Brent Kearney

Kevin Kelly recently gave a TED Talk on “technology’s epic story”, the first 7 minutes of which I think provides an excellent description of the nature of humanity as the technological species. On Kelly’s account, humanity itself is a concept of our own invention, which we continue to develop as part of an overall technological ecology that he calls “The Technium”.

Although I love Kelly’s idea of The Technium and it being an extension of (our) life, and even the defining feature of our condition, I disagree with his teleological interpretation of technology in general having it’s own wants. After we develop some real independently thinking technology, then it will have intention, but up until now — sorry, not so.

My hopes for technology in the near to long term future are probably on the extreme end of the scale, when compared with average views of where technology is going. For example, I think that many of Ray Kurzweil’s predictions on the merging of technology with our own biology will probably come to pass, and I look forward to it. However, fantasizing about The Technium’s intentions, treating it like some sort of ephemeral galactic life force, is akin to worshiping gadgets.

After his story of technology as an extension of humanity, Kelly’s talk is at best confusing and at worst incoherent. For example, he defines technology as a human invention, and then goes on to describe it as predating humanity by billions of years.

My working definition of technology is anything useful that a human mind makes (7:17)… the origins and roots of technology go back to the Big Bang (7:37).

Kelly makes some very loose connections between energy, information, entropy and order, and somehow draws conclusions in cosmology and biology from it. This involves some dubious claims about the “energy density” in life being greater than that of a star, and that of a microchip being greater than everything else in the universe.

I’m not sure how this is calculated, but I suspect that if my Mac used as much energy per gram as the Sun outputs, my power bill would be more than the power bill of the entire planet combined.

Even if we accepted the numbers about the flow of energy per gram per second through stars vs microchips, what can we conclude from it? Kelly sees a general trend, placing our technology into a “7th Kingdom of Life”, which is evolving from entropy into greater order, and has been doing so independently of us from the beginning of time.

While we can all agree that technology is progressing, I prefer the simpler explanation that it is progressing from and due to human effort alone, and not a mysterious, cosmological-scale life force. In any case, Kevin Kelly’s talk is thought provoking, and well worth your next 17 minutes!

The technological singularity is a point in time when a self-aware artificial intelligence (AI) recursively increases its own intelligence, leading to an “intelligence explosion” of unimaginable scale. Some people consider this project to be the fastest way, perhaps even the only way, for us to solve our most serious problems. As a species, we may not be smart enough to solve the big problems of the human condition, such as war, psychopathy, environmental sustainability, etc., so the idea is to create “super intelligences” that will show us how to fix the potentially civilization-destroying problems we face.

Much of the thinking and effort into strong AI development concerns the obvious risk of the project — how do we ensure that the resulting super-intelligence will be friendly? Or, as Johnathan Goldstein puts it in his interview with AI and robotics researcher Professor Noel Sharkey:

… twenty years from now, you think it’s more likely that a robot will be changing my bedpans than chasing me down the street, with lasers coming out of it’s eyes?

Dr. Sharkey thought that the latter scenario would be very unlikely.

There is another aspect of this super intelligence project that seems to get little mention, at least in the popular literature: what will it be like for them? Will the AIs be able to communicate with us, or for them, would it be like trying to explain calculus to a pigeon? How long will they try before giving up, if indeed at all?

That idea is artfully expressed in the following little piece of creative genius. It is from one of my favorite podcasts, CBC’s Wiretap, with Jonathan Goldstein. This is from the November 21st episode, The Answering Machine, where Goldstein played a reading of “Spirals”, a short story from David Eagleman:

I highly recommend that you listen to the whole episode, which includes the interview with Professor Sharkey and other humourous AI-related material. You can get it here, or in iTunes.

I’ll be attending the Humanity+ Summit next weekend, where one of the leading proponents of strong AI, Ben Goertzel, is speaking. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to ask him about how communication with a super-intelligence will be possible, given the gap.

Throughout the summer of 2009, FastForward Radio did a special series that they called A World Transformed, which provided an overview of the emerging technologies that are poised to radically transform our societies and ourselves in ways that are hardly imaginable. Although the audio sometimes sounds like they’re speaking through a plastic bag into a tin can attached by a string, from the bottom of a well, the interviews with some of the most knowledgeable people in the world on these topics makes listening very worthwhile.

If you’re interested in learning about some exciting developments in science & technology, then I highly recommend that you listen to these podcasts — they’ll blow your mind:

• Part 2: The Era of Indefinite Lifespan
  

  Visionary aging researchers and best-selling authors Aubrey de Grey (Ending Aging) and Terry Grossman (The Baby-Boomer’s Guide to Living Forever, Transcend: Nine Steps to Living Well Forever) explain how indefinite healthy extension of human lifespan is not only possible, but may well soon be within our grasp.

• Part 3: The Nanotechnology Revolution
  

  Nanotechnology promises to change our world in ways that are difficult to predict, or even imagine. Are you ready for:

  …Star Trek style replicators that would allow you to make anything, ANYTHING, you wanted?

  …artificial robotic blood cells that will turn an Average Joe into a world-class athlete, or allow you to hold your breath under water for an hour at a time?

  Nanotechnology promises all of this plus a lot more. We’re joined by a distinguished panel of guests who will help us understand the benefits, and risks, of this technology that will be with us sooner than most of us expect.

• Part 5: Achieving Friendly Artificial Intelligence
  

  In the near future, is machine intelligence going to equal or overtake human intelligence in terms of speed and capability?

  If so, what can we do to make sure these new intelligences are on our side?

• Part 9: The Technological Singularity
  

  Ray Kurzweil has been described as “the restless genius” by the Wall Street Journal, and “the ultimate thinking machine” by Forbes magazine. Inc. magazine ranked him #8 among entrepreneurs in the United States, calling him the “rightful heir to Thomas Edison.” He is a man who wears many hats — businessman, inventor, artist, visionary, and bestselling author. With his book The Singularity Is Near he has probably done more than anyone else to alert the the public as to the amazing period of transformation in which we now live.

I have picked out what I thought were the best of the 10ish podcasts that make up The Speculist’s The World Transformed series, but by all means, check out the full series at their website. Thank you very much, Phil Bowermaster and Stephen Gordon, for putting together this fantastic series to raise awareness and encourage discussion about the promise and peril we face in times ahead.

It is said that parody is a form of flattery. Wired’s Chris Hardwick just posted a hilarious spoof acceptance letter (below) from the just-launched Singularity University. Singularity U is a project of futurist Ray Kurzweil, X-Prize CEO Peter Diamandis, and a host of other luminaries.

Aside from the obvious poking fun at the sheer nerdiness of S.U. and it’s perceived cult-like vibe, some things of note in the letter are the jab at the cost of the S.U. program ($25,000), that “speculative instruction” is on offer, and that Hardwick estimates the school will be dissolved in three years.

From the Singularity University website:

Singularity University aims to assemble, educate and inspire a cadre of leaders who strive to understand and facilitate the development of exponentially advancing technologies and apply, focus and guide these tools to address humanity’s grand challenges.

The Methuselah Foundation, whose mission is “nothing less than to enable humans to live longer, better, and wiser, by defeating age-related disease and suffering”, recently got some flashy press coverage by a TV outfit in Los Angeles, KTLA:

[video removed]

The “organ printing” technology described in the video is by a Methuselah-funded company called Organovo. It is one of several organizations supported by the Methuselah Foundation. Another of it’s organizations is even more exciting: the SENS Foundation:

SENS is an acronym for “Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence”. It is best defined as an integrated set of medical techniques designed to restore youthful molecular and cellular structure to aged tissues and organs. Essentially, this involves the application of regenerative medicine to the problem of age-related ill-health. However, regenerative medicine is usually thought of as encompassing a few specific technologies such as stem cell therapy and tissue engineering, whereas SENS incorporates a variety of other techniques to remove or obviate the accumulating damage of aging.

SENS is the brainchild of the famous Aubrey de Grey, author of the book Ending Aging. De Grey spoke at a conference in Edmonton, Alberta a few years ago, and was interviewed by the CBC. See it and are other interviews and media here.

Aubrey de Grey