Accelerating Future

Randis Albion: “Golem” Thursday, Jan 14 2010 

images Michael Anissimov 12:22 pm

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5 Responses to “Randis Albion: “Golem””

1. Summerspeaker says:

   January 14, 2010 at 5:06 pm

   Neat. What’s the context for this picture, if any? Does it relate to transhumanism in ways beyond the obvious?

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2. Michael Anissimov says:

   January 15, 2010 at 10:56 am

   What’s the context for this picture, if any?

   None. Sometimes I post pictures that I naturally like and have a vaguely transhumanist flavor. I have tens of thousands of excellent artworks on my HD, so I might as well link some now and then.

   Does it relate to transhumanism in ways beyond the obvious?

   It depends on what relations you’re thinking of. A lot of the excitement of art is in the ambiguity of its interpretation. This image invokes several dozen connotations.

   Reply
3. Panda says:

   January 15, 2010 at 1:27 pm

   Despite the magical entertainment, outside the window, clothes are drying on a line… A mathematics book is defaced with 2+2=?. Instead of holding a book on science, the boy is preoccupied with an ancient manuscript of occultism… and stuck in a wheelchair. Near the left of the window, we can see Chinese characters that are rather blurry on two different banners. I can make out “alcohol” on one of them. The title “summertime” is upon a pamphlet or vinyl on the floor- perhaps a reference to old jazz. The cartoon also looks old…

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4. Fredrik Bränström says:

   January 15, 2010 at 5:02 pm

   Michael, I would absolutely love to be able to peek at that library… Any chance you could make it available online, or just part of it?

   Here’s another one I found earlier today: http://www.quantumcathedral.com/pl_images/TRANSHUMAN-HAND999.jpg (Don’t know of its origin. It is also used on http://www.botox4thebrain.com/?p=479)

   Reply
5. Panda says:

   January 17, 2010 at 12:32 pm

   Michael, can I request a blog post? :)

   I would like to see you write about Hanson’s “Economics of the Singularity”. [1] In 2008, you described it as “Humans could find themselves out of work if machines of merely human intellect could be made cheap enough.” [2] Part of Hanson’s speculative scenario is that humans would select for docile AI that would willingly work for mere machine-subsistence levels- thus leading (by inference) to a low-utility future for the majority of sentients. I want to know if you think too-docile AI could itself be a problem and what implications that has for ‘friendly’ AI.

   Dr. Hanson wrote:

   “The population of smart machines would explode even faster than the economy. So even though total wealth would increase very rapidly, wealth per machine would fall rapidly. If these smart machines are considered ”people,” then most people would be machines, and per-person wealth and wages would quickly fall to machine-subsistence levels, which would be far below human-subsistence levels. Salaries would probably be just high enough to cover the rent on a tiny body, a few cubic centimeters of space, the odd spare part, a few watts of energy and heat dumping, and a Net connection.”

   [1] http://spectrum.ieee.org/robotics/robotics-software/economics-of-the-singularity/0

   [2] http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/michael/blog/2008/05/special-report-on-the-singularity-by-ieee-spectrum/

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