do take a moment and watch this brilliant presentation , it might make a difference
he calls himself a friendly skeptic, an approach I espouse and agree with Last night, the World Future Society’s yearly confab got underway in Boston with a keynote from Wendell Wallach, a lecturer and scholar at Yale University. Judging by the audience of several hundred, the topic of artificial intelligence, the singularity, and their societal implications are of interest across all demographics. |
Wallach is a pioneer in the nascent field of robot ethics and has captured the imaginations of futurists with his theories on artificial moral agents and computational ethics. In fact, he designed the world’s first course on the subject at Yale, and he published a book last year entitled, Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right from Wrong. |
Wallace immediately engaged the future-hungry audience with a video clip from the opening scene of 2001: A Space Odyssey depicting man’s upright strife with a bone. For better and for worse, man will shape technology, and in turn, it will shape man. He said to get ready for a “wild roller coaster ride through emerging technologies.” And he delivered. |
One of the first among a barrage of points Wallace made in his keynote was that Homo sapiens were not the first toolmakers, that honor goes to Homo habilis. Additionally, we’re not the only ones to use tools pointing to the several kinds of animals that also use them. The important issue for us, however, is that we’re seeing the beginning of a co-evolution between human beings and their technologies. We now evolve culturally and are as much as product of our culture as our biology. |
According to Wallace, life expectancy is growing at a rate of 1 year every 10 years. He asks, “What if we doubled life expectancy? What would the societal impact be?” We’re now attacking death as a disease and the battle can be traced back to the in the mid-1800s when germ theory came into the fore. A simple solution to germs is to use ordinary bar soap he remarked to the crowd’s delight. |
Wallace then moved on the singularity. For the uninitiated, the term singularity is borrowed from physics and in this context means the point 20, 30 or 100 years out (depending who you ask) at which technological progress will enable computers to reproduce the same level of intelligence as humans. “The change would be dramatic that it has to be called the singularity,” he said. |
Wallace is not entirely bought into the idea, however, calling himself a friendly skeptic. “We are far from understanding human intelligence and the qualities to pull this off.” He then proceeded to parse the topic into three areas: complexity, thresholds, and societal/ethical implications. |
Reaching the computational ability of the human brain is within sight, but there are other things about the brain that can’t be overlooked. For instance, it is engaged in massive parallel processing and extensive looping, and we don’t know how it self-organizes. If you damage the brain, there is limited degradation, but with a desktop, if one bit is out of place, your computer locks up. |
Wallace discussed the role of ethical theory in defining the control architecture of robots, first by noting the shortcomings of Isaac Asimov’s 3 laws of robots, quipping that they’re a nice literary device. “Humans are a biochemical instinctual, emotional platform while computers are rational from the get go,” he said. |
Robots that take care of the elderly, for instance will need to use ethics and react to say the terror of a patient, maybe caused by the robot itself. |
Driver-less cars sounds like a good idea and many people say it will solve many problems like traffic congestion and the death-rate on the road. Although traffic deaths may decrease substantially, accidents will still occur, therefore, corporations will simply not build them because of the liability issue. They need insurance. |
The presentation concluded with a look at research ethics. He asked if we should lower or raise the barriers for using human subjects and if we should allow for enhancement research. “Our challenge is to find the middle way that works for all humanity,” he said. Read more at www.zdnet.com |
though I haven’t read the book yet, this reminds much of Delanda (a thousand years..), moving into a bright future requires that we accept the idea of a rational optimist
Long before “sustainable” became a buzzword, intellectuals wondered how long industrial society could survive. In “The Idea of Decline in Western History,” after surveying predictions from the mid-19th century until today, the historian Arthur Herman identifies two consistently dominant schools of thought.
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| The first school despairs because it foresees inevitable ruin. The second school is hopeful — but only because these intellectuals foresee ruin, too, and can hardly wait for the decadent modern world to be replaced by one more to their liking. Every now and then, someone comes along to note that society has failed to collapse and might go on prospering, but the notion is promptly dismissed in academia as happy talk from a simpleton. Predicting that the world will not end is also pretty good insurance against a prolonged stay on the best-seller list. Have you read Julian Simon’s “The State of Humanity”? Indur Goklany’s “The Improving State of the World”? Gregg Easterbrook’s “Sonic Boom”? |
The first school despairs because it foresees inevitable ruin. The second school is hopeful — but only because these intellectuals foresee ruin, too, and can hardly wait for the decadent modern world to be replaced by one more to their liking. Every now and then, someone comes along to note that society has failed to collapse and might go on prospering, but the notion is promptly dismissed in academia as happy talk from a simpleton. Predicting that the world will not end is also pretty good insurance against a prolonged stay on the best-seller list. Have you read Julian Simon’s “The State of Humanity”? Indur Goklany’s “The Improving State of the World”? Gregg Easterbrook’s “Sonic Boom”?
Good books all, and so is the newest addition to this slender canon, “The Rational Optimist,” by Matt Ridley. It does much more than debunk the doomsaying. Dr. Ridley provides a grand unified theory of history from the Stone Age to the better age awaiting us in 2100.
It’s an audacious task, but he has the intellectual breadth for it. A trained zoologist and former editor at The Economist, Dr. Ridley has established himself in previous books, like “The Origins of Virtue” and “Genome,” as the supreme synthesist of lessons from anthropology, psychology, molecular genetics, economics and game theory. This time he takes on all of human history, starting with our mysteriously successful debut. What made Homo sapiens so special? Dr. Ridley argues that it wasn’t our big brain, because Neanderthals had a big brain, too. Nor was it our willingness to help one another, because apes and other social animals also had an instinct for reciprocity. |
The first school despairs because it foresees inevitable ruin. The second school is hopeful — but only because these intellectuals foresee ruin, too, and can hardly wait for the decadent modern world to be replaced by one more to their liking. Every now and then, someone comes along to note that society has failed to collapse and might go on prospering, but the notion is promptly dismissed in academia as happy talk from a simpleton. Predicting that the world will not end is also pretty good insurance against a prolonged stay on the best-seller list. Have you read Julian Simon’s “The State of Humanity”? Indur Goklany’s “The Improving State of the World”? Gregg Easterbrook’s “Sonic Boom”?
Good books all, and so is the newest addition to this slender canon, “The Rational Optimist,” by Matt Ridley. It does much more than debunk the doomsaying. Dr. Ridley provides a grand unified theory of history from the Stone Age to the better age awaiting us in 2100.
It’s an audacious task, but he has the intellectual breadth for it. A trained zoologist and former editor at The Economist, Dr. Ridley has established himself in previous books, like “The Origins of Virtue” and “Genome,” as the supreme synthesist of lessons from anthropology, psychology, molecular genetics, economics and game theory. This time he takes on all of human history, starting with our mysteriously successful debut. What made Homo sapiens so special? Dr. Ridley argues that it wasn’t our big brain, because Neanderthals had a big brain, too. Nor was it our willingness to help one another, because apes and other social animals also had an instinct for reciprocity. Read more at www.nytimes.com |
Our brains are limited. It may take a posthuman species to work out the big questions says Martin Rees and we may need agree with him
Einstein averred that “the most incomprehensible thing about the Universe is
that it is comprehensible”. He was right to be astonished. Our minds evolved
to cope with life on the African savannah, but can comprehend a great deal
about the counterintuitive microworld of atoms, and about the vastness of
the cosmos.
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Indeed, Einstein would have been specially gratified at how our cosmic
horizons have expanded. Our Sun is one of a hundred billion stars in our
galaxy, which is itself one of many billion of galaxies in range of our
telescopes. And there is firm evidence that these all emerged from a hot
dense “beginning” nearly 14 billion years ago.
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Other sciences have advanced apace, disclosing the nature of atoms, genes and
cells. Last year, we celebrated Charles Darwin’s anniversary. His pioneering
insights are pivotal to our understanding of all life on Earth, and the
vulnerability of our environment to human actions.
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Science is a global culture. Its universality is specially compelling in my
own subject of astronomy. The dark night sky is an inheritance we’ve shared
with all humanity, throughout history. All have gazed up in wonder at the
same vault of heaven, but interpreted it in diverse ways.
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It’s a cultural deprivation not to appreciate the panorama offered by modern
cosmology and Darwinian evolution — the chain of emergent complexity leading
from some still-mysterious beginning to atoms, stars and planets. And how,
on our planet, life emerged and evolved into a biosphere containing
creatures with brains able to ponder their origins. This common
understanding should transcend all national differences — and all faiths
too.
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As Woody Allen said: “Eternity is very long, especially towards the end.” So
there is time enough for dramatic posthuman evolution, whether organic or
silicon-based, on the Earth or far beyond. And for those species that come
after us, even the most baffling problems that we can pose may be as
straightforward as simple arithmetic is to us.
Read more at www.timesonline.co.uk |
In the late 1950s, three men who identified as the Son of God were forced to live together in a mental hospital. What happened? a fascinating and enlightening read by By Vaughan Bell. | In the late 1950s, psychologist Milton Rokeach was gripped by an eccentric plan. He gathered three psychiatric patients, each with the delusion that they were Jesus Christ, to live together for two years in Ypsilanti State Hospital to see if their beliefs would change. The early meetings were stormy. “You oughta worship me, I’ll tell you that!” one of the Christs yelled. “I will not worship you! You’re a creature! You better live your own life and wake up to the facts!” another snapped back. “No two men are Jesus Christs. … I am the Good Lord!” the third interjected, barely concealing his anger. |
| Frustrated by psychology’s focus on what he considered to be peripheral beliefs, like political opinions and social attitudes, Rokeach wanted to probe the limits of identity. He had been intrigued by stories of Secret Service agents who felt they had lost contact with their original identities, and wondered if a man’s sense of self might be challenged in a controlled setting. Unusually for a psychologist, he found his answer in the Bible. There is only one Son of God, says the good book, so anyone who believed himself to be Jesus would suffer a psychological affront by the very existence of another like him. This was the revelation that led Rokeach to orchestrate his meeting of the Messiahs and document their encounter in the extraordinary (and out-of-print) book from 1964, The Three Christs of Ypsilanti. |
Although we take little from it scientifically, the book remains a rare and eccentric journey into the madness of not three, but four men in an asylum. It is, in that sense, an unexpected tribute to human folly, and one that works best as a meditation on our own misplaced self-confidence. Whether scientist or psychiatric patient, we assume others are more likely to be biased or misled than we are, and we take for granted that our own beliefs are based on sound reasoning and observation. This may be the nearest we can get to revelation—the understanding that our most cherished beliefs could be wrong. Read more at slate.com |
How free exchange between people increases prosperity and trust In his 1776 work An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Scottish moral philosopher Adam Smith identified the cause in a single variable: “the propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another.” Today we call this free trade or market capitalism, and since the recession it has become de rigueur to dis the system as corrupt, rotten or deeply flawed.
If we pull back and take a long-horizon perspective, however, the free exchange between people of goods, services and especially ideas leads to trust between strangers and prosperity for more people. Think of it as ideas having sex. That is what zoologist and science writer Matt Ridley calls it in his book The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves (HarperCollins, 2010). Ridley is optimistic that “the world will pull out of the current crisis because of the way that markets in goods, services and ideas allow human beings to exchange and specialize honestly for the betterment of all.” |
Sex evolved because the benefit of the diversity created through the intermixture of genomes outweighed the costs of engaging in it, and so we enjoy exchanging our genes with one another, and life is all the richer for it. Likewise ideas. “Exchange is to cultural evolution as sex is to biological evolution,” Ridley writes, and “the more human beings diversified as consumers and specialized as producers, and the more they then exchanged, the better off they have been, are and will be. And the good news is that there is no inevitable end to this process. The more people are drawn into the global division of labour, the more people can specialize and exchange, the wealthier we will all be.” Read more at www.scientificamerican.com |
the very fact of being there enhances exposure, the point is good and interesting though I fail to agree that the end result is a FREE WHEELING mad max public square Some interesting points from David Brooks, noting a study by Gentzkow and Shapiro which counters the prevailing assumption that the internet has created a collection of information cocoons which people occupy to confirm their existing prejudices:
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| …Looking at a site says nothing about how you process it or the character of attention you bring to it. It could be people spend a lot of time at their home sites and then go off on forays looking for things to hate. But it probably does mean they are not insecure and they are not sheltered….If this study is correct, the Internet will not produce a cocooned public square, but a free-wheeling multilayered Mad Max public square. The study also suggests that if there is increased polarization (and there is), it’s probably not the Internet that’s Read more at mindblog.dericbownds.net |
The 18th-century philosopher Adam Smith wasn’t the free-market fundamentalist he is thought to have been. It’s time we realised the relevance of his ideas to today’s financial crisis.
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There is a vision here that has a remarkably current ring. The continuing global relevance of Smith’s ideas is quite astonishing, and it is a tribute to the power of his mind that this global vision is so forcefully presented by someone who, a quarter of a millennium ago, lived most of his life in considerable seclusion in a tiny coastal Scottish town. Smith’s analyses and explorations are of critical importance for any society in the world in which issues of morals, politics and economics receive attention. The Theory of Moral Sentiments is a global manifesto of profound significance to the interdependent world in which we live. Read more at www.newstatesman.com |
fascinating to see these coming into our lives, connectivity and ubiquity rule the game.  In the emerging Internet of Things, everyday objects are becoming networked. Clothing is no exception. It’s still early days for Web-enabled clothes - the best example so far is the Nike+ running shoe, which contains sensors that connect to the user’s iPod. But expect to see everything from your shirt to your underwear networked in the not too distant future.
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In the following list of ten ’smart clothing’ items, we showcase Internet pants, a proximity sensing shirt, a heart sensing bra, biosensor underwear, a “thought helmet”, and more! |
most of the list… but many more important ones are missing.. | Holy Fire, Bruce Sterling
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So you want to be a futurist? Better be ready to do a lot of reading. |
As you probably picked up from earlier entries in the Futures Thinking series, foresight work is intensely information-based. If you’re going to make grounded projections of future possibilities, you have understand both what has led us to the point we’re at today, and what kinds of issues seem to be shaping up as emerging drivers. A few pieces to trigger some creative thoughts can help, too. |
- Smart Mobs, Howard Rheingold
- The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs
- Everyware, Adam Greenfield
- Plan B, Lester Brown
- Radical Evolution, Joel Garreau
- Brave New War, John Robb
- No Logo, Naomi Klein
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- Accelerando, Charlie Stross
- Transmetropolitan series, Warren Ellis & Darrick Roberts
- Holy Fire, Bruce Sterling
- The Bohr Maker, Linda Nagata
- Rainbows End, Vernor Vinge
- Red Mars/Green Mars/Blue Mars trilogy, Kim Stanley Robinson
Read more at www.fastcompany.com |
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