Accelerating Future

What is the point of transhumanism? Part of it is to put up a notice that says “we deliberately want to work towards human enhancement, meet here if you’re interested”. That way a group can aggregate around that cause and start companies, non-profits, and think tanks to accelerate its realization.

Fortunately, billions of dollars in research funds are already being spent on technologies that are useful for human enhancement, such as regenerative medicine, gene therapy, RNA interference, genome sequencing, implants and prostheses, brain-computer interfacing, robotic exoskeletons, and more.

But explicit, self-declared “transhumanists” — a small group of roughly 10,000 people with a combined net worth under $3 billion — could never personally direct all human enhancement research (nor would we want to), but we can influence it in what we see as positive directions.

Transhumanists should be useful to humanity as a whole. I envision our role as interdisciplinary thinkers who stay up to date with as many scientific and technological developments as possible, consider trends and future directions, then offer suggestions on present-day choices in enhancement research and ethics.

In particular, long-term popular opinion of human enhancement may be determined by its first world-changing examples. Advocates of responsible enhancement have an interest in the “debut” and immediate impact of serious human enhancement.

We see nascent signs of popular response to human enhancement today, with augmented persons like Oscar Pistorius, the record-holding runner with two prosthetic legs. Pistorius is cleared to compete in the Olympics, a reversal of an earlier decision by the International Association of Athletics Federations banning the use of “any technical device that incorporates springs, wheels or any other element that provides a user with an advantage over another athlete not using such a device”.

Although Pistorius’ experience is an interesting window into the way humanity deals with augmented persons, it is my opinion, and that of many other transhumanists, that a real transhuman is a transhuman mind, and anything else is a side issue (a paraphrase of a quote by Robert Heinlein). Say you are a person so heavily enhanced with cybernetics technology that you can lift a ton, run a mile a minute, and get energy directly from the Sun. Well, alright, that’s cool, but it will impact things that other people really care about, like your ability to interact with them, have creative insights, solve problems, or make people laugh? Not much.

To me personally, “transhumanism” is mainly about humanity’s effort to make a mind smarter than itself. It is sometimes difficult to define “intelligence”, so here I’ll define “smarter” as the ability to see things others don’t, generate valuable insights others don’t, create things others can’t, possess an expanded memory, improved ability to free associate between memories, fundamental improvements in the wetware used to formulate and process concepts, make probability assessments and updates that are mathematically sound and self-consistent, construct and manipulate more detailed mental models of other people and objects, possess hundreds of other traits we intuitively associate with intelligence, and thousands of additional traits that we haven’t discerned yet because we haven’t thought about the issue enough. As you can see, defining “intelligence” is not easy.

Obviously, enhancing or modifying a human mind is a huge challenge. Some, like the Singularity Institute and its supporters, advocate constructing a human-level artificial intelligence to trigger a feedback cascade in intelligence research. Others, like neuroscientist Anders Sandberg and economist Robin Hanson, wager that intelligence enhancement will be kickstarted by the scanning and “uploading” of human minds. The Innerspace Foundation is looking to neural prostheses, offering a reward to the first person who develops a cognitive prosthesis that expands human memory. Other approaches to intelligence enhancement are formulated and floated in numerous closed-door conversations.

Which will have a major impact first? AI, uploading, BCI, or some other approach? Because the advocates of intelligence enhancement are having trouble agreeing on which approach is best, we are not working towards this technology as quickly and smoothly as we should. Transhumanists need to agree on an approach to intelligence enhancement, and throw as much as our effort as possible behind it.

Although I personally advocate the AI approach, I encourage research into the other areas, though I am admittedly skeptical that uploading could be first. Keeping an open mind in appraising different fields of intelligence research is essential, as we don’t want to get bogged down in one approach if it starts failing.

Closely observing the way that nascent intelligence enhancement technologies are applied is helpful for considering their future impact. For instance, we see AIs being introduced to virtual worlds like SecondLife. Could these environments act as useful testing grounds for further AI development, and sandboxes to evaluate the way these AIs interact with humans, the environment, and other agents? Most certainly.

A large intelligence enhancement breakthrough could accelerate adjacent breakthroughs in other areas. Because intelligence underlies our ability to solve all problems, an improvement in that underlying capability could give us a greater return on investment than improvement of any other tool.

Another important question concerns whether enhanced intelligence will be put to beneficial ends once it is developed. If an elite group uses the technology, could they merely use it to consolidate and preserve their power? All of humanity has reason to avoid this outcome. Advance concern and the application of safeguards will be necessary, because once an elite group has the technology, it might be too late to take it away.

For one person’s estimate on timescales, see Nick Bostrom’s “How Long Until Superintelligence?”

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Christine Peterson, a founder of the Foresight Institute, is someone I’ve always really liked. She is known is for coining the term “open source”, but I primarily see her as a public policy expert on nanotechnology.

There’s a concept she mentioned to me the first time I met her that’s stayed with me ever since. Christine and I were discussing radical technological change, and what it meant for everyday people. She brought up the concept of a canary in a coal mine. She then said that the Amish should be our canary in a coal mine — if technological changes are so severe that they destroy the lifestyle of the Amish, then the disruption is excessive and possibly unjustified. Ever since then, I’ve wanted a world where transhumanists geeks like myself can meet our superlative goals but still coexist in the same universe as the Amish. I see no reason why it can’t be that way.

Part of the reason why is that I don’t see the Singularity as necessarily being a visible explosion of change that modifies everything everywhere. To me, the Singularity is just the creation of smarter-than-human intelligence, likely accompanied by rapid bootstrapping to superintelligence. But is this “superintelligence” some sci-fi caricature that transforms local matter into a gigantic computer, because “their manifest destiny is to turn Jupiter into computronium so they can play 10^20 characters simultaneously in their favourite RPG”? (Quote by Greg Egan, rest assured I’ll be using it more frequently.) The answer may be yes or no depending on the initial conditions of the seed before it goes critical. I hope the answer is no, and that the world after superintelligence is more enjoyable to the average citizen, not less.

To me, a successful takeoff would likely be mostly invisible, because of the simple fact that most people would be disturbed and angered by having their constituent atoms rearranged into floating point counters of an AI’s pleasure register. Say I’m in Ireland, looking over an emerald field that the island is so famous for. Pre-Singularity, it’s a field. Post-Singularity, it’s still a field. I can roll around in it, run away from bees, eat grass and spit it out, etc. If the field has changed, something is probably wrong. (Call this the Emerald Field Test if you like.) Although superintelligence equipped with nanotechnology would likely have the ability to rearrange that field into practically anything, I would hope they’d choose not to, because their goals would be aligned with our own.

I don’t care if billions of people choose not to enhance themselves when the tech becomes available. I don’t care if the skylines of the future look just like the skylines of today. I don’t care if Jupiter is not converted into computronium. I just want 1) smarter-than-human intelligence to be created, and 2) it to cooperate with us in solving problems like poverty and injustice.

I used to think that I’d want to enhance my intelligence as far as it would go as soon as the technology is available. Now I don’t even care so much. If I can sit on a beach and stare at the ocean for a few years immediately post-Singularity, I’d be absolutely pleased. Right now, the planet is just at risk from any number of terrible dangers, including nuclear war, synthetic life, and soon, unfriendly AI and nanotechnological threats. I want to goof off and play Halo 3 just as much as anyone, but there will always be that one muscle in my neck that is extremely tense until we have a plan in place to reduce the probability of catastrophical global disaster to near zero. And that plan doesn’t involve destroying simple and enjoyable ways of life.

tl;dr: Superintelligence can be created without destroying the natural world or traditional ways of life.

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I’m interested in finding people to go on record, or who have already gone on record, as saying that superintelligence (smarter than human in every field) is impossible. I’m sure there are quite a few such people out there. We can use Nick Bostrom’s definition for a superintelligence:

“By a “superintelligence” we mean an intellect that is much smarter than the best human brains in practically every field, including scientific creativity, general wisdom and social skills.”

Based on a scholarly analysis of the complexity of the human brain and improvements in computing hardware and our understanding of intelligence, Bostrom came to the conclusion “we will have superhuman artificial intelligence within the first third of the next century”. Meaning, by 2033, Nick Bostrom believes there will likely be AIs smarter than human brains in practically every field, including:

• common sense
• humor
• artistic creativity
• imagination
• scientific knowledge and capability
• deriving solutions to political problems that please everyone
• inventing better political systems no human would never think of
• finding ways to get clean water to third world countries
• developing cures to diseases such as AIDS, cancer, etc.
• ability to visualize complex shapes
• ability to visualize complex systems
• ability to invent new shields and weapons
• ability to shock and surprise others with its intelligence
• ability to put human mathematicians, dancers, and philosophers to shame
• invent gadgets to help you get past daily annoyances
• etc…

Because such an AI would presumably run on a supercomputer of the time, it could then be copied, probably at least a few thousand times, into additional supercomputers. Then the superintelligence could develop new methods of computing for spinning off alternate versions of itself, building new superintelligences from scratch, or changing human beings into superintelligences. By developing more powerful computers, mass-producing them, shielding and cooling them, putting them in custom-built bodies, distributed systems, or whatever, presumably you could have millions or billions of such superintelligences running around the planet a decade or less after the first one is created.

Is this “the Singularity”? No, because the word Singularity has lost all meaning and is all but useless. It’s a word you drop to sound cool around science fiction nerds. People who are serious about communicating refer to specific scenarios and assumptions, so that others can have some glimmer of an idea of what they’re talking about. I only use the word “Singularity” so people will find these posts when they Google it, and just maybe be convinced to stop using it.

Anyway, what I’m interested in finding are people that not only believe superintelligence won’t be possible by 2033, as Nick Bostrom has argued, but that it won’t be possible in 100 years, or 1000 years, or ever, because humans are fundamentally the smartest creatures that can physically exist. And I hate to always bring Christianity into this, but I think the Church is a key reason why people believe superintelligence is impossible. Most churches teach that man was made in God’s image, presumably meaning man is about as awesome as any being can get. But what about…

• human brains engineered to have faster metabolisms?
• human brains augmented with cultured cortical tissue?
• human brains interfacing with neuroelectronics?
• artificial intelligences based on the human brain?
• artificial intelligences based on Bayesian learning algorithms?
• extraterrestial intelligences anywhere in the universe?

Naysayers of superintelligence would argue (or would they?) that there is a glass ceiling of intelligence that presumably halts at around the human level. Or, they would argue that smarter-than-human intelligence is possible, but it would only excel in fields traditionally associated with “braininess”, like playing chess or doing mathematics, but never artistic creativity, spiritual insight, charisma, imagination, wisdom, etc. This artificial separation between the former and the latter is quite odd to me, as it seems like all these qualities originate in the brain. But again, more Christian theology arrives on the scene to muddy things up: priests often say that these latter qualities originate in the soul, not the brain. But then why does blood circulation in certain brain areas light up when we paint a painting, or talk to people at a party? If the nerve impulses that direct our arms to engage in dance do not originate with the brain, then where do they come from?

And by the way, I myself am not particularly attached to the 2033 date, although I do consider it reasonable. I’m more interested in the debate over whether superintelligence will be possible ever… not whether or not it will be possible in our lifetimes, for instance.

Do all transhumanists believe superintelligence is possible? If so, why is there so much focus in transhumanism on bodily augmentation, life extension, nanotechnology, and biotechnology, but very little on superintelligence specifically? When transhumanists think of “superintelligence”, are they mainly thinking “Einstein”? Or do they think that intelligence enhancement advances will happen slowly, allowing us to raise only one IQ point per year rather than 1000 at once, and therefore it’s really not the juicy fruit that some think it is?

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SIAI stands for “Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence”, a educational and research group centered around the concept of the “Singularity”. The term Singularity is used to describe a distinct event - the creation of an intelligence smarter than Homo sapiens. Basically, an intelligence significantly smarter than any human genius, past or present. The Singularity Institute is attempting to trigger this event by serving as a magnet for people interested in contributing money to pay people to work full-time on the task of constructing a true Artificial Intelligence capable of improving its own source code in an open-ended way, without help from programmers.

All humans are members of the same species, with the same basic mental hardware. Our panhuman set of mental hardware is comparable to the panhuman set of physical hardware - arms, legs, muscles, organs, etc. These pieces of hardware may be larger or smaller, slightly faster or slightly slower, but share the same basic features and characteristics. Our ability to imagine and solve problems is fundamentally limited by our mental hardware. For example, it is impossible to hold more than 8 or so items in our working memory while solving a problem. We simply do not have the capacity. It is impossible for us to intuitively imagine complex, interconnected relationships beyond a maximum number of nodes. And the list goes on.

Homo sapiens is the first species capable of building a complex civilization. But it doesn’t mean we are the smartest type of mind that could potentially exist. In the possibility space, there must exist minds smarter than us as we are smarter than chimps. Problems which seem impossible to the smartest human geniuses might appear utterly simple to these smarter intelligences. A chimp genius is no match for an average human, and a human genius is no match for a genuinely smarter species.

Smartness is the quality that makes it impossible to write a story containing a character smarter than you are. You are truly incapable of imagining what they’d do. You can use crude literary devices like saying they’re capable of learning dozens of languages in a year, or memorizing 1000 digits of pi, but imagining the more subtle consequences of heightened intelligence is impossible.

Where do we find an intelligence smarter than humans? We could evolve one, by forbidding humans below a certain IQ level to have children. However this would take many thousands of years and would curtail fundamental human freedoms. We could wait for smarter-than-human aliens to arrive on this planet… but there is no evidence of aliens visiting this planet in its multi-billion year history and it doesn’t seem likely that they’ll be stopping by our neighborhood anytime soon. So the next best option is to create one with technology.

All of the above is very difficult for a lot of people to process. Imagining something smarter than us is truly difficult. We tend to think that human geniuses represent the upper ceiling of what is theoretically possible. And when we imagine smarter-than-human intelligences, we are liable to underestimate the true novelty of the prospect. Understanding our particular human type of intelligence requires exposure to some amount of cognitive science.

The Singularity Institute is attempting to build an intelligence entirely outside the human realm, through the route of Artificial Intelligence. There are a few reasons why building an AI is likely to be simpler than commonly thought. First, an AI needn’t duplicate the full complexity of the human brain. Human intelligence evolved relatively recently, and most neurological complexity exists to facilitate all the survival instincts of animals we evolved from. Secondly, human intelligence is just a particular implementation of intelligence, designed blindly by evolution rather than purposefully by an intelligent designer. A plane is not as complicated as a bird. Thirdly, the underlying hardware - silicon - is inherently more flexible, reprogrammable, and rapid than neurons.

Greater intelligence, coupled together with the right initial motivations, could help humanity more than we can help ourselves. Some would argue that any smarter intelligence would inevitably see us as inferior. The Singularity Institute argues that this is a misconception based on the way humans are programmed by evolution to interact with each other.

Compared to the posts below, this is the longest and most confusing. That’s because the topic is so difficult to discuss because there are so many facets to it. However, I believe that working towards the creation of human-friendly, superhuman intelligence represents a humanitarian cause greater than any other. And I believe that the creation of a human-unfriendly superhuman intelligence represents a risk greater than any other. For more information, see the Singularity Institute’s website.

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