In a display of knowledge that eclipses that displayed by many transhumanists, Khannea Suntzu, a “high-priced and highly-desired call girl” in SecondLife, speaks with Wagner James Au of New World Notes, the most widely read blog on SecondLife. Khannea is apparently fairly well-known, even outside of SL, as has been interviewed or profiled on the popular gaming portal 1 Up, and even the prestigious French publication Le Monde. When she contacted Wagner James Au, it was not to give an interview (which she’s done many times before), but to merely use him as a loudspeaker to talk about the Singularity:

“What does interest me is of an entirely different nature,” she continued. “The fact is, I have a bit obsessed with the idea of a singularity. You may have heard of it. Not everybody believes such a thing may actually happen, but after having read Ray Kurzweil’s The Singularity is Near, I am deeply concerned. In his last two books he talks about this whole singularity business and sketches a prospect that it’ll be actually possible that in the next 10-20 years some part of what we are could be captured in some form of artificial medium. Maybe ‘we’ could be imprinted in a new substrate, effectively copying or transplanting ‘us’ into a new state of existence.

Not sure that we’ll choose to upload our entire bodies and minds by 2020, even if it were possible, but she continues:

“However, in the next 10-20 years there’s gonna be a whole lot of things happening. Starting with better VR and robotics, in the 2020s we’ll have computers that can think, hard AI, nanotechology, genetic therapies and maybe the first affordable life extension therapies. Most people around, maybe even you, have no clue what is gonna happen. By 2020 nearly all low-education jobs in the modern industrial societies can and will be replaced or streamlined by automated systems. You’ll see unemployment numbers in Europe, US and Japan ranging in the 20-30%. By 2025 production costs of all objects you can buy in the stores will be dropping fast because of nanofactory replication. That will create even more unemployment. By 2030 we’ll have actual mind-machine interfaces of some sort. What happens after that, I can’t even begin to speculate. It could all very well lead up to a real singularity, with some kind Artificial Intelligence (whether or not it IS self-aware) improving itself in spectacular increments. By 2050 we may have a world completely alien to the world we live in right now. I don’t know for sure but I expect spectacular things.”

What is she going to do about it?

“These ideas of mine effectively make me a bit of an obsessive,” she allowed, “though hopefully not Cassandra. I can go and circlejerk endlessly in the transhuman scene, but I’ve had enough of that. My primary interest is starting to instill some sort of public awareness, preferably inside SL.

The transhumanist scene (not “transhuman”) is certainly not a circle jerk, because new people are getting involved all the time, and the subjects for discussion are so broad that people exchange new knowledge regularly. I highly doubt that Khannea has even joined a transhumanist mailing list, otherwise she would at least have the “transhumanist” word down, but I’m sure she’s probably skimmed the transhumanism entry on Wikipedia.

So instead of participating in a circle jerk in “transhuman scene”, she’s going to be instilling public awareness in SL… perhaps during some of her call sessions? I don’t know. I always thought it was better to instill public awareness on a website that anyone can find in seconds via Google.

“I’ll be in my 60s in 2030. I have a fair chance of being alive by then, if the world doesnt suffer thermonuclear meltdown before then. If technology indeed does the unprecedented jumping through hoops I think it can, I want in on all that. And my guess is the best way to achieve that is to leave a mark, influence people, create awareness, foment discussion and maybe even political activism. I don’t want my already small chances to experience all this to be halved into the single percent digits. I am convinced that what I do and say, right now, can increase the chances, with whatever modest resources I have, of me seeing some spectacular sights in the next decades - or maybe the next centuries.

Influence people to do what? Be excited that technology will inevitably give us nanofactories, AI, and life extension therapies without any effort on our part? This is “passive singularitarianism”, and it’s quite silly. She also speaks about existential risk (thermonuclear meltdown?) as if it were something that will happen on its own or won’t, and we can’t possibly have any influence over it.

“And yes,” she concluded, referring to the brunette avatar in fetish wear, “Khannea fits a central role in that. In fact, it is my sincere ambition to be her. I think that I have a fair shot of experiencing her, being her, to the best of my ability, before 2040. Maybe even well beyond 2100.”

Good luck! Now that you’re excited about The Singularity is Near, you should definitely take a shot at reading a substantial amount of other transhumanist writing.

In the end, it is my position that the web and real life will give us much greater leverage than SecondLife. If you have something to say, put it in HTML form. If you want to secure large donations for transhumanist projects, work out deals on the phone or in person, because hitting someone up on SL probably won’t take you very far. The comments on the interview show the general cluelessness of the SL poplace when it comes to transhumanism. Perhaps log out of SecondLife and use Google for a while?

New Astroroach podcast.

Also, Anne shares her thoughts on Artificial Intelligence and the Singularity, which she’s just starting to get acquainted with… apparently her initial conception was completely wrong. This strongly shows that it doesn’t really matter how smart you are, if you don’t make a specific effort to get the right idea, you’re practically certain to walk away with the wrong idea.