NASA & Google Researching Singularity -The Future of the Human Species?

Maybe Google's posting of their enigmatic UFO logo this weekend is a not so subtle sign that they know something the rest of us don't. An ET search query, perhaps? Meanwhile down at the Googleplex, it is the best of times.  Anyone who complains about science not delivering it's promises simply doesn't comprehend how incredible this information age truly is: you can go to the mall RIGHT NOW and buy devices which would have reshaped the world ten years ago, are reshaping it today, and technology isn't slowing down - it's accelerating exponentially.  There are incredible innovations just around the corner and that's the thinking behind the creation of Singularity University.

An advanced academic institution sponsored by leading lights including NASA and Google (so it couldn't sound smarter if Brainiac 5 traveled back in time to attend the opening ceremony).  The "Singularity" is the idea of a future point where super-human intellects are created, turbo-boosting the already exponential rate of technological improvement and triggering a fundamental change in human society - after the Agricultural Revolution, and the Industrial Revolution, we would have the Intelligence Revolution

Real AI effects are closer than you might think, with entirely automated systems producing new scientific results and even holding patents on minor inventions.  The key factor in singularity scenarios is the positive-feedback loop of self-improvement: once something is even slightly smarter than humanity, it can start to improve itself or design new intelligences faster than we can leading to an intelligence explosion designed by something that isn't us.

The Singularity University proposes to train people to deal with the accelerating evolution of technology, both in terms of understanding the directions and harnessing the potential of new interactions between branches of science like artificial intelligence, genetic engineering and nanotechnology.

Inventor and author Raymond Kurzweil is one of the forces behind SU, which we presume will have the most awesomely equipped pranks of all time ("Check it out, we replaced the Professor's chair with an adaptive holographic robot!"), and it isn't the only institutions he's helped found.  There's also the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence whose sole function is based on the exponential AI increases predicted.  The idea is that the first AI created will have an enormous advantage over all that follow, upgrading itself at a rate they can never catch up on simply because it started first, so the Institute wants to work to create a benevolent AI to guard us against all that might follow.

Make no mistake: the AI race is on, and Raymond wants us to win.

Posted by Luke McKinney.

Highly Recommended:

Stephen Hawking: "Humans Have Entered a New Stage of Evolution"

Sources:

Raymond Kurzweil discusses technological progress and announces the Singularity University 

The Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence

An advanced academic institution sponsored by leading lights including NASA and Google (so it couldn't sound smarter if Brainiac 5 traveled back in time to attend the opening ceremony).  The "Singularity" is the idea of a future point where super-human intellects are created, turbo-boosting the already exponential rate of technological improvement and triggering a fundamental change in human society - after the Agricultural Revolution, and the Industrial Revolution, we would have the Intelligence Revolution

Real AI effects are closer than you might think, with entirely automated systems producing new scientific results and even holding patents on minor inventions.  The key factor in singularity scenarios is the positive-feedback loop of self-improvement: once something is even slightly smarter than humanity, it can start to improve itself or design new intelligences faster than we can leading to an intelligence explosion designed by something that isn't us.

The Singularity University proposes to train people to deal with the accelerating evolution of technology, both in terms of understanding the directions and harnessing the potential of new interactions between branches of science like artificial intelligence, genetic engineering and nanotechnology.

Inventor and author Raymond Kurzweil is one of the forces behind SU, which we presume will have the most awesomely equipped pranks of all time ("Check it out, we replaced the Professor's chair with an adaptive holographic robot!"), and it isn't the only institutions he's helped found.  There's also the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence whose sole function is based on the exponential AI increases predicted.  The idea is that the first AI created will have an enormous advantage over all that follow, upgrading itself at a rate they can never catch up on simply because it started first, so the Institute wants to work to create a benevolent AI to guard us against all that might follow.

Make no mistake: the AI race is on, and Raymond wants us to win.

Posted by Luke McKinney.

Highly Recommended:

Stephen Hawking: "Humans Have Entered a New Stage of Evolution"

Sources:

Raymond Kurzweil discusses technological progress and announces the Singularity University 

The Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence

Comments

[Brad F.]

Sounds like what might happen is we'll create something that's smarter than us, which will create something which is smarter than us, which will etc etc etc, which will then smoosh us because we're in its way towards intellectual greatness?

Not that I'm against the idea of innovation and moving forward. I just hope we find a way to not get left in the dust of our own creations.

[Andrew T]

I think the way a superintelligence would treat humanity would depend to a large degree on how humanity treats it. So long as we do not behave in a hostile manner towards it, I see no reason why it would want to "smoosh" us. From a rational standpoint, the only reason to engage in violence is in defense, and a superintelligence would be far more rational than we are.

So humanity needs to figure out how we're going to act and respond to an intelligence that may be as far above us as we are above ants: are we the benign regular ants, or the fire ants that need to be exterminated for the sake of protection?

[Val R]

Well, suppose the super-intelligence is so smart and so autonomous that it would feel no need to report to us humans as to what it's up to, in much the same way as we don't bother to notify ants when we are cementing over their nest. the super-intelligence simply might have a different perspective on what Earth should be like, and we may not fit into it. Key factor would inevitably be the sets of values such AI would develop. all imho 'course

[ThankGodForAtheism]

Unless we give it explicit rules about behaviour, the second it finds out one of our goals is to restore the climate it could possibly start killing us off.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics

Anyone interested in this should read some of Isaac Asimov's work, the man who, unknowingly, created the term "robotics".

Isaac Asimov - "The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom."

[love]

just let love be