SIAI Interview Series – Aubrey de Grey
Longevity Escape Velocity and the Singularity
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Monthly Archives: September 2007
The Human Importance of the Intelligence Explosion
Eliezer Yudkowsky and Peter Thiel at the 2006 Singularity Summit at Stanford
Eliezer Yudkowsky is Research Fellow and Director of the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence, a non–profit research institute dedicated to increasing the likelihood of, and decreasing the time to, a maximally beneficial singularity. He is one of the world’s foremost experts on the subject, and frequently speaks on artificial general intelligence (AGI), rationality, and the future. He created the “Friendly AI” approach to AGI, which emphasizes the importance of the structure of an ethical optimization process and its supergoal, in contrast to the more common trend of seeking the ‘right’ fixed enumeration of ethical rules a moral agent should follow. In 1996, he wrote “Staring into the Singularity,” one of the first singularity analyses. In 2001, he presented the first technical design for a self–improving AI that takes safety into consideration, with his book–length Creating Friendly AI: The Analysis and Design of Benevolent Goal Architectures. “Coherent Extrapolated Volition” (2004) is a recent written update to his Friendly AI theory.
Yudkowsky’s research into the workings of the human mind and minds–in–general led to a paper on the evolutionary psychology of human general intelligence, “Levels of Organization in General Intelligence” (2002), forthcoming in a volume on Artificial General Intelligence, as well as papers on human rationality and philosophy of science. He also has two papers forthcoming in an edited volume on Global Catastrophic Risks from Oxford University Press, entitled “Cognitive Biases Potentially Affecting Judgment of Global Risks” and “Artificial Intelligence and Global Risk.” His presentation at the Singularity Summit in 2006 was entitled “The Human Importance of the Intelligence Explosion.”
Artificial Intelligence and Existential Risks
Nick Bostrom presenting at the 2006 Singularity Summit at Stanford
Nick Bostrom, Ph.D., is Director of Oxford University’s Future of Humanity Institute, which takes a multi-disciplinary approach to understanding and evaluating humanity’s long-term prospects. He is also University Fellow in the James Martin Institute for Science and Civilization at Oxford. Prior to these appointments, Bostrom spent several years teaching at Yale University in the Department of Philosophy and the Yale Institute for Social and Policy Studies. His formal education spans physics, computational neuroscience, and artificial intelligence, as well as philosophy.
Dr. Bostrom is one of the world’s leading experts on the consequences and ethics of anticipated technologies, including human enhancement and global catastrophic risks. He has also done extensive work in the foundations of probability theory and philosophy of science. His book Anthropic Bias (New York: Routledge, 2002) presented the first mathematical theory of observation selection effects, phenomena which can introduce methodological bias into our reasoning if not properly understood and accounted for. He is a highly sought-after speaker on the future of humanity and emerging technologies, and has done more than 150 interviews for television, radio, and print media. He also contributes to the online forum dedicated to Overcoming Bias in individual personal beliefs and actions.
Wealth Preservation Trusts of Cryopreserved Patients
Bruce Klein, Tanya Jones, and Aubrey de Grey at the 6th Alcor Conference in Scottsdale, Arizona
Tanya Jones, Alcor’s Chief Operating Officer, has been actively involved with the organization since 1990. She has devoted a decade of work to cryonics overseeing the cryopreservation process, improving procedures, and managing Alcor’s day-to-day operations. She held the titles of Program Architect and Director of Communication at the Foresight Nanotech Institute and has participated in the cryopreservation procedures of half of Alcor’s patient population. At the 6th Alcor Conference she gave a talk on the efforts to provide and protect the wealth preservation trusts necessary to support and eventually revive cryopreserved patients.
The Cryobiological Basis to Cryonics
Brian Wowk presenting at the 6th Alcor Conference in Scottsdale
Brian Wowk is a Senior Scientist at 21st Century Medicine, Inc. where he studies the low temperature preservation of tissues and organs for medical use. He was a co-founder with Dr. Gregory Fahy of technology permitting successful cryonic temperature preservation of the mammalian kidney. Cryobiology studies show steady progress in the quality with which brain information can be preserved under ideal conditions. However the absence of demonstrable reversibility, and the vast variety of conditions under which cryopreservations can take place, introduce uncertainty in the “information theoretic” paradigm of cryonics. At the 6th Alcor Conference in Scottsdale, Arizona, Dr. Wowk gave a talk on the basis of cryonics in the science of cryobiology, while deconstructing several popular myths of cryobology.
A Precursor to Cryonic Revival
Aubrey de Grey presenting at the 6th Alcor Conference in Scottsdale
Aubrey de Grey is the editor of Rejuvenation Research, the world’s only peer-reviewed journal focused on intervention in aging, he is an advocate of research seeking answers to how molecular and cellular metabolic damage brings about aging and ways humans can intervene to repair and/or obviate that damage. At the 2006 Alcor conference in Scottsdale, Arizona, he gave a presentation on how implementing Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence might be viewed as a precursor to the prospect of reviving patients from cryonic suspension.