Singularity Institute for AI

[JAW]

Hi,
A friend forwarded these sites to me. Very interesting read re technology, moores laws, the "singularity" event that supposedly will occur in relation to technology, AI, intelligence, etc and related topics such as the meaning of life, goals and so on. Very, very interesting.

http://yudkowsky.net/singularity.html\
http://www.singinst.org/

Cheers.

[Telos]

I also recommend

www.kurzweilai.net

He is a member of singularity institute and has a few books out as well.

[Logic]

Ahh, a very interesting read, thanks for the links.

[Telos]

I'm surprised there isn't more discussion on this site about transhumanism or posthumanism. After all, those two movements are just as "new age" as new agers, but from a scientific perspective.

[alexd]

It's interesting that the singularity effect often appears to be self-constrained. New technology is being developed faster and faster but no means to sustain such technology exist. For example, flying cars were developed some years back but no road infrastructure exists to sustain them. A 64-bit microprocessor was developed a while back but still no Windows OS exists to make use of its processing power. It's true that technology is accelerating at an exponential rate but the speed at which we are seeing the output effects in actual reality is not congruent with the rate of acceleration. Until we escalate above this apparent lag in my opinion there will not be any absolute point of singularity in the future.

Perhaps very soon we will slow down research speed as has occurred with space exploration and research into life extension. Just because something "can be" researched doesn't seem to merit its research anymore.

Telos, what are the two concepts you mentioned about?


Alex

[Telos]

Poshumanism and transhumanism are about us becoming "more than human" as we integrate ourselves more directly with technology - microchips in the brain, mechanical prosthetics, that sort of thing.

There is another thread about this with links:
http://www.astralpulse.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=15701