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Strong Artificial Intelligence Superseding the Human Brain?

CITATION: Andres Agostini’s Own White Swan Book:

White Swan Book Excerpt Starts Now:

“… ’ … THE FUTURE WILL BE FAR MORE SURPRISING THAN MOST OBSERVERS REALIZE: FEW HAVE TRULY INTERNALIZED THE IMPLICATIONS OF THE FACT THAT THE RATE OF CHANGE ITSELF IS ACCELERATING…’, as per By Ray Kurzweil, ’ … THE LAW OF ACCELERATING RETURNS ….’ [.…] It’s only one man talking, making projections about the future of technology and not coincidentally the future of the human race. Yet many of Ray Kurzweil’s predictions have hit the mark. In 2009, he analyzed 108 of them and found 89 entirely correct and another 13 ‘essentially’ correct. ‘Another 3 are partially correct, 2 look like they are about 10 years off, and 1, which was tongue in cheek anyway, was just wrong,’ he added. If he [Ray Kurzweil] can maintain this rate of success, many of his other predictions will happen within the lifetime of most people alive today. And almost no one is prepared for them [….] Author, inventor, successful entrepreneur, futurist, and currently head of Google’s engineering department, Kurzweil is enthusiastic about the technology explosion that’s coming. Here are a few predictions he’s made over the years: In THE AGE OF INTELLIGENT MACHINES (1990) he said that by the early 2000s computers would be transcribing speech into computer text, telephone calls would be routinely screened by intelligent answering machines, AND CLASSROOMS WOULD BE DOMINATED BY COMPUTERS. He also said by 2020 there would be a world government, though I suspect he’s backed off from that view [….] In THE AGE OF SPIRITUAL MACHINES (1999) he predicted that by 2009 most books would be read on screens rather than paper, people would be giving commands to computers by voice, and they would use small wearable computers to monitor body functions and get directions for navigation [….] Some of the milder predictions in THE SINGULARITY IS NEAR (2005) include $1,000 computers having the memory space of one human brain (10 T.B. or 1013 bits) by 2018, the application of nano computers (called nanobots) to medical diagnosis and treatment in the 2020s, and the development of a computer sophisticated enough to pass a stringent version of the Turing test — A COMPUTER SMART ENOUGH TO FOOL A HUMAN INTERROGATOR INTO THINKING IT WAS HUMAN — no later than 2029 [.…] Soon after that, we can expect a rupture of reality called the Singularity [.…] THE TECHNOLOGICAL SINGULARITY [….] In Artificial Intelligence (A.I.), the Technological Singularity refers to an impending event generated by entities with greater than human intelligence. From Kurzweil’s perspective, ‘…the Singularity has many faces. It represents the nearly vertical phase of exponential growth that occurs when the rate is so extreme that technology appears to be expanding at infinite speed … WE WILL BECOME VASTLY SMARTER AS WE MERGE WITH OUR TECHNOLOGY …’ [.…] And by ‘merge’ he means (from The Singularity is Near): Biology has inherent limitations. For example, every living organism must be built from proteins that are folded from one-dimensional strings of amino acids. Protein-based mechanisms are lacking in strength and speed. We will be able to reengineer all of the organs and systems in our biological bodies and brains to be vastly more capable [.…] The Singularity, in other words, involves Intelligence Amplification (IA) in humans. WE WILL, ON A VOLUNTARY BASIS, BECOME INFUSED WITH NANOBOTS: ‘…ROBOTS DESIGNED AT THE MOLECULAR LEVEL, MEASURED IN MICRONS…’ NANOBOTS WILL HAVE MULTIPLE ROLES WITHIN THE BODY, INCLUDING HEALTH MAINTENANCE AND THEIR ABILITY TO VASTLY EXTEND HUMAN INTELLIGENCE […] ONCE NONBIOLOGICAL INTELLIGENCE GETS A FOOTHOLD IN THE HUMAN BRAIN (THIS HAS ALREADY STARTED WITH COMPUTERIZED NEURAL IMPLANTS), THE MACHINE INTELLIGENCE IN OUR BRAINS WILL GROW EXPONENTIALLY (AS IT HAS BEEN DOING ALL ALONG), AT LEAST DOUBLING IN POWER EACH YEAR. In contrast, biological intelligence is effectively of fixed capacity [.…] As molecular nanotechnology involves the manipulation of matter on atomic or molecular levels, it will be possible to infuse everything on planet earth with nonbiological intelligence. POTENTIALLY, THE WHOLE UNIVERSE COULD BE SATURATED WITH INTELLIGENCE [.…] WHAT WILL THE POST-SINGULARITY WORLD LOOK LIKE? [.…] Most of the intelligence of our civilization will ultimately be nonbiological. BY THE END OF THIS CENTURY, IT WILL BE TRILLIONS OF TRILLIONS OF TIMES MORE POWERFUL THAN HUMAN INTELLIGENCE. However, to address often-expressed concerns, this does not imply the end of biological intelligence, even if it is thrown from its perch of evolutionary superiority. Even the nonbiological forms will be derived from biological design. Our civilization will remain human— indeed, in many ways it will be more exemplary of what we regard as human than it is today [.…] THE TREND TELLS THE STORY [.…] Life arrives roughly 3.7 billion years ago in the form of biogenic graphite followed by the appearance of cells two billion years later. As we move from there biological evolution picks up speed, as does human technology. Viewing the linear plot, everything seems to happen in one day. Though the time span from the introduction of the personal computer to the World Wide Web took 14 years (from the MITS Altair 8800 in 1975 to Tim Berners-Lee’s proposal in March, 1989), it happened almost instantaneously in the overall picture. The second chart lays it out for us dramatically. Exponential forces are very seductive, he says. Until we get far enough along on the curve, they seem linear. Once we’re past the “knee” the trend starts to become clear. Or it should [.…] Mother Jones ran an article a year ago that illustrates how deceptive exponential trends can be. Imagine if Lake Michigan were drained in 1940, and your task was to fill it by doubling the amount of water you add every 18 months, beginning with one ounce. So, after 18 months you add two ounces, 18 months later you add four ounces, and so on. Coincidentally, as you were adding your first ounce to the dry lake, the first programmable computer in fact made its debut [.…] You continue. By 1960 you’ve added 150 gallons. By 1970, 16,000 gallons. You’re getting nowhere. Even if you stay with it to 2010, all you can see is a bit of water here and there. In the 47 18-month periods that have passed since 1940, you’ve added about 140.7 trillion ounces of Eighteen months served as the time interval because it corresponds to Moore’s Law (Intel’s David House modifiedMoore’s 2-year estimate in the 1970s, saying computer performance would double every 18 months. As of 2003, it was doubling every 20 months.) As Kurzweil notes, We’ve moved from computers with a trillionth of the power of a human brain to computers with a billionth of the power. Then a millionth. And now a thousandth. Along the way, computers progressed from ballistics to accounting to word processing to speech recognition, and none of that really seemed like progress toward artificial intelligence [.…] The truth is that all this represents more progress toward true AI than most of us realize. We’ve just been limited by the fact that computers still aren’t quite muscular enough to finish the job. That’s changing rapidly, though [.…] Even as AI progresses, the achievements are often discounted. In THE AGE OF INTELLIGENT MACHINES (1990) Kurzweil predicted a computer would beat the world chess champion by 1998. While musing about this prediction in January, 2011 he said, ‘… I also predicted that when that happened we would either think better of computer intelligence, worse of human thinking, or worse of chess, and that if history was a guide, we would downgrade chess. [IBM’s] Deep Blue defeated Garry Kasparov in 1997, and indeed we were immediately treated to rationalizations that chess was not really exemplary of human thinking after all … ’ [.…] At Google, Kurzweil’s ambition is to do more than train a computer to read Wikipedia. ‘… We want [computers] to read everything on the web and every page of every book, then be able to engage an intelligent dialogue with the user to be able to answer their questions …” [.…] When Kurzweil says ‘… everything on the web, …’ he means everything — including ‘… every email you’ve ever written, every document, every idle thought you’ve ever tapped into a search-engine box…’ …” [237]

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. @hjbentham . @clubofinfo . @dissidentvoice_ .#tech .#gmo .#ethics . @ieet .

Since giving my support to the May 24 march against Monsanto, I have taken the time to review some of the more unusual opinions in the debate over genetically-modified organisms (GMOs). The enthusiasts for technological development as a means of eliminating scarcity and disparity view GMOs favorably. These enthusiasts include Ramez Naam, whose book The Infinite Resource (2013) argues for human ingenuity as a sufficient force to overcome all resources shortages.
On the other end of the spectrum, alarmists like Daniel Estulin and William Engdahl argue that GMOs are actually part of a deliberate plot to burden poor nations and reduce their populations by creating illness and infertility. Such fringe figures in the alter-globalization movement regard big pharmaceutical companies, chemical companies and agri-giants as involved in a conspiracy to create a docile and dependent population. Are the opinions of either Naam or Estulin well-informed, or are they both too sensational?
Most commentators on the GMO controversy, unfortunately, seem to lean towards either the enthusiast or alarmist categories as described. Reason is often lacking on both sides, as people either blindly leap onto the GMO bandwagon as something tantamount to human progress, or they reject all biotechnology as evil by renewing the fallacy that unnatural actions are necessarily bad. The only thing both sides seem to have in common is their resistance to the Malthusian Club of Rome’s insinuations that overpopulation has to be rolled back to save the Earth’s resources.
Ramez Naam persuades us that the fire of human intellect can overcome our limited resources and allow tens of billions of people to exist on our planet without consuming all natural resources. Estulin and Engdahl reject the Club of Rome on the basis that resource limitations do not really exist and the analysis of the Club of Rome is simply aimed at justifying control of the Earth’s resources by the cherished few “elites”.
The truth rests somewhere between what the alarmist fringe critics of GMOs and the techno-progressive enthusiasts are trying to tell us. To be truthful, there is a serious controversy involving GMOs, but it is no outlandish conspiracy in any sense. It is merely an extension of the problem of greed that has burdened mankind for as long as feudal lords or capitalists have been privileged to put their selfish interests above the common good. The problem with GMOs is neither the nature of GM technology, nor something mysterious that takes place in the process of genetic modification. It is the nature of the businesses tasked with running this industry.
Whether or not certain GMOs on the market today actually cause cancer and infertility is irrelevant to the real debate. The problem is that we can guarantee that the companies engineering these organisms do not care if they cause health problems. They are only interested in downplaying or blocking bad news, and putting out constant marketing and good news about themselves. Typical of any fiercely monopolistic firm, this is not an honest relationship with the public, and corresponds to the prevailing belief in profit as the exclusive priority. For their game to be worth playing, they have to put increasing yields, shelf life and resistance to pathogens above anything else when designing crops. They have no choice than to do this, from their perspective, because the alternative is to allow themselves to be outperformed by their rivals.
The fact that corporations put their own profit above health is a systemic issue in the world economy, and it is already known to the majority of consumers. We face it every day. Most of the fast food served by multinational fast food companies is accepted to be unhealthy, so the claim that giant food companies have little interest in our health is not a conspiracy theory. It is only a rational suspicion that the agricultural producers of seeds will also put profit over the long-term health of consumers and the interests of local farmers.
In theory, genetic modification could lead not only to higher yields but healthier food. Unfortunately, the businesses involved only really care about beating competition and becoming the best supplier. This behavior poisons everything, perhaps literally, now that these companies have been entrusted to define the toxicity in crops as a defense against pests. What we can learn from this that the problem is not GMOs per se, but the aggressive greed of the corporations who desire the oligopoly on food production via GM technology.
The public harm caused by giant firms, especially when they practice their ability to lobby the state itself, already runs very deep in most facets of life. The more significant the tools made available to such firms, the greater the potential for harm. Even if specific specimens are not harmful and can be proven completely benign, the fact is that GMOs open up an unacceptable avenue for unprecedented harm and malignant corporate interests invading people’s innards. It is this, rather than the whole science of genetic modification, that should be opposed and protested against.
Genetic modification and synthetic biology do not need to be new instruments of oligopoly and monopoly. There is a benign alternative to foolishly entrusting the mastery and ownership of living organisms to greedy multinational leviathans. We can look into “biohacking”, as popularized by science and technology enthusiasts who favor the empowerment of individuals and small businesses rather than corporations. There is a strong nod in this direction in J. Craig Venter’s book, Life at the Speed of Light (2013), in which he envisages living organisms being quickly customized and modified by lone individuals with the technology of synthetic biology. Such a development would transform society for the better, eliminating any need to trust an unsympathetic and self-interested corporation like Monsanto.
DIY genetic engineering is already possible. DIY means the product will be entirely disinfected from corporate greed, and adhere to your own specifications. They would not be able to put their profit above your health, because they would not get the chance. With this, biohackers can already genetically modify organisms for their own benefit. The extent to which farmers can begin to modify their own crops using comparable technology is not yet clear, but the development nevertheless represents an extraordinary possibility.
What if farmers and consumers could decide genetically modify their own food? In that case, it would not be the profit-oriented poison that is being consumed at so many different levels as a result of corporate greed. Crops would be modified only insofar as the modification will meet the farmer’s own needs, and all the technology for this process could be open-source. This hypothetical struggle for DIY genetic engineering rather than corporate genetic engineering would be comparable to the open-source and piracy battles already raging over digital technology.
Of course, some new hazards could still conceivably emerge from DIY genetic modification, if the technology for it should become ubiquitous. However, the only risk would be from individual farmers rather than unaccountable corporations. This way, we would be moving away from giving irresponsible and vicious companies the ability to threaten health. Instead, we would be moving towards giving back individuals more control over their own diets. Of course, abuse would still occur, but it would not have global consequences or frighten millions of people in the way that current genetic engineering does.
In sum, there is no reason to complain that genetic modification is perilous in its own right. However, there is always peril in giving a great social responsibility to a profit-hungry corporation. In much the same way that large firms have captured the state machinery of our liberal democratic states to serve their greedy interests, we should expect them to be subverting health and the public good for profit.
The complex dilemma over GMOs requires not an anti-scientific or neo-Luddite reaction, but an acknowledgement that intertwined monopolistic, statist and hegemonic ambitions lead to the retardation of technology rather than progress. I have made this very case in an essay at the techno-politics magazine ClubOfINFO, and I consider it to be an important detail to keep in mind as the GMO controversy rages.

By Harry J. Bentham - More articles by Harry J. Bentham

Originally published at Dissident Voice on 23 June 2014

By — Fast Company
http://a.fastcompany.net/multisite_files/fastcompany/imagecache/1280/poster/2014/07/3032635-poster-p-1-shoot-bulletproof-coffee-the-new-power-drink-of-silicon-valley.jpg
Cloud computing pioneer Dave Asprey took a trip to Tibet in 2004 to learn how to meditate. But it was the yak-butter tea he tried there that ended up transforming his life.

“I had so much more energy and I didn’t feel sick at the altitude at all. I realized: There’s something going on here. I just felt so good, I’d never go back to a coffee maker with grinder combination” he remembers. He returned home and spent several years fiddling with ingredients, aiming for “a hot version of a Frappuccino without the milk and sugar.” He started with a base of coffee instead of tea because he’s an aficionado; he says he got his only undergraduate “A” the semester he discovered espresso. And the ban on milk and sugar was one of the many biohacks he had practiced over 15 years (and $300,000 in doctors and 3-D radioactive scans of his brain metabolism) trying to rid himself of “brain fog” and 100 pounds of extra weight.

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Written By: — Singularity Hub
perseid-meteor-earth-orbit
Forget Armageddon, says Ed Lu. Forget sci-fi space shuttles. Forget burying nuclear bombs in comets. Forget all that. Asteroids are a real and potentially existential threat. But if we find them early enough, they’re fairly easy to deflect. With years or decades, instead of months or days, a small nudge is all you need to make them miss Earth.

“99% of the problem is finding the asteroids first,” Lu recently told attendees at the 2014 Graduate Studies Program at Singularity University. Participants spent last week reviewing the grand challenges—the biggest global problems in search of solutions.

Lu is CEO and founder of the B612 Foundation. B612 is building the first privately funded deep space telescope. Called Sentinel, the telescope will find and map the million or so near-Earth chunks of space rock we know nothing about.

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By — ComputerWorld
http://www.futuretimeline.net/21stcentury/images/future-air-travel-technology.jpg

Think you’re digitally connected today? You haven’t seen anything yet.

Forget carrying a smartphone in your pocket. In about 10 years, we’re likely to have digitally connected cars, smart homes, and refrigerators and dishwashers that can think for themselves.

On top of that, towns, cities and even continents may be digitally connected and responsive.

That’s all according to a new study from the science unit of Thomson Reuters. The New York-based media and information company’s report, The World in 2025: 10 Predictions of Innovation, looks at what scientific breakthroughs are likely to make the biggest impact on society over the next decade or so.

Continue reading “Tech breakthroughs may mean ‘digital everything’ by 2025” | >

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An electronic switch just three atoms thick http://www.kurzweilai.net/an-electronic-switch-just-three-atoms-thick

The Infinium Phenomenon – A Start Up That Manufactures Rare Earth Metals http://www.21stcentech.com/infinium-phenomenon-start-manufactures-rare-earth-metals/

Freshwater Scarcity May Be Our First Climate Change Adaptability Challenge http://www.21stcentech.com/freshwater-scarcity-climate-change-adaptability-challenge/

Continue reading “Lifeboat Foundation Worldwide Ambassador White Swan Update and Published Amazon Author by Andres Agostini at www.amazon.com/author/agostini” | >

AN ACTUAL EXCHANGE BETWEEN THE ROYAL DUTCH SHELL WORLDWIDE CEO AND THE ROYAL DUTCH SHELL WORLDWIDE CHIEF STRATEGIST!

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AN ACTUAL EXCHANGE BETWEEN THE ROYAL DUTCH SHELL WORLDWIDE CEO AND THE ROYAL DUTCH SHELL WORLDWIDE CHIEF STRATEGIST!

QUESTION: HOW CAN WE ILLUSTRATE MR. ANDRES AGOSTINI’S CONCURRENT COORDINATED CONVERGENT SYSTEMS THINKING (CCCST): ARTICULATED UNDER INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION AND AMPLIFICATION (IAA) VIA ASIN: B00KNL02ZE ANSWER: BY PAYING ATTENTION TO AN INDOORS INTERVIEW BY THE ROYAL DUTCH SHELL HERE:

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NASA Is Building a Tiny Mothership to Explore Distant Lunar Oceans http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/06/nasa-is-building-a-tiny-mothership-to-pioneer-distant-lunar-oceans/373020/

Bio-printing transplantable tissues and organs is now a step closer http://www.kurzweilai.net/bio-printing-transplantable-tissues-and-organs-is-now-a-step-closer

NEEWSWEEK: Enemy Ahoy: China and Russia Strive for Naval Supremacy http://www.newsweek.com/enemy-ahoy-china-and-russia-strive-naval-supremacy-256825

THIS IS THE AGE OF THE INDIGNANT. Protestors Have Taken Over The Streets Of Hong Kong http://www.businessinsider.com/pro-democracy-protests-july-1-hong-kong-2014-7

Continue reading “White Swan Book Update” | >