Beyond Asimov’s Laws

Around the world, thinkers in roboethics have realized the obvious — Asimov’s Laws are useless for creating friendly robots or AIs. A recent PhysOrg press release, “Living Safely with Robots, Beyond Asimov’s Laws”, describes the conclusions of a study published in International Journal of Social Robotics on roboethics. The study was a collaboration between Taiwanese and Japanese scientists.

The points made in the press release are similar to those made by the Singularity Institute’s 2004 publicity project, Three Laws Unsafe, which was released in conjunction with I, Robot, starring Will Smith.

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Singularity University in the Chronicle of Higher Education

Singularity University, which had its first day yesterday, got an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education. I am especially happy to see a mention of the risk of bioengineered viruses in that article, showing that Kurzweil really does care about some risks of technological progress and not just the benefits. I do concur with Wendell Wallach and Colin Allen however, when they claim in Moral Machines that Kurzweil underestimates the risk of Artificial General Intelligence.

The article makes an error in that it says Kurzweil predicts a “singularity” in 2029 rather than 2045. Kurzweil predicts Turing Test-passing AI in 2029, but not a “singularity” (“rupture in the fabric of our understanding) until 2045.

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Michael Jackson’s Brain Rots, Never to Be Preserved

Apparently Michael Jackson was interested in cryonics, but never signed up.

This is sort of sad, because the structure of the brain holds one’s personality and a lifetime of memories. Even if you don’t believe in the potential of future revival, preserving the structure of the brain would still be incredibly interesting, because future analysis could allow us to read memories and other cognitive features. Already, neuroscientists can read basic thoughts via brain scanning.

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IA vs. AI, Again

My work was recently cited by Remi Sussan at the Greek online journal Re-public, in an article “Transhumanism and Hermetism”. The relevant passage says:

Are there any cybermarcionists? We watch them being erased in various currents about “singularity” who suspect that the real birth of transhumanity will occur with the creation of an intelligence, superior to the human being. This superior intelligence could be a mutant human being but for some,[10] the human brain is structurally too defective to allow the passage to a superior level. Only an artificial intelligence, maximized from the beginning, can allow this “singularity”.

The citation, [10], refers to a footnote that says, “See, for example, Michael Anissimov, ”Forecasting Superintelligence: the Technological Singularity”. I want to point out that nowhere in my article do I say that “the human brain is structurally too defective to allow the passage to a superior level”. That claim is completely false. I only say that it seems likely that AI will cross the line into superintelligence before intelligence amplification (IA) does, for …

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Nick Bostrom on Superintelligence in Forbes

Nick Bostrom, SIAI advisor, philosopher at the University of Oxford, and Director of the Future of Humanity Institute, has this to say in Forbes:

Whether abrupt and singular or more gradual and multipolar, the transition from human-level to superintelligence would be of pivotal significance. Superintelligence would be the last invention biological man would ever need to make, since, by definition, it would be much better at inventing than we are. All sorts of theoretically possible technologies could be developed quickly by superintelligence — advanced molecular manufacturing, medical nanotechnology, human-enhancement technologies, uploading, weapons of all kinds, lifelike virtual realities, self-replicating space-colonizing robotic probes and more. It would also be effective at creating plans and strategies, working out philosophical problems, persuading and manipulating.

It is an open question whether the consequences would be for the better or the worse. The potential upside is clearly enormous, but the downside includes existential risk. Humanity’s future might one day depend on the initial conditions we create–in particular, on whether we successfully design the system (e.g., the seed AI’s goal architecture) in such a …

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COSMOS Magazine on Singularity

COSMOS magazine’s current print edition features the Singularity — many of the articles are online.

We’ve gotten to a tipping point of Singularity coverage where it is just ubiquitous. There have been articles in The New York Times, Forbes, Newsweek, and COSMOS, all in the last month. There was also Jamais Cascio’s great article in The Atlantic on intelligence enhancement.

Note how the “Singularity” meme is also eclipsing the transhumanism meme in terms of coverage. Not a dig at transhumanism, just stating an interesting fact. One trying to present transhumanist ideas in the mainstream is likely to be hit with the phrase, “you mean the Singularity?”

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Moral Machines Blog

Wendell Wallach and Colin Allen, authors of Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right From Wrong, a fascinating look at morality in machines, have a blog on the topic that I wasn’t aware of until recently.

You should definitely check out their book. It’s relatively brief and analyzes many important issues around how one might go about building machines with a sense of morality. Wendell made a post where he praised my recent project Preventing Skynet and made a call for closer interaction between two communities in machine morality:

Our friend Michael Anissimov has, together with others, initiated a new blog, “Terminator Salvation: Preventing Skynet: Just say ‘no’ to genocidal artificial intelligence!” We applaud this effort and encourage members of the machine morality, machine ethics, and roboethics community to contribute to the blog. There has been a kind of split into two communities, with only a little cross-over, between those focused around future ethical challenges posed by a possible Singularity and those whose attention is directed at more immediately challenges and the implementation of moral decision …

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