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I, Nanobot — Bionanotechnology is Coming
Maria Williams writes "Alan H. Goldstein, inventor of the A-PRIZE, and popular science columnist,
says:
Scientists are on the verge of breaking the carbon barrier — creating artificial life and changing forever what it means to be human. And we're not ready...
Nanofabricated animats may be infinitesimally tiny, but their electrons will be exactly the same size as ours — and their effect on human reality will be as immeasurable as the universe. Like an inverted SETI program, humanity must now look inward, constantly scanning technology space for animats, or their progenitors. The first alien life may not come from the stars, but from ourselves." Yes it's an older article, but it's a fairly quiet sunday today.
Long article is LOOOONG
I think this guy may be taking himself a little too seriously:
"So why listen to the voice of one who is not Ishmael, not Cassandra, not even Ralph Nader? Because I can tell you something that no one else can. I can tell you the exact moment when Homo sapiens will cease to exist. And I can tell you how the end will come. I can show you the exact design of the device that will bring us down. I can reveal the blueprint, provide the precise technical specifications."
We broke the carbon barrier back when we discovered fermentation. We changed what it means to be human when we discovered agriculture.
Check out his "NOTES AND REFERENCES". :)
He's referencing his own work (2 of the 5 referenced), and the dates are in 2006 (with a Wired article from 2005).
This seems more like an attempt to get people to buy his newly published book than anything else. And as evidenced in your clip, there's a bit of megalomania there.
He dismisses rather pompously very smart people :
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,due to multitude of specialized mechanisms and systems which allow them to get better access to resources ,better combat external treats , etc .And now this guy says just because we make one artificial new life form it will dominate instantly? -having to fight with all the existing lifeforms ,which became better adapted to current environment over the course of hundreds of millions of years?
;) ) driven by chemistry can overcome combined intelligence of super beings/creators (from this lifeform' point of view) such as the scientists which created it? Everybody remembers from school that bacteria/virus/whatever primitive organisms can potentially cover whole earth in thick layers in record time, this guys seems missed the part why it never happens - conditions around it are never favorable for that to happen , and more primitive organism is - less tools it has to change its conditions to its own liking
,and we become even more proficient at this ,not less so.
,failing to understand that this is the most powerful engine on earth. Not the microorganism , note the insects, nor reptiles, nor mammals, nor anything else out of living realms has comparable power on earth to what our civilization has. Human civilization in the sheer ability to manipulate environment far exceeds anything " natural evolution" created so far .The ultimate power of life is the power to change environment around itself ,power to manipulate matter and energy to its own liking.
,higher level you go you see organisms being able to create those necessary elements out of other elements ,and when you go even higher you start seeing more advance of its kind .Till you come to this bright flash of light ( from evolutionary scale of time point of view ) marking the time when evolution of technology started ,driven by first intelligence capable of doing so (hum
They don't realize what evolution is. They have come to the problem from artificial intelligence, or systems analysis, or mathematics, or astronomy, or aerospace engineering. Folks like Ray Kurzweil, Bill Joy and Eric Drexler have raised some alarms, but they are too dazzled by the complexity and power of human cybersystems, devices and networks to see it coming. They think the power of our tools lies in their ever-increasing complexity -- but they are wrong.
The biotech folks just don't get it either. People like Craig Venter and Leroy Hood are too enthralled with the possibilities inherent in engineering biology to get it
Failing to understand himself the very basics of evolutionary biology - little primitive nano -organisms (viruses, bacteria, single cell organisms) (even artificially created ones) are not as grave dangers as he paints precisely because they are primitive. Those primitive forms of life dominated earth and more complex organisms took over because there are inherent evolutionary benefits of being complex -if it wasn't so more complex forms of life would never evolve
Complex lifeforms such dominated all primitive lifeforms over the course of millions years, due to their inherent capability to adapt better to more varied environment and conditions
That the simple cellular automata (forgive me the pun
This was true for "blind "evolution and will be even more true for human governed one -as we have and advantage over all other lifeforms - we can change its course the way we want with our tools and technologies
He dismisses ave of prominent futurologists for complex human created systems
Primitive life forms can only manipulate what exist around them: at the level of molecular biology everything is simple chemistry -dependent on presence of particular elements:
No, I've not forgotten this, I've simply ignored it because it isn't an actual problem for several reasons.
First, computers have a huge advantage in that once we have one working intelligent system, we can copy its state and have two - or two hundred - or two million - with relative ease. We can't do this with people, nor is there any hint we'll be able to any time soon. This advantage makes it worth more to "educate" one system. It is as if by educating your kid to the level of a PhD, I'd educated your entire town. All of a sudden, your kid becomes very important and worthwhile to educate.
Second, any one computer can be "educated", if you will (have those questions answered) through multiple sources, multiplying the learning speed and dividing the learning time. And this only needs be done once; they're not like people, who keep showing up un-programmed and who must each be laboriously programmed by flipping low level switches, as it were. This is worth doing no matter what it costs, because of point one. Knowledge compilation is ongoing right now; there are several very large projects of this nature.
Third, if one can simply prove that some particular method gives rise to intelligence, market and social factors will converge on the problem and simply up the efficiency until the problem is solved many times over. The only thing we have to have is some kind of result we can demonstrate in a time frame that will convince those who must invest to get those needed resources on line towards solving the problem.
Fourth, parallelism can be applied at multiple levels. Look what Google has done to make search work. An intelligence that resides in 1000 machines is no less intelligent for having done so, if one were to have to apply such broad leverage - and remember, there is no evidence that this is so. We won't know how to ask the question, much less evaluate the answer, until we have a working algorithm.
Fifth, in the "educate" phase, even assuming that intelligent response is running at 360:1, that is not to say that initial education of the first unit will run at that rate. If information is simply put in place (remember, study is a human problem -- computers may not require study at all) it may be that the learning rate is many thousands of times that of a human. You just can't assume that learning equals reasoning. It isn't always the same process, and it certainly isn't the same when simply copying.
Generally, speed does not matter. Results matter. If speed is so poor that results are unobtainable, then speed matters. I don't expect that this is the case based upon the evidence at hand. We work; dogs work; mice work. All demonstrate various levels of intelligence with descending degrees of "hardware" available to them. Computers have huge amounts of capability. I conclude that computers can work too.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
So you believe there is some magical algorithm which, when implemented, is self-aware? The "turing test" obfuscates the issue. It is not intelligent if it is not self-aware. Even if it can give the appearance of responding intelligently.
Other than that loaded word, "magic", absolutely. You represent a case of at least one. I represent another. I simply extend that idea to a different architecture, because I am of the opinion that the architectures have significant equivalence, computationally speaking.
What I don't believe in is some "magic" situation that will not give up its operational methods and modalities in response to a concerted effort to understand it, when the entire problem resides right here in our "back yard", as the human brain certainly does. Postulating that the brain is a magic box with functionality that cannot be replicated is stepping out on a limb that no other comparable intellectual effort we have ever undertaken can justify. The only problems we've been consistently unable to solve are of a type where the information is unavailable to us (eg, the big bang, or whatever happened, or didn't happen.) Even then we do pretty well. But the brain isn't like that. It is right here. In literally billions of instances. We'll figure it out. I have very high confidence this will happen, and that it isn't all that far out in the future.
I have no reason to assume that an Ai would not be self-aware. More to the point, neither do you.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Yes. Humans already show this kind of intelligence can exist; I have no trouble generalizing to other forms from there. Artificial is not a distinction that concerns me in the sense of creating a barrier to possibility.
Agreed. But like most things in the world, "stuff" often happens without any consideration for the cans that get opened. We just have to deal with the issues. Not that I think we'll do very well. There may be attempts to legislate progress out of the loop (as we see with stem cells and cloning, for instance) but I don't see that as being effective, long term. Politicians don't have the control they think they do unless the resources required are so large that they cannot be hidden. Ai is the antithesis of such a project; you can do it at home, disconnected from the net, you could succeed and no one need know until your Ai has been duplicated and distributed a million or more times. Like DVD John's code, any attempts to "control" are doomed to failure before they begin.
In order: They should, they should be able to, religion is mythology/100% bunkum and there are no actual implications whatsoever other than perhaps we're a step closer to getting over it, and free will in the philosophical sense is not a question that has any practical application, so why bother and for that matter, how many people really care? Will Ai's care? Good question. I hope to be able to ask some day. :)
Reality doesn't care if you have a hard time. Things are what they are. No more, no less. We either intelligently play the cards reality deals us, or we buy into illusion / bad metaphor and generate canned responses via someone else's playbook. Each of us has to make that call.
Well, mine aren't; they're meaningful because I deem them so. Likewise, the emotions, dreams and desires of those I care about are meaningful to me for the same reason; I elect to engage them and enjoy that process. All else, to me, is utterly meaningless navel-gazing.
My research is on high performance associative memory. My results have been very pragmatic; no surprises at all for me; things work as I pretty much always thought they worked, and though they may also work in other ways, the path I'm on has been quite productive.
I see no religious problems other than religion itself, which I do see as a huge problem, basically the result of fear, gullibility, and ignorance in various combinations. As far as moral and ethical issues go, we've been really poor at dealing with them among humans; there is no indication we will be any better if or when we introduce (or find, or are found by) other forms of life. Things will get more complicated, more divisive, and we'll make a further muddle of it. In my opinion. As to my "unconfirmed beliefs", that'd be 99% of what I think about in every domain. I've a confidence-based world view, not a conviction based one. So you'll have to be more specific. :)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.