Singularity Institute Featured in January Issue of GQ
If you haven't picked up this month's GQ magazine, do it soon. There is a feature on the Singularity Summit and Singularity Institute. (I also hear there is a piece by Carl Zimmer on the Singularity in Playboy but I haven't picked it up yet.) Seeing community names like Rick Schwall (an SIAI donor and supporter) in a national magazine sure is a trip. According to the National Magazine Awards, circulation is somewhere between 500,000 and 1,000,000 and is up in recent years.
Here is the Singularity portion (I removed the magazine cover due to copyright concerns and complaints from the comments section):
Really freaky, mmhmmm! Freaky like our ancestral past or Pandora freaky, I hope.
H/t to Gus K. for pointing out the article earlier this month.
January 26th, 2010 - 19:47
So, transhumanism gets articles in two sexist, consumerist magazines for bourgeois men. Thrilling. Any word about they treat the Singularity would be appreciated, because I’m sure as hell not giving either of those publications any money.
January 27th, 2010 - 02:16
Well said.
Michael, you don’t need any fancy tech to get out of the Stone Age on this one. If your goal is promotion of the singularity, it would maybe be wise not to alienate half the world’s population in the material used to present it. It would be easy to cast the whole project as an extension of a ‘male’ drive to dominate and manipulate nature – the kind of (false) impression that gets created by such associations.
January 27th, 2010 - 07:30
Michael:
I mentioned this GQ article to you a month ago in one of my posts.
Summerspeak & MediumDog:
If you don’t want to buy the magazine, I’ll summarize it: It was a respectful treatment of the idea of an imminent singularity but it also balanced it with statements by other scientists that singularity-type changes would not happen for a long time.
January 27th, 2010 - 09:16
TheMediumDog:
I didn’t choose which magazine this article appeared in, I’m just reporting it. I am SIAI’s Media Director, after all.
However it is presented in the media, AI provides a massive potential benefit and risk to us all, and many people can see that regardless of the presentation method.
There’s nothing wrong with manipulating nature. A lot of nature is evil: it causes death, disease, famine, etc. “Natural” should not be used to determine whether something is good or bad. This is basic Enlightenment common sense.
The Singularity is an Enlightenment project of using what we have at our disposal to improve our lives and the world. For those that are anti-Enlightenment in general, the project will not appeal.
January 27th, 2010 - 19:18
I agree with all this, and well done for taking down the picture.
March 6th, 2010 - 22:34
I was trying to get a copy of the article. I read it at a hair salon of all places, just after finishing Jaron Lanier’s book “you are not a gadget”. Very contrasting material. Personally, it makes me want to go make something with my bare hands etc. and be as imperfectly human as possible for the rest of my short inferior life! but alas, I am addicted to my computer
March 6th, 2010 - 22:35
I was trying to get a copy of the article. I read it at a hair salon of all places, by total chance, just after finishing Jaron Lanier’s book “you are not a gadget”. Very contrasting material. Personally, it makes me want to go make something with my bare hands etc. and be as imperfectly human as possible for the rest of my short inferior life! but alas, I am addicted to my computer
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