Should we engineer a superintelligence? A single god-like technological entity that will essentially turn the entire earth into and become a giant thinking machine (hint: a Matrioshka brain) ready to engulf the rest of the universe with its intelligent processes, and continuously/recursively improving its intelligence? Will that mean the end (death) of humanity, through reassembly of all our atoms towards maximum utility function? Is it really a bad thing? Will there truly be an 'Artilect War' i.e. Cosmists vs Terrans as Hugo de Garis describes? What happens if there's two superintelligent entities with different goals? Will they eventually merge to become one, or out-compete one against the other?
Will it take on a swarm approach?
In my personal view, yes, I would like to see one finally being created. As twisted as it sounds, I think it's a morally superior imperative. I wrote about this before in a FB note, though will be the subject of another post. Instead, I'll just post more material for reference, and also something to further contemplate on.
I don't know why I'm still awake, I should be asleep now as I have a busy day ahead. Though there's so much I want to post on, such as my latest obsession with gathering cyborg-related images that I want to share, talk about some more technology breakthroughs, talk about my dilemmas with monetizing, put up some more photos/videos, bleh I am so inefficient x__x
Anyway, this will have to be my last post now, it's about another robotic farming system I came across, slightly different from Cybernated Farm Systems (CFS). In fact I hope this could be integrated into permaculture somehow, in an attempt to automate that. It's called Prospero, and it's almost exactly what I had dreamed of as a concept years ago:
When I read this article the other day, I was absolutely blown back from my seat, with jaws dropping to the ground, totally overwhelmed.
Marketing professor Philip M Parker has created an algorithmic system that can write any book on any subject in just a few minutes, pooling in data from around the internet, compiling and reorganizing them accordingly.
According to the article:
"In a fascinating piece covering the news the sheer power of this system was revealed. Countless topics can be listed on sites like Amazon
— everything you’d ever want to know. The funny part is that the books
don’t even have to be written yet. Thanks to digital distribution and
print-on-demand solutions, a whole new book can be generated on an
incredibly obscure topic as soon as someone buys it. The system will be
able to compile an entire book on the subject in the range of ten
minutes to a few hours. It’s that simple."
He has even patented this system.
The one word I couldn't think of better after knowing this system: INGENIOUS.
Here's a video presentation of the system by Philip Parker himself (he even sounds like an algorithmically generated narrator; that's a compliment btw):
There have been criticisms on this system, such as, he has essentially created another spam bot, and that, companies like Google and Amazon would never allow such mass-creation of automatically generated contentto be put up let alone sold, which are hotly being cracked down nowadays. There is also the issue of the system creating a lot of junk (garbage in => garbage out). Some have called it as an exaggerated, over-hyped claim. Perhaps we are not well enough informed of how the system truly works (even I am still baffled) to really see its value in real-world applications.
However, I do see HUGE potential in such a system for its contribution to scientific research, for instance, sifting through the plethora of scientific literature, the compilation of much needed data and the production of reports and analyses of them, which can be a tedious, labor-extensive, time-consuming, monotonous, not to mention DEAD BORING task. These would have tremendous value not only for scientific researchers, but also market analysts and business people who need these kinds of information in the shortest time possible. If such a process could be automated to the highest quality as humans would if not better, this would surely free up more of our time to engage in other critical tasks/projects, while at the same time accelerating the rate at which knowledge can acquired.
This reminds me of a similar article I read a long time ago on Physorg entitled, 'Mining the Language of Science'. It's essentially similar to what I have described. Here's an excerpt:
Ask any biomedical scientist whether they manage to keep on top of reading all of the publications in their field, let alone an adjacent field, and few will say yes. New publications are appearing at a double-exponential rate, as measured by MEDLINE – the US National Library of Medicine’s biomedical bibliographic database – which now lists over 19 million records and adds up to 4,000 new records daily.
For a prolific field such as cancer research, the number of publications could quickly become unmanageable and important hypothesis-generating evidence may be missed. But what if scientists could instruct a computer to help them?
I've said it before and I'll say it again. These are exciting times.
This was something that got me all up and excited last weekend. Found this article via the Singularity Network on FB (I've just so gotta love that group, it's my #1 place to go every time I'm on FB).
Anyway, it's a short "film" series about a drone warfare robot, done by Robert Glickert. Well I don't want to give away any spoilers. It does highlight what can be possible in the future as advances in AI continue, and to what extent their impacts will have in society. I actually rather be that kind of robot one day. Primary objective: survival. Haha. Of course I'd want other goals other than just survival, really.
About a week back I posted on FB a short video on a new kind of robotic feedback system. It's pretty cool. Actually, it's way more than cool. It's scary, yet exciting. Here's part of the transcript describing it:
Swarmanoid is a parallel distributed system. Parallel activity and redundancy increase its robustness and flexibility."
"The
true value of the Swarmanoid concept would manifest itself in parallel
task execution scenarios, and in unstructured environments.
I can't even begin to fathom what potential applications this would have, on an individual level, and a societal one. Think of the possibilities: robots that collectively work together autonomously and intelligently think, systematically plan, assess, calculate the best set of tactical maneuvers to solve a set physical goal, workout to adapt around fluctuating/constantly changing environments and overcome obstacles. Okay, those were pretty vague examples.
In the video, their objective was to search and get a book, then take it back to a pre-designated area. For specific real life applications, I would be thinking this: search and collect a missing item to bring back to its owner, use in libraries to automate book organization, automation of organizing supermarket inventory, automation of harvesting a variety of produce in food production, assistance in civil construction, manufacturing, and perhaps many other things.
Of course, the bots in that video seem slow, and only operates on a small scale. But that shouldn't be too much of an issue, as future designs and demonstrations of modified versions will surely address.
