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Growing pains. We're like birds shitting in our nests before we're big enough to leave it.

I used to be an environmentalist (more of a sentamentalist, actually), until I started to view humankind's technology and its impact as a natural extention of our evolution.

We'll eventually reach the end of our dirty industrial phase (without killing ourselves), and begin a green nanotech phase where we're not forced to rape resources in the conventional top-down way, because we've got complete control over 100% recyclable matter, and where we can actually reverse all the environmental damage we've done at the molecular level.

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Spam-in-a-can space opera and pure fantasy is still entertaining as long as there's human characters to empathize with, but it's not visionary.

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So build more floating islands instead. 70% of Earth's wet surface area hasn't been claimed.

Okay folks, here's the plan: we live on the island until we perfect space travel and terraforming, then we go grab one of those other planets that no one's using right now.

And here's my plan, Oh Great Leader: we live on the island AS technology continues to advance exponentially anyway, thanks to ~6 billion interconnected minds feeding off each other ("IP" anti-progress be damned), then we move to a self-sufficient, offplanet island as soon as possible in order to minimize the chances of the The Great Filter wiping everyone out. In the unlikely event that planetside humanity doesn't wipe itself out, then tech will continue to advance to Singularity in short order, otherwise, progress will come to a standstill and we'll be spam in space island cans for quite a long while until we screw like rabbits to get our brain-count back up.

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Bring the cyberpower on! The scary thing, though, is how many people still don't have a clue, even though this clue is already running and biting them in their ass. Running robots is a second step. Just think how long ago we were amazed at first Japanese humanoid robots that basically were only capable of standing upright. Give a few more years and we'll have an advanced androids. A few more years and they will be androids with fully functional hands, a few yet more years and they will be capable of performing most manual labour tasks. And voila, in what, 2020 we will have robots capable of doing pretty much everything they could in our sci-fi.

Isn't that amazing? And still, most people think (they don't technically think, because they are not intelligent, but I can't find a better word) that this will never happen, because they can't imagine this really happen, because they are so stuck in the present... And not surprisingly, there are plenty of them here on Slashdot. Some of these idiots are even modded +5.

And of course, they have the same or greater difficulty comprehending ideas of immortality, uploading, advanced nanotech and other transhumanist ideas... What our scientists and engineers have to do to impress them? I don't know.

Do see also recent Exponential Growth an Illusion?: Response to Ilkka Tuomi by Ray Kurzweil

the worst assumption many of us are making is that humans are not themselves computers.
About Kurzweil

Let's try that again:
here it is

I mean, we've seen this kind of crap so often, it is no longer funny, but anyway, I will bite. :)

1) End draws nearer for Moore?s Law - we do not know that and this might even be false. Remember, Moore himself thought that his observation will only be valid for a decade or so. But instead the end of Moore's Law has been constantly postponed for almost half a century now. It might be that, with increased R&D, in 10 years we will expect the end of Moore's Law in 2025. Then the opposite to the article title is true - the end of Moore's Law is always pushed further into the future.
2) Ignoring the stupid and factually incorrect headline, let's turn to the idea itself that this Law will stop working some day. Well, duh. Obviously, if we are talking about transistors on silicon, we can't increase the density infinitely, because every transistor must have at least one atom and we can only pack the atoms so tightly before they start to fuse. :) Of course, any constant (moreso exponential) growth will have to stop. How is that news?
3) Why do we ignore all computing technologies and concentrate on transistors and silicon alone? Like Kurzweil writes, they are just a small part of the big picture. It might very well be possible to make a computer based on the electron tunneling effect, which complicates traditional transistors.

The truth is - it is possible to fit a shitload of computational capacity in a very small volume. As a minimum, we can fit a computer able to run a human-level AI in a cube 10x10x10 cm. And most likely, we will be able to do 5-20 orders of magnitude better. Most likely, not without Intel's help. Computers will not stop becoming much faster, simply because it is fashionable (or rather it was 10 years ago) to bash Moore's Law.

In short, journalists are complete idiots, we are tired from sensationalist bullshit.

It's a funny coincidence that Moore's Law will hit the wall (S-curve actually) at about the same time that nanotechnology is maturing, allowing for the next paradigm in computing to continue our exponential progress.

Molecular manufacturing -- while still 10 to 20 years away -- means that billion-dollar factories won't be needed to manufacture ANYTHING anymore. Everything, from food to clothing to genetically evolved open source 3D chip designs, will be built bottom-up for the same lowcost as growing a potatoe.

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Those that *do* make it past that mass extinction filter (nuclear? bio? nano?), to Singularity, are probably so far advanced as to be unrecognizable and uninterested in us primitive biological ants.

It's a pity humans still have all their eggs in one basket; until we've got self-sustaining offworld populations, we're a ticking time bomb.

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This makes me think about development possibilities for Ray Kurzweil's virtual alter-ego, Ramona.
It seems that /.ers are divided on the issue of whether the poetry produced by the software is any good, but just think what will happen as similar things are developed and refined.

Take a look at Ramona's bio and songs (MP3 format). They are, in the fictional context, her own compositions.
Now, Ray has an avatar that can hold fairly simple conversations with online visitors (and can even, with an IE plug-in, become animated and speak), and a piece of software that can write poetry. Music can be expressed in mathematical terms. How much does anyone want to bet that Kurzweil Labs may be able to develop a "creative AI", one that's able to write its own music and lyrics, and possibly evolve them much as a real musician does?

IMHO, it's just a matter of time until movies like "S1m0ne" become closer to reality. Do you guys/girls/geeks think that the possibility of true artificial intelligence is getting closer?

This makes me think about development possibilities for Ray Kurzweil's virtual alter-ego, Ramona.
It seems that /.ers are divided on the issue of whether the poetry produced by the software is any good, but just think what will happen as similar things are developed and refined.

Take a look at Ramona's bio and songs (MP3 format). They are, in the fictional context, her own compositions.
Now, Ray has an avatar that can hold fairly simple conversations with online visitors (and can even, with an IE plug-in, become animated and speak), and a piece of software that can write poetry. Music can be expressed in mathematical terms. How much does anyone want to bet that Kurzweil Labs may be able to develop a "creative AI", one that's able to write its own music and lyrics, and possibly evolve them much as a real musician does?

IMHO, it's just a matter of time until movies like "S1m0ne" become closer to reality. Do you guys/girls/geeks think that the possibility of true artificial intelligence is getting closer?

This makes me think about development possibilities for Ray Kurzweil's virtual alter-ego, Ramona.
It seems that /.ers are divided on the issue of whether the poetry produced by the software is any good, but just think what will happen as similar things are developed and refined.

Take a look at Ramona's bio and songs (MP3 format). They are, in the fictional context, her own compositions.
Now, Ray has an avatar that can hold fairly simple conversations with online visitors (and can even, with an IE plug-in, become animated and speak), and a piece of software that can write poetry. Music can be expressed in mathematical terms. How much does anyone want to bet that Kurzweil Labs may be able to develop a "creative AI", one that's able to write its own music and lyrics, and possibly evolve them much as a real musician does?

IMHO, it's just a matter of time until movies like "S1m0ne" become closer to reality. Do you guys/girls/geeks think that the possibility of true artificial intelligence is getting closer?

This makes me think about development possibilities for Ray Kurzweil's virtual alter-ego, Ramona.
It seems that /.ers are divided on the issue of whether the poetry produced by the software is any good, but just think what will happen as similar things are developed and refined.

Take a look at Ramona's bio and songs (MP3 format). They are, in the fictional context, her own compositions.
Now, Ray has an avatar that can hold fairly simple conversations with online visitors (and can even, with an IE plug-in, become animated and speak), and a piece of software that can write poetry. Music can be expressed in mathematical terms. How much does anyone want to bet that Kurzweil Labs may be able to develop a "creative AI", one that's able to write its own music and lyrics, and possibly evolve them much as a real musician does?

IMHO, it's just a matter of time until movies like "S1m0ne" become closer to reality. Do you guys/girls/geeks think that the possibility of true artificial intelligence is getting closer?

And it's that same advancing tech that allows for advances in food production, health, etc, which is why society didn't collapse from overpopulation as was the hot prediction in the 70s.

So yes, 12 billion minds are better than 6.

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Humankinds appetite for communication and connectedness will continue to grow, and despite my "Brain-2-Network" interface, I'll still be able to stop and smell the flowers.

Simstim can never replace reality

Never say never, or did you mean to say "I hope it's never possible, because it conflicts with my current belief systems"?

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Robots. One acts as a wheelchair to carry handicapped people around, walking up stairs, etc., while the other plays the flute in a band. Every time I see the useful functions of robots I get worried. I'm a Luddite -- or should I say somewhat self-protective of the human race. I'm not scared of Aibo or the Honda Sapien, they just walk around and look human. But when I see robots replacing human beings, I worry that we're one step closer to obsolesence. We are replaceable by robots which will soon be superior to us in every way. I just hope they don't think like humans, or they will perform ethnic cleansing on us. Will robots have their own Darwinian philosopher advocating survival of the fittest?

I'd better ask Cory Doctorow, or better yet, Ray Kurzweil.

The same program drew with Kramnik last year. It was quite a surprise as we would have expected Deep Fritz to trounce kramnik by now. But, the reason why it did not is discussed here by Ray kurzweil.
Interestingly, the current game is using 4 processors against 8 used in kramnik game.

It is far, far more likely that our exponentionally advancing technology will destroy us before we've had a chance to leave the nest, and transcend to a safer form (non-bio) minus some of our outmoded evolutionary jungle-brain baggage.

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The exponential trend that has gained the greatest public recognition has become known as "Moore's Law." Gordon Moore, one of the inventors of integrated circuits, and then Chairman of Intel, noted in the mid 1970s that we could squeeze twice as many transistors on an integrated circuit every 24 months. Given that the electrons have less distance to travel, the circuits also run twice as fast, providing an overall quadrupling of computational power.

After sixty years of devoted service, Moore's Law will die a dignified death no later than the year 2019. By that time, transistor features will be just a few atoms in width, and the strategy of ever finer photolithography will have run its course. So, will that be the end of the exponential growth of computing?

Don't bet on it.

If we plot the speed (in instructions per second) per $1000 (in constant dollars) of 49 famous calculators and computers spanning the entire twentieth century, we note some interesting observations. Moore's Law Was Not the First, but the Fifth Paradigm To Provide Exponential Growth of Computing

Each time one paradigm runs out of steam, another picks up the pace

It is important to note that Moore's Law of Integrated Circuits was not the first, but the fifth paradigm to provide accelerating price-performance. Computing devices have been consistently multiplying in power (per unit of time) from the mechanical calculating devices used in the 1890 U.S. Census, to Turing's relay-based "Robinson" machine that cracked the Nazi enigma code, to the CBS vacuum tube computer that predicted the election of Eisenhower, to the transistor-based machines used in the first space launches, to the integrated-circuit-based personal computer which I used to dictate (and automatically transcribe) this essay.

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"Moore's Law Was Not the First, but the Fifth Paradigm To Provide Exponential Growth of Computing. Each time one paradigm runs out of steam, another picks up the pace." - Ray Kurzweil.

Diamond will eventually replace silicon, and we haven't even started building dense 3D or 2-1/2D layered chips yet (because we can't build with atomic precision yet).

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Well, we are going to have to change human nature eventually, if we want to survive alongside exponentially advancing technology where any random psychopath will be able to "press The Red Button" with exponentially decreasing effort.

I think humans are basically good when resources are abundant and life is good, but when resources are scarce (artificial or not), then the "selfish gene" goes into overdrive and people get desperate. But there's also that rare minority who have their selfish gene stuck in high gear even though they're already living like [spam]kings, because, hey, more power and more money secures *MY* genes even further, right? Screw the commons. I only care about ME and MY family and MY tribe.

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"However, growth in magnetic memory is not primarily a matter of Moore's law, but includes advances in mechanical and electromagnetic systems."

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"However, growth in magnetic memory is not primarily a matter of Moore's law, but includes advances in mechanical and electromagnetic systems."

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Once a person has been introduced to the inevitability of the evolution of smarter-than-human intelligence, they can no longer claim ignorance, and either accept it or go into denial like most people because the future shock is too much for old belief systems to handle, or too fantastic for bitter cynics who didn't get their promised flying cars.

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Define "near term." Advances in the evolution of all kinds of technology will continue to progress at an exponential pace; so the long-term is closer to the near-term than you would think.

but really, if it can be made to work you aren't going to need a lot of other new, new ideas.

What do you mean "if it can be made to work?" Nature already does it, and "The principles of physics, as far as I can see, do not speak against the possibility of maneuvering things atom by atom." artificially.

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I wish more politicians would grasp just how fast the rate of change is going to increase in the coming decades. Then again, maybe they have? Maybe key governments have taken some "Harry Seldon"-type advisor seriously, but their scared-shitless plan of action was to consolidate their power before they inevitably lose it? (Nah. Too out there.)

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Hey, I just want to "fight the weather" long enough to make it to a different kind of cliff which makes the nation-state irrelevant anyway.

I've pretty much accepted that the world will get much worse before it gets much, much better. The pendulum still hasn't started swinging back toward freedom...

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No, it's not.

All evolutionary progress, including technology, has always increased exponentially. Once you understand this -- and I mean really understand -- then the naturally increasing rate of change is no longer so shocking.

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Also, one final optimistic note: In 20 to 30 years, advanced technology will have completely changed the socio/political/economic climate - beyond recognition.

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Ethernet Timeline

* 10 Megabit Ethernet 1990*
* 100 Megabit Ethernet 1995
* 1 Gigabit Ethernet 1998
* 10 Gigabit Ethernet 2002
* 100 Gigabit Ethernet 2006**
* 1 Terabit Ethernet 2008**
* 10 Terabit Ethernet 2010**

Hmm. I wonder what that looks like when graphed.

What do you know, yet another example of exponential "tripe" in the overall exponential trend toward Singularity. :)

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DIY AI (Do-It-Yourself Artificial Intelligence) is now available to provide AI Minds for these "Executive Secretaries" in a growing list of programming languages:
APL;
JAVA (see code-link #001 :-)
Labview;
Lisp;
Perl;
Python;
Visual Basic (see link #001 :-)

The Technological Singularity of Vernor Vinge is happening right here and now -- all around you.

Please mod up this message as high as it deserves. If you doubt the AI Mind meme, please see
ACM SIGPLAN Notices: Mind.Forth AI paper by Dr. Paul Frenger;
Concept-Fiber Theory of Mind review by Ben Goertzel, Ph.D.

Every Slashdot-reading programmer ought seriously to consider dropping all other activities and joining the AI Revolution adumbrated in this SlashDot article on Executive Secretaries with AI.

True, but as I said, Moore's law is just a specific case of the observed exponential trends in general. Moore's law will "hit the wall" when transistors can't shrink smaller than atoms, and it's at that point that a paradigm shift occurs to keep up the pace. This shift has already occured a few times.

Maybe these diamond-substrate IC's are next? Or quantum computing? Who knows. All I know is that these trends tend to continue.

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Tripe? Where do you get that from? Moore's observation about the exponential growth of transistor count is just a specific case of the more general Law of Accelerating Returns.

Exponential growth isn't tripe-- it's historical trend that hasn't been broken in thousands of years.

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The funny thing (to me at least) is that very few people have fully digested the implications of exponential progress. They're in for a rude awakening over the next couple decades.

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Maybe you're unaware of another, much larger frontier, that you could call "innerspace."

Understandably, most people only know of the human condition and so are bio- and planetary chauvinists. But living like spam in a can really isn't very futuristic once you've opened your eyes to the exponential trends in technological progress, and the coming transhuman condition.

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The sensor nodes themselves weren't as important as how their data was seemlessly networked into everyone's augmented reality.

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Check Kurzweil's web. It talks about the singularity.

Roughly, the singularity is the matter of creating an artificial intelligence superior to ours. Obviosly this superior intelligence would be able to do all the things we are able to do, so it could create even superior intelligences. The result of this would be an ever increasing developement, and the complete change of the world as we know us.

Bill Joy, Sun Microsystems cofounder, argumented in this article that he is scared about the possibility of the singularity making the human race extinct. And well, it could happen. But I would like to tell him and everybody who thinks like him that, if the singularity doesn't take place, we will be extinguish ourselves when terrestial resources are exhausted (very likely) or when a cosmical disaster takes place (sun will expand and shallow earth, 100% guaranteed).

The singularity and his exponential scientific developement would gives us and/or our "singular artificial sons" a significatively better chance of survival.

Thousands of years? Try decades.

Singularity or bust.

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Wow are you an optimist! Two or three decades.

Actually, the two to three decades estimate is conservative given our observed exponential progress.

You're even more optimistic than the Star Trek writers. We will be lucky to have "replicators" in two or three millennia.

You have your replicator types mixed up. Star Trek "replicators" were very advanced energy->mass converters, whereas general purpose molecular manufacturing "assemblers" are much simpler by comparison, since all they do is physically put molecules together from the bottom up.

You might want to learn a bit about the history and principles of real science

I'm not pulling optimistic guestimates out of my ass. You might want to acquaint yourself with The Law of Accelerating Returns (more comprehensive than Gordon Moore's observation) if you want understand why two to three decades is actually a conservative estimate, and not so optimistic afterall.

Maybe your problem is that you're old enough to be bitter about not getting the impractical flying car and meal-in-a-pill that you were promised for The Year 2000 (echo... echo... echo...), while at the same time taking for granted all of the other amazing advances all around you.

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You mean, what's to stop someone from hoarding an unfair share of molecular feedstock (like carbon), living space, or solar energy? Probably a new social contract which says that if you haven't earned enough respect (see: whuffie) then you aren't deserving of a greater than average share (which is more than enough anyway) of the resources collectively owned.

e.g. Great thinkers, designers, and artists who bring joy to millions of people might be deemed worthy of "wasting" an ungodly amount of carbon on a thousand-story diamond palace on prime beachfront property, whereas your average Joe would be content with a five-story porn palace floating in the middle of the ocean, in the clouds, or in orbit. Total assholes might have to make do with a climate controlled 20th century mansion in Antartica.

... ask me in 200 years. With the current rate progress

You need to update your rate of progress. The Law of Accelerating Returns puts this pre-Singularity nanotech well before the middle of this century.

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First of all, this entire discussion is just going to get people all worked up. Emotional responses will drive the flow and so many useless words are going to be written on this topic. It is such a shame. Instead of taking the time to do research and think through this "problem" people will just whip off postings of little value. For being so intelligent, most folks here prefer to complain and whine and groan. As usual, even through feelings are strong, no real analysis will be provided and we'll only hear opinions.

Second, if you think for a moment that this isn't going to continue, you are smoking crack. More and more jobs are going to flow out of the United States, and other countries, to countries where the cost of doing business is lower. Notice that I say "cost of doing business" versus salaries. Listen, this isn't just about jobs and salaries and benefits. Those things are a very small part of this trend. You need to look at the entire picture and you need to think about how organizations are determining costs. It is cheaper for many reasons to move jobs to other countries.

Third, you can bet your ass that the output of folks in China and India is as good as the United States. I have first hand experience that demonstrates that quality is no longer an issue in most cases. That's one data point, sure, but I've heard similar stories from my colleagues and I've seen the reports. One more time: Quality is not an issue. "They" can do "our" work, if that is how you think about things.

Fourth, any and all jobs are up for grabs. Forget about competition from other humans, you also need to be concerned with competition from machines. Machines will outsmart us, and they will take our jobs this century. You can go into nursing, for example, but even face-to-face and touch-n-feel jobs are not as secure as you think they might be. With technology, any job can be eliminated, reduced, or changed. That last point is critical -- jobs and job types change over time.

Fifth, the only "solution" to the "problem" of job loss to other countries / technologies is to stay on top of the game: educate yourself continuously, never stop until you die. This keeps you happy, healthy, and employed. Another helpful hint is to be ultra flexible. In your job, your life, your thinking, your location. Be ready for change, and stay ahead...through education and training. Do whatever it takes to be the best, absolutely the best, at what you do. But, don't just focus on that skill or that area. Educate and adapt. Innovate. Treat yourself like a freakin' miniture company. Write articles, network, build value, sell yourself, remain as mobile as possible, never settle for what you have. Be like David Bowie and think of yourself like a product (Madonna, and other smart entertainers do this also). Are you getting the drift here?

Pffft.

The article is actually quite short sighted. It's like someone from late 19th century predicting that by mid-20th steam-powered machinery will be so common, that it will ruin the horse industry. OMG! All people currently tending horses will become unemployed! What should we do?

I predict this: if a computer-based intelligence reaches the human level, then all todays concerns, including employment at McD will be absolutely irrelevant.

Here is a bit dated article which has A LOT more insight.

Red Mars is ... an 'almost plausible sci-fi' future-history approach about Colonizing and Terraforming Mars.

It's only plausible if you still think that technology is advancing linearly, instead of exponentially, and only if you assume humans will still be stuck in our fragile biological form for a period longer than the centuries it takes to terraform a planet in the first place. So no, IMHO, I think we'll sooner end up ripping Mars apart (oh the humanity!) to make better use of its matter, than wasting space & energy by living on its limited surface area.

(Yeah, I've had a slight problem suspending my disbelief for most SF in recent years :)

I'd much rather see Iain Banks' Culture brought to the screen, though that would be just a tad bit more difficult.

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How about Arthur C. Clarke, who practically invented the idea of communications satellites?
Relevant or not, here are some of his "recent" predictions.

I like the 2004 one about human cloning.
Didn't some crack-pot group claim this last year? (I'm too lazy to google it)

The 'scientists' I mentioned have made real world accomplishments for the future, though.

Healthy discussion. Good points all.

For men, computers are all about their p3nises. Why else would they "log in" to interface? EOF

For men, computers are all about their p3nises. Why else would they "log in" to interface? EOF

For men, computers are all about their p3nises. Why else would they "log in" to interface? EOF

Moore's Law is, according to some (KurzweilAI.net), not only exponential, but the increase is also exponential. So, for all of us that complains about the slowness of technological advances: that will pass!