Accelerating Future

There are two types of “Singularitarians”. One type of Singularitarian, mostly imaginary because no one I’ve ever met actually self-identifies this way, is the type defined in Ray Kurzweil’s 2005 book The Singularity is Near. Since this book has a permanent place on my desk, I need to reach only about 10 inches to retrieve it and open to the page that defines it. Here it is:

“A Singularitarian is someone who understands the Singularity and has reflected on its meaning for his or her own life.”

Alright. Unfortunately, I’m motivated to entirely ignore this definition, as it was introduced five years after another, different, better definition. The better definition was introduced by Eliezer Yudkowsky on January 1st, 2000, in the Singularitarian Principles, which is admittedly slightly out of date:

Definitional Principle #1: Singularity

A Singularitarian believes that the Singularity is possible, that the Singularity is a good thing, and that we should help make it happen.

Definitional Principle #2: Activism

Singularitarians are the partisans of the Singularity.

A Singularitarian is someone who believes that technologically creating a greater-than-human intelligence is desirable, and who works to that end.

A Singularitarian is advocate, agent, defender, and friend of the future known as the Singularity.

Definitional Principle #3: Ultratechnology

The “Singularity” is a natural, non-mystical, technologically triggered event. We, the Singularitarians, are allied in the purpose of bringing about a natural event through natural means, not sitting in a circle chanting over a computer. There are thousands, perhaps millions, of stories and prophecies and rituals that allegedly involve something that could theoretically be described as “greater-than-human intelligence”. What distinguishes the Singularitarians is that we want to bring about a natural event, working through ultratechnologies such as AI or nanotech, without relying on mystical means or morally valent effects.

Definitional Principle #4: Globalism

Similarly, although the Singularity is simply the creation of greater-than-human intelligence, the “Singularity” in “Singularitarian” is the Singularity as seen from the perspective of the vast majority of humanity. It’s the event seen from a global perspective, just like the “liberty” in “libertarian” is global. If you don’t advocate global liberty, you aren’t a libertarian. If you don’t advocate global Singularity, if you just advocate a personal, private Singularity, then you’re not a Singularitarian.

My main qualm with the above is the notion that the Singularity is necessarily a good thing, when it isn’t. Superintelligences could easily wipe us out to make way for structures that provide them greater subjective utility. I would suggest that Mr. Yudkowsky take the few minutes necessary to update the page to reflect this.

Anyway, the biggest difference between Kurzweil’s Singularitarianism and Yudkowsky’s Singularitarianism is that practically anyone can qualify for the former, while the latter is reserved specifically for rationalist activists who want a Singularity to benefit all humanity. Anyone who has watched any of the Terminator movies and thought that such a scenario might be possible in several decades has thought about the “Singularity” and its meaning in his or her own life, so that may be millions of people, but this isn’t a significant delineation. It’s conspicuously inclusive, in a boring way.

Yudkowsky’s Singularitarianism is an activist singularitarianism — we’re going to work towards smarter-than-human intelligence, join us if you wish.

In this sense, this Singularitarianism is more of a notice than a prediction.

This group, however small it may be, is focused on constructing a self-improving artificial general intelligence (AGI) that acts beneficently towards all humanity, however long that takes.

Join us if you wish.

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If you’re interested in matters of AI friendliness, I strongly suggest you read the Creating Friendly AI FAQ. This is an appendix of one of the first (and finest) pieces of work to really take a close look at the problem.

One of my favorite answers is this one:

Can’t beat logic like that. Anyway, that’s the only answer that’s pithy, the rest are extremely well-written and thought out.

Here are the questions covered:

1. How is it possible to define Friendliness?
2. Isn’t all morality relative?
3. What if your definition of ‘Friendliness’ is distorted by your unconscious preconceptions?
4. Who are you to decide what ‘Friendliness’ is?
5. Won’t AIs necessarily be [insert some quality just like the human version]?
6. Isn’t evolution necessary to create AIs?
7. Even if AIs aren’t evolved, won’t they still be just like humans?
8. Even if AIs aren’t evolved, won’t they still be selfish?
9. Even if AIs aren’t evolved, won’t they still have self-serving beliefs?
10. Even if AIs aren’t evolved, won’t they still have analogues of pain and pleasure?
11. Won’t AIs decide to serve their own goals instead of humanity’s?
12. Won’t a community of AIs be more efficient than a single AI?
13. Aren’t individual differences necessary to intelligence? Isn’t a society necessary to produce ideas? Isn’t capitalism necessary for efficiency?
14. Isn’t a community [of AIs, of humans] more trustworthy than a single individual?
15. How do you keep a self-modifying AI from modifying the goal system?
16. Won’t an AI decide to just bliss out instead of doing anything useful?
17. What happens if the AI’s ’subgoals’ overthrow the ’supergoals’?
18. But…
19. Is Friendly AI really a good idea?
20. Have you really thought about the implications of what you’re doing?
21. What if something goes wrong?
22. What if something goes wrong anyway?
23. Do all these safeguards mean you think that there are huge problems ahead?
24. Would it be safer to have an uploaded human, or a community of uploaded humans, become the first superintelligence?

~~~

Read and learn! Once we create a self-improving seed, we’ll likely be stuck with it forever, so it’s important that we make the right decisions about how to program it right now.

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I was reading “Thoughts on Friendly AI” at utilitarian-essays.com, a site with short papers on various utilitarian issues, including AI friendliness. (An unfortunate aspect of incorrectly programmed strong AI is that poses a huge risk to humanity.) I wanted to point out several interesting positions in the essay, as well as respond to a few open questions. From here on out, I will refer to the author as “Utilitarian”.

Utilitarian writes:

I think the probability that humans will create an AGI is not trivially small; I wouldn’t put the figure below 0.01, and personally I would consider 0.15 or so to be a more reasonable Bayesian best-guess estimate. Thus, if the stakes are sufficiently high, work related to friendly AI may have enormous expected value.

Here, Utilitarian admits having a low estimate of the probability that humans will create strong AI — around 15%, but at least 1%. In spite of this, the author concludes that friendly AI work may have enormous expected value. This means that you don’t have to believe its particularly likely that AI friendliness is a big deal for AI friendliness to be a big deal anyway. This is because of the degree of power that a strong AI would have if it is indeed technologically possible.

Next, Utilitarian launches into a look at the Coherent Extrapolated Volition (CEV) programmatic concept for AI friendliness. It is pointed out that a CEV-based AI could lead to beneficial outcomes for non-human animals if humanity’s volition decides to include theirs:

CEV would be designed as a dynamic process in which the FAI would extrapolate humanity’s volitions slowly at first and then build upon those volitions in order to rewrite its code and improve the extrapolation process in subsequent iterations. So, for instance, if in the first round, humans decided that chimpanzee volitions should be counted (to the extent this is possible), then chimpanzees would be included in the second round.

My general comment: it might seem unfair program a strong AI to care only about the opinions of humans for the first round (this is the current plan), but unfortunately, anything else is too risky. What if we decide to program the AI to average our volition with that of our cats, and the cats end up outnumbering the humans, and it turns out that cats don’t like us all that much? Do we want a strong AI on the cats’ side? Probably not. On the same note, we should program the first strong AI in such a way that it doesn’t unfairly favor a small subset of humans.

Utilitarian then writes, provocatively:

However, the starting point–i.e., who will be extrapolated in the first round–is arbitrary, because we can’t rely on the CEV process to decide that for us. The current plan is to extrapolate only humans and allow them to decide whether to include non-human animals in subsequent rounds. But why stop there? Why not only extrapolate humans born in January and allow them to decide whether to include humans born in other months?

We might hope that all roads will lead to Rome and that all initial choices of the set of volitions to extrapolate will lead to the same result, but this is far from obvious. Thus, the choice of whether and to what extent to include non-human animal volitions in CEV is an important open question–one with which animal-welfare organizations might consider getting involved.

The designers of CEV assume that the category “all humans” is ideal for the initial input. It must be made openly clear that this choice is entirely arbitrary. For reasons I will describe in another post, I actually suspect it might be safer to use only one human being as the initial input. In any case, the author points out here that animal welfare organizations might be interested in lobbying for a place for certain animals, for instance the great apes, in the first CEV input stage.

Personally, I object to the killing of higher vertebrates if at all possible. I suspect that once that in-vitro meat becomes available, many people will “spontaneously” begin realizing that destroying animals for food was an ethical sacrifice all along, and the practice will fall out of vogue, like slavery. Would this be recognized in the first round of CEV? I’m counting on it, but who knows? If the answer is no, do I have a moral obligation to lobby that higher vertebrates be included in the initial CEV input? I don’t think so, because doing so might make the fundamental building block more complex, less stable, and more unpredictable.

We have an obligation to maximize the stability and predictability of the outcome of strong AI, because anything else is unfair to the people that have to live with it. It might not be possible to put the genie back into the bottle. An obviously flawed AI might be capable of self-perpetuating its influence despite any attempts to stop it, leading to an unpleasant period between its creation and Heat Death. This could be about 10⁴⁰ years, a long time by any measure.

Do all roads lead to Rome? I hope so, but there is little way of telling in advance. One crutch used in the CEV approach is to have a way of peeking at the final outcome and vetoing it if it is obviously a failure. If a single person or exclusive group has the right to do this, one might ask, “how is this different than using just their volitions as input to begin with?” I see a difference, but it’s admittedly subtle. The elite group would have veto power, but it wouldn’t be micro-managing the outcome.

Utilitarian then writes:

It may be the case that animals don’t have an abstract enough sense of their volitions for CEV to work with them. If this is true, the same could be said of human infants. It’s not obvious to me that human infants deserve more direct influence over CEV than, say, pigs. If one makes the argument that human infants have the potential to develop into adults with a better sense of their true volitions, then replace “human infants” by “human adults with significant intellectual disabilities.”

It may be a good idea to exclude human adults with significant intellectual disabilities and human infants. Neurologically, all humans above a certain age are basically similar, but infants and adults with significant intellectual disabilities will be distinctly different. Where do we draw the line? I don’t know, but it seems counter-productive to include the input of minds that lack an abstract sense of morality. Most would at least agree that people in a coma cannot make moral choices in their current state.

Utilitarian writes:

It’s plausible that the lives of most wild animals involve more suffering than happiness; this is especially likely if insects are sentient. On the other hand, most humans value nature highly and would prefer for wildlife to exist. I’m afraid that the CEV of humanity wouldn’t give enough consideration to the suffering of wild animals and, even worse, might create vastly more through terraforming, directed panspermia, or sentient computer simulations of nature.

My hope is that this concern would be addressed by the “if we knew more” part of CEV. If humans were more cognizant of wild-animal suffering and were able to more deeply imagine how horrible it is for, say, a frog to be swallowed alive by a snake, then perhaps they would be more reluctant to value “pristine natural environments.” And if their opinions were still unmoved, then maybe the impulse to preserve nature would be so strong that it would indeed have some merit.

If insects are sentient, we will figure it out soon enough. We should have faith in humanity’s ability to identify failings in our own morality and collectively improve, as has occurred since at least the Middle Ages. In any case, specially intervening to remove the possibility entirely would be a breach of ethics and interference from an elite group.

A similar concern relates to lab universes. If anyone were going to create infinitely many new universes in a laboratory, it would probably be an AGI. I’m concerned that humans would find the creation of new universes so exciting, cool, or unusual that they would ignore the fact that they would create an infinite amount of suffering in the process–and probably far more suffering than happiness

If lab universes are possible, hopefully we’ll come to a democratic conclusion that they shouldn’t contain suffering sentients. I don’t see why we wouldn’t.

In favor of SIAI, Utilitarian writes:

Of course, these scenarios assume that the friendly AI would be built correctly and humanely, but this is an argument in favor of SIAI’s work, rather than against it. Better to have a friendly AI determine the future of our part of the universe than a careless (or even malevolent) AI built by less circumspect programmers.

I will address the third part, “Religion”, in another post.

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Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a topic that always seems to drop on and off the radar of public interest in synch with Hollywood portrayals and celebrity prognostications. Indeed, the most recent spat of attention has followed a much-publicized $10,000 wager made by futurist and inventor Ray Kurzweil against corporate trailblazer Mitchell Kapor. The bet, solemnized at www.longbets.org (where all winnings go to charity), is that a computer, or “machine intelligence,” will pass the so-called Turing test by 2029. The Turing test, a challenge to see if a computer can fool a human judge into thinking it is human, is a traditional benchmark for the point when true Artificial Intelligence can be said to have been achieved - a historic moment, by any measure.

But with recent discussion of AI taking place in the context of a wager, debates have tended to focus on the difficulty of the problem rather than the implications - as though the arrival of true Artificial Intelligence would only mean the difference between a robot making your coffee and brewing it yourself.

What are the stakes, really? Why should this wager matter to you personally? And what, exactly, are the odds?

First Scenario: Kapor Wins. (No true AI by 2029)

Between now and 2029, the steady march of progress will continue; worker productivity will climb as technological innovation improves efficiency in most industries. Genetic engineering will make new headway in combating disease and improving food supplies. Nanotechnology - the engineering of materials and devices at the molecular level - will steadily mature, accelerating economic development.

As a consequence of these conditions, your standard of living will improve, your life expectancy will increase, and you will enjoy new leisure activities made possible by faster computers and richer interfaces (i.e. Virtual Reality). But during this time you will also endure the usual misfortunes of illness and injury, and one or more persons close to you will suffer a disease, accident, or age-related death. There is also a good chance that somewhere in the world, an intentional or accidental use of genetically engineered bio-weapons or self-replicating nanotechnology will cause casualties numbering in the millions. And there is a small but non-zero chance that such a disaster will bloom out of control and wipe out the human race.

Second Scenario: Kurzweil Wins. (True AI before 2029)

Between now and 2029, scientists will work out a functional design for true AI that possesses a core desire to understand and assist humanity (a characteristic called Friendliness by some researchers). While unimpressive at first, the new AI will learn quickly and receive extra computing capacity to increase its capabilities. Once mature, it will assist its programmers in the design of a next-generation AI. This process will be repeated a number of times with considerable improvements in both intelligence and Friendliness, and before too long will produce one or more minds that can only be called superintelligent. Applying phenomenal brilliance to the betterment of the human condition, Friendly superintelligence will ensure that nanotechnology and genetic engineering are quickly mastered to an extent that human scientists alone could never have reached. Technological progress will be so rapid as to fundamentally change our perception of civilization itself.

As a consequence of these conditions, you (and everyone else) will enjoy unconditional material prosperity and indefinite life-expectancy - with the resulting time and means for pursuits that may include increasing your own intelligence and exploring the galaxy. You will be free to forgo most of the usual misfortunes of illness and injury, and no person close to you will suffer death from disease or old age unless they choose to. The same intelligence that allows for the mastery of genetic engineering and nanotechnology will also work to prevent the possibility of cataclysmic disasters stemming from these technologies. And other potential threats to our planet, such as asteroid strikes and climate change, will be averted or remedied with surprising ease.

You may feel that this second scenario sounds too good to be true; indeed, this is one reason why many people bet against it. It does, admittedly, depend on a number of things going right. But the chief requirement for a positive outcome is reasonably straightforward: namely, that the first AI to begin the spiraling cycle of increasing intelligence be engineered to share human compassion and values, despite any changes incurred through successive redesigns. Given success in this area, the huge and positive contribution that could be made by superintelligence is generally accepted by futurists; in fact, they even have a name for the point at which greater-than-human intelligence starts changing the world: the Singularity.

It must be said, then, that the stakes in the Kurzweil/Kapor wager are, in fact, awesome. But what are the actual odds that AI will be developed anytime soon? Gambling metaphors fail, for predicting the Singularity is not like forecasting the weather or winning the lottery. The answer to the question of when true AI will be born depends entirely on the actions of real people, like you, who are free to participate in this discussion and support the causes they care about.

Will AI be possible in the near future? Yes. The human brain is extremely complicated and not yet fully understood, but AI engineers do not need to simulate the entire brain in silicon - only the patterns and features that give rise to general intelligence. And if all else fails, the brain can eventually be modeled in close detail. Though mysterious, the brain is tangible proof that intelligence can come in small packages.

AI naysayers would have us believe that the disappointing failure of AI projects over the last fifty years means that we cannot hope to achieve true Artificial Intelligence in the next fifty. However, as investment advertisements must always warn, past performance is no guarantee of future results - an axiom that applies to failure as well as success. Forward-looking individuals realize that, barring our own extinction, AI will eventually be created. But when and how AI comes into being will not depend on a roll of the dice or a spin of the wheel, but on how aggressively and responsibly we set about solving the problem. Think back to the above scenarios for a moment. Kapor and Kurzweil have each bet $10,000. But given the enormous qualitative difference between life before and after the Singularity, how much would it be worth to you to see Friendly AI happen sooner - whether by a few decades, a few years, or even just one day?

We are all participants in this wager, with the chips already down and the stakes astronomically high. But what are the odds?

The odds are whatever we choose to make them.

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From our earliest days as an intelligent species, it has always been more difficult to create than to destroy. From fire to fission, forces of great constructive potential have invariably been used as weapons against innocent people with tragic results. The cumulative losses to individuals, nations - and indeed, the whole human family - can never be fully understood.

Despite a pervasive - and in many ways false - sense of security that came with the end of the Cold War, we are far from being past the threat of technologically facilitated global ruin. The rise of trans-national terrorism may not on the surface seem nearly as dangerous as a full-scale atomic conflict. But the bold acts of hatred performed by those who place no value on their own lives remind us daily of the fact that, among billions, there will always be a few who would destroy civilization itself if they had the capacity to do so.

The day is approaching when this awful power will be all too abundant. Technological progress, that relentless engine that has refined our tools of creation and destruction, is not slowing down. It is accelerating. Technologies that seemed like fantasy a few years ago are now discussed as old news and common knowledge. Scientists recently built a lethal polio virus from scratch by assembling a custom strand of DNA. Nanotechnology - the engineering of materials and machines at the molecular level - is already churning out fibers and coatings incorporated into commercial products, and concept components for devices smaller than human cells are created daily.

Times of tremendous potential are upon us. Where we had only decades ago acquired the ability to observe the most fundamental processes of nature, we are now becoming masters of them. The most intractable diseases and disabilities cannot long stand against the perfect scrutiny and manipulation of genetic engineers. The endless drought of economic scarcity that lingers in so much of the world has no chance of resisting the impending flood of material prosperity unleashed by self-reproducing nanofactories that produce goods of unprecedented quality at negligible cost.

But this flood of prosperity cannot help but flow with a dangerous swiftness equal to the technological progress which propels it. Even ignoring the usual sources of murderous discontent, this radical shift in the quantity and quality of life will probably be sufficient to cause dangerous political upheaval. And, as has always happened with knowledge, the arts of genetic engineering and nanotechnology will inevitably see perversions into killing applications. But this time the danger will be far greater than the threat of nuclear catastrophe - an event entirely survivable by many who might nevertheless wish they hadn’t. A custom-designed plague might be virulent enough to kill everyone, and a swarm of self-replicating nanomachines could swallow the biosphere whole.

Calls to relinquish technologies that could lead to such ends are unrealistic, as these are inextricably linked to positive applications - which greatly outnumber the negative ones. And any attempt to suppress technological progress through means of legislation and enforcement will only mean that when these technologies do inevitably mature, they will be in the hands of those who operate outside the law. Government bodies and committees certainly deserve respect for their ability to mediate disputes and create safety guidelines, but these have never proven capable of ensuring that a given technology is never once used for destructive purposes. And with advanced genetic engineering and nanotechnology, one single misuse may be all it takes to write the epitaph for the human race. We simply cannot rely on traditional organizations and regulations to guide us safely through these turbulent rapids of progress. The current is too swift and the hazards too numerous. And we know from history that somewhere, somehow, there is always a mistake. A human mistake.

Human mistakes are inevitable for the obvious reason that we are in possession of mere human intelligence. We also carry in our genes a myriad of irrational tendencies that do not serve us well, having been so far removed from the ancestral environments where they were useful. We often cherish our primitive instincts and delight in our child-like awe at mysteries “beyond human comprehension,” but these are fertile ground for the kinds of critical failures that could send civilization crashing into the lodestones of oblivion. Our need, then, is for faculties beyond human reasoning, and for minds free of evolutionary liabilities. Whether collectively or in the minds of a select few, we need greater-than-human intelligence to skillfully shoot the rapids of progress and chart the seas of universal prosperity.

Fortunately, the means to achieve greater-than-human intelligence (a milestone called the Singularity by many futurists) are found within the very currents of technology pushing us to this critical juncture. Genetic engineering is one possible answer, but given the relatively long time it takes for a human baby to mature into an adult, this approach would probably not be timely enough even if there were no ethical questions to consider. Augmenting human intelligence by connecting brains directly to powerful computers is another option, but this may not do anything to reduce the likelihood of rash, biological mistakes being made, and may actually amplify their damage. At present, the only conceivable way to promptly give rise to greater-than-human intelligence free of the most significant human failings is through the creation of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). (The “General” is sometimes added by researchers to distinguish it from the narrowly specialized programs that are often claimed, for marketing reasons, to possess Artificial Intelligence (AI).) Computer technology has matured to the point where most AI researchers feel that an AGI could exist on today’s equipment, given the right design.

But of course the “right” design has not yet been developed, and will not be without determined effort. Any sufficiently intelligent AGI will be able to assist in the design of its own successors, making subsequent leaps in intelligence easier. But the initial design must do more than “merely” think in ways that match or exceed human capability. It must empathize with and care about the problems of its human comrades - a trait called “Friendliness” by some researchers. An AGI lacking this compassion would be as dangerous as any other technological nightmare. And since computer technology is so rapidly increasing in power and decreasing in cost, a time will come when rogue nations or sociopaths could create an unsafe AI - with consequences as potentially catastrophic as the misuse of nanotechnology or genetic engineering. Unless, that is, we already have greater intelligence on our side helping to discover ways to prevent such disasters.

The fate of humanity thus hinges on this question: When will we create greater-than-human intelligence that cares about our problems? There is every reason to act now. Without greater intelligence we are doomed to make human mistakes regarding forces so powerful that there may be no second chances. But, with the assistance of Friendly AI, we will have an extraordinary new capacity to not only safeguard our continued existence, but to meet every other challenge we currently face - or may face.

There is no greater or more responsible use for discretionary resources today than the advancement of this effort. Whether it be a few pennies, a few million dollars, or years of volunteer service, investments in Friendly AI will go further to improve the human condition than donations to any other charity or research project. After all, there are few causes that would not benefit from an infusion of Friendly superintelligence. But, more importantly, if we do not safely navigate the rapids of progress we will not be around to worry about disease, poverty or global warming. This is one swift ride that we are all along for, whether we like it or not, and it is up to each of us to help make sure the human family can survive the journey and come out on top.

(Read the latest short, Singularity-relevant story by Mitch at SIAI’s new blog.)

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Few would rush to accept an offer of immortality if each successive year were to bring an ever-increasing burden of broken hips, memory loss, and incontinence. This may help explain why so many people find the thought of extreme life extension unpalatable; the best years are not usually represented by triple digits.

Hence, those who actually intend to live forever usually know something about the technology that would make this possible. They understand how the same research that could ultimately conquer aging will also be critical to treating the ailments associated with it. This conclusion is not a difficult one; even today, the leading causes of death for people in their physical prime are not diseases, but accidents, homicide, and suicide. If the biological clock could be stopped or reversed, careful individuals could live in excellent health for a very long time.

To “think immortal”, then, is to engage in sophisticated long-term planning – anticipating the secondary effects of technological progress and the opportunities they present. But it is also to recognize the way many issues which may not have seemed worth caring about during an eighty-year lifetime could literally be matters of life and death over many centuries. Whether the bell tolls in sixty years or six hundred, the knell would be premature to someone who might have lived as long as the stars.

This type of thinking adds new complexity to the historical dilemma of retirement planning: figuring out when retirement will leave the minimal combination of interest, principal, and entitlements needed to live comfortably until death. The challenge, of course, lies in the impossibility of knowing exactly how soon death will come and how much money will be needed in the meantime. Today’s would-be immortals must not only prepare for physical old-age, but make special arrangements for the cases of “premature” death and indefinite life span. As with any investment plan, a well-balanced portfolio is essential.

Along with traditional fiscal prudence and a combination of high and low risk/yield investments, committed immortalists generally consider it prudent to take out a cryonics life insurance policy as soon as it is practical to do so. These policies, which name as beneficiary an institution where the body or head will be promptly frozen in a maximally preservative state, are no longer the eccentric testaments of the self-absorbed (if they ever were.) It takes a certain scientific optimism to consign one’s corpse to a cylinder of liquid nitrogen; those who do so typically understand what the general public still does not: that a number of credible technological visions exist by which the essential pattern of a mind may be reinstantiated in a new and better form – in a world of material abundance scarcely imaginable today. The popular arguments that a thawed mind would be badly damaged, or that one’s descendants may not be interested in the high cost of thawing, are thus, to these investors, scarcely worth acknowledging. However, the anti-cryonicists at least make the important point that the future of the frozen may well be cold – a point many immortalists, in their hopeful enthusiasm, may choose not to think about. They definitely should; optimism can put someone in cryogenic suspension, but it cannot bring them out.

Cryonics depends on a future society with the means and the willingness to restore the dead to a better life. But holders of cryonic life insurance, of all people, should understand that those same technologies that could make their rebirth possible may also be used to catastrophic ends. To enjoy a meaningful future, the living and the suspended alike must first have a future, a commodity now taken for granted but destined to become increasingly tenuous as biotechnology, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence approach adolescence. Genetically engineered plagues could be haunting nightmares of virulence. Microscopic, self-replicating nanomachines could spread like a cancer and consume the biosphere. Unfriendly artificial intelligence could see humanity as the infection: a threat to be eradicated.

Contributions to organizations working to bring these technologies to responsible maturity — rather than our own extinction — thus make essential additions to an immortalist portfolio. One such organization is the Foresight Institute, which promotes and develops guidelines for the safe development of nanotechnology. Another is the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence (SIAI), which strives to ensure that the first truly superhuman intelligence will be squarely on our side, working with its creators to safely greet the dawn of ultratechnology and stamp out the indignities of the human condition.

In fact, the potential benefits of compassionate superintelligence are so enormous as to make SIAI a worthy first-tier investment for anyone, immortalist or otherwise. This is especially true for younger people, who stand a very good chance of living through the Singularity (the greater intelligence milestone) even without cryonic arrangements; they and others would be well advised to watch their health and avoid needless physical risk, lest they miss out.

No single portfolio can ever right for everyone. But if you are interested in the possibility of living indefinitely – if the thought of going “gentle into that good night” angers you – there are investments you can make. In any case, whether you intend to live forever, expect to die next week, or simply want to leave a better world behind for those who will follow you, successfully planning for the future today demands that you carefully consider the kind of future you hope will be enjoyed – and invest in that as well.

©2002 by Mitchell Howe

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Updates from the Singularity Institute:

$400,000 Matching Challenge.

What would the money be used for?

• SIAI R&D Program (Ph.D. Scholarship, Postdoctoral Fellowship, Research Programmer)
• The Singularity Summit II (September 8-9, Palace of Fine Arts Theatre, San Francisco, CA)
• SIAI Research Fellowship Program & Fund (to Support Present & Future Research Fellows)
• SIAI Fund Development (Roundtable Dinners, Special Events, Foundation Grant Proposals)
• SIAI Educational Outreach & Marketing (Website, Blog, Newsletter, Media, Online Marketing)

If half of the challenge ($200,000) is met by May 21st, Peter Thiel will pledge an additional $50,000 in matching funds.

Ray Kurzweil has joined the Board of Directors for SIAI.

New interview with Barney Pell. Dr. Pell has an impressive background in AI.

SIAI has proposed an AI Impact Initiative.

Ben Goertzel and Bruce Klein have joined SIAI’s team. Ben, Eliezer, Marcello, and others will be working towards Friendly AI as a more unified group.

SIAI matters for two reasons. First, they encourage discussion of the Singularity by holding the annual Singularity Summit. The Singularity, the creation of smarter-than-human intelligence, is the defining event of the coming century, and it could happen in as soon as one or two decades. Second, SIAI is the only organization that takes the problem of Friendly AI seriously. Friendly AI is not an automatic thing. It’s something you need to think about and work towards. That’s what SIAI is doing.

Self-improving Friendly AI could accomplish a tremendous amount of good. It doesn’t matter whether it takes 10 years, or 100 years - benevolent superintelligence in the form of Friendly AI could solve literally all of our problems. Creating such an AI successfully will not be easy. We could mess up and create minds that don’t care about us. That’s why the field is so important. The earlier we start, the better.

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