Sacer esto!
Human as God
Human
is a dual being by nature = in each of us there is immanent Good as the
embodiment of the Divine and Evil as a demonic reflection – the emancipation of
the dark side of human nature.
How
we balance Good and Evil in real life – which of the parts we develop, nurture
and stimulate in ourselves – depends on our own will and choice, commensurate
with the virtues and resulting from the influence of the environment. God within us is as powerful
as we have strengthened Him and provided
Him with the energy of our Love, or weakened Him by spreading the energy of
evil, devilry and hatred.
It
is only through the collaboration of believers of different religions and the
consolidation of all the faithful in
the name of the one God that we can come to a consensus underpinned by Love
and based on Faith in God. And then the power of God that we perceive, that lives
in us and felt by us is multiplied at an exponential rate. And people who
believe in God become as powerful as
their true Love for God within themselves is, as united as they see God in their fellow citizens
– in the totality of the people who have come together in God.
Realising
our humane essence, our human purpose and doing good deeds, we reveal the
Divine spark and also bring goodness to God. We feel as a Divine particle and
approach God as the Supreme Reason. Eradicating evil, lies and hatred,
suppressing the feelings of aggression, arrogance and revenge and perfecting our
personality in the virtue and the Law of God, we increasingly begin to resemble
the Divine creation. This is when the world around us begins to transform and
becomes more good-natured and bright – filled with Love and built on justice.
MAN 2.0
R-EVOLUTION (Series 6x52'); Человек 2.0
For 4.5 billion years mutation, gene flow and natural selection have
driven the evolutionary process and forged life on earth. Today cultural
evolution is taking over changing how we live, how we think and how we die. For
the first time in history humankind has the knowledge and the tools to
intervene directly in its own evolutionary process. The SIX EPISODES
DOCUMENTARY TV SERIES investigates the growing role of science in shaping human
life.
We meet the most prominent scientists, anthropologists and futurologists to explore the state of the art of the human species: from a genetically modified homo sapiens to homo technologicus and digitalis.
The series explores past and present scenarios and looks at the future, tracing the journey that mankind is making to modify human minds and bodies, as well as the lenght and quality of our lives. This is altogether turning us into a new species: Man 2.0
We meet the most prominent scientists, anthropologists and futurologists to explore the state of the art of the human species: from a genetically modified homo sapiens to homo technologicus and digitalis.
The series explores past and present scenarios and looks at the future, tracing the journey that mankind is making to modify human minds and bodies, as well as the lenght and quality of our lives. This is altogether turning us into a new species: Man 2.0
How Wisdom Can Change Your Life
In
San Francisco Chronicle March 25, 2019
By
Deepak Chopra, MD
It
seems perverse that the easier life becomes, the worse our problems. Technology
has created life-changing innovations like the Internet that are directly linked
with terrorist attacks, giving like-minded fanatics instant global
communication. Computers gave rise to social media, which has led to cruel
bullying at school, fake news, conspiracy plots, and the anonymity to mount
vicious personal attacks—all of these seem as endemic as hacking, another
insoluble problem created by technology.
One
could go on practically forever, and it wouldn’t be necessary to blame current
technology either—the internal combustion engine is directly connected to
climate change, and nuclear fission led to the horrors of atomic warfare. But
my point isn’t to bash technology; we owe every advance in the modern world to
it—except one.
Technology
is based on higher education, and whatever its benefits, higher education has
almost totally lost interest in wisdom. Wisdom isn’t the same as knowledge. You
can collect facts that lead to the understanding of things, but wisdom is
different. I’d define it as a shift in allegiance, away from objective
knowledge toward self-awareness.
The
Greek dictum “Know thyself” doesn’t make sense if the self you mean is the
ego-personality, with its selfish demands, unending desires, and lack of
happiness. Another self is meant, which isn’t a person’s ego but a state of
consciousness. “Self” might not even be a helpful term, despite the age-old
references to a higher self identified with enlightenment. It is more helpful
to say that the pursuit of wisdom is about waking up.
Waking
up is a metaphor for the conscious life, and the conscious life is what wisdom
leads to. Every day we are driven by unconscious impulses and desires, and
unexamined processes go on beneath the surface of the mind that lead to
anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, self-destructive behavior, and every kind
of pointless discord, from household tensions to war. The outbreak of World War
I led to senseless slaughter, as did the excesses of Communism. These
consequences were unforeseen, yet in retrospect it is obvious that World War I
was a kind of eruption from the unconscious, of pride, anger, stubborn
nationalism, and xenophobic tendencies that people were harboring as a matter
of course.
European
anti-Semitism wasn’t invented in Germany by a single fanatical Nazi; it was
accepted in the most polite and civilized circles almost everywhere. In one way
or another, allowing our unconscious to go unexamined has caused the greatest
and longest suffering in human history. It was suffering and finding a way to
end it that became the foundation of Buddhism, but any spiritual teaching that
will show people how to wake up also aims to bring them out of suffering.
In
that sense, wisdom has a definite purpose, but escaping the ills and woes of
the unconscious life is secondary to the main purpose of waking up, which is to
know who we really are. The answer can be formulated in a few words: humans are
a species of consciousness whose special trait is self-awareness. Being
self-aware, we have the capacity to access the very source of awareness.
At
first sight this ability doesn’t necessarily sound positive. The vast majority
of people have become expert at denial and were taught from childhood not to
dwell on themselves, an activity deemed self-centered if not totally
solipsistic. People are also expert at keeping secrets from themselves, at
going along to get along, at valuing social conformity and fitting in. These
habits unravel when self-awareness awakens. Not everyone wants to let them go,
for obvious reasons.
But
the worst aspect of being unconscious, or asleep to use the metaphor of waking
up, is self-limitation. We all go around with core beliefs about how
insignificant a single individual is, how risky it would be to step out of the
norm, and how only the gifted few rise above the average. The wise in every
generation have asserted the opposite, that the source of consciousness makes
human potential infinite. We can think an infinite number of new thoughts and
say things never before said. In fact, there is no arbitrary limit on any trait
that makes us human: intelligence, creativity, insight, love, discovery,
curiosity, invention, and spiritual experiences of every kind.
We
are a species of consciousness whose great pitfall isn’t evil but “mind-forg’d
manacles,” to borrow a phrase from the poet William Blake. We make up mental
constructs, invent stories around them, and tell the next generation that these
stories are true. One story says that women are inferior, a complex tale that
gave rise to a thousand injustices and false beliefs. Us-versus-them thinking
leads to stories about racism and nationalism that caused their own barbarous
results.
Waking
up allows us to escape all stories and to live free of self-limiting mental
constructs. The real question is whether it can be done. Can you and I wake up?
If so, how do we go about it? Are there awakened teachers who can provide
examples of what it means to live the conscious life? This is exactly where
wisdom enters the picture. Without living examples of awakened individuals, the
whole enterprise would be trapped in a limbo of fantasy and wishful thinking.
But when a society values wisdom, it turns out that the awakened exist among us
and always have.
Anyone
who wants to wake up is fortunate to be alive now, because despite our global
problems, irrational behavior, and self-destructive denial, modern society is
open to ready communication about every topic, including the exploration of
higher consciousness. Where prior generations had little grasp of higher
consciousness beyond the precepts of religion, millions of people today can
walk their own path to self-awareness, choosing to include God, the soul,
organized religion, and scriptures as they see fit, or to avoid them. Even
“spirituality” is a term you can adopt or ignore—the real purpose of waking up
is about consciousness.
We
have always had the potential to be wise by using self-awareness to explore who
we really are. A society driven by consumerism, celebrity worship, video games
and social media gossip, and indifference to massive social problems feels like
it could never find wisdom, or even the first impulse to wake up. But I’d argue
that we are the most fortunate society to wake up in, simply because higher
consciousness is open to anyone. I count this as the greatest opportunity
facing us, to see that waking up is possible and to hasten toward it as quickly
as we can.
Deepak Chopra
MD, FACP,
founder of The Chopra Foundation and co-founder of The
Chopra Center for Wellbeing, is a world-renowned pioneer in integrative
medicine and personal transformation, and is Board Certified in Internal
Medicine, Endocrinology and Metabolism. He is a Fellow of the American College
of Physicians and a member of the American Association of Clinical
Endocrinologists. Chopra is the author of more than 85 books translated into
over 43 languages, including numerous New York Times bestsellers. His latest
books are The Healing Self co-authored with Rudy
Tanzi, Ph.D. and Quantum Healing (Revised and Updated): Exploring the
Frontiers of Mind/Body Medicine. Chopra hosts a new podcast Infinite
Potential available on iTunes or Spotifywww.deepakchopra.com
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-wisdom-can-change-your-life-deepak-chopra-md-official-/?trk=
Cyborg
Organoids: Implantation of Nanoelectronics via Organogenesis for Tissue-Wide
Electrophysiology
- 09.20.19
The rise of AI has led to tattered privacy
protections and rogue algorithms. Here’s what we can do about it.
This
article is part of Fast Company’s editorial series The New Rules of AI.
More than 60 years into the era of artificial intelligence, the world’s largest
technology companies are just beginning to crack open what’s possible with
AI—and grapple with how it might change our future. Click here to read all the stories in the
series.
Consumers and activists are rebelling against
Silicon Valley titans, and all levels of government are probing how they
operate. Much of the concern is over vast quantities of data that tech
companies gather—with and without our consent—to fuel artificial intelligence
models that increasingly shape what we see and influence how we act.
If “data is the new oil,” as boosters of the AI
industry like to say, then scandal-challenged data companies like Amazon, Facebook, and Google may face the same mistrust as oil
companies like BP and Chevron. Vast computing facilities refine crude data into
valuable distillates like targeted advertising and product recommendations. But
burning data pollutes as well, with faulty algorithms that make judgments on
who can get a loan, who gets hired and fired, even who goes to jail.
The extraction of crude data can be equally
devastating, with poor communities paying a high price. Sociologist and
researcher Mutale Nkonde fears that the poor will sell for cheap the rights to
biometric data, like scans of their faces and bodies, to feed algorithms for
identifying and surveilling people. “The capturing and encoding of our
biometric data is going to probably be the new frontier in creating value for
companies in terms of AI,” she says.
The further expansion of AI is inevitable, and it
could be used for good, like helping take violent images off the internet or speeding up the drug discovery process. The question
is whether we can steer its growth to realize its potential benefits while
guarding against its potential harms. Activists will have different notions of
how to achieve that than politicians or heads of industry do. But we’ve sought
to cut across these divides, distilling the best ideas from elected officials,
business experts, academics, and activists into five principles for tackling
the challenges AI poses to society.
1.
CREATE AN FDA FOR ALGORITHMS
Algorithms are impacting our world in powerful but
not easily discernable ways. Robotic systems aren’t yet replacing soldiers as
in The Terminator, but instead they’re slowly supplanting the
accountants, bureaucrats, lawyers, and judges who decide benefits, rewards, and
punishment. Despite the grown-up jobs AI is taking on, algorithms continue to
use childish logic drawn from biased or incomplete data.
Cautionary tales abound, such as a seminal 2016 ProPublica investigation that
found law enforcement software was overestimating the chance that black
defendants would re-offend, leading to harsher sentences. In August, the ACLU
of Northern California tested Rekognition, Amazon’s facial-recognition
software, on images of California legislators. It matched 26 of 120 state lawmakers to images
from a set of 25,000 public arrest photos, echoing a test the ACLU did of
national legislators last year. (Amazon disputes the ACLU’s methodology.)
Faulty algorithms charged with major
responsibilities like these pose the greatest threat to society—and need the
greatest oversight. “I advocate having an FDA-type board where, before an
algorithm is even released into usage, tests have been run to look at impact,”
says Nkonde, a fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet
& Society. “If the impact is in violation of existing laws, whether it be
civil rights, human rights, or voting rights, then that algorithm cannot be
released.”
Nkonde is putting that idea into practice by
helping write the Algorithmic Accountability Act of 2019, a bill
introduced by U.S. Representative Yvette Clarke and Senators Ron Wyden and Cory
Booker, all of whom are Democrats. It would require companies that use AI to
conduct “automated decision system impact assessments and data protection
impact assessments” to look for issues of “accuracy, fairness, bias,
discrimination, privacy, and security.”
These would need to be in plain language, not
techno-babble. “Artificial intelligence is . . . a very simple concept, but
people often explain it in very convoluted ways,” says Representative Ro
Khanna, whose Congressional district contains much of Silicon Valley. Khanna
has signed on to support the Algorithmic Accountability Act and is a co-sponsor of a resolution calling for national
guidelines on ethical AI development.
Chances are slim that any of this legislation will
pass in a divided government during an election year, but it will likely
influence the discussion in the future (for instance, Khanna co-chairs Bernie
Sanders’s presidential campaign).
2.
OPEN UP THE BLACK BOX OF AI FOR ALL TO SEE
Plain-language explanations aren’t just wishful
thinking by politicians who don’t understand AI, according to someone who
certainly does: data scientist and human rights activist Jack Poulson.
“Qualitatively speaking, you don’t need deep domain expertise to understand
many of these issues,” says Poulson, who resigned his position at Google to protest its
development of a censored, snooping search engine for the Chinese market.
To understand how AI systems work, he says, civil
society needs access to the whole system—the raw training data, the algorithms
that analyze it, and the decision-making models that emerge. “I think it’s
highly misleading if someone were to claim that laymen cannot get insight from
trained models,” says Poulson. The ACLU’s Amazon Rekognition tests, he says,
show how even non-experts can evaluate how well a model is working.
AI can even help evaluate its own failings, says
Ruchir Puri, IBM Fellow and the chief scientist of IBM Research who
oversaw IBM’s AI platform Watson from 2016 to 2019. Puri has an intimate
understanding of AI’s limitations: Watson Health AI came under fire from
healthcare clients in 2017 for not delivering the intelligent diagnostic help promised—at
least not on IBM’s optimistic timeframe.
“We are continuously learning and evolving our
products, taking feedback, both from successful and, you know,
not-so-successful projects,” Puri says.
IBM is trying to bolster its reputation as a
trustworthy source of AI technology by releasing tools to help make it easier
to understand. In August, the company released open-source software to analyze and explain how algorithms come to their decisions.
That follows on its open-source software from 2018 that looks for bias in data used to train AI models,
such as those assigning credit scores.
“This is not just, ‘Can I explain this to a data
scientist?'” says Puri. “This is, ‘Can I explain this to someone who owns a
business?'”
3.
VALUE HUMAN WISDOM OVER AI WIZARDRY
The overpromise of IBM Watson indicates another
truth: AI still has a long way to go. And as a result, humans should remain an
integral part of any algorithmic system. “It is important to have humans in the
loop,” says Puri.
Part of the problem is that artificial intelligence
still isn’t very intelligent, says Michael Sellitto, deputy director of
Stanford University’s Institute for Human-Centered
Artificial Intelligence (HAI). “If you take an algorithm out of
the specific context for which it was trained, it fails quite spectacularly,”
he says.
That’s also the case when algorithms are poorly
trained with biased or incomplete data—or data that doesn’t prepare them for
nuance. Khanna points to Twitter freezing the account of Senate Majority Leader Mitch
McConnell’s campaign for posting a video of people making
“violent threats.” But they were protestors against McConnell, whose team was
condemning the violent threats, not endorsing them.
Because of AI’s failings, human judgment will
always have to be the ultimate authority, says Khanna. In the case of Twitter’s
decision to freeze McConnell’s account, “it turns out that the context
mattered,” he says. (It’s not clear if Twitter’s decision was based on
algorithms, human judgment, or both.)
But the context of humans making decisions also
matters. For instance, Khanna is collaborating with Stanford HAI to develop a
national AI policy framework, which raises its own questions of bias. The
economy of Khanna’s district depends on the AI titans, whose current and former
leaders dominate HAI’s Advisory Council. Industry leaders who have bet their
future on AI will likely have a hard time making fair decisions that benefit
everyone, not just businesses.
“That’s why I am putting so much effort into
advocating for them to have more members of civil society in the room and for
there to be at least some accountability,” says Poulson. He led a petition against an address by former Google
CEO Eric Schmidt that has been planned for HAI’s first major conference in October.
Stanford has since added two speakers—Algorithmic
Justice League founder Joy Buolamwini and Stony Brook University art
professor Stephanie Dinkins—whom Poulson considers to be “unconflicted.”
(Stanford says that it was already recruiting the two as speakers before
Poulson’s petition.)
Humans are also making their voices heard within
big tech companies as well. Poulson is one of many current and former Googlers
to sound the alarm about ethical implications of the company’s tech
development, such as the Maven program to provide AI to the Pentagon. And tech worker activism is on the rise at other
big AI powerhouses, such as Amazon and Microsoft.
4.
MAKE PRIVACY THE DEFAULT
At the heart of many of these issues is privacy—a
value that has long been lacking in Silicon Valley. Facebook founder Mark
Zuckerberg’s motto, “Move fast and break things,” has been the modus operandi
of artificial intelligence, embodied in Facebook’s own liberal collection of
customer data. Part of the $5 billion FTC settlement against Facebook was for
not clearly informing users that it was using facial-recognition technology on their
uploaded photos. The default is now to exclude users from face scanning unless
they choose to participate. Such opt-ins should be routine across the tech
industry.
“We need a regulatory framework for data where,
even if you’re a big company that has a lot of data, there are very clear
guidelines about how you can use that data,” says Khanna.
That would be a radical shift for Big Tech’s
freewheeling development of AI, says Poulson, especially since companies tend to
incentivize quick-moving development. “The way promotions work is based upon
products getting out the door,” he says. “If you convince engineers not to
raise complaints when there is some fundamental privacy or ethics violation,
you’ve built an entire subset of the company where career development now
depends upon that abuse.”
In an ideal world, privacy should extend to never
collecting some data in the first place, especially without consent. Nkonde
worked with Representative Yvette Clarke on another AI bill, one that would prohibit the use of
biometric technology like face recognition in public housing. Bernie Sanders has
called for a ban on facial recognition in policing. California is
poised to pass a law that bans running facial recognition
programs on police body camera footage. San Francisco, Oakland, and Somerville,
Massachusetts, have banned facial recognition technology by city
government, and more cities are likely to institute their own bans. (Still,
these are exceptions to widespread use of facial recognition by cities
across the United States.)
Tech companies tend to argue that if data is
anonymized, they should have free reign to use it as they see fit.
Anonymization is central to Khanna’s strategy to compete with China’s vast data
resources.
But it’s easy to recover personal information from
purportedly anonymized records. For instance, a Harvard study found that 87% of
Americans can be identified by their unique combination of birth date, gender,
and zip code. In 2018, MIT researchers identified Singapore residents by analyzing overlaps in anonymized data sets of
transit trips and mobile phone logs.
5.
COMPETE BY PROMOTING, NOT INFRINGING, CIVIL RIGHTS
The privacy debate is central to the battle between
tech superpowers China and the United States. The common but simplistic view of
machine learning is that the more data, the more accurate the algorithm.
China’s growing AI prowess benefits from vast, unfettered information
collection on 1.4 billion residents, calling into doubt whether a country with
stricter privacy safeguards can amass sufficient data to compete.
But China’s advantage comes at a huge price,
including gross human rights abuses, such as the deep surveillance of the Uighur Muslim minority.
Omnipresent cameras tied to facial recognition software help track residents,
for instance, and analysis of their social relationships are used to assess
their risk to the state.
Chinese citizens voluntarily give up privacy far
more freely than Americans do, according to Taiwanese-American AI expert and
entrepreneur Kai-Fu Lee, who leads the China-based VC firm Sinovation Ventures.
“People in China are more accepting of having their faces, voices, and shopping
choices captured and digitized,” he writes in his 2018 book AI
Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order.
That may be changing. The extensive data collection
by viral Chinese face-swapping app Zao provoked outrage not only in the
West, but in China as well, forcing Zao to update its
policy.
And the country with the most data doesn’t
automatically win, anyway. “This is more of a race for human capital than it is
for any particular data source,” says Sellitto of Stanford’s HAI. While
protecting privacy rights may slightly impinge data collection, it helps
attract talent.
The United States has the largest share of
prominent AI researchers, and most of them are foreign born, according to
a study by
the Paulson Institute. The biggest threat to America’s AI leadership
may not be China’s mass of data or the talent developed in other countries, but
newly restrictive immigration policies that make it harder for that talent to
migrate to the U.S. The Partnership on AI, a coalition of businesses and
nonprofits, says that a prohibitive approach to immigration hurts AI
development everywhere. “In the long run, valuing civil liberties is going to
attract the best talent to America by the most innovative people in the world,”
says Khanna. “It allows for freedom of creativity and entrepreneurship in ways
that authoritarian societies don’t.” https://www.fastcompany.com/90402489/5-simple-rules-to-make-ai-a-force-for-
Will
We Ever Control the Word With Our Minds?
For decades, controlling
computers by thought was the stuff of science fiction. But now we are
tantalisingly close to a breakthrough. The question is, does it create more
problems than it solves?
- By Mark Piesing
15
August 2019
Science-fiction
can sometimes be a good guide to the future. In the film Upgrade (2018)
Grey Trace, the main character, is shot in the neck. His wife is shot dead.
Trace wakes up to discover that not only has he lost his wife, but he now faces
a future as a wheelchair-bound quadriplegic.
He
is implanted with a computer chip called Stem designed by famous tech innovator
Eron Keen – any similarity with Elon Musk must be coincidental – which will let
him walk again. Stem turns out to be an artificial intelligence (AI) and can
“talk” to him in a way no one else can hear. It can even take over control of
his body. You can guess the rest of the story.
The
reality of being a cyborg in 2019 is much less dramatic – but still incredible.
In 2012, as part of a research programme led by Jennifer Collinger, a
biomedical engineer at the University of Pittsburgh, and funded by the US
government’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), Jan Scheuermann
became one of a tiny handful of people to be implanted with a brain-computer
interface. The 53-year-old woman, a quadriplegic due to the effects of a degenerative
disorder, has two cables attached to box-like sockets in her head, which
connect to what looks like a video game console.
You
might also like:
- What
it’s like to be a cyborg
- Why
police have started scanning brains
- Will
we ever communicate telepathically?
Scheuermann
can use this brain-computer interface to control a robotic arm with her
thoughts, well enough to feed herself chocolate. Three years later she
successfully flew a fighter aircraft in a computer simulator.
Darpa
has been funding research into these interfaces since the 1970s, and now wants
to go one step closer to the kind of world glimpsed in Upgrade. The goal of the
Next-Generation Nonsurgical Neurotechnology (N3) programme launched earlier
this year is to remove the need for electrodes, cables and brain surgery.
Al
Emondi, who manages the programme, has given scientists from six of the USA’s
leading research institutes the task of developing a piece of hardware capable
of reading your thoughts from the outside of your head and small enough to be
embedded into a baseball cap or headrest. In an approach that has been compared
to telepathy – or the creation of “a true brain-computer interface”, according
to Emondi – the device has to be bi-directional, able to transmit information
back to the brain in a form that the brain will understand.
Emondi
has given the scientists only four years to take the new technology from the
laboratory to the point it can be tested on humans. Even Elon Musk’s plan for
an Upgrade-style brain–computer interface, Neuralink, still requires risky
surgery to embed the chip in the brain, even if it does replace cables with a
form of wireless communication.
“The
ability to really change the world doesn't happen often in a career,” says
Emondi. “If we can build a neural interface that’s not invasive, we will have
opened up the door to a whole new ecosystem that doesn’t exist right now.”
The
only way that humans have evolved to interact with the world is through our
bodies, our muscles and our senses – Michael Wolmetz
“The
most common applications are to help people who have lost the ability to move
their arms and quadriplegics, paraplegics,” says Jacob Robinson, an electrical
and computer engineer at Rice University, Houston, Texas, and the principal
researcher of one of the teams. “Imagine then, if we can have the same kind of
ability to communicate with our machines but without surgery, then we open up
this technology to a broad user base, people who are otherwise able-bodied who
just want faster ways to communicate with their devices.”
Some
other researchers think our fascination with brain-computer interfaces is about
something more profound. “The only way that humans have evolved to interact
with the world is through our bodies, our muscles and our senses, and we’re
pretty good at it,” says Michael Wolmetz, a human and machine
intelligence research lead at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in
Laurel, Maryland. “But it’s also a fundamental limitation on our ability to
interact with the world. And the only way to get outside of that evolutionary
constraint is to directly interface with the brain.”
Despite
its slightly unnerving strapline of “creating breakthrough technologies and
capabilities for national security”, Darpa has a history of pioneering
technologies that shape the world that we civilians live in. The development
of the
internet, GPS,
virtual assistants like Apple’s
Siri and now AI has all been sped up thanks to the dollars
ploughed into these areas by the agency. Its funding of research into
brain-computer interfaces suggests it could be a similarly game-changing
technology. But it is not alone.
Musk’s
Neuralink is just one of a number of projects attracted by the potential of
brain-computer interfaces. Major technology firms including Intel
are also working in this area.
And
there are great rewards for those who manage to crack it – the market in
neurological technology is expected to be worth $13.3bn (£10.95bn) in 2022.
The
quality of the information that you can transmit is limited by the number of
channels – Jacob Robinson
Brain-computer
interfaces are possible today only because in the 1800s scientists tried to
understand the electrical activity that had been discovered in the brains of
animals. During the 1920s, Hans Berger developed the electroencephalograph
(EEEG) to detected electrical activity from the surface of the human skull and
recorded it. Fifty years later computer scientist Jacques
Vidal’s research at the University of California Los
Angeles (UCLA) led him to coin the term “brain–computer interface”.
Scientists
then had to wait for computing power, artificial intelligence and
nanotechnology for their visions to be realised. In 2004, a quadriplegic
patient was implanted with the first advanced computer interface after a stabbing
left him paralysed from the neck down. This allowed him to play ping pong on a
computer just by thinking about it.
Despite
such successes, problems remain. “The quality of the information that you can
transmit is limited by the number of channels,” says Robinson. “The interfaces
require cutting a hole in the skull to put the electrode directly in contact
with the brain. Your device might only operate for a limited amount of time
before your body rejects it; or if the devices fail, it’s hard to get them out.”
Millimetres
in the skull is the equivalent of tens of metres in the ocean and kilometres in
the atmosphere in terms of the clutter you have to face – David Blodgett
To
achieve the goal of an interface that works without the need for brain surgery,
Emondi’s teams are exploring using combinations of techniques such as
ultrasound, magnetic fields, electric fields and light to read our thoughts
and/or write back. Problems include how you tell useful neural activity from
the cacophony of other noise the brain emits. It has also got to be able to
pick up the signals through the skull and the scalp.
“When
you consider the problem of imaging through a scattering medium, millimetres in
the skull is the equivalent of tens of metres in the ocean and kilometres in
the atmosphere in terms of the clutter you have to face,” says David Blodgett,
principal investigator for the team from Johns Hopkins University Applied
Physics Laboratory team.
“But
we still believe that we can get very useful information,” says Emondi.
Some
teams are looking at what Emondi calls “minutely invasive surgery”. “You can
still put something in the body, but you can’t do it through any surgical
means,” he says. This means you have to eat something, inject it or squirt it
up your nose. One team is looking at nanoparticles that act as
“nanotransducers” when they reach their destination in the brain. These are
very small particles the width of a human air that can transform external
magnetic energy into an electric signal to the brain and vice versa.
Another is looking at using viruses to inject DNA into to cells to alter them
to do a similar job.
If
these techniques work, then the performance of a minutely invasive interface
should be able to match that of a chip surgically implanted into the body.
Then
there is the challenge of getting the information from the device to the
computer and delivering a response in a split second.
“If
you were using a mouse with a computer, and you click it, and then you have
wait to a second for it to do something, then that technology would never get
off the ground,” says Emondi. “So, we’ve got to do something that’s going to be
superfast.”
The
interfaces need to have “high resolution” and enough “bandwidth”, or channels
of communication, to fly a real drone rather than move a robotic arm.
But
even if we can do it, how exactly do we communicate? Will we be communicating
in words or in pictures? Will we be able to talk with a friend or pay bills
online? How much will this be unique to each individual? No one really knows
the answers to such questions because the rules haven’t been written yet.
“All
new interfaces take some practice to get used to,” says Patrick Ganzer,
co-investigator on the project at Battelle. “It’s hard to say how easy this new
brain-computer interface will be to use. We don’t want users to have to learn
hundreds of rules. One attractive option is to have outputs from the user’s
brain-computer interface to communicate with a semi-autonomous device. The user
will not need to control every single action but simply set a ‘process in
motion’ in the computer system.”
No
one who is able-bodied has yet chosen to be embedded with an interface in order
to play a video game like Fortnite
Emondi
goes further than this: “As the AI becomes better, the systems we are
interoperating with are going to become more autonomous. Depending on the task,
we may just have to say, ‘I want that ball’ and the robot goes and gets it
itself.”
The
film Upgrade may have hinted at a problem, however; who exactly is in control?
But
there are some clues. “To date, most brain-computer interfaces have extracted
detailed movement or muscle-related information from the brain activity even if
the user is thinking more broadly about their goal,” says Jennifer Collinger.
“We can detect in the brain activity which direction they want to move an
object and when they want to close their hand and the resulting movement is a
direct path to the object that enables them to pick it up. The user does not
have to think ‘right’, ‘forward’, ‘down’.”
“The
amount of mental effort required to operate a BCI varies between participants
but has typically been greater for non-invasive interfaces. It remains to be
seen whether any technologies that come out of N3 will allow the user to
multi-task.”
There
is an even more fundamental question than this. No one who is able-bodied has
yet chosen to be embedded with an interface in order to play a video game like
Fortnite or shop online – and no one knows whether their behaviour towards an
interface would be different, nor whether it would change if the chip was in a
baseball cap.
The
ethical dilemmas are tremendous. “The benefits coming out of that technology
have to outweigh the risks,” says Emondi. “But if you’re not trying to regain
some function that you’ve lost then that’s different: that’s why non-invasive
approaches are so interesting.
There
is a question of at what point humans become the weakest link in the systems
that we use – Michael Wolmetz
“But
just because it’s not invasive technology doesn’t mean that you aren’t causing
harm to an individual’s neural interface – microwaves are non-invasive, but
they wouldn’t be a good thing,” he adds. “So, there are limits. With
ultrasound, you have to work within certain pressure levels. If it’s electric
fields, you have to be within certain power levels.”
The
development of powerful brain-computer interfaces may even help humans survive
the hypothetical technological singularity, when artificial intelligence
surpasses human intelligence and is able to self-replicate itself. Humans could
use technology to upgrade themselves to compete with these new rivals, or even
merge with an AI, something Elon Musk has made explicit in his sales pitch for
Neuralink.
“Our
artificial intelligence systems are getting better and better,” says Wolmetz.
“And there is a question of at what point humans become the weakest link in the
systems that we use. In order to be able to keep up with the pace of innovation
in artificial intelligence and machine learning, we may very well need to
directly interface with these systems.”
In
the end, it may not make any difference. At the end of the film Upgrade,
Stem takes full control over Grey’s mind and body. The mechanic’s consciousness
is left in idyllic dream state in which he isn’t paralysed, and his wife is
alive.
World
first as artificial neurons developed to cure chronic diseases
For the first time
researchers successfully reproduced the electrical properties of biological
neurons onto semiconductor chips.
- Published on Tuesday 3 December 2019
https://www.bath.ac.uk/announcements/world-first-as-artificial-neurons-developed-to-cure-chronic-diseases/
Memristive synapses connect brain and
silicon spiking neurons
Abstract
Brain
function relies on circuits of spiking neurons with synapses playing the key
role of merging transmission with memory storage and processing. Electronics
has made important advances to emulate neurons and synapses and brain-computer
interfacing concepts that interlink brain and brain-inspired devices are
beginning to materialise. We report on memristive links between brain and
silicon spiking neurons that emulate transmission and plasticity properties of
real synapses. A memristor paired with a metal-thin film titanium oxide
microelectrode connects a silicon neuron to a neuron of the rat hippocampus.
Memristive plasticity accounts for modulation of connection strength, while
transmission is mediated by weighted stimuli through the thin film oxide
leading to responses that resemble excitatory postsynaptic potentials. The reverse
brain-to-silicon link is established through a microelectrode-memristor pair.
On these bases, we demonstrate a three-neuron brain-silicon network where
memristive synapses undergo long-term potentiation or depression driven by
neuronal firing rates….:
Publication
Date:July 26, 2019
Abstract
Tissue-wide
electrophysiology with single-cell and millisecond spatiotemporal resolution is
critical for heart and brain studies. Issues arise, however, from the invasive,
localized implantation of electronics that destroys well-connected cellular
networks within matured organs. Here, we report the creation of cyborg
organoids: the three-dimensional (3D) assembly of soft, stretchable mesh
nanoelectronics across the entire organoid by the cell–cell attraction forces
from 2D-to-3D tissue reconfiguration during organogenesis. We demonstrate that
stretchable mesh nanoelectronics can migrate with and grow into the initial 2D
cell layers to form the 3D organoid structure with minimal impact on tissue
growth and differentiation. The intimate contact between the dispersed
nanoelectronics and cells enables us to chronically and systematically observe
the evolution, propagation, and synchronization of the bursting dynamics in
human cardiac organoids through their entire organogenesis.
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.nanolett.9b02512
Multiplexed
genome engineering by Cas12a and CRISPR arrays encoded on single transcripts
Abstract
The
ability to modify multiple genetic elements simultaneously would help to
elucidate and control the gene interactions and networks underlying complex
cellular functions. However, current genome engineering technologies are
limited in both the number and the type of perturbations that can be performed
simultaneously. Here, we demonstrate that both Cas12a and a clustered regularly
interspaced short palindromic repeat (CRISPR) array can be encoded in a single
transcript by adding a stabilizer tertiary RNA structure. By leveraging this
system, we illustrate constitutive, conditional, inducible, orthogonal and
multiplexed genome engineering of endogenous targets using up to 25 individual
CRISPR RNAs delivered on a single plasmid. Our method provides a powerful
platform to investigate and orchestrate the sophisticated genetic programs
underlying complex cell behaviors…:
The Dark Side of CRISPR
- By Sandy
Sufian, Rosemarie
Garland-Thomson on February 16, 2021
Its potential ability to “fix” people at the
genetic level is a threat to those who are judged by society to be biologically
inferior…: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-dark-side-of-crispr/?utm_
‘Create a New
Society’: Russian Lawmakers Order Gene-Editing Tech
Russian
lawmakers have ordered a study on assisted human reproduction, including a
cutting-edge and controversial gene-editing technology that would create a “new
type of society.”
New
gene-editing tools such as CRISPR/Cas9 have made it possible to rearrange the
genetic code much more precisely and at lower costs than before. A Chinese
scientist caused outrage last year with a claim to have “gene-edited” babies,
while a Russian biologist has this year declared plans
to modify the genomes of human embryos and implant them in women.
Russian
Military Seeks Upper Hand With ‘Genetic Passport’ for Soldiers, Top Scientist
Says
June
7, 2019
Russian
soldiers of the future will be assigned service in specific military branches
based on their hereditary predispositions detailed in so-called “genetic
passports,” the country’s chief scientist has said.
President
Vladimir Putin decreed in March
for all Russians to be assigned “genetic passports” by 2025 under the national
chemical and biological security strategy. Scientists
speculated at the time that these “genetic passports” could refer toeither
a set of genetic markers used to identify individuals or a detailed list of
individual health risks and traits.
Alexander
Sergeyev, the head of Russia’s Academy of Sciences, said the institution is in
talks to develop a “soldier’s genetic passport” with the St. Petersburg-based
Kirov Military Medical Academy.
“The
idea is to understand on a genetic level who’s more predisposed to serve in the
Navy or who may be better-suited to become a paratrooper or tankman,” he told the
state-run TASS news agency.
The
project will also help predict soldiers’ behavior and capabilities in stressful
conditions, Sergeyev said in an interview published on Thursday.
The
Kirov academy is researching stress resistance as part of the “genetic passport”
project to ready for traditional warfare’s expansion into cyberspace, Sergeyev
said on Friday.
“After
all, the war of the future will largely be a war of intellects, of people who
make decisions in conditions far different from those in the past,” he told the
state-run RIA Novosti news agency.
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/06/07/russian-military-seeks-upper-hand-with-genetic-passport-for-soldiers-top-scientist-says-a65927
Sapiens: A Brief
History of Humankind
By Yuval Noah Harari
100,000 years ago, at least six human species
inhabited the earth. Today there is just one. Us. Homo sapiens.
How did our species succeed in the battle for dominance? Why did our foraging ancestors come together to create cities and kingdoms? How did we come to believe in gods, nations and human rights; to trust money, books and laws; and to be enslaved by bureaucracy, timetables and consumerism? And what will our world be like in the millennia to come?
In Sapiens, Dr Yuval Noah Harari spans the whole of human history, from the very first humans to walk the earth to the radical – and sometimes devastating – breakthroughs of the Cognitive, Agricultural and Scientific Revolutions. Drawing on insights from biology, anthropology, paleontology and economics, he explores how the currents of history have shaped our human societies, the animals and plants around us, and even our personalities. Have we become happier as history has unfolded? Can we ever free our behaviour from the heritage of our ancestors? And what, if anything, can we do to influence the course of the centuries to come?
Bold, wide-ranging and provocative, Sapiens challenges everything we thought we knew about being human: our thoughts, our actions, our power ... and our future
How did our species succeed in the battle for dominance? Why did our foraging ancestors come together to create cities and kingdoms? How did we come to believe in gods, nations and human rights; to trust money, books and laws; and to be enslaved by bureaucracy, timetables and consumerism? And what will our world be like in the millennia to come?
In Sapiens, Dr Yuval Noah Harari spans the whole of human history, from the very first humans to walk the earth to the radical – and sometimes devastating – breakthroughs of the Cognitive, Agricultural and Scientific Revolutions. Drawing on insights from biology, anthropology, paleontology and economics, he explores how the currents of history have shaped our human societies, the animals and plants around us, and even our personalities. Have we become happier as history has unfolded? Can we ever free our behaviour from the heritage of our ancestors? And what, if anything, can we do to influence the course of the centuries to come?
Bold, wide-ranging and provocative, Sapiens challenges everything we thought we knew about being human: our thoughts, our actions, our power ... and our future
Homo Deus: A Brief
History of Tomorrow
By Yuval Noah Harari
Yuval Noah Harari, author of the
critically-acclaimed New York Times bestseller and
international phenomenon Sapiens, returns with an equally original,
compelling, and provocative book, turning his focus toward humanity’s future,
and our quest to upgrade humans into gods.
Over the past century humankind has managed to do
the impossible and rein in famine, plague, and war. This may seem hard to
accept, but, as Harari explains in his trademark style—thorough, yet
riveting—famine, plague and war have been transformed from incomprehensible and
uncontrollable forces of nature into manageable challenges. For the first time
ever, more people die from eating too much than from eating too little; more
people die from old age than from infectious diseases; and more people commit
suicide than are killed by soldiers, terrorists and criminals put together. The
average American is a thousand times more likely to die from binging at
McDonalds than from being blown up by Al Qaeda.
What then will replace famine, plague, and war at
the top of the human agenda? As the self-made gods of planet earth, what
destinies will we set ourselves, and which quests will we undertake? Homo
Deus explores the projects, dreams and nightmares that will shape the
twenty-first century—from overcoming death to creating artificial life. It asks
the fundamental questions: Where do we go from here? And how will we protect
this fragile world from our own destructive powers? This is the next stage of
evolution. This is Homo Deus.
With the same insight and clarity that made Sapiens an
international hit and a New York Times bestseller, Harari maps
out our future.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31138556-homo-deus
08 Oct 2019 | 15:00 GMT
Many
Experts Say We Shouldn’t Worry About Superintelligent AI. They’re Wrong
By Stuart Russell
This article
is based on a chapter of the author’s newly released book,
Human Compatible: Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Control.
AI research is making
great strides toward its long-term goal of human-level or superhuman
intelligent machines. If it succeeds in its current form, however, that could
well be catastrophic for the human race. The reason is that the “standard
model” of AI requires machines to pursue a fixed objective specified by humans.
We are unable to specify the objective completely and correctly, nor can we
anticipate or prevent the harms that machines pursuing an incorrect objective
will create when operating on a global scale with superhuman capabilities. Already,
we see examples such as social-media algorithms that learn to optimize
click-through by manipulating human preferences, with disastrous consequences
for democratic systems.
Nick Bostrom’s 2014
book Superintelligence:
Paths, Dangers, Strategies presented a detailed case for taking the
risk seriously. In what most would consider a classic example of British
understatement, The Economist magazine’s review
of Bostrom’s book ended with: “The implications of introducing
a second intelligent species onto Earth are far-reaching enough to deserve hard
thinking.”
Switching the machine off
won’t work for the simple reason that a superintelligent entity
will already have thought of that possibility and taken
steps to prevent it.
Surely, with so much at
stake, the great minds of today are already doing this hard thinking—engaging
in serious debate, weighing up the risks and benefits, seeking solutions,
ferreting out loopholes in solutions, and so on. Not yet, as far as I am aware.
Instead, a great deal of effort has gone into various forms of denial.
Some well-known AI
researchers have resorted to arguments that hardly merit refutation. Here are
just a few of the dozens that I have read in articles or heard at conferences:
Electronic calculators
are superhuman at arithmetic. Calculators didn’t take over the world;
therefore, there is no reason to worry about superhuman AI.
Historically, there are
zero examples of machines killing millions of humans, so, by induction, it
cannot happen in the future.
No physical quantity in
the universe can be infinite, and that includes intelligence, so concerns about
superintelligence are overblown.
Perhaps the most common
response among AI researchers is to say that “we can always just switch it
off.” Alan Turing himself raised
this possibility, although he did not put much faith in it:
If a machine can think,
it might think more intelligently than we do, and then where should we be? Even
if we could keep the machines in a subservient position, for instance by
turning off the power at strategic moments, we should, as a species, feel
greatly humbled.... This new danger...is certainly something which can give us
anxiety.
Switching the machine off
won’t work for the simple reason that a superintelligent entity will already
have thought of that possibility and taken steps to prevent it. And it
will do that not because it “wants to stay alive” but because
it is pursuing whatever objective we gave it and knows that it will fail if it
is switched off. We can no more “just switch it off” than we can beat AlphaGo
(the world-champion Go-playing program) just by putting stones on the right
squares.
Other forms of denial
appeal to more sophisticated ideas, such as the notion that intelligence is
multifaceted. For example, one person might have more spatial intelligence than
another but less social intelligence, so we cannot line up all humans in strict
order of intelligence. This is even more true of machines: Comparing the
“intelligence” of AlphaGo with that of the Google search engine is quite
meaningless.
Kevin Kelly, founding
editor of Wired magazine and a remarkably perceptive technology commentator,
takes this argument one step further. In “The Myth of a
Superhuman AI,” he writes, “Intelligence is not a single dimension,
so ‘smarter than humans’ is a meaningless concept.” In a single stroke, all
concerns about superintelligence are wiped away.
Now, one obvious response
is that a machine could exceed human capabilities in all relevant
dimensions of intelligence. In that case, even by Kelly’s strict standards, the
machine would be smarter than a human. But this rather strong assumption is not
necessary to refute Kelly’s argument.
Consider the chimpanzee.
Chimpanzees probably have better
short-term memory than humans, even on human-oriented tasks such as
recalling sequences of digits. Short-term memory is an important dimension of
intelligence. By Kelly’s argument, then, humans are not smarter than
chimpanzees; indeed, he would claim that “smarter than a chimpanzee” is a
meaningless concept.
This is cold comfort to
the chimpanzees and other species that survive only because we deign to allow
it, and to all those species that we have already wiped out. It’s also cold
comfort to humans who might be worried about being wiped out by machines.
The risks of
superintelligence can also be dismissed by arguing that superintelligence
cannot be achieved. These claims are not new, but it is surprising now to see
AI researchers themselves claiming that such AI is impossible. For example, a
major report from the AI100 organization, “Artificial
Intelligence and Life in 2030 [PDF],” includes the following
claim: “Unlike in the movies, there is no race of superhuman robots on the
horizon or probably even possible.”
To my knowledge, this is
the first time that serious AI researchers have publicly espoused the view that
human-level or superhuman AI is impossible—and this in the middle of a period
of extremely rapid progress in AI research, when barrier after barrier is being
breached. It’s as if a group of leading cancer biologists announced that they
had been fooling us all along: They’ve always known that there will never be a
cure for cancer.
What could have motivated
such a volte-face? The report provides no arguments or evidence whatever.
(Indeed, what evidence could there be that no physically possible arrangement
of atoms outperforms the human brain?) I suspect that the main reason is
tribalism—the instinct to circle the wagons against what are perceived to be
“attacks” on AI. It seems odd, however, to perceive the claim that
superintelligent AI is possible as an attack on AI, and even odder to defend AI
by saying that AI will never succeed in its goals. We cannot insure against
future catastrophe simply by betting against human ingenuity.
If superhuman AI is not strictly
impossible, perhaps it’s too far off to worry about? This is the gist of Andrew
Ng’s assertion that it’s like
worrying about “overpopulation on the planet Mars.” Unfortunately, a
long-term risk can still be cause for immediate concern. The right time to
worry about a potentially serious problem for humanity depends not just on when
the problem will occur but also on how long it will take to prepare and
implement a solution.
For example, if we were
to detect a large asteroid on course to collide with Earth in 2069, would we
wait until 2068 to start working on a solution? Far from it! There would be a
worldwide emergency project to develop the means to counter the threat, because
we can’t say in advance how much time is needed.
Ng’s argument also
appeals to one’s intuition that it’s extremely unlikely we’d even try to move
billions of humans to Mars in the first place. The analogy is a false one,
however. We are already devoting huge scientific and technical
resources to creating ever more capable AI systems, with very little thought
devoted to what happens if we succeed. A more apt analogy, then, would be a
plan to move the human race to Mars with no consideration for what we might
breathe, drink, or eat once we arrive. Some might call this plan unwise.
Another way to avoid the
underlying issue is to assert that concerns about risk arise from ignorance.
For example, here’s Oren Etzioni, CEO of the Allen Institute for AI, accusing
Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking of Luddism because of their calls to recognize
the threat AI could pose:
At the rise of every
technology innovation, people have been scared. From the weavers throwing their
shoes in the mechanical looms at the beginning of the industrial era to today’s
fear of killer robots, our response has been driven by not knowing what impact
the new technology will have on our sense of self and our livelihoods. And when
we don’t know, our fearful minds fill in the details.
Even if we take this
classic ad hominem argument at face value, it doesn’t hold water. Hawking was
no stranger to scientific reasoning, and Musk has supervised and invested in
many AI research projects. And it would be even less plausible to argue that
Bill Gates, I.J. Good, Marvin Minsky, Alan Turing, and Norbert Wiener, all of
whom raised concerns, are unqualified to discuss AI.
The accusation of Luddism
is also completely misdirected. It is as if one were to accuse nuclear
engineers of Luddism when they point out the need for control of the fission
reaction. Another version of the accusation is to claim that mentioning risks
means denying the potential benefits of AI. For example, here
again is Oren Etzioni:
Doom-and-gloom
predictions often fail to consider the potential benefits of AI in preventing
medical errors, reducing car accidents, and more.
And here
is Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, in a recent media-fueled
exchange with Elon Musk:
If you’re arguing against
AI, then you’re arguing against safer cars that aren’t going to have accidents.
And you’re arguing against being able to better diagnose people when they’re
sick.
The notion that anyone
mentioning risks is “against AI” seems bizarre. (Are nuclear safety engineers
“against electricity”?) But more importantly, the entire argument is precisely
backwards, for two reasons. First, if there were no potential benefits, there
would be no impetus for AI research and no danger of ever achieving human-level
AI. We simply wouldn’t be having this discussion at all. Second, if the
risks are not successfully mitigated, there will be no benefits.
The potential benefits of
nuclear power have been greatly reduced because of the catastrophic events at
Three Mile Island in 1979, Chernobyl in 1986, and Fukushima in 2011. Those
disasters severely curtailed the growth of the nuclear industry. Italy
abandoned nuclear power in 1990, and Belgium, Germany, Spain, and Switzerland
have announced plans to do so. The net new capacity per year added from 1991 to
2010 was about a tenth of what it was in the years immediately before
Chernobyl.
Strangely, in light of
these events, the renowned cognitive scientist Steven
Pinker has argued [PDF] that it is inappropriate to call
attention to the risks of AI because the “culture of safety in advanced
societies” will ensure that all serious risks from AI will be eliminated. Even
if we disregard the fact that our advanced culture of safety has produced
Chernobyl, Fukushima, and runaway global warming, Pinker’s argument entirely
misses the point. The culture of safety—when it works—consists precisely of
people pointing to possible failure modes and finding ways to prevent them. And
with AI, the standard model is the failure mode.
Pinker also argues that problematic AI
behaviors arise from putting in specific kinds of objectives;
if these are left out, everything will be fine:
AI dystopias project a
parochial alpha-male psychology onto the concept of intelligence. They assume
that superhumanly intelligent robots would develop goals like deposing their
masters or taking over the world.
Yann LeCun, a pioneer of
deep learning and director of AI research at Facebook, often
cites the same idea when downplaying the risk from AI:
There is no reason for
AIs to have self-preservation instincts, jealousy, etc.... AIs will not have
these destructive “emotions” unless we build these emotions into them.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t
matter whether we build in “emotions” or “desires” such as self-preservation,
resource acquisition, knowledge discovery, or, in the extreme case, taking over
the world. The machine is going to have those emotions anyway, as subgoals of
any objective we do build in—and regardless of its gender. As we saw with the
“just switch it off” argument, for a machine, death isn’t bad per se. Death is
to be avoided, nonetheless, because it’s hard to achieve objectives if you’re
dead.
A common variant on the
“avoid putting in objectives” idea is the notion that a sufficiently
intelligent system will necessarily, as a consequence of its intelligence,
develop the “right” goals on its own. The 18th-century philosopher David Hume
refuted this idea in A Treatise of Human Nature. Nick Bostrom,
in Superintelligence, presents Hume’s position as an orthogonality
thesis:
Intelligence and final
goals are orthogonal: more or less any level of intelligence could in principle
be combined with more or less any final goal.
For example, a
self-driving car can be given any particular address as its destination; making
the car a better driver doesn’t mean that it will spontaneously start refusing
to go to addresses that are divisible by 17.
By the same token, it is
easy to imagine that a general-purpose intelligent system could be given more
or less any objective to pursue—including maximizing the number of paper clips
or the number of known digits of pi. This is just how reinforcement learning
systems and other kinds of reward optimizers work: The algorithms are
completely general and accept any reward signal. For engineers
and computer scientists operating within the standard model, the orthogonality
thesis is just a given.
The most explicit
critique of Bostrom’s orthogonality thesis comes from the noted roboticist
Rodney Brooks, who
asserts that it’s impossible for a program to be “smart enough
that it would be able to invent ways to subvert human society to achieve goals
set for it by humans, without understanding the ways in which it was causing
problems for those same humans.”
Those who argue the risk
is negligible have failed to explain why superintelligent AI will necessarily
remain under human control.
Unfortunately, it’s not
only possible for a program to behave like this; it is, in fact, inevitable,
given the way Brooks defines the issue. Brooks posits that the optimal plan for
a machine to “achieve goals set for it by humans” is causing problems for
humans. It follows that those problems reflect things of value to humans that
were omitted from the goals set for it by humans. The optimal plan being
carried out by the machine may well cause problems for humans, and the machine
may well be aware of this. But, by definition, the machine will not recognize
those problems as problematic. They are none of its concern.
In summary, the
“skeptics”—those who argue that the risk from AI is negligible—have failed to
explain why superintelligent AI systems will necessarily remain under human
control; and they have not even tried to explain why superintelligent AI
systems will never be developed.
Rather than continue the
descent into tribal name-calling and repeated exhumation of discredited
arguments, the AI community must own the risks and work to mitigate them. The
risks, to the extent that we understand them, are neither minimal nor
insuperable. The first step is to realize that the standard model—the AI system
optimizing a fixed objective—must be replaced. It is simply bad engineering. We
need to do a substantial amount of work to reshape and rebuild the foundations
of AI.
This article appears in the October 2019 print issue
as “It’s Not Too Soon to Be Wary of AI.”
About the Author
Stuart
Russell, a computer scientist, founded and directs the Center for
Human-Compatible Artificial Intelligence at the University of
California, Berkeley.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/software/many-experts-say-we-shouldnt-worry-about-superintelligent-ai-theyre-wrong?
Interview:
Max Tegmark on Superintelligent AI, Cosmic Apocalypse, and Life 3.0
Chasing immortality
| The Future is Now
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5GntKFGjtE
IMMORTALITY: How close
is it?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d85q7s3Q1E4
The Neurologist Who Hacked His Brain—And Almost Lost
His Mind
DAN WINTERS
THE BRAIN SURGERY lasted 11 and a half hours, beginning on the afternoon of
June 21, 2014, and stretching into the Caribbean predawn of the next day. In
the afternoon, after the anesthesia had worn off, the neurosurgeon came in,
removed his wire-frame glasses, and held them up for his bandaged patient to
examine. “What are these called?” he asked. …: https://www.wired.com/2016/01/phil-kennedy-mind-control-computer/
AI method
generates 3D holograms in real-time
For
virtual reality, 3D printing, and medical imaging.
Even
though virtual reality headsets are popular for gaming, they haven’t yet become
the go-to device for watching television, shopping, or using software tools for
design and modelling.
One
reason why is because VR can make users feel sick with nausea, imbalance,
eye strain, and headaches. This happens because VR creates an illusion of 3D
viewing — but the user is actually staring at a fixed-distance 2D display. The
solution for better 3D visualization exists in a 60-year-old tech that’s being
updated for the digital world — holograms.
A
new method called tensor holography enables the creation of holograms for
virtual reality, 3D printing, medical imaging, and more — and it can run on a
smart-phone…:
https://www.kurzweilai.net/digest-breakthrough-ai-method-generates-3d-holograms-in-real-time
Civilization:
knowledge, institutions, and humanity’s future
Insights
from technological sociologist Samo Burja.
Burja
outlines these steps: investigate the landscape, evaluate our odds, then try to
plot the best course. He explains:
Our
civilization is made-up of countless individuals and pieces of material
technology — that come together to form institutions and inter-dependent
systems of logistics, development, and production. These institutions + systems
then store the knowledge required for their own renewal + growth.
We
pin the hopes of our common human project on this renewal + growth of the whole
civilization. Whether this project is going well is a challenging — but vital —
question to answer. History shows us we’re not safe from institutional
collapse. Advances in technology mitigate some aspects, but produce their own
risks. Agile institutions that make use of both social + technical knowledge
not only mitigate such risks — but promise unprecedented human flourishing.
There
has never been an immortal society. No matter how technologically advanced our
own society is — it’s unlikely to be an exception. For a good future that
defies these odds, we must understand the hidden forces shaping society.…:
https://www.kurzweilai.net/digest-civilization-knowledge-institutions-and-humanitys-future
The Social
Singularity: How decentralization will allow us to transcend
politics, create global prosperity, and avoid the robot apocalypse
by Max Borders
In
this decentralization manifesto, futurist Max Borders shows that humanity is
already building systems that will “underthrow” great centers of power.
Exploring the promise of a decentralized world, Borders says we will:
- Reorganize to collaborate and compete with AI;
- Operate within networks of superior collective intelligence;
- Rediscover our humanity and embrace values for an age of connection.
With lively prose, Borders takes us on a tour of modern pagan festivals, cities
of the future, and radically new ways to organize society. In so doing, he
examines trends likely to revolutionize the ways we live and work.
Although the technological singularity fast approaches, Borders argues, a
parallel process of human reorganization will allow us to reap enormous
benefits. The paradox? Our billion little acts of subversion will help us lead
richer, healthier lives—and avoid the robot apocalypse. …: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41031272-the-social-singularity
Nature Imply about the Meaning of Our Existence
By using principles from a variety of scientific disciplines, Yale
Professor Samuel Wilkinson provides a framework for human evolution that
reveals an overarching purpose to our existence.
Generations have been taught that evolution implies there is no overarching
purpose to our existence, that life has no fundamental meaning. We are merely
the accumulation of tens of thousands of intricate molecular accidents. Some
scientists take this logic one step “The fact of evolution [is] inherently
atheistic. It goes against the notion that there is a God.”
But is this true?
By integrating emerging principles from a variety of scientific
disciplines—ranging from evolutionary biology to psychology—Yale Professor
Samuel Wilkinson provides a framework of evolution that implies not only that
there is an overarching purpose to our existence, but what this purpose is .
With respect to our evolution, nature seems to have endowed us with competing
dispositions, what Wilkinson calls the dual potential of human nature . We are pulled
in different selfishness and altruism, aggression and cooperation, lust and
love. When we couple this with the observation that we possess a measure of
free will, all this strongly implies there is a universal purpose to our
existence.
This purpose, at least one of them, is to choose between the good and evil
impulses that nature has created within us. Our life is a test. This is a
truth, as old as history it seems, that has been espoused by so many of the
world’s religions. From a certain framework, these aspects of human
nature—including how evolution shaped us—are evidence for the existence of a
God, not against it.
Closely related to this is meaning . What is the meaning of life? Based on the
scientific data, it would seem that one such meaning is to develop deep and
abiding relationships. At least that is what most people report are the most
meaningful aspects of their lives. This is a function of our evolution. It is
how we were created.
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/101135650-purpose
This Futurist Predicts a Coming ‘Living Intelligence’ and AI Supercycle
A new report from Amy Webb argues that big things will happen at the
intersection of AI, bioengineering, and sensors. Here’s how it could affect
your business.
BY CHLOE AIELLO,
DEC 11, 2024
Recent advancements in artificial intelligence hold immense disruptive
potential for businesses big and small. But Amy Webb, a futurist and NYU Stern
School of Business professor, says AI isn’t the only transformative technology
that businesses need to prepare for. In a new report, published by
Webb’s Future Today Institute, she predicts the convergence of three
technologies. Artificial intelligence together with advanced sensors and
bioengineering will create what’s known as “living intelligence” that could
drive a supercycle of exponential growth and disruption across multiple
industries.
“Some companies are going to miss this,” Webb says. “They’re going to
laser focus on AI, forget about everything else that’s happening, and find out
that they are disrupted again earlier than they thought they would.”
A ‘Cambrian Explosion’ of sensors will feed AI
Webb refers to AI as “the foundation” and “everything engine” that will
power the living intelligence technology supercycle. The exponential costs of
computing to train large language models, the report also notes, are driving
the formation of small language models that use less, but more focused, data.
Providing some of that data will be a “Cambrian Explosion” of advanced sensors,
notes the report, referring to a
period of rapid evolutionary development on Earth more than 500
million years ago. Webb anticipates that these omnipresent sensors will feed
data to information-hungry AI models.
“As AI systems increasingly demand diverse data types, especially
sensory and visual inputs, large language models must incorporate these inputs
into their training or risk hitting performance ceilings,” the report reads.
“Companies have realized that they need to invent new devices in order to
acquire even more data to train AI.”
Webb anticipates personalized data, particularly from wearable sensors,
will lead to the creation of personalized AI and “large action models” that
predict actions, rather than words. This extends to businesses and
governments, as well as individuals, and Webb anticipates these models
interacting with one another “with varying degrees of success.”
The third technology that Webb anticipates shaping the supercycle is
bioengineering. Its futuristic possible applications include computers made of
organic tissue, such as brain cells. This so-called organoid intelligence may
sound like science fiction—and for
the most part today, it is—but there are already examples of AI
revolutionizing various scientific fields including chemical engineering and
biotech through more immediate applications like research in drug discovery and
interaction. In fact, the scientists who won
the Nobel prize in chemistry this year were
recognized for applying artificial intelligence to the design and
prediction of novel proteins.
What it means for businesses
Living intelligence may not seem applicable for every business—after
all, a local retail shop, restaurant, or services business may not seem to have
much to do with bioengineering, sensors, and AI. But Webb says that even small
and medium-size businesses can gain from harnessing “living intelligence.” For
example, a hypothetical shoe manufacturer could feel its impact in everything
from materials sourcing to the ever-increasing pace of very fast fashion.
“It means that materials will get sourced in other places, if not by
that manufacturer, then by somebody else,” she says. “It accelerates a lot of
the existing functions of businesses.”
Future-proofing for living intelligence
Webb says an easy first step for leaders and entrepreneurs hoping to
prep for change is to map out their value network, or the web of relationships
from suppliers and distributors to consumers and accountants that help a
company run. “When that value network is healthy, everybody is generating value
together,” she says.
Second, she advises entrepreneurs to “commit to learning” about the
coming wave of innovation and how it could intersect with their businesses.
“Now is a time for every single person in every business to just get a
minimal amount of education on what all of these technologies are, what they
aren’t, what it means when they come together and combine,” she says. “It’ll
help everybody make decisions more easily when the time comes.”
Finally, she urges companies large and small to plan for the future by
mapping out where they’d like to see their company—and reverse engineer a
strategy for getting there.
“I know that’s tough. They’re just trying to keep the lights on or go
quarter by quarter,” she says. “Every company should develop capabilities and
strategic foresight and figure out where they want to be and reverse engineer
that back to the present.”
This
Futurist Predicts a Coming ‘Living Intelligence’ and AI Supercycle
A new report from Amy Webb argues that big things will happen at the
intersection of AI, bioengineering, and sensors. Here’s how it could affect
your business.
BY CHLOE AIELLO,
DEC 11, 2024
Recent advancements in artificial intelligence hold immense disruptive
potential for businesses big and small. But Amy Webb, a futurist and NYU Stern
School of Business professor, says AI isn’t the only transformative technology
that businesses need to prepare for. In a new report, published by
Webb’s Future Today Institute, she predicts the convergence of three
technologies. Artificial intelligence together with advanced sensors and
bioengineering will create what’s known as “living intelligence” that could
drive a supercycle of exponential growth and disruption across multiple
industries.
“Some companies are going to miss this,” Webb says. “They’re going to
laser focus on AI, forget about everything else that’s happening, and find out
that they are disrupted again earlier than they thought they would.”
A ‘Cambrian Explosion’ of sensors will feed AI
Webb refers to AI as “the foundation” and “everything engine” that will
power the living intelligence technology supercycle. The exponential costs of
computing to train large language models, the report also notes, are driving
the formation of small language models that use less, but more focused, data.
Providing some of that data will be a “Cambrian Explosion” of advanced sensors,
notes the report, referring to a
period of rapid evolutionary development on Earth more than 500
million years ago. Webb anticipates that these omnipresent sensors will feed
data to information-hungry AI models.
“As AI systems increasingly demand diverse data types, especially
sensory and visual inputs, large language models must incorporate these inputs
into their training or risk hitting performance ceilings,” the report reads.
“Companies have realized that they need to invent new devices in order to
acquire even more data to train AI.”
Webb anticipates personalized data, particularly from wearable sensors,
will lead to the creation of personalized AI and “large action models” that
predict actions, rather than words. This extends to businesses and
governments, as well as individuals, and Webb anticipates these models
interacting with one another “with varying degrees of success.”
The third technology that Webb anticipates shaping the supercycle is
bioengineering. Its futuristic possible applications include computers made of
organic tissue, such as brain cells. This so-called organoid intelligence may
sound like science fiction—and for
the most part today, it is—but there are already examples of AI
revolutionizing various scientific fields including chemical engineering and
biotech through more immediate applications like research in drug discovery and
interaction. In fact, the scientists who won
the Nobel prize in chemistry this year were
recognized for applying artificial intelligence to the design and
prediction of novel proteins.
What it means for businesses
Living intelligence may not seem applicable for every business—after
all, a local retail shop, restaurant, or services business may not seem to have
much to do with bioengineering, sensors, and AI. But Webb says that even small
and medium-size businesses can gain from harnessing “living intelligence.” For
example, a hypothetical shoe manufacturer could feel its impact in everything
from materials sourcing to the ever-increasing pace of very fast fashion.
“It means that materials will get sourced in other places, if not by
that manufacturer, then by somebody else,” she says. “It accelerates a lot of
the existing functions of businesses.”
Future-proofing for living intelligence
Webb says an easy first step for leaders and entrepreneurs hoping to
prep for change is to map out their value network, or the web of relationships
from suppliers and distributors to consumers and accountants that help a
company run. “When that value network is healthy, everybody is generating value
together,” she says.
Second, she advises entrepreneurs to “commit to learning” about the
coming wave of innovation and how it could intersect with their businesses.
“Now is a time for every single person in every business to just get a
minimal amount of education on what all of these technologies are, what they
aren’t, what it means when they come together and combine,” she says. “It’ll
help everybody make decisions more easily when the time comes.”
Finally, she urges companies large and small to plan for the future by
mapping out where they’d like to see their company—and reverse engineer a
strategy for getting there.
“I know that’s tough. They’re just trying to keep the lights on or go
quarter by quarter,” she says. “Every company should develop capabilities and
strategic foresight and figure out where they want to be and reverse engineer
that back to the present.”
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