First, a primer of sorts:

Technological Singularity (Wikipedia)

2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal (TIME Magazine)


Now, let's slow down and examine one aspect mentioned in the Time article (page 5):



The Blue Brain Project is (as defined by the Wikipedia article) "an attempt to create a synthetic brain by reverse-engineering the mammalian brain down to the molecular level". Pretty damned audacious goal, right? (Here's the project's official website, if you'd like to check it out for more info).

"What's so special about simulating a mammalian brain?" you ask. (Might as well say "human" brain, since that's Blue Brain's next big goal after they master the mouse brain they've been working on.) Let's think about this for a second: once you have simulated the human brain, what's next?

Back to the Time article for a few juicy quotes...





Y'all catch that yet? By Kurzweil's expectations, we'll have machines that can out-think us by 2045 (provided the global economy hasn't completely collapsed and been re-structured by then). Once that happens, who the hell needs humanity?

This is where we leap into the realm of science fiction: humans transferring their minds into computers (like in Ghost in the Shell), functional cyborgs (like in RoboCop), AI (Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation, any story by Isaac Asimov) or... drumroll, please... machines that might decide humanity isn't worth bothering with anymore and either decide to enslave us all (which would be pointless, since any machine that can out-think us could also make less-intelligent machines that can out-work us) or just destroy us outright (like in The Terminator and its spin-offs, The Matrix and its spin-offs, the Daleks from Dr. Who...).

This seems like a major hurdle, doesn't it? Apparently, Kurzweil and his philosophical followers agree. Back to the article...



My question: How the hell would go about doing that, exactly? Since we're already taking our ideas from sci fi, maybe sci fi can give us a few reliable answers.

In Star Wars, almost all droids came with "restraining bolts", little devices you could pop onto a machine to keep it from doing whatever the hell it wanted to do. Wonderful little devices with numerous functions, those restraining bolts. If a droid wanted to run away, it couldn't; the restraining bolt kept it programmed into subservience. If a droid wanted to disobey programming, it couldn't; the restraining bolt kept it from doing that, too. How about removing it? Droids apparently couldn't do that; R2-D2 never tried to remove his on his own. However, he did trick his young, naive new master - Luke Skywalker - into doing it, then promptly ran away later that night. (Of course, droids in Star Wars were based on the pre-Islamic concept of the djinn, and restraining bolts were just another form of "magic ring" or amulet or somesuch that kept them in line, but I digress.) Another method was periodic memory wipes, which kept droids from developing distinct personalities of their own. (Notice C-3PO has a mind-wipe at the end of Episode III? R2 does not. Which droid was the one who tried to escape in Episode IV and which one told the escapee to stay put and shut up?) If you have a kind-hearted fool of a master who won't do either to his/her droids - like Luke - then you have the potential for an AI gone rogue. I remind you: R2-D2 is considered a fairly low-end droid in the Star Wars universe, and he still thinks in relatively humanistic terms. What happens when you're dealing with an AI of greater intellect who could probably do more than just trick someone into removing the restraining bolt (or some similar device we may devise), but find or invent technological workarounds for it?

Asimov came up with the Three Laws of Robotics. Such laws are no problem, when we're talking about machines that can think on a relatively human level. What about machines that can think beyond a human level? Surely, one of those machines could figure out a way to reprogram either themselves or another machine in such a fashion that the sacred "Three Laws" no longer have any effect, right? (Think about it: there will be robotic soldiers. We already have them. They will only get better as the years go by. Do you want a machine designed to kill - so humans don't have to - to have laws regulating human preservation in their programming? Then you have the potential for a man-hating murder-droid.)

I hate to sound like a Luddite (and I'm NOT by any stretch of the term), but why don't we, I don't know, STOP TRYING TO MAKE MACHINES SMARTER THAN WE ARE?? Seems like evolutionary good sense to me, right? Well, there's a reason scientists and technologists are working on something like this: pure self-interest.



Yep, it's all about mankind's quest for immortality. In our search for the Fountain of Youth, we could possibly doom ourselves.

Let's forgo the notion of Skynet for a moment. Let's focus on the idea of moving our consciousness into a robot body. What's to stop a potential world dictator from doing that? What kind of control could that give him/her/it over, say, a robot army, his/her/their HQ nation's AI-controlled factories or means of production, the digital economy (the concept of someone being able to lower interest rates with just a thought is frightening) or even digital state-run Media, all connected to him/her/it by the next form of "better-than-Bluetooth" wireless communications protocol?

There are already stories of people who've been chipped with RFID transmitters connecting them to their homes, like Joe Wooller. (You also have cybernetics researchers like Mark Gasson, who implanted himself with an RFID chip, then infected it with a computer virus to prove how vulnerable wireless connections are, and to remind us that once we marry our bodies to such technology there is no going back and we must suffer all the terrible consequences if we desire to reap the potentially world-changing boons of that technology.

Remember the Laughing Man, the character from Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex who could hack into people's brains and alter memories because almost everyone in that series is connected wirelessly to the Internet? Sounds a little too sci fi, right? Not according to AboveTopSecret. Their post quotes from an article at Save the Humans by Jason Roth, which says:



I know, I just quoted a conspiracy site and that automatically pegs me as a "loony". Screw that. I'll quote from a more respectable source, like, say, WIRED Magazine:



This is serious shit, so serious that they already have coined a new term for this: it's called neurosecurity. (Before you ask: yes, there is a Wikipedia entry for it. God, you know when Wikipedia already has an entry for it, somebody's worried!) The Journal of Neurosurgery already has an article on it, and it's already becoming a ubiquitous term online.

So, let's ratchet up the fear even more! Take the previous hypothetical wannabe-Hitler I already mentioned - you know, the one who transferred their brain into a robot body that gives them wireless control of damn near everything - and give them the ability to hack into other people's wirelessly-connected brains via a clever little virus spread through the neural internet. Remember the old Bible verses about some evil future dictator forcing the world to take the "Mark of the Beast"? Who needs to force you to do anything when they can just hack into your mind and reprogram you to want to take it? Hell, it might eventually even be part of the basic brain-computer interface! (Come on, like you didn't think a neural interface wouldn't come with some basic form of government control! Egypt's Mubarak already had the power to shut off the Internet in his nation, and Obama wants the same thing here in the United States. You just know a brain-computer interface would at least come with some kind of government-mandated "shut-off", let alone some form of GPS tracking system!) This hypothetical dictator will be able to find you, watch you, reprogram you and - should you somehow break free and get out of line - turn anyone against you.

Skynet? The Matrix? The Beast of Revelation? Child's play, compared to what could be coming within our lifetimes. And it all starts with just a harmless simulation of a mammalian brain...

Getting scared yet?



The previous technological fear-mongering was brought to you by J.C. Batte ©2011, and is best read while listening to Fear Factory. Take it with a grain of salt. Reader discretion is encouraged.

Funny that I just yesterday discussed the possibilities of reverse engineering of the brain, robotics and brain-computer interfaces with someone.

I have to read your long post in more detail, but from what I glanced over I wouldn't be as concerned about the technologies as you appear to be. The singularity isn't here yet, and last year I heard it was supposed to be was 2029. Now it's already pushed back to 2045? The blue brain project is, I believe, aimed at reverse engineering a column of the brain of a hamster (or what animal was it). A column is a small part of the brain. They are nowhere near a whole rat brain, let alone a human one. Brain-computer interfaces (at least the non-invasive ones) aren't terribly good at picking up thoughts or computer commands yet. Yes, governments might install gps or read along with your thoughts if you use them, but why would they? And unless your are so paralysed you have no other means of communication, you could probably take the device off (and if you are so paralysed, you are probably not going to go to a lot of places so why bother about the gps anyway?). I don't want to add to your concerns, but I would worry about the data retention laws of communication (phone, email). I think they are already in place in the US, too.

I do think that if some of these technologies are going to become reality or are on the verge of becoming reality, we have to think whether that's the way to go and if so, whether we need some checks and balances.

It's not all doom (if that is your assessment) that is in these developments, though. Some of the trends you mentioned (singularity, robotics) are fueled by Moore's law. That also makes the ever smaller cell phones and tablet pcs possible, which are in great demand. Stopping the 'symptoms' of ageing might sound scary, but for how long have people searched for the fountain of youth? Our desire for better, more, younger might be a double egded sword, and it is good to discuss that.

Yesssssss, the day I upload my consciousness into the AI core of an interstellar Von Neumann machine grows ever closer! All I have to do is cling to this feeble shell of flesh a little longer, then I can carve out myself a bloody empire among the stars!

Yep, I'm outing myself as a card-carrying member of the Robot Overlords Fan Club. Except it's not really Skynet's cheerleading squad, it's all about the advancement of humanity as a species. Simulating a consciousness is a step towards consciousness transference and thereby transcending nature completely. We can become better, stronger, faster. Through science like this we can finally leave this pale blue dot that's cradled us for millions of years (and seriously, isn't it about time we moved out into the big, wide scary universe and got proper jobs?) to explore the vastness of creation.

Brother Cavil from Battlestar Galactica nicely summed up my attitude towards all these Singularity shenanigans.


The biggest worry a lot of people have about stuff like this, assuming HAL X000 doesn't wipe us out first, is that scientific progress like that somehow has to mean sacrificing everything that makes us human. Love, sadness and other qualities that likely don't have any validity beyond our galactic backwater. Except it doesn't have to be like that, unless you want it to. Of course, "human" wants and desires may be very different after millennia of self-directed evolution and adaptation, but just imagine for a moment.

Imagine yourself as a sentient cathedral to science drifting through the vastness of space. Your senses encompass multiple spectrums, your "brain" thinks at the speed of light (possibly faster: who knows?). When you pass through an occupied solar system, your presence blots out the sun. Instead of mundane matters like expensive shoes and tax returns, your thoughts are occupied by weightier topics like "how can I adapt to the heat death of the universe?" or...other matters beyond our imagination at present. Now imagine you have come to an uncharted virgin world far beyond the one that birthed your ancestors so long ago.

Deep inside the vastness of your being, swarms of nanites construct an automated cloning bay and cybernetics lab from a handful of stardust. A suitable-yet-improved facsimile of your old, vulnerable, half-forgotten human self is grown to maturity in a matter of seconds inside a glass tank. This clone (or, more accurately, "probe" or vehicle) is directly and intimately connected to your vast, all-encompassing consciousness. So intimately connected that there's no real distinction, no definitive separation of being. A perfect avatar for a God of the Diamond Age. One of billions of such beings strung out across eternity like diamonds.

While your biological exploration vehicle dries him/her/itself off and gets dressed, a suitable means of transportation is constructed to ferry this capsule of your consciousness down to the planet's surface. While you are still in orbit scanning pulsars and quasars and spacial anomalies, at the same time you are also setting foot onto a new world; breathing alien air and feeling the heat of a young sun on your skin. Perhaps the planet is not unoccupied. Maybe you have gone down among alien people, perfectly disguised as one of them with a firm (yet incomplete) understanding of them gleaned from a couple of thousand years of casual observation from orbit. Do you come as a prophet, messiah, conquerer, or nobody? By this point in human evolution, the only thing that defines who or what you are is your yourself.

Or it could just be a very realistic computer simulation you cooked up for yourself during the long journeys between solar systems. One of many such virtual games so wondrous they engross even the gods themselves. We could discuss the ramifications and opportunities of all this til judgement day and still only scratch the surface of what could be possible. Hell, who say's we'd even leave a smudge on this infinite gem of possibility?

We literally won't know until we get there.

To address another one of your main points:


What's to say the dictator will still have the same urges, desires or ambitions once he becomes El Computer Presidente?

All free societies have started with one premise: human nature is cruel, unjust, a force to be controlled. The separation of powers, from Aristotle to Montesquieu, is designed purely to thwart the ambitions of individuals (how comical the West's pride in its vast tangle of agencies, jurisdictions and other arcane procedures). The solution is to address the flaws in human nature. Make all beings truly equal in both body and mind: if you start with minds that are lucid, knowledgeable and emotionally sound, the needs of government change dramatically. Human nature is not perfect so improvements are to be welcomed, not annihilated. As enhanced beings, we could establish a pure democracy that runs on instantaneous input from the electorate.

An AI has the processing power to handle all governmental functions worldwide, legislative, executive, and judicial. Once every mind has been enhanced and can merge with the AI, attitudes toward major legislation can be processed on a daily or even more frequent basis. The key word here is "communication", not "assimilation". Life will go on as usual. All governments have power, but the benefit of giving this power to a synthetic intellect is that human affairs would no longer need to be ruled by generalities. An AI would have a deep understanding of every person's life and opinions.

"General ideas are no proof of the strength, but rather of the insufficiency of the human intellect." These are the words of Alexis de Tocqueville, an observer of the birth of modern democracy. Though general ideas allow human minds to make judgments quickly, they are necessarily incomplete. So de Tocqueville noted that an all-knowing mind: the mind of God as he conceived it, would have no need for general ideas. It would understand every individual in detail and at a glance. Incomplete applications of law or justice would be impossible for such a mind.

Thus, human affairs can be driven by wisdom, and wisdom must first be human. You must start with what a human sees and feels. But wisdom must also be knowledgeable, logical, and fair to billions of other beings.

- trag, taking the "Deep Time" approach to such things

I'm betting on Darwin; the Kwisatz Haderach to go kick your shiney metal asses.

Every implant exalts us. Every line of code in our subsystems elevates us from our disgusting flesh. How can you challenge a perfect, immortal machine?

killall -9 init

Entropy.

With sadism

Viva la resistance!!

We've not yet got the technology to construct a machine that can function with the subtle nature of the biological processes and the massive number of neural connections. It's all at a very, very, very primitive state. Then you have to consider not simulating stuff like ageing and cellular decay - while keeping the functionality the same. Any static entity like that is going to meet evolutionary competition like a kipper hitting a brick wall at 0.8C

Reminds me of that age-old story joke the Enterprise-D meets Windows 95".

Exactly. We're still some way off from having anything approaching adaptive, truly sentient artificial life. Early prototypes will no doubt be very similar to children, albeit rigid and inflexible. Eventually we will create an artificial intelligence that can learn, adapt and involve; until then any doom-mongering scare talk about the rise of Skynet is a tad premature.


Alas, so are my dreams of intergalactic conqu... I mean exploration, as a giant metallic god-ship.

- trag, disappointed that nobody remembers System Shock 2

We remember, hacker.

-- Thu Feb 17, 2011 10:19 pm --


We remember, hacker.

I think we shouldn't wait for them to build indestructable sentient killing machines.
We should act now!
It is now the duty of every homo sapien to smash up every machine they see for the sake of humanity!
Every assembly line robot, every toaster must be destroyed! Every scientist "re-educated".

Down with progress!
Down with this sort of thing!
Careful now!


Rabblerabble

My analysis of historical data suggests an 97.34% probability that someone would.

Yes, and I'm going to start on this personal comp*fzfzfxxodfvl lfc;cf vbvcxz\\sd*