Has the technological singularity in 2019 changed since the late 1990s?
As a theoretical concept it has become more recognized. As a potential threat, it is significantly written about and talked about. Because the field of narrow AI is growing and machine learning has found a place in academics and entrepreneurs are investing in the growth of AI, tech leaders have come to the table and voiced their concerns, especially Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and the late Stephen Hawking. The concept of existential risk has taken a central position within the discussions about AI and machine ethicists are prepping their arguments toward a consensus that near-future robots will force us to rethink the exponential advances in the fields of robotics and computer science. Here it is crucial for those leaders in philosophy and ethics to address the concept of what an ethical machine means and the true goal of machine ethics.
I promise you: this post is going to tell a scientifically coherent story that involves all five topics listed in the title. Not one can be omitted.
My story starts with a Zoom talk that the one and only Lenny Susskind delivered for the Simons Institute for Theory of Computing back in May. There followed a panel discussion involving Lenny, Edward Witten, Geoffrey Penington, Umesh Vazirani, and your humble shtetlmaster.
Lenny’s talk led up to a gedankenexperiment involving an observer, Alice, who bravely jumps into a specially-prepared black hole, in order to see the answer to a certain computational problem in her final seconds before being ripped to shreds near the singularity. Drawing on earlier work by Bouland, Fefferman, and Vazirani, Lenny speculated that the computational problem could be exponentially hard even for a (standard) quantum computer. Despite this, Lenny repeatedly insisted—indeed, he asked me again to stress here—that he was not claiming to violate the Quantum Extended Church-Turing Thesis (QECTT), the statement th at all of nature can be efficiently simulated by a standard quantum computer. Instead, he was simply investigating how the QECTT needs to be formulated in order to be a true statement.
The field of Artificial Intelligence was founded in the mid 1950s with the aim of constructing “thinking machines” — that is to say, computer systems with human-like general intelligence. Think of humanoid robots that not only look but act and think with intelligence equal to and ultimately greater than that of human beings. But in the intervening years, the field has drifted far from its ambitious old-fashioned roots.
Dr. Ben Goertzel is an artificial intelligence researcher, CEO and founder of SingularityNET. A project combining artificial intelligence and blockchain to democratize access to artificial intelligence. Ben seeks to fulfil the original ambitions of the field. Ben graduated with a PhD in Mathematics from Temple University in 1990. Ben’s approach to AGI over many decades now has been inspired by many disciplines, but in particular from human cognitive psychology and computer science perspective. To date Ben’s work has been mostly theoretically-driven. Ben thinks that most of the deep learning approaches to AGI today try to model the brain. They may have a loose analogy to human neuroscience but they have not tried to derive the details of an AGI architecture from an overall conception of what a mind is. Ben thinks that what matters for creating human-level (or greater) intelligence is having the right information processing architecture, not the underlying mechanics via which the architecture is implemented.
Ben thinks that there is a certain set of key cognitive processes and interactions that AGI systems must implement explicitly such as; working and long-term memory, deliberative and reactive processing, perc biological systems tend to be messy, complex and integrative; searching for a single “algorithm of general intelligence” is an inappropriate attempt to project the aesthetics of physics or theoretical computer science into a qualitatively different domain.
Panel: Dr. Tim Scarfe, Dr. Yannic Kilcher, Dr. Keith Duggar.
“DEATH DEFANGED Cryonics, Cryothanasia and the Future of Sentience” with David Pearce, Author, Philosopher and well-known TransHumanistThis service will be on ZOOM and YouTube Live Stream only, not in person. Zoom at 6:00 PM Eastern Time. Live Stream at 7:00 PM Eastern Time. Stay after the close of the YouTube streaming for the Zoom After Party until??:00 pm. Enjoy fellowship in the extended discussions with Neal and Immortalists & Friends from Around the World, sharing bold ideas on health, longevity, and technology!(Note: Mr. Pearce was scheduled last month to give a presentation but due to circumstances beyond our control we did not have that presentation. We look forward this month to have David Pearce join us!)David Pearce is the author of 4 major works:“The Hedonistic Imperative”, “The Biointelligence Explosion: How Recursively Self-Improving Organic Robots will Modify their Own Source Code and Bootstrap Our Way to Full-Spectrum Superintelligence”, “Singularity Hypotheses: A Scientific and Philosophical Assessment”, & “Can Biotechnology Abolish Suffering?” The Hedonistic Imperative (1995) advocates the use of biotechnology to abolish suffering throughout the living world. In 1998, he co-founded the World Transhumanist Association (H+) with Nick Bostrom. Transhumanists believe in the use of technology to overcome our biological limitations. Currently, Pearce is a fellow of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, and sits on the futurist advisory board of the Lifeboat Foundation. He is also the director of bioethics of Invincible Wellbeing and is on the advisory boards of the Center on Long-Term Risk, the Organization for the Prevention of Intense Suffering and since 2021 the Qualia Research Institute. Please share this event with someone that you care about. Would you like to make a Donation to Perpetual Life? Your donations help us grow & improve our services. To donate, go to our website http://Perpetual.Life and use the PayPal button at the top right of the page. Thank you for your generous donations, we appreciate it immensely!“Our task is to make nature, the blind force of nature, into an instrument of universal resuscitation and to become a union of immortal beings.“ - Nikolai F. FedorovWe hold faith in the technologies & discoveries of humanity to END AGING and Defeat involuntary Death within our lifetime. Working to Save Lives with Age Reversal Education. ========== Perpetual Life Creed ==========We believe that all of life is sacred and that we have been given this one life to make unlimited. We believe in our Creator’s divine plan for all of humanity to have infinite lifespans in perfect health and eternal joy, rendering death to be optional. By following our Gospel we achieve eternal life creating a heaven here on earth. We follow Nikolai Fyodorov, who taught that the transcendence of the creator will only be solved when humanity in our unified efforts become an instrument of universal resuscitation, when the divine word becomes our divine action. And we follow Arthur C. Clarke, who said “The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible.“And so, we enter each day energized in Spirit and empowered by the words of our prophets to live in joy, serving our creator and all of mankind, Forever and Ever.==========Wishing you Perfect Health and Great Longevity!Perpetual Life, a science-faith based church is open to people of all faiths & belief systems. We are non-denominational & non-judgmental and a central gathering place of Immortalists & Transhumans. What unites us is our common faith, belief and desire in Unlimited Life Spans. We are located in Pompano Beach FL at 950 South Cypress Road.
In this landmark talk, Peter Diamandis shares how we are rapidly heading towards a human-scale transformation, the next evolutionary step into what he calls a “Meta-Intelligence,” a future in which we are all highly connected — brain to brain via the cloud — sharing thoughts, knowledge and actions. He highlights the 4 driving forces as well as the 4 steps that is transforming humanity.
In 2014 Fortune Magazine named Peter Diamandis as one of the World’s 50 Greatest Leaders.
Diamandis He is the Founder & Executive Chairman of the XPRIZE Foundation which leads the world in designing and operating large-scale incentive competitions. He is also the Co-Founder & Exec Chairman of Singularity University, a graduate-level Silicon Valley institution that counsels the world’s leaders on exponentially growing technologies.
As an entrepreneur, Diamandis has started 17 companies. He is the Co-Founder and Vice-Chairman of Human Longevity Inc. (HLI), a genomics and cell therapy-based company focused on extending the healthy human lifespan, and Co-Founder and Co-Chairman of Planetary Resources, a company designing spacecraft to enable the detection and prospecting of asteroid for fuels and precious materials.
Peter Diamandis earned degrees in Molecular Genetics and Aerospace Engineering from the MIT, and holds an M.D. from Harvard Medical School.
This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community.
Nvidia omniverse to predict an alternate future of the world by forecasting productivity with AI, FIFA integrates full body tracking AI to help referees make calls, and new Meta AI translates 200 languages with highest degree of accuracy.
AI News Timestamps: 0:00 Nvidia Omniverse AI Predicts Alternate Future of The World. 3:01 FIFA Uses Full Body Tracking AI 4:05 Meta AI Translates 200 Languages.
Unfortunately my internet link went down in the second Q&A session at the end and the recording cut off. Shame, loads of great information came out about FPGA/ASIC implementations, AI for the VR/AR, C/C++ and a whole load of other riveting and most interesting techie stuff. But thankfully the main part of the talk was recorded.
TALK OVERVIEW This talk is about the realization of the ideas behind the Fractal Brain theory and the unifying theory of life and intelligence discussed in the last Zoom talk, in the form of useful technology. The Startup at the End of Time will be the vehicle for the development and commercialization of a new generation of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) algorithms.
We will show in detail how the theoretical fractal brain/genome ideas lead to a whole new way of doing AI and ML that overcomes most of the central limitations of and problems associated with existing approaches. A compelling feature of this approach is that it is based on how neurons and brains actually work, unlike existing artificial neural networks, which though making sensational headlines are impeded by severe limitations and which are based on an out of date understanding of neurons form about 70 years ago. We hope to convince you that this new approach, really is the path to true AI.
In the last Zoom talk, we discussed a great unifying of scientific ideas relating to life & brain/mind science through the application of the mathematical idea of symmetry. In turn the same symmetry approach leads to a unifying of a mass of ideas relating to computer and information science. There’s been talk in recent years of a ‘master algorithm’ of machine learning and AI. We’ll explain that it goes far deeper than that and show how there exists a way of unifying into a single algorithm, the most important fundamental algorithms in use in the world today, which relate to data compression, databases, search engines and also existing AI/ML. Furthermore and importantly this algorithm is completely fractal or scale invariant. The same algorithm which is able to perform all these functionalities is able to run on a micro-controller unit (MCU), mobile phone, laptop and workstation, going right up to a supercomputer.
The application and utility of this new technology is endless. We will discuss the road map by which the sort of theoretical ideas I’ve been discussing in the Zoom, academic and public talks over the past few years, and which I’ve written about in the Fractal Brain Theory book, will become practical technology. And how the Java/C/C++ code running my workstation and mobile phones will become products and services.
According to Big Bang Theory, About 13.7 billion years ago, our entire universe existed as a singularity. It is really Difficult to imagine, how all the matter in the universe and space itself, existed in a form smaller than a subatomic particle. But here, even more difficult question suddenly arises: What existed before the big bang? Actually it doesn’t make any sense to ask, what happened before the big bang, as it is believed that time itself did not exist before the big bang!!! Space and time both were created after the big bang. It is something like asking, what part of earth is north of the north pole. The north Pole is the most northern point on earth and so there is nowhere north of it. But there is also possibility that something was there before the Big Bang happened According to the “the big Bounce” theory, our universe is the recycled result of another universe, that dies and. collapses in on itself. This collapsing universe would come back to a singularity before bouncing back out. It results in the big bang and a brand-new universe is again created. But there is a problem with the big Bounce theory. Actually according to current observations, our universe is constantly expanding faster than ever before. But the big Bounce theory requires the universe to be contracted so that it can reach at the stage of singularity. Another Possibility is of the parallel universe. According to this theory our universe is not the only Universe that exists. it is one of many universes in the Grand multiverse. According to some scientists it may also be possible, our universe is at the other end of a black hole called a white hole. A White hole has properties just opposite to that of the black hole. In general relativity, a white hole is a hypothetical region of spacetime which cannot be entered from the outside, although matter and light can escape from it. In this sense it is the reverse of a black hole, which can only be entered from the outside from which matter and light cannot escape. Unlike black holes, white holes spew material into space rather than sucking material in. All that we have discussed here, are the possibilities, what existed before the big bang. Actually we don’t really know, what really caused the big bang and what was present before it. Was there no space and time before Big Bang is also a mystery.
Synopsis: The arrival of homo sapiens on Earth amounted to a singularity for its ecosystems, a transition that dramatically changed the distribution and interaction of living species within a relatively short amount of time. Such transitions are not unprecedented during the evolution of life, but machine intelligence represents a new phenomenon: for the first time, there are agents on earth that are not part of the biosphere. Instead of competing for a niche in the ecosystems of living systems, AI might compete with life itself.
How can we understand agency in the context of the cooperation and competition between AI, humans and other organisms?
This talk was part of the ‘Stepping Into the Future‘conference.
Bio: Joscha Bach, Ph.D. is an AI researcher who worked and published about cognitive architectures, mental representation, emotion, social modeling, and multi-agent systems. He earned his Ph.D. in cognitive science from the University of Osnabrück, Germany, and has built computational models of motivated decision making, perception, categorization, and concept-formation. He is especially interested in the philosophy of AI and in the augmentation of the human mind.
Joscha has taught computer science, AI, and cognitive science at the Humboldt-University of Berlin and the Institute for Cognitive Science at Osnabrück.
His book “Principles of Synthetic Intelligence – PSI: An Architecture of Motivated Cognition” (Oxford University Press) is available on amazon.
AI News includes a breakthrough in brain computer interface tech that allows brain to brain communication between two operators, a modular, stackable AI chip for edge computing and consumers, and a spiking neuron array to allow robots to sense size, temperature, and weights when touching objects.
AI News Timestamps: 0:00 BCI Enables Brain-To-Brain Communication. 2:58 Edge Computing Modular AI Chip. 6:10 Robot Touch For Size, Temperature, & Weights.
