume this technology is fundamentally different. Perhaps the opposite, in fact, with many more iterations that fall short of the holy grail of competitive with the human brain, but are nonetheless still quite useful in their own right.

The high-level architecture in the "What AI Will Really Be Like" entry would be more for a system that is intended to interact with and act like a human. I think most of us would consider this to be what AI means – to act and interact like a human with humans.
Although I feel simulated intelligence is a more accurate term for this field, let me use this term in a different way, so things don’t get confusing. I will use simulated intelligence to mean systems that exhibit behavior we might describe as intelligent, but not necessarily in a human way. This will usually, but not necessarily, mean a “simpler” form of intelligence than AI is usually taken to mean, but not necessarily.

How many of us interact with nonhuman systems, computers or otherwise, that we think of as “intelligent? Not functionally rich, intelligent. Even the most advanced, commercially available software, such as Windows Vista, is quite functionally rich – but does anybody, as they use this OS, or any other, think, “you know, this software sure is intelligent”? Honestly, with just about any system I've ever used, that thought hasn’t really crossed my mind, to admire its intelligence and I might wager that the same is true with most everyone else.

It's not really in our nature to admire the intelligence of others, with notable exceptions. If we have trouble doing that with each other, then manufactured products are going to find it even more difficult to have their smarts admired in this way. Because of this, it may prove fruitful to approach this from another direction - not making products "smart", but making them not be "stupid".

When we approach simulated intelligence in this way, there is a lot of insight to be gained. Though few of us have praised the smarts of any of our products, we have certainly cursed at them, been aggravated with them for this or that clueless behavior. There is more to work with when approached from this direction. We can glean a lot more in terms of business requirements, and when we achieve a minimization of stupidity in our consumer products, we have in fact found a way to increase their intelligence.

Let's turn the coin over and examine it in this way. What would it take for us to think of some of our current products, computer or otherwise, as “not stupid” (or at least as, not as stupid as they currently are)? Big question, lots of different answers, but in its simplest form, some criteria might be:
- Asks you a question once, and uses that answer to inform its behavior (at least when you’re using it) thereafter in ways that help reduce our effort to achieve our ends. As just noted above, these can be identified less by thinking of them as intelligent by the presence of this behavior, as stupid and eventually highly irritating in the absence of this behavior. A top of mind example is when you plug in an external disk drive to your computer, up comes the prompt, “what do you want to do, copy the pictures, play the music, etc, or do nothing.” You reply, saying, “do nothing,” and click the box that says, “do this action every time”. Yet, every single time you plug in that drive again, or any other, you have to answer that question again. This is a simple example, and there are already lots of confirmation and preference dialogues in many OSes, but this type of “intelligence” is really to us obvious “lack of intelligence” by its absence, or especially, when it asks, you give it the answer, and it forgets, does it a different way, or otherwise differs from your clearly stated preference. In this perhaps simplest form of intelligence, the system asks you a question, you give it your answer, and they system does it that way for you, every time, in every way that seems reasonable. Occasional reiterations of the question are OK, as long as in most ways we feel like the system "gets it" in terms of our preferences.

- To move on to a higher level of intelligence not in common use today, in combination with asking questions, the system observes your behavior over time, asks more comprehensive questions, and makes conservatively realistic preference deductions of a broader scope from that information. This can still be far from a human-like level of deduction capability. To pick an example familiar to myself, in image processing software, individuals process images in a number of different ways, sharpening, saturation, color, etc, in a way that over time that individual can see similarities in the way that they process similarly pictures with similar characteristics, low-res, high-res, orangey, red, etc. an image processing software suite that could detect these as well, possibility with confirmation from the user, could in effect proactively process large numbers of digital images or movies without the

This higher level of intelligence is more complex, and very rare in currently available systems, to the best of my knowledge. In the image processing example, after a session where you have processed a large number of images in different ways, individually, batch script, etc, at the end of the session, the software asks, remember how you processed images like these? You say yes, and perhaps an additional button, “apply my processing preferences” to an image or images thereafter, and it applies not only its functionality, but in the way you have tended apply it in images with similar characteristics, eventually in a way where after clicking that button, you say, wow, this image is prefect, I don’t need to adjust it any more.”

- Is this behavior intelligent yet? Well, its getting close...in any case, its damn convenient, saves lots of time, and makes the user much more productive, possibly much more.

Clearly, we’re not going to be regularly praising the smarts of any non-human system until they routinely show more impressive powers of deduction that we typically do. I will describe those in another thread, but may require something like the AI architecture in the previous thread. However, well before that there are an exceedingly rich set of potential SI applications that will deserve at least the consideration of implicit intelligence simply because we will not think of them as aggravatingly stupid – in other words, seemingly aware of what we’re doing, and doing something that makes sense to us, aside from a mindless, rote schedule.

It hopefully seems clear that these simple SI applications, while a bridge to more advanced AI type of behaviors, are obviously still conventional computer software and hardware type technologies. Some of the simpler forms we’re familiar with, others we’re surprised or annoyed that they don’t exist, regardless of the true reasonability of that expectation.

This is an extremely cogent point, intelligent behaviors will evolve, probably gradually over the next few decades, in ways that build on the technologies in current use, that we are already familiar with. There will be discontinuities, but they will be the exceptions to the rule that we already live with every day - technologies progress gradually, in ways that are seldom jaw-dropping, but nonetheless quite useful in the long run.

Other than the asking of simple questions, and collecting detailed preferences, each explicitly communicated by the user, hardly any of the others are apparent in any widespread system that I can think of at the moment (give me some examples, if you have, very interested).

So I ask, where’s the AI? We’ve been hearing about AI for decades, and we’ve tried different forms that had limitations of one kind of another – expert systems, for example. I’ve heard of some promising directions in this field based on advances in understanding the human brain, and we’ll see where those go. But again, where is it, in terms of widespread systems?
Where should we be looking for it, in the first place?
Naturally, droids of the kind I will describe will certainly have a strong incentive to have sophisticated, seemingly overtly intelligent, software. This is rather obvious, but this also will be among the most advanced flavors of this type of technology, so we’re looking at the finish line trying to see who wins the race, when the starting line has barely (or even) been crossed yet.

One place I would suggest would seem like a reasonable place to expect to find these early on is in computing operating systems. Ill pick on windows, since I’m the most familiar with tat, but the same comments apply to all the ones I’m aware of.
Why isn’t Vista more intelligent? I'll defer to Microsoft for the real answer, of course, but here are some reasonable attempts to answer that. One answer might be is that it isn’t necessary. That’s possible, but I would suggest unlikely. A more realistic tentative answer might be that there is so much to do in terms of developing and integrating requests from users for what are more straightforward functionality improvements. Also, things like making the underlying software infrastructure more accessible to third party developers, improved handling of graphics, etc.
Doing those things already require massive numbers of brilliant developers, working together in tightly integrated teams to produce exceedingly complex software that is backward compatible, thoroughly tested, etc. each iteration of the OS requires many years of effort by those teams to get the next version out. significant delays are not uncommon, which implies that even this traditional mode of large scale software development is becoming so complex that it is very difficult to estimate the time to complete with much accuracy.
In addition to those very sound reasons, there may another, less obvious one. It is conceivable that the techniques of developing intelligent software behaviors, such as advanced, implicit preference identification and extrapolation, are to some degree orthogonal with the techniques of traditional software developers. OSes versions, like all software versions, have a large amount of momentum, and the software developers for that software have techniques that they are comfortable with, and extend in a predictable way. Adding to the difficulty is that any intelligent behavior, if it requires significantly different developer skill sets, must be smoothly integrated into the much larger body of the functionally-oriented software.

So, there are several possibilities, which apply across the board to just about any software application from any company:
- Few behaviors were requested by the user community that could be described as qualitatively different in terms of intelligent, as opposed to simply more functionally rich.
- Intelligent behaviors were considered, deemed too complex, and deferred
- Intelligent behaviors were considered, attempted, and dropped because they were too complex (I think this happened with vista once or twice, not sure)
- Most user requests were communicated in the form of functional enhancements based on the current, known version (the menu does this, I would like it to do something additionally)
- Intelligent behaviors have been collected, and some kind of AI-supportive infrastructure is being developed or considered, and will be forthcoming at some point.

To some extent some or all of these may be true. However, it is my suspicion that for most software being developed today, neither the users in their requests, nor the development teams in their enhancement processes, are really even thinking in these terms to much extent. In other words, the vast majority of momentum across the entire software industry and almost their entire user base, conceptualize and execute software in terms of functionality enhancements or modifications.
Functionality improvements are of course highly important and exceedingly challenging , I'm not suggesting anyone’s slacking anywhere. However, I would cautiously suggest that, really, very few are even thinking in these terms in the first place, ie, intelligence enhancements, so I'm not sure we really know how valuable or not they would be if carefully selected and well executed.

A very good countering thought is, at some point does the current era of functionality enhancement software sets morph into recognizable "intelligence" incorporation? To some degree this may turn out to be true. But I would suggest not necessarily, in and of itself, without modifying the way software development is considered and executed.

In any case, the more fundamental doubt I would express is that there doesn’t seem to be a truly flexible, adaptable, and powerful AI architecture out there at the moment that would be a good starting point for incorporation into our current portfolio of conventional software apps.

So my answer to the blog titles’ question, "Where is all the AI, anyway?":
At least in terms of widespread applications, its simply not there yet. It has been a long time, 40 years or so, and has evolved through many forms of very specialized utility, but it is still not to a point of general applicability. I suggest that this is due a couple of factors. It is a very, very tough problem, and deserves great respect for that difficulty, and the most obvious application, human-like interaction, is the toughest. And to a lesser but still significant degree, we’re not really thinking in those terms, we think in terms of functionality creation and enhancement. Of course, the development of a general purpose AI architecture will most likely lead to slowly changing attention to intelligent behaviors.

That will be a long process, perhaps taking decades, or maybe just years. Its difficult to estimate, because its hard to say where we really are in terms of this technology, without at least one widespread, commercially available product to study and understand where we are now.

My point is, AI gets some breathless coverage, because it is quite exciting. Some of the current research is more promising than in past decades, based on our improved understanding of the human brain. However, it is important even for an optimist to be open-eyed and bare knuckled, in order to possess an optimism able to withstand the light of objective evidence. We should respect the immense difficulty of this space, and be patient – it may be a while before these kinds of technologies are just around the corner, in terms of being in a store, just around the corner (or on the Internet, you know what I mean – commercially available).

Because it is so tough, it is imperative that research be pointed in the directions most likely to yield promising results. The choices don't differ in their results by a year or two, but perhaps decades.

Further Reading:

Why A.I. Is Brain-Dead, interview with Marvin Minsky

The Singularity Cometh? Or Not?

What Artificial Intelligence (AI) Will Really Be Like

2007-08-28T08:43:00.000-07:00

No matter how intelligent, advanced AI will be purely rationally controlled - and hence knowable, non-threatening, and eminently useful.

In coverage of artificial intelligence technologies whether in paper, movies, TV news, or the net, there is always this anxiety bordering on dread of the projected point when these artificial brains, presumably in a robot of some kind but not necessarily, reach and then eclipse the power of one of our own human brains. Up to that point, the coverage is excitedly optimistic. But at that point and after, it takes the tone of, we’d better be afraid, perhaps really afraid. Almost all of the coverage has either this tone of quiet dread, or remains optimistic, but with no real idea of how this superintelligent technology will actually be used in the future. The possibilities are endless, but it's almost like, they'll be the smart ones, we can't possibly imagine how they'll actually be used from our perspective here in the present.

Respectfully, I disagree entirely - these droids and the uses to which they will be put are quite knowable, because we humans will be manufacturing them within constraints, legal and otherwise, that we would recognize today.

The future will be different, but not entirely different in every single way. Corporations aren't going to turn against consumers with malevolent technology, and much of this thread will show that the droids won't get there by themselves.

Have confidence in our future selves, we are not going to lose control of our products in this way. It's funny to say that, because not only is there little risk of our products getting away from us, to get them just to their intended design behaviors will be an immense undertaking, making Vista look like DOS - or a simple "Hello, World" program. We won't have to monitor them to make sure they don't get out of hand, that's the movies. We will want them to help. In fact, some of these techs may positively require their significant help in order to be achieved - they could be too tough for humans alone. I say that to hit home the tech complexity, not to slam humans, I'm mostly referring to some of the most advanced droid techs covered later.

This general theme of things getting out of hand once AI tech gets to the human+ level is quite widespread. I just did a Google before I wrote this so that I wouldn't address something already past, but the scary or unknowable Singularity and related concepts are entrenched as common wisdom, I would venture to say. We need to address this, because these chains of perspective are deeply flawed in important ways. In fact, in just about every way, except for the prediction that computing power will some day get as powerful as a human's.

Taken together, these two perspectives represent the vast majority of opinion and coverage on this subject. These will be put to a well-deserved rest in this and following threads. Both these views are incorrect, and are therefore limiting in terms of their predictive value. Looking beyond the Singularity is kind of like saying, the sky is blue because God made it that way - and just waiting for the droids to turn on us isn’t very helpful either. These technologies will neither be spontaneously malevolent, nor are their applications beyond our ken from here in the present. We can't see everything, of course, but by carefully processing the future we can see a great deal more than is currently believed.

In regards to the potential malevolence of advanced AI systems, the thinking generally seems to be that once these devices get a little past 1 human intelligence multiple, they will look at us like the inferior life forms we are, and they will use that intelligence to enslave or kill us, as a short step to taking over the world.

Really what the proponents of that view are saying is that, because they will necessarily have to have “brains” organized very closely to our own to exhibit truly “intelligent” behavior, they will be subject to the same vagaries of intent as our own. But since they’ll be lots more smart, they win. In other words, we fear that they will be like us, because we have a history of using our intelligence aggressively, both between ourselves and with the planet's resources as a whole.

This represents the sharp horns of a most serious dilemma: advanced AI needs to be modeled more or less exactly like our own intelligence in order to behave as humans deem intelligent; however, we understand that our own intelligence is often selfish and unpredictable, so we feel inherently uneasy with replicating these control mechanisms in the intelligence of our advanced consumer products.

This approach is untenable not only because of the vast complexity of creating a droid that is driven as we are (as we will describe below). This will take decades longer than necessary, and the result will be a Pyrrhic victory for humans, because the control mechanisms for ourselves are elusive and ephemeral. To replicate these control mechanisms in a consumer product would be problematic, and perhaps ultimately a mixed bag of pros and cons that at the very least could suboptimize their market success. If I am correct in assuming from the limited evidence available that most advanced AI research dollars are currently going in this direction, then we could be spending billions and losing decades in an ultimately unproductive direction.

I predict that when advanced AI technology is finally consumer-ready it will embody a different approach. That is, it will be more a perception-management engine which is designed to respond to and interact with a given human (usually its owner) in such a way that to that person seem absolutely, realistically human. It does not matter if the droid truly feels emotion, for example, as long as it seems to a human that it does truly feel emotion. In other words, that the emotions are a high-enough fidelity simulation to be indistinguishable from an actual person to the perception of a real person .

This may seem a little vague or confusing, but not to worry - we have scenarios galore to illustrate what is meant by these concepts, in later threads.

It may be that current approaches seem in some ways quixotic in terms of pursuing an advanced AI tech that "really" thinks is because we don't really have a good handle on the business requirements, the detailed understanding of the applications we're designing these for. Things like the Turing test are good checkpoints, but hardly inform the detailed direction in which the research dollars should be putting to best use. Details are important, because when a enough details are accumulated, one can often step back and see a pattern, a cadence, that they take, which can in turn sometimes lead to shortcuts, optimizations, that produce the desired result in a shortened time with the important functionalities intact.

When a technology is too far away in time, it suffers the same effects that distant physical objects do in space, small, indistinct, fuzzy. Visionaries are those instruments, futurists provide the focus on these distant lands. If that land is going to be a real one, those visionaries need to have hard hats, with feet firmly on the ground, because much of the future is nuts and bolts, like today. Let's put on a hard hat to address this problem, this most central core of almost all interesting advanced future technologies.

Really, an architecture that seems exactly human is as good as one that is truly human, and if that architecture is more stable and predictable, it is better. If that architecture also makes it more straightforward to incorporate greater than human intelligence in ways that are valuable but nonthreatening, then that architecture could be considered superior.

Droids will eventually have everything they need to take over the world, save one – the motivation. The ambition, the will to power, the ability to feel contempt, hatred, or any other emotion, for that matter, good or bad. Without this, their other powers are not threatening at all. They will be able to simulate emotions, but not be controlled by them – a profoundly critical difference, of the first magnitude in importance. Without these emotions in the driver's seat, they will be about as likely to exhibit truly malevolent behavior as a PC today, seriously, no matter how smart they are. Much of this thread will be devoted to supporting this statement.

It's time to be fair to ourselves and acknowledge that the nature of emotions and how they affect our behavior is of monumental complexity, in absolute terms – just because we don’t think we’re thinking about our emotions does not mean they don’t require vast computational resources, both in our own brains and any man-made system. If for no other reason, their great complexity means that there is almost a nil probability of their spontaneous, unintended appearance in a droid or related consumer product of any kind. The main source of unintended behaviors today in computers are software bugs, and bugs create problems, occasionally even make your computer freeze up, but they don’t exhibit highly coherent, complex behaviors. That’s why it’s called a bug, usually localized in effect, very rarely if ever coherently working with another bug to produce a substantively different software functionality.

The nature of emotions and their control mechanisms are so complex that I doubt science understands them enough to provide a detailed description, much less the conceptual framework for replicating our emotion drivers in a manufactured product. Remember, scientific knowledge leads engineering knowledge, sometimes by very substantial timeframes; and if our scientific knowledge is still tackling the basic how do emotions work, how do they control us, then it will be reasonable to expect a very long wait for droids driven in this way.

On the other hand, with the architecture suggested in this blog, emotions are less critical instruments of behavioral control as they are displays for the benefit of its owner. What proportion of whatever id-like behavior is simulated will be in response to the cues from its owner - so the deepest mysteries of emotion and the id don't have to be really solved, just solved enough to make them successful consumer offerings.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting that this architecture will be easy - it will still take decades to realize. However, it will be realizable in a way that an emotion-driven droid will not, for the forseeable future.

From studying present and past technologies the lesson is abundantly clear: you don’t get something for nothing – complex and unintended behaviors do not appear spontaneously in a human built system, no matter how advanced the technology gets. Any desired system behavior requires work, usually a lot of work, by lots of smart people who have no reason to design a malevolent product, and every reason not to.

You don’t get something for nothing - that would fall into the “we should be so lucky” category. This kind of spontaneous creation of new and unexpected behaviors in technology is almost like believing in magic, and spontaneous creation of highly complex system characteristics are about as likely as real magic – they simply don’t happen, and are not likely to happen, even in the far future and with incredibly more advanced technologies. Not only will that fact remain intact, it could deepen considerably because of the much greater complexity of those systems. We seem to think that spontaneous, complex behaviors are more likely in a more complex system, but actually the reverse is true – they are even less likely, because the spontaneous behavior would have to coherently and significantly affect even more intricately interconnected systems in more and more improbable ways.

The malevolence concern is so extremely implausible that the onus is really on those who claim it could happen, and exactly how if so. If a solid, detailed, logically consistent case can not be made, then we must acknowledge that this is a fear unsupported by any real evidence, and wisely set it aside for the time being, until actual evidence supporting that belief does surface. Until then, it's magical behavior and therefore not useful for predicting the future.

In any case, I predict that the concerns about AI systems turning malignant will evaporate almost as soon as real products are introduced. Much of the anxiety is simply because we don’t have experience with those advanced AI products. If we look at the most formidable computing machines today, supercomputers, they are amazingly fast and powerful, but we don’t consider them likely to spontaneously develop motivations and take over the world – at least I haven’t seen serious concerns of that nature recently.

Far from being malevolent, the exact opposite will be true: advanced AI systems built in the future, even those with vast multiples of human intelligence, will by their very nature and architecture not be competitive with human intelligence, but amazingly complementary. The PC today has that role, and these future techs will feel complementary in the same sort of way, but orders of magnitude more sophisticated. These devices will provide immense value to us, into the far future.

To go further, we need to explore the nature of intelligence more clearly. In particular, let's see if the widely accepted belief that any advanced artificial intelligence must be architected just like ours holds water or not.

Intelligence is a very interesting topic.

I don’t believe this almost universal conception is correct, and completely disagree with Kurzweil and others that these systems will require an organization essentially identical to our own brain. In fact, it will be almost completely the opposite, and it turns out that the type of intelligence exhibited is not threatening and even quite complementary to humans, amazingly so in fact.

So, we have 3 intelligence subsystems, id, superego, and rational, to work with. What mix of the 3 does an optimal AI system require? For example, a droid that must interact smoothly and effectively with one or more people, while executing many other tasks as well. I will devote a thread to explaining in detail how and why, but for now accept that the optimal mixture of the 3 will be to make the rational engine as the true control center, with id-interpretive and id-simulation engines, which are used as necessary to convince humans of their naturalness, or humanness. Their emotions are purely for our consumption, they don't control the droid's behavior at all. The rational control center is orchestrating the simulated emotions, and will be completely in control at all times.

This is an important distinction from almost all efforts I hear of today in terms of ultimate objective: current approaches are seeking to have the "emotions" of these droids actually run things in the droid's behavior and actions. This is a far more complex, inherently unstable, and ultimately unnecessary holy grail to try to attain.

Think about it. These are consumer products, we are not intentionally creating a new, autonomous lifeform for its benefit. We are not God, we are consumers, and we want a creation that is as much tuned to what we want as any technology developed today. Remember, these people will be real people, think about what you would do if the products were available - what would you want? This blog will describe a fair attempt at answering this and many other questions, discarding the future's halo and just walking around in it like the place it is, our place now, but with a little more treadware on it. Probably one or two pretty bad things might happen in the next 100 years, but in the big scheme, probably not stop man's trajectory of progress. Lots, lots more knowledge, both scientific and engineering. At some point, the knowledge itself becomes difficult to dislodge, so it would take a pretty big calamity to come near stopping or even significantly slowing that juggernaut.

Despite our amazing knowledge gained, we must acknowledge that these are very tough problems. Emulating the human brain - the most complex object in the universe, that we know of - pretty big boots to fill. Let's attack this as consumers rather than semi-Gods and do it right, pragmatically - 100 years seems like a long time, but it is nothing. The eons stretch ahead, and for our civilization to weather those eons, we'll need to get sustainable very quickly, and these technologies should provide immensely powerful tools to help us get those equally big challenges under control.

This brain will be a synthetic creation (at least for quite a while), an immensely advanced version of a microprocessor computer system today. Our current systems are very challenging to make, but once made, there is no evidence that any computer circuitry has ever rearranged itself in spontaneous ways. To proactively address some concerns out there like, "well, the id-simulators might take over, then you're in trouble again" - trying to get that exciting malevolence back into the picture, but please refrain - there is absolutely no reason to believe that the probability of this occurring is anything but vanishgly small.

The potential for malevolence in our droids is kind of attractive in weird ways -sexy, dangerous. But there is not the slightest support for fears of this kind, so even though they seem a little less cool because they won't get medieval on you, once you set that preconception aside much progress can be made in divining the amazing value proposition these consumer products will provide.

The advanced AI/droid brain will be much advanced, but should be able to leverage the chip and software industries infrastructure of today fairly well. It will be like a super-PC, very different but alike in one important way: its degree of emotion in terms of the decisions it makes and actions it performs. Our current computer systems do not seem to be getting more emotional as a parameter to consider in their design and production.

Superego-type simulators may be needed as well in some form, also primarily for our benefit. Consider their superego to be the legal code that its owner is operating under, customized for locale. This is for its owner's interest almost entirely: to keep its owner and itself out of legal trouble, because being in jail means that owner's weal is way down. A droid convicted or implicated in any legal trouble could mean big problems for its manufacturer, which they will want to avoid as a high priority. The very best way in almost every case to avoid trouble of this kind is to prevent its occurrence in the first place, and most likely will be exclusively applied to social situations, when someone in addition to its owner is involved.

So, a rational control center runs the show, and interacts with id-interpretive and id-simulating learning engines as needed to seem human in character, with the droid's interactions bounded by the human legal code.

It may not be apparent, but this organization is a huge difference from humans, almost as different as it can get. Of central importance is that in the droid brain, the id-simulators aren’t driving the droid’s behavior – they are being used to understand its environment to some degree, especially interpreting the gestures and actions of human beings. It is also being used to simulate id-like responses appropriate to the situation. These behaviors will seem absolutely indistinguishable to us from “real” emotions at some point, but that’s because simulations that are sufficiently sophisticated seem to be real, they suspend our disbelief. That will be the point, to suspend our disbelief with high-fidielity simulations, but generated differently from how our real emotions are.

This difference severely undermines almost all of the worries around rogue systems of this kind. This is because when you think about it, our ids are the source of almost all our bad behaviors. This is primarily due to the fact that it developed in a time far before civilization, in a more rough and tumble world. Many of these “primitive” motivations are incompatible with civilization, or at least must be repressed more of the time. Droids will be designed and built with primary directives that are as important to them as our survive and sex drives are for us. However, these will be different in ways that will are non-threatening to and much more compatible with human beings than we often are among ourselves.

For example, our id-driver of survive and thrive is unbounded. This is especially true for the survival instinct – it is usually absolute, and we will react as vigorously to a friend trying to kill us as a stranger. There are exceptions of course, such as a hero giving his life to save others, or a parent giving his life to save his child. These are exceptions to what is generally a very powerful, in effect absolute, will. In droids and other AI systems, this survival instinct, instead of being absolute, will be carefully bounded by hardware and software to be appropriate to its design purpse. That is, it might resist being turned off by a stranger, but be fine with being turned off by its owner, for example. A more extreme example might be a battle droid that is a fierce killing machine on the battlefield, but docile as a kitten when being turned off by its field commander.

The idea of a bounded or limited survival drive seems strange to us, but that’s only because we don’t have that. We think of it as part of intelligence overall, but that isn’t correct either – it is far more basic than intelligence, a core component of biological creatures competing with each other and many other creatures in a complex, violent world. However, there is absolutely no reason to believe that a technological system of this kind could not be developed as easily as one with absolute survival drivers, like humans do. In fact, for droids, when engineering design decisions are made for these devices, a bounded survival driver will be far more preferable in almost all cases I can think of. This is another key difference that I suggest delivers a major body blow to fears of rogue AI systems. Carefully bounded in essence means carefully controlled. It may seem that the line between bounded and absolute survival is thin, and that a droid could switch from one to the other unpredictably. To the extent that this ever seems to happen to any degree, this will be a bug, not a spontaneous, magical behavior. This is a good thing – bugs are time-consuming to find and eliminate, BUT they do not generally in isolation or combined with other bugs produce highly coherent, complex behaviors. In others words, a bug isn’t going to produce a robot that suddenly has true emotions, which would be required to do things like take over the world.

The second big id-driver of sexual procreation for humans will be replaced by design in droids by something like “maximize my owner’s weal and happiness”. This completely selfless driver seems strange to us, but that’s only because we don’t have that, at least as an all-consuming motivation. But, again, there is absolutely no reason to believe this driver cannot be designed and manufactured in a system of this kind. The drive for sex is not a basic ingredient of intelligence – it is to fill this need that much of our intelligence has been organized by the demands of biological evolution. And of course, lots of other animals have this need as well, whether or not we consider them intelligent.

So, the advanced AI systems controlling rational-core engine will collect data, passing appropriate information to its id-interpretive engine, and responding with a mixture of rational feedback, mixed with id-like simulations of human behavior as appropriate.

At some point we’ll be able to interact with a droid or other AI system of this kind, and it will behave exactly like a real human being – to the extent that we as humans can actually suspend our disbelief that they are not. They may talk, respond, laugh, whatever, like real human beings, but they are totally different inside. Remember, its all pretend, it’s all a simulation. In fact, I think that “simulated intelligence” is a much better moniker for this field. It's less threatening, and more accurate in terms of what’s actually going on.

In addition to the above, there are additional reasons that this AI architecture will be preferable to one more closely modeled on our human brain. The biggest one is market efficiency. I predict it will prove far easier to build a rational-driver brain than an artificial brain that is truly id-driven while being also stable and predictable. Our id is a deep and mysterious place, filled with lots of things that could be hard to justify in a manufactured product.

Although it will still be a huge undertaking, creating a rational-engine driven AI brain with id-interpretive and id-simulating components will be a far easier and straightforward effort than one that is id-driven. The comparison of the two efforts may warrant the Vista-DOS comparison again - it would be much harder to drive a droid with emotions, and more risky, than the rational-centric architecture described here.

So multiple forces – stability, cost, as well as performing all the functionality required – strongly suggest this will be some flavor of the preferred AI architecture for the majority of advanced AI systems. The relative importance of each may vary, and as we’ll discuss, things like the id-interpretive engine may grow quite large in later models in order to detect and interpret subtler and subtler human signals. Regardless of the relative size or importance any of these components attains, these will still be logical, rational-engine driven. We think we are rational driven – these will be rational-driven in a much truer way. To the extent that they can be described as having id-like drivers (which will, by the way, be controlled by the rational engine), those id drivers of “bounded survival” and “maximizing its owners weal” are nonthreatening. And because we’ve seen that highly complex behaviors don’t spontaneously appear, even in systems of this sophistication, there’s really not much to dread in this technology. This also has important implications for the idea that their intelligence can be measured in terms of multiples of human intelligence – that they will get to 1, then 10, and someday immense multiples of human intelligence – in the millions, perhaps, and higher. It goes almost without saying in every other source I’ve seen that a droid with 1M times a human’s intelligence would be as far above us as we are a cockroach, which is why we think that sooner or later, we’re going to be prime targets for squishing by these droids. However, the discussion above reveals the fatal flaw in fears of this kind. The architecture of their mind is so different, that to truly compare their total mental capabilities with our mental capabilities is not apples to apples, but apples to oranges. To make a thorough, reasonably accurate side-by-side comparison would require not one number, like the universally accepted multiple of human intelligence, but hundreds, perhaps thousands, of metrics, many of which we probably aren’t even skilled enough to devise at the moment. Our ids drive our brains, but in ways that are far more elusive to describe thoroughly than their reasoning control centers.

But of course, companies that will make these are not going to try to communicate a large number of comparison metrics to the future’s consumer base. Then as now, they will simplify these into a small number of metrics that help guide buying decisions, but are far from a complete picture.

For example, one metric might be logical deductions per second. It should be clear that this is the sweet spot for this AI architecture, and they will outshine us greatly, in the same way computers today are far faster at processing numbers than a human could ever try. Our computers today are millions of times faster than us at many types of calculation, but those are in ways that we appreciate, that help us, that complement us.

Another potential metric might be a fairer comparison to our own natural strengths, say, emotional cues interpreted per second. I can say with confidence that it will be a long, long time before an AI brain, or any other technology we care to ponder, will be better than we humans at that, that is one of our most basic skills, deep within our id, optimized as an important driver by evolution.

I have no idea which metric or small set of metrics will eventually be used to compare droid and human intelligence. However, if forced to venture a guess, I would say that companies then will do what companies today do - select the metric or metrics which makes their product seem most impressive. This would imply that multiples which stress the droid's natural abilities will be the most commonly used. If this is the case, if for example logical deductions rather than emotional cues are utilized, then my high-multiple being a counterintuitive or misleading metric is even more true. Be that as it may, at some point the complexity of these droid brains will equal and then eventually far exceed the complexity of our own. But this doesn't mean they will be any more potentially malevolent than earlier models, because the same considerations apply almost irrespective of complexity.

Here’s the non-intutive, common wisdom-violating result of comparing two radically different types of intelligence with one or two metrics. It may take 100s, 1000s, or even higher multiples of “human intelligence” as represented in these droids to approach the level of skills at reading cues that a human reads and interacts with another person now instantly. Our “animal,” id brains are in fact immensely powerful and perform impressive feats of computing without even our conscious thought, and what is simple for us will require very advanced AI brains to even approach our skill there.

We don’t think much about these computationally demanding skills that the id performs much of the time, or tend to discount them, but that’s because we can do these without really “thinking” – so we make the deeply incorrect error that they are “easy”, and will be covered by these droids early on, with a few multiples of human intelligence. However, then as now, what is easy for them will be hard for us; what is hard for them, will be easy for us. That is the basic fulcrum of their complementarity to us. Over time, much of their computational investment will be in doing things that are second nature to us.

However, even given these apples-to-oranges, imperfect set of whatever human-to-artificial intelligence metrics are adopted, I will in a later post describe how even truly immense multiples of these metrics, in the millions or higher, of some of these future systems will still have plenty to focus that intelligence in ways that are not competitive, but complementary, used in ways that its individual human owner appreciates deeply, but is not threatened by in any way. Fundamentally, instead of going up, into higher and higher levels of strategic, world-conquering ambition or what-not, these multiples will be focused down, into observing and analyzing more and more subtle signals communicated by its owner, other humans, and its environment in general. As we’ll see, going down is as much if not more computationally demanding than going the other way. And the design and manufacture of these will keep them within their design boundaries, no matter how complex they get, in the same way that even though microprocessors today are rapidly becoming faster and denser, but without a growing suspicion that they are becoming more likely to exhibit truly autonomous, non-bug related motivations. These future droids will be as likely to feel contempt for our human brains as a microprocessor does today.

Malignant robots are prevalent in movies and such, but that it is only because it would be a boring movie without the robots getting out of line in some way, using their spontaneously generated ids in ways that in reality continue to be the sole domain of human being’s capabilities, but completely alien to droids, for a long, long time – even when those droids have giant multiples of human intelligence and are absolutely indistinguishable from humans in appearance and behavior.

The fact that our droids won't turn on us doesn't mean this is a utopian future, however. There will be real challenges, but they're not what you think they are. These may be as serious as some of the traditional fears, but of an entirely different nature. They will come from within us, not the droids per se. Wherever we go, humans will lead the way, our will never overthrown by our creations. Those future challenges won't trigger a rush of adrenaline, but something in the pit of your stomach, somewhere between butterflies and a small rock there, as we realize we are heading into things that our current technologies barely hint at.

Further Reading:

Applications of artificial intelligence (Wikipedia)

Bayesian theory in New Scientist

Why Robots Won't Rule the World

AI and Scare Tactics, a Tale of Two Species

Ray Kurzweil On IT And The Future of Technology

Searching for Intelligence in Edinburgh
Artificial Intelligence celebrates new advances (Aug 10, 2005)

The Id, Ego, and Superego

Sigmund Freud, Id, Ego, Superego, Biography

Dictionary: superego

Origins of Values

Imagination Actualization in the Noisy Future

2007-08-28T08:32:00.000-07:00

Description of the key assumptions underlying the nature of the future, particularly from the individual consumer standpoint.

I have described the trends that will inform the future, and that frame and bound the predictions made throughout this blog; but to determine a refined clarity as to their specifics, a couple of cogent observations about the future are key. First, it will be noisier, in terms of sales messages, spam, and myriad other often unwanted bombardments from anywhere and everywhere, much noisier than today even. To escape this attention-eating noise, the nesting trend of today will strengthen, perhaps substantially.

In addition, traditional forms of home entertainment, such as TV, will still be around in some presumably more advanced form, but they will be getting tired. True on-demand programming will help, but only so far. Unfortunately, the promise of thousands of TV channels will not help much either. I have 300 or something channels now on cable, and spend much of time clicking through them, and say a "kumbaya" if I find one show worth watching. More channels means that a less rapidly growing advertising budget by companies is sliced thinner and thinner. Since original programming is expensive, with a thinner ad budget the temptation to show reruns is large, and even what original programming remains is of dimished quality, on average. This trend will become worse, maybe not tremendously worse, but in any case there is little reason to believe that it will improve markedly.

The real problem with TV programming, and even things like gaming, are that you are living in someone else's imagination, not your own. These traditional forms of entertainment will definitely still be around, and maybe a few or several forms we haven't thought of yet, but they will not be enough to satisfyingly soak up the free time of millions of consumers as much as the technologies following the trend I will describe next.

Given that we’ll be spending as much time in the home or more in a noisier world than now, where will we go for fulfillment, to feed the social, emotional, and mental needs that the maddening crowds outside cannot?

To fill this deepening need, in addition to doing useful work, much of the direction in consumer technologies will be in a trend that can be described as “actualizing the imagination” – i.e., helping us make our imagining “real” in the sense of pictures, movies, and at some point synchronized interactions between virtual reality systems and droids, for making what's in our heads stunningly realistic and interactive. People’s exploding repository of digital pictures, high-definition video, etc, will be a key input to these advanced systems for bringing those repositories to life for its owners or other’s enjoyment in dramatic new ways. I will describe these in considerable detail in a later post.

As the world becomes more noisy, we will become more nostalgic as well, to do as we’ve always done, look to a simpler past to bring us calm and quiet retrospection. Bringing the past to life, especially our own past, will be a killer application for advanced AI, droid, virtual reality, and other imagination actualization technologies, the uses limited only to – well, our imagination. That’s a big place that is hidden from the world most of the time, and is only vivid to ourselves in a limited way. A major trend in much of entertainment and visualization technology has this goal as the final objective: to see, hear, and touch artificially generated "realities" in photorealistic detail, generated in near-real time, that is so vivid you don’t have to work to suspend your imagination, it actually suspends your imagination for you.

The final introductory post explores the topic of non-invasive vs. invasive technologies to achieve these ends, and which seems more likely.