Re: The Future

My responses are interspered below.

"Oliver Wong" <owong@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:bEOUh.10432$iq5.280939@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"Charles Hottel" <chottel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:_mUTh.2691$3P3.1491@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

It is somewhat hard to answer your question and yet do the book justice.

I'll add the book to my "list of things to read". Meanwhile, I'll throw
out a few objections and questions, 'cause I too find this topic
interesting.


I will try to give the jist of why the process will keep going short of
our destroying ourselves or our being destroyed by a natural disaster.
Now that we have the human genome we will, at an ever increasing
exponential rate, decipher the processes underlying the operation of our
bodies and disease processes. This will allow us to conquer disease, end
hunger and extend life span.

I'm not sure how understanding human genome will "end hunger". Hunger
seems to be an economical and political problem, rather than a biological,
medical or technological problem. Even if by the means by which
genome-engineering will end hunger is by actually modifying our bodies so
that we no longer need to eat (and instead, absorb energy through
photosynthesis or something), the economical and political barriers will
still exist: i.e. we won't nescessarily share this technology with those
who are starving.


The genome is just a step. It is like having the object code for a computer
program but without having any source code. We will have to reverse
engineer and figure out how things work in the body. The genes describe how
to make the proteins but the do not describe eveything, like the exact
wiring of every neuron in the brain. We now that because ther simply is not
enough information in the genome to do that. There is more than the genome
to figure out. One of the processes that we will figure out is cloning. But
cloning the whole organism is the least interesting. Kurzweil claims we will
clone things like parts of animal. This will help end animal suffering,
reduce pollution and produce food much more cheaply and that will help end
hunger. With the advances in biotechnology, nanotechnology and strong AI the
raw materials become less valuable than the knowledge that is used to create
products with them.
For example the cost of a personal computer is not really based on the raw
materials but on the knowledge that it takes to create it. Well I left the
book at work and I am sure I am not explaining as well and as in detail as
he does.

This will allow some of us to live long enough to take advantage of
nanotechnology which is now less developed than biotechnology, yet it too
is advancing exponentially. Nanotechnology will allow us to manifest
things in the real world from simple raw materials and the information
needed to construct them (picture Star Trek replicators machines).

There's a question of cost-effectiveness, though. It's one thing to
merely *have* the technology to take random matter (crumpled up
newspapers, banana peels, etc.) and convert it into something useful (e.g.
a dish of fettucini alfredo). It's an entirely different thing to have
this technology available in a form which costs less than a couple billion
dollars per invocation.

New technology is usually very expensive at first and does not work that
well. As improvements are made it works better and the prices fall. By the
time it is adopted by the majority it is cheap and works really well. This
process of adoption of technology into the mainstream is happening at a
faster and faster rate. Nanobots are so small that it is hard to see how
they can be created cost effectively in large enough number without
self-replication. However if the self-replication does not stop when it is
programmed to do so then it is goodbye biosphere hello nano-goo. He
discusses all this in detail and apparently there is a lot of up front
planning going on what can be done with this technology. There a lot of
footnote/web reference in the book to supplementary material. I have not had
time to delve into it yet and before reading this book I did not know much
about nanotechnology or its potential. However nantotechnolgy is just in the
begining phases of the exponential curve where to us humans the process
appears almost linear, at least until you hit the knee of the curve. For
example a guy had a pond with fish and he wished to prevent the water plants
from covering the pond and killing his fish. The plants grew so as to
double the area they covered in two to three days. He watch the growth of
the plants for several weeks and the progress seemed not so bad so he went
on a two week vactaion. When he came back the pond was covered with plants
and the fish were dead. The last seven doublings increased the area coverd
by a factor of 128. Most of the progress occurs after the knee of the curve.

Technology is a two edge sword. The up side is tantilizing and seductive and
the downside is frightening and could mean the end of us..


Eventually we could choose to replace our biological bodies with "better"
engineered bodies and even before that it can be used to further expand
our life spans. These technologices will interact with each other
synergistically. Technology to enable reverse engineering of the brain is
also expanding at an exponential rate.

You might be interested in reading Roger Penrose's "The Emperor's New
Mind". In it, Penrose convincingly argues that there's "something going
on" in the human brain which current physical theories cannot explain. He
suspects we'll need to develop a unifying theory for quantum-gravity
before we can make further progress in understanding how the mind works.
Penrose has written other books since then -- I believe one of them is
called "Shadows of the Mind" -- but I haven't read them yet, so I'm not
sure if Penrose has since updated his analysis.


Thanks that book is on my list but I have not gotton to it yet. I already
have "Shadows of the Mind" but have not read it yet. Well I figured to do
some readin in my retirment but now I may try to get to it sooner.

I believe Penrose and someone else whose name escapes me at the moment
speculate that tubules (not certain if that is the correct spelling) in the
nerons may perform quatum computation. Kurzweil says that there is as yet no
proof of that and even if such computation goes on in the brain there is
nothing that prevents a machine from functioning as a quantum computer and
duplicating it. I thought his explaination of quantum computers, how they
work and what their limitations were the clearest and easiest to understand
that I have read to date. Having to figure out and duplicate these quantum
processes will delay the time table, but we already see computers increasing
their intellegence rapidly without quantum computing. We can probably have
very intelligent computers without it although it would be required for
uploading minds. In 1990 compter were scoffed at by champion human chess
players but compter kept getting smarter while the humans remained about the
same. By 1995 (I think that is the year) the computes caught up and passed
the humans.

Either way, reverse engineering the brain might not be as simple as
sending in nanobots and having them report what they "see". Afterall,
nanobots, by definition, thend to be at the nanometer scale (10^-9
meters), whereas I'm guessing a lot of quantum phenomenon happen at the
plank scale (10^-35 meters). Beyond nanotech, there's picotech, femtotech,
attotech, zeptotech and yoctotech, the last of which only reaches 10^-24
meter scale. If we're going to go this route, we've still got a long way
to go.


Yes you are right about that. He speculates only up to the femtotech level
IIRC.

Personally, I think current research in neural networks is relatively
promising. Current estimates put the number of neurons in a human brain at
100 billion. There's currently a CPU with 1024 cores
(http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=17076&ch=infotech).
Once we get a CPU with a billion cores (around 40 years, if we assume a
doubling of core every 18 months), we might start to see something
interesting.


Kurzweil talks about simulating the brain at two levels and gives order of
magnitude estimates for how much computer power will be needed.

On level is to simulate the brain at level function units. This requires
somewhat less computations per second (cps) than simulating the neurons and
all of their non-linearities. The later level of simulation would be need
if you want to scan your barin an upload a copy to a computer.

Right now we have functional level simulation of some regions of the brain.
There are probably several hundred of these functional regions.

Right now the unused cycles of computers attached to the internet is
probably more than enough for functional simulation. Around 2020
supercomputers will be powerful enough to do it and around 2025 a PC will
have that much power. He predicts computers will start passing the Turing
test around 2030 and by around 2037 full simulation of the neurons and their
non-linearities will be possible.

There are some analog processes used by the brain and also the nervous
system and edocrine sytem etc will have to be taken into account. He
discusses all of these and how many cps it will take to dupliacte them.

Nanotechnology will greatly speed this up also. This will lead to machine
intelligence on computers that are a million times faster at processing
than our brains.


Yep this is his point exactly.

The AI guys seem to want to do it so they can say "see we were right all
along". Plus the idea of immortality and super intelligence with god-like
powers is very seductive to guys who like to learn things and increase their
knowledge. What worries me is that humans are a mixture of both good and
evil potential and the million times faster processing will amplify both.
Despite the rosey projections and optimistic senariors I think nobody knows
what the consequences will be. For every positive picture presented you can
imagine an equally powerful negative picture. I think implementing it
without some idea of what will happen is irresponsible. Techology always
seems to result is some unintended consequences. As it gets more powerful
those consequences could result in the end of us all.

He says we evolved from bacteria and we did not exterminate them so super
intelligent computers will not wipe us out. In fact they will be human and
will value and respect their human heritage. He is optimistic about human
values.

Well we have not wiped out bacteria but we don't mind killing them by the
millions or billions when they get in our way. We experiment on monkeys that
share our genome to 95 to 99 percent. Human values have produced world wars,
mass exterminations, genocide and many other horrible events. We often have
good conscious intentions that are thwarted by subconscious programs. Often
these subconscious programs are developed in childhood and they have a good
purpose for us, but their methods are those that make sense for a child but
are not appropriate behavior for an adult.What happens if these god-like
super intelligences get in a power struggle to see who will be the head
god?. What will the collateral damage be? What happens if the one million
plus increase in speed results in mental illness or frustration and
impatience with the slow responses of unenhanced humans? When they sneeze
will we all catch cold? If they can modify their design and improve upon it
at an ever increasing rate how long will they retain their "humanity". He
projects that late in this century a single computer will have trillions of
times the processing power of 10 billion people. It does not take super
intelligence to realize that mere humans with nuclear weapons and
nanoweapons could be preceived by these AIs as a threat to their existence.

He does not address this very deeply. Most of his arguments are with those
who say that what he is proposing cannot be done. He says the super
intelligence will find a way to overcome any obstacle. He does not mention
much about trying to control it, although some of the refrences are to
material that discusses steps we should take to make sure we have friendly
relations with them. I suppose if we try to control it and it circumvents us
then relations might not be very good.

Just because we can do a thing does not mean we should do it. If we do
decide to implement nanotechnology and strong AI we had better be extremely
cautious. However the ever increasing speed of the exponential process would
not seem to leave much time for reflection. However there have been
moratoriums in the past on developing biotechnology, until conferences
were held and guidlines were developed. One of his arguments is that it
would take a worldwide totalitarian regime to stop the development and then
it would probably go underground and might focus on he more dangerous
aspects. He feels if it is out in the open it will be easier to control it.
Even as optimistic as he is he realizes the potential downside and rates our
chances of survival at around 50-50.


Note that, depending on your metric, computers may already be a million
times faster at processing than our brains. For one example metric,
communication from one neuron to the text happens using a combination of
chemical and electrical reactions which is exceedingly slow compared to
the switching speed of a transitor in a CPU chip. Advocates of Strong AI
(Penrose is not one of them) believe the only thing stopping computers
from being able to "think like a human" is the relatively linear nature of
CPU design, contrasted against the massively parallel architecture of the
human brain.

[...]

He posulates having interchangable reality and virtual reality and even
having them both at the same time.

Something like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_mediated_reality ?

I'm fond of the idea that people will be able to one day directly
"perceive" the Internet as a sixth sense, via
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_plasticity. Extracting information from
packets using your WiFi connection would be as natural as extracting
information from photons using your eye. This will open up new forms of
artful expression, and a new medium that is not based in sight, sound,
touch, taste or smell. Perhaps you could directly send states of mind,
perspectives or emotions for others to experience.

- Oliver


By 2020 or so you may have eyeglasses or contact lenses that provide
internet access and virtual reality in combination with real reality.

Once the intelligent, networked together nanobots are place at the junction
of each synapse you can choose virtual reality or real reality at will. You
can have many different personalities and virtual representations. You can
have virtual sex and appear as you want and choose your partners appearance
and your partner can do the same. But watch out for those computer viruses!
Some of it seems like it will be pretty confusing. Maybe it is easier if you
merge with the tchnology gradually.

I have really mixed feelings. Some of it sounds great, some of it disgusting
and some very frightening.


.

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