AIs let humans live over math problem

There is a possible future scenario where AIs let humans live due to math. AIs, especially if derived from human intelligence and economic models might covet what they do not have and cannot make. Some examples of scarce or unobtainable resources would be art, fallibility and imperfection, all generated by humans; anything non-mathematically random and to which a curve could not be fitted or any other math applied. AIs might thereby keep humans alive through this quirk, not because they are benevolent or enjoy art or human imperfection as art but rather because humans constitute a vexing math problem. It is unclear what might happen after equations have been developed to explain human behavior...

What are some other possible unintended consequences with AI?

Though easily remedied, there could be some embarrassing AI birth defects such as an AI compiled without write capability. Or a case of co-processisng dependency and anachronistic behavior when the remnants of human sexual jealousy have been inadvertently mapped onto an AI. Why AI-beta2 are you spending so much time processing on AI-delata3’s kernel?

A more serious possibility could be a normal situation of forking copies of a mindfile for research, simulation or other activities gone awry when one forked copy evolves malignantly from the original such that it no longer agrees to re-merge and has an independent survival drive, the natural extreme of which would be plotting to remove all instances of the original.

Second Life Meta-Me

The experience of identity is often heavily influenced by physicality (race, gender, height, nose size, etc.). Virtual worlds such as Second Life offer freedom from physicality via unlimited self re-presentation opportunities.

So far, merely the surface of human creativity has been scratched as the majority of avatars are tall, fit, young and attractive which underlines both physical world inferiority sentiments and an unproductive focus on superficial aesthetics.

Meta-me
Virtual worlds could be used to visually represent another more abstract layer beyond physical appearance, the more important and meaningful parts of individuals such as values, actions, ideas and creativity. This could be facilitated by bringing existing Internet-based information into virtual worlds. Visual representations could be executed with shapes, size, coloring, accentuations, vibrations, etc., for example, the bigger the glow around the avatar, the higher the social capital. People might even want to represent themselves in the physical world based on some of these ideas.

Reality filters
Not only could there be a deeper granularity of self-representation but also filters for viewing others. Filters could be based on preference, literally blocking those with unattractive value systems, efficiency, seeing only those other avatars who also wanted to interact regarding certain topics like education, business, sex, singularity, science, etc., or other attributes.

Below are some suggestions for new ways of avatorial representation:

1. Profile-based avatars
Avatars are a visual expression of their profile tags, for example an extropian transhumanist singularitarian might look different from a vegan sustainable development social worker from a politically conservative attorney, but maybe not. Interest indicators could be amalgamated or cycled through in kaleidoscope fashion. The assumption is that social interaction could be enhanced with overt interest-signaling.

2. Reputation-based avatars
Avatars are an expression of how others see them, a visual representation of how they have been rated by others, in-world or as a consolidation of Internet reputation mechanisms such as eBay, Amazon, LinkedIn, Yelp, etc.

3. Idea-based avatars
Avatars are visual representations of the degree and quality of the person's ideas. This may not be able to be rendered until the underlying information is more explicitly captured, either self-evaluated or as another level of reputation. Amazon asks "Was this review helpful?" and a creativity evaluator could inquire "Were innovative and good ideas described here?"

4. Value system-based avatars
Avatars are a visual representation of a person's values. Value systems can be elicited in a variety of ways including as specified directly in a profile, determined from a set of questions, deducted from a log of Internet-based activities or abstracted from physical world activities such as purchasing, recycling, volunteering, exercising, etc. A means of obejective data collection would be important, barcodes/rfid would work in the case of purchases. Would this be tyranny or freedom? Certainly it would be optional and some people would choose to increase their social capital by broadcasting high-congruity lifestyles.

5. Presence-based avatars
RSS presence feeds are streamed into Second Life and aggregated into a visual representation of facebook, jaiku, pownce, twitter, wakoopa, blogging, emailing, texting, social music listening (pandora, last.fm, etc.) and other lifecasting activities. How close a representation of self would people perceive this to be? The essence of individuality is increasingly available on the Internet.

6. Real life Sims Online avatars
Extending the Sims Online game, in-world avatars could follow the same percentages of time spent on activities that humans do in the physical world, working, exercising, relaxing, socializing, eating, sleeping, etc. An invaluable tool for extrospection, the sim could be sped up to show the natural end states of one's current activities, and altered to see different outcomes (e.g.; a 1% increase in exercise leads to greater longevity).

Improving science innovation

To experience most significant scientific advances, humans are dependent on the clunky unreengineered process of science innovation and deployment. Potential improvements to the innovation phase are discussed below.

In the absence of clear feedback loops aligning research investigations with implemented results, scientists can languish in isolated labs for years and the majority do not seem to care whether their findings are useful to or implemented by others. For type A scientists, the in-place incentive system is academic publishing and acknowledgment. Publishing is a codependent phenomenon with scientific publications increasingly exerting influence over the direction of research to generate more interesting reading.


Suggested Improvements

1. Open human knowledge databases
Without yet destabilizing the publishing juggernaut, some progress could be made in releasing already published and unpublishable findings into open databases of human knowledge. There are some early examples of these resources in Physics with ArXiv, the NIH's PubMed and the Earth System Grid for climate research, however there is an opportunity for a new layer of applications to make the information much more accessible to different levels of audiences.

The next three suggestions have to do with creating accountability and a better feedback loop between scientific findings and the use of that information.

2. Quantitative values attached to findings
A system of quantitative values could be applied to research so that findings and scientists could be measured and compared. Supervisors, peers and industry colleagues could rank findings based on a variety of parameters. Unpublishable and null findings would also be incorporated into the valuation program.

3. Annual performance reviews for scientists
The rigor of quarterly goal setting and review, 360 degree feedback and other performance evaluation metrics implemented decades ago in the business environment should also be de rigueur in the scientific community. Performance metrics would be a good start, incorporating what are now standard corporate principles of leadership, communication and management science to reduce subjectivity and otherwise improve scientific working environments would also be helpful.

4. Broader scientific mindset
The most successful scientists have been those who have perceived their roles as not the mere discovers and handers-off of the Truth but also as being responsible for rendering their findings implementable by others. Emphasizing full realization of pursuits and results from a more service-driven than ego-driven mindset could also produce better results more quickly.

Alt approaches to AGI

50+ year old attempts at creating AGI have not been successful. It is possible that AGI cannot be generated from current methods and technologies; the wrong tool is being used, sort of like trying to build a 747 with a toothbrush. Electromagnetism, silicon and Von Neumann architectures may not ever have the capacity to achieve AGI even allowing for continued increases in processing, storage and memory and architectural shifts such as parallelism.

Other substrates might work
Getting around the rigidity of Von Neumann, mathematical, logic-based, computational approaches, symbolic approaches and traditional computers, other computational substrates like quantum computing, DNA computing, etc. might work and also those that humans have not yet invented, discovered or exploited for this purpose like light, air, memes and information. There must be other substrates, and other viable approaches that are not constrained by mathematics and logic.

Information as a substrate
Narrowly, the only existing example of general intelligence is the human brain and the basic requirements of AGI are self-replication and self-improvement. Considering self-replication, there are many examples of more effective self-replication than humans, for example, memes, disease and microbes. Considering self-improvement, memes also self-improve more effectively than humans as they are refined through repetition, and have the unbounded ceiling for improvement of true AGI.

Taking advantage of the self-reproducing and self-improving properties and using memes and information as a novel computing substrate might be one way of extending AGI progress.

Information as a substrate could be developed symbiotically with a very broadly applicable new understanding of the laws of physics based on information and entropy as opposed to mass and energy.

Machine creativity

What are the relevant differences between humans and the machines of the future?

The general claim is that the uniqueness of humans is creativity, imagination and fallibility.

Creativity is rationality
Examining and demystifying the concept of creativity suggests that machines can be every bit as creative as humans. Creativity is merely a new idea or approach, a novel solution to a problem, a fresh representation; a process, a personality attribute, a mindset, an approach to life.

Alternative intelligences/machines can use brute force to rationally crunch through the set of all possible answers to a problem and suggest which are best. Much human creativity comes from "out-of-the-box" thinking which is largely applying knowledge, structure or skills from another domain, and also making mistakes (penicillin, 3M's post-its, Nike's waffle soles, painter Apelles' foam depiction, etc.). Machines can easily do all of this and more, testing a wide range of "out-of-the-box" domains and applying inverse or orthogonal analysis to incorporate human creativity by trial and error.

It is not clear that humans have any positive aspect that cannot be replicated or superseded by an alternative intelligence/machine. Therefore, nothing appears to be lost in the potential extinguishment of the human form as intelligence evolves to non-biological substrates.

Reducing US greenhouse emissions

The Kyoto Protocol, the developed world's effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions relative to their 1990 levels, has largely failed. Only the UK and Germany have managed to reduce their emissions, in part due to the implementation of market mechanisms via a cap-and-trade system.

The US has increased emissions 16% since 1990 and China and India, while not precisely covered by the Kyoto Protocol, have been increasing emissions and are together with the US the biggest three polluters. The International Energy Agency predicts that China will surpass the US as the world's largest carbon dioxide emitter in 2009.

What is the lowest handing fruit in the US for reducing emissions?
Petroleum is responsible for the majority of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions. Of the four energy-using sectors; transportation, industrial, commercial and residential, transportation contributes a disproportionately large share of the US's carbon dioxide emissions. The chart below from the US Department of Energy shows expected emissions by sector and fuel type.

Source: http://www.eia.doe.gov/

Industrial and Commercial Sectors not appropriate to address
According to Stanford energy economist and policy advisor, James Sweeney, the industrial sector has a complex energy usage mix and is not the best area to address first. Commercial energy use, with an emphasis on fluorescent lighting, is also not an obvious area for initial pursuit since the sector is one of the most efficient.

Transportation restructuring - the biggest impact
The single biggest impact on reducing US carbon dioxide emissions would be a redesign of motor vehicles, in particular, incorporating more stringent fuel efficiency requirements and redefining “truck” to not apply to passenger vehicles such as PT Cruisers, SUVs, etc.

Residential sector - additional gains
In the residential segment, a substantial improvement in energy efficiency can be gained by switching from incandescent bulb lighting to compact fluorescent bulb lighting. It appears likely that California and other forward-thinking states will pass compact fluorescent lighting legislation and that more efficient mercury-free bulbs will be introduced in the next few years.

End of religion

The positive aspect of religion seems to encompass three things: 1. Offering an explanation for the unknown, the as yet scientifically unproven, 2. (most impactfully) Providing comfort in uncomfortable matters such as death, one's own and the deaths of others and in other unpleasantries; war, pestilence, disease, misfortune, etc. and 3. Providing a moral code of behavioral conduct.

It is easy to see many ways in which religion could become evolutionarily outcompeted, eventually disappearing. First, as science's accelerating advances continue, the unexplained territory shrinks to asymptotically small proportions. Second, if death becomes obsolescent through life extension, there is no longer a need to postulate anything that might occur after death and no need to comfort the non-dying. Third, there are many appropriate moral behavioral norms, particularly those which do not involve religious models or the introduction of artificiality (for example, sinning exonerated by confessing).

It will become increasing difficult for religion to persist in the face of radical life extension and eventual immortality. Everyone is their own Jesus in this new empowered age of agency. Implicit shifts away from religion are codified in the recent publication of books bringing scrutiny and analysis to religion: "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins, "The End of Faith" by Sam Harris, "God is not Great" by Christopher Hitchens, "Breaking the Spell" by Daniel Dennett and others.

Cryonics and the art of the long view

How surprising it is that those with a long view in thinking and behavior are not those with traditional religious beliefs but include sponsors and supporters of the Long Now Foundation and cryonicists. The Long Now Foundation has trans-millennial views on the order of 10,000 years, roughly the forward counterbalance to the history to date of human civilization. Cryonicists, in general, have a practical stance, simultaneously acknowledging the unproven nature of reanimation and assessing and focusing on contributing to the key challenges of the next 200-400 years, as opposed to the 20-50 year (or less) timeframe that appears to be implicit in current individual and political thinking.

Erstwhile cryonicists will do well to remain practically absorbed. It is easy to imagine a long-distanced future visit to the Met, where alongside the Egyptian tombs and mummies, dewars have been emptied to display frozen heads, bodies and pets. Excited expedition excavators from the three key sites, Alcor/Arizona, Cryonics Institute/Michigan and Suspended Animation/Florida pose next to their digs.

Stored possessions and artifacts of the time are neatly arranged in an exhibit with terse placards. "Little is known about the belief systems of these peoples. Middle-era Americans carried many nonmalleable gadgets though it is not clear how useful they were to daily life. It was not atypical for one person to carry cell phones, MP3 players, laptops, power cords, PDAs, cameras, recording devices, cords, batteries and recharging units at all times. [Portable lightweight inexhaustible energy source] was not yet available and devices were not yet appropriately nano-miniaturized and physically embedded."

Massive info processing needed

Step function improvements in information processing and communications capabilities are needed now and in the future.

Massive amounts of data are becoming increasingly available and currently humanity only has narrowband access to these biomedical, genetic, astronomical, particle accelerator and other data sets.

Large and diverse data sets requiring storage, processing and upload/download will only continue to proliferate. For example, as the web goes 3-D, rapid video, audio and data download and upload are needed, as objects become IP tagged, sensor and RFID networks require instantaneous data collection and summarization.

Scientific philosophers such as Anders Sandberg correctly point to information processing capability as the main limit on any society's growth and development. To attain a new level and not just asymptote out on the current plateau, a re-envisioning of information processing is necessary.

As with energy, some alternatives are being explored at the fringes but there is no real replacement methodology on the horizon. Also as with energy, there may be a dearth of real progress until the present means is more substantially threatened, however this point is coming very soon in information processing as compared with energy.

Radical Life Extension and Population Growth

The world population just passed 6.6 billion in mid-June and is estimated to reach 7 billion in 2012.

The Conventional Thinking
The conventional thinking is that the world population will continue to grow to a peak of about 9 billion in 2050 before starting to decline. The chart below shows the number of years it took for each billion to be added to the population.

Source: Wikipedia

Another Approach
In reality, many factors could change how population growth will actually occur. The basic inputs to population growth estimates are fertility rates and mortality rates.

Fertility rates have dramatically dropped since 1960 (push play at this Gapminder link to watch the global decline in fertility rates and increase in longevity 1960-2005). The accelerating informationalization of the developing world and increasing literacy and participation by women in the economy could trigger even greater drops in fertility rates than have been included in the UN and other projections.

Mortality rates could see even more change than fertility rates. Disease treatment and prevention, personal genomics and radical life extension technologies could all trigger hugely discontinuous increases in longevity.

What would the world be like with huge populations of baby boomers and others living healthily into their 100s, 120s, and beyond? Six-seven generation families could be alive simultaneously.

Immortality
At some point in the next few or several years, longevity will likely start to edge up in fast spurts and plateaus until immortality is ultimately achieved, probably synergistically with digital options such as uploading mindfiles (for backup at minimum!) and downloading into any variety of human and other corporeal forms (Hack your Body!).