26th Birthday
Today, April 10th, is my 26th birthday. If you wish to make me happy on my birthday, you know what you can do -- make a donation to SIAI! Thank you for your readership and support of this blog and of the transhumanist movement in general.
SIAI LinkedIn Group
I've created a group for the Singularity Institute on LinkedIn, to encourage professional networking among SIAI supporters and staff. Consider joining if you are an SIAI supporter and use LinkedIn.
New Harvest Update
I recently received the below email, which concerns research advances in in vitro meat.
Since our last update, these papers became available:
Datar I, Betti M. 2010. Possibilities for an in vitro meat production system. Innovative Food Science and Emerging Technologies 11: 13-22.
Haagsman HP, Hellingwerf KJ, Roelen BAJ. Production of animal proteins by cell systems, Utrecht, 2009.
Best wishes,
Jason Matheny
New Harvest
http://www.new-harvest.org
info@new-harvest.org
http://feeds.feedburner.com/NewHarvestResources
Chalmers: “The argument for a singularity is one that we should take seriously”
Here is a quote from the Chalmers paper that I linked yesterday:
One might think that the singularity would be of great interest to academic philosophers, cognitive scientists, and artificial intelligence researchers. In practice, this has not been the case. Good was an eminent academic, but his article was largely unappreciated at the time. The subsequent discussion of the singularity has largely taken place in nonacademic circles, including Internet forums, popular media and books, and workshops organized by the independent Singularity Institute. Perhaps the highly speculative flavor of the singularity idea has been responsible for academic resistance to the idea.
I think this resistance is a shame, as the singularity idea is clearly an important one. The argument for a singularity is one that we should take seriously. And the questions surrounding the singularity are of enormous practical and philosophical concern.
Practically: If there is a singularity, it will be one of the most important events in the history of the planet. An intelligence explosion has enormous potential benefits: a cure for all known diseases, an end to poverty, extraordinary scientific advances, and much more. It also has enormous potential dangers: an end to the human race, an arms race of warring machines, the power to destroy the planet. So if there is even a small chance that there will be a singularity, we would do well to think about what forms it might take and whether there is anything we can do to influence the outcomes in a positive direction.
Good, practical advice for everyone living in the 21st century!
Forbes “Life in 2020″ Articles
Forbes has recently published a package of articles on predictions for life in the year 2020, and their social media wing emailed me to publish the links, so here they are! 2010 is a good year to make predictions for 2015 and 2020. If you want to be a futurist in 2015 or 2020, start now with some predictions! Anyway, here is the blurb and links:
You will be healthier. Your technology will be more human. You will fight to keep your job. You will walk to work. There will be nowhere to hide. Your life is about to change.
Transportation in 2020
In 10 years, your commute will be short, cheap and, dare we say, fun.
The Classroom In 2020
The next decade will bring an end to school as we know it.
Your Choice In 2020
How big computing will make every action a transaction.
Your Computer In 2020
Traditional computers are disappearing; human beings themselves are becoming information augmented.
Your Home In 2020
Goodbye, McMansions. In 2020 we'll build for the triple bottom line: people, planet as well as profit.
Your Job In 2020
In 2020 you will fight to keep your job.
Your Diet In 2020
In 2020 you will finally start taking care of yourself.
Your Health In 2020
Passive patients will become empowered participants.
Making Whuffie
Social networks change the way we look at the world and introduce new economic incentives.
David Chalmers on Singularity, Intelligence Exposion
Recently, David Chalmers announced that he was posting a new paper based on his Singularity Summit 2010 talk: "The Singularity: A Philosophical Analysis". In his announcement, Chalmers notes, "I'm still an amateur on these topics and any feedback would be appreciated." You can also watch a video of Chalmers' Summit talk.
Technological Singularity and Acceleration Studies: Call for Papers
Amnon Eden sent me this call for papers.
Track in:
8th European conference on Computing And Philosophy — ECAP 2010
Technische Universität München
4–6 October 2010
Important dates:
* Submission (extended abstracts): 7 May 2010
* Notification: 9 May 2010
* ECAP Conference: 4–6 October 2010
Theme
Historical analysis of a broad range of paradigm shifts in science, biology, history, technology, and in particular in computing technology, suggests an accelerating rate of evolution, however measured. John von Neumann projected that the consequence of this trend may be an “essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs as we know them could not continueâ€. This notion of singularity coincides in time and nature with Alan Turing (1950) and Stephen Hawking's (1998) expectation of machines to exhibit intelligence on a par with to the average human no later than 2050. Irving John Good (1965) and Vernor Vinge (1993) expect the singularity to take the form of an 'intelligence explosion', a process in which intelligent machines design ever more intelligent machines. Transhumanists suggest a parallel or alternative, explosive process of improvements in human intelligence. And Alvin Toffler's Third Wave (1980) forecasts "a collision point in human destiny" the scale of which, in the course of history, is on the par only with the agricultural revolution and the industrial revolution.
We invite submissions describing systematic attempts at understanding the likelihood and nature of these projections. In particular, we welcome papers critically analyzing the following issues from a philosophical, computational, mathematical, scientific and ethical standpoints:
* Claims and evidence to acceleration
* Technological predictions (critical analysis of past and future)
* The nature of an intelligence explosion and its possible outcomes
* The nature of the Technological Singularity and its outcome
* Safe and unsafe artificial general intelligence and preventative measures
* Technological forecasts of computing phenomena and their projected impact
* Beyond the ‘event horizon’ of the Technological Singularity
* The prospects of transhuman breakthroughs and likely timeframes
Amnon H. Eden, School of Computer Science & Electronic Engineering, University of Essex, UK and Center For Inquiry, Amherst NY
Audio of My Foresight 2010 Talk: “Don’t Fear the Singularity, But Be Careful”
Here is the audio of the video file. Thanks to Franz Fuchs for extracting the audio file.
CNN: US to Announce New Nuclear Weapons Strategy
From CNN's political ticker:
WASHINGTON (CNN) – The United States will swear off the development of new generations of nuclear weapons and reduce its reliance on them in a sweeping overhaul of its nuclear strategy due out Tuesday.
The Obama administration’s Nuclear Posture Review will alter decades of American policy to provide an incentive for countries to stay within the rules of the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty, a senior administration official told CNN. The focus of U.S. nuclear policy will be on isolating countries that are flouting their obligations under that pact, the official said.
President Barack Obama is scheduled to announce the new strategy on Tuesday, two days before he plans to sign a new nuclear arms treaty with Russia that reduces both countries' missile stockpiles. The president is expected to be joined by several Cabinet members, including Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Energy Secretary Steven Chu.
This could be the best week for nuclear security ever!
Ben Goertzel on Numenta
I've always agreed with Ben Goertzel's general position on Numenta. (See Jeff Hawkins' lecture at UBC for a basic description of the ideas behind Numenta.) Every few months or so, it seems, someone pops up on the AGI list and asks, "what do you guys think about Jeff Hawkins and Numenta"? Earlier this year, in February, "Jay Man" said:
I'm curious if anybody else is following the work done at Numenta.com? trust me I have no affiliation with them, but I seriously think they are on the right path for AGI. First HTM based commercial product was released only a couple of days ago from VitaminD inc. with very impressive people detection. I have not studied their HTM in absolute in depth but have a very reasonable idea how they work, what I like about it is the simplicity! you essentially have a single node that does not care about the data-type being fed be it video, audio or any other sensory input. The system is completely inveriant to translations, scaling, temporal changes and has the ability to generelize, unlike standard neural nets, it does not suffer problems such as overtraining or forgetting. What i want to know is what are its limitations? Why is it not a good platform for true AGI? Compared to PLN (probabilistic logic networks) how does it differ? It makes me wonder, when I read in these forums when people are talking about Natural Language Processing most talk about programming the linguistics, and grammar into the system, shouldn't all this stuff be purely learned by the system (HTM's have the the ability to learn completely unsupervised).
Ben Goertzel responded:
1) HTM doesn't work very well. Download it and try for yourself. Other hierarchical pattern recognition networks like Itamar Arel's Binatix or DeSTIN systems work better
2) HTM, in its current implementation or detailed design, is a system for perception. Not action. Not abstract cognition, reasoning, etc. The idea that a hierarchical perception network is all you need to build a humanlike mind, seems to me a strangely oversimplified notion of cognitive architecture, and IMO Hawkins does not defend it well in his books or papers...ben
In Jeff Hawkins' book, he basically says, "we know the architecture of the visual cortex looks like this (a hierarchical network of abstractive nodes), and the architecture of the rest of the brain can be expected to be the same, therefore HTM (hierarchical temporal memory) will let us build AIs much smarter than we have now".
When I asked Ben if I could post his email on Numenta, he reminded me of his detailed review of Hawkins' book On Intelligence when it came out in 2006.
Why is Numenta important? 1) it's very well-funded and has some extremely bright people on its team, 2) some big-time VCs take it seriously, because they take Jeff Hawkins (co-founder of Palm) seriously, and his book is popular fodder for banter among neuroscience-minded businesspeople. However, the project is looking to be a disappointment, headed for the "Thank You for Trying" bin, like Cyc.