NYT: The first church of robotics

Computer scientist and technology critic Jaron Lanier offers his two cents on the silicon valley mindset in his op-ed, "The first church of robotics." Excerpt:

The answer is simply that computer scientists are human, and are as terrified by the human condition as anyone else. We, the technical elite, seek some way of thinking that gives us an answer to death, for instance. This helps explain the allure of a place like the Singularity University. The influential Silicon Valley institution preaches a story that goes like this: one day in the not-so-distant future, the Internet will suddenly coalesce into a super-intelligent A.I., infinitely smarter than any of us individually and all of us combined; it will become alive in the blink of an eye, and take over the world before humans even realize what’s happening.

Some think the newly sentient Internet would then choose to kill us; others think it would be generous and digitize us the way Google is digitizing old books, so that we can live forever as algorithms inside the global brain. Yes, this sounds like many different science fiction movies. Yes, it sounds nutty when stated so bluntly. But these are ideas with tremendous currency in Silicon Valley; these are guiding principles, not just amusements, for many of the most influential technologists.

It should go without saying that we can’t count on the appearance of a soul-detecting sensor that will verify that a person’s consciousness has been virtualized and immortalized. There is certainly no such sensor with us today to confirm metaphysical ideas about people, or even to recognize the contents of the human brain. All thoughts about consciousness, souls and the like are bound up equally in faith, which suggests something remarkable: What we are seeing is a new religion, expressed through an engineering culture.

What I would like to point out, though, is that a great deal of the confusion and rancor in the world today concerns tension at the boundary between religion and modernity — whether it’s the distrust among Islamic or Christian fundamentalists of the scientific worldview, or even the discomfort that often greets progress in fields like climate change science or stem-cell research.

If technologists are creating their own ultramodern religion, and it is one in which people are told to wait politely as their very souls are made obsolete, we might expect further and worsening tensions. But if technology were presented without metaphysical baggage, is it possible that modernity would not make people as uncomfortable?

Link.

NYT: Merely Human? That’s So Yesterday

I'm sure most of you have caught this by now, but the New York Times recently published a 5,000 word article about the Singularity University, Ray Kurzweil, and the technological Singularity. All the usual suspects are referenced within, including the IEET's James Hughes, Terry Grossman, Peter Thiel, Peter Diamandis, Andrew Hessel, Sonia Arrison, and William S. Bainbridge.

A taste of the article:

Richard A. Clarke, former head of counterterrorism at the National Security Council, has followed Mr. Kurzweil’s work and written a science-fiction thriller, “Breakpoint,” in which a group of terrorists try to halt the advance of technology. He sees major conflicts coming as the government and citizens try to wrap their heads around technology that’s just beginning to appear.

“There are enormous social and political issues that will arise,” Mr. Clarke says. “There are vast groups of people in society who believe the earth is 5,000 years old. If they want to slow down progress and prevent the world from changing around them and they engaged in political action or violence, then there will have to be some sort of decision point.”

Mr. Clarke says the government has a contingency plan for just about everything — including an attack by Canada — but has yet to think through the implications of techno-philosophies like the Singularity. (If it’s any consolation, Mr. Long of the Defense Department asked a flood of questions while attending Singularity University.)

Mr. Kurzweil himself acknowledges the possibility of grim outcomes from rapidly advancing technology but prefers to think positively. “Technological evolution is a continuation of biological evolution,” he says. “That is very much a natural process.”

Disturbing fact revealed in the article: Google and Microsoft employees trailed only members of the military as the largest individual contributors to Ron Paul’s 2008 presidential campaign.

For a curious and infuriating response to the NYT article, be sure to check out Pete Shank's "A Singular Kind of Eugenics," but be warned: the bullshit factor is off the charts (e.g. Shank is terribly confused about the history of transhumanism, particularly the role and evolution of the Extropy Institute, the World Transhumanist Association, Humanity+ and the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies).

Singularity University launched to considerable debate

Earlier last week, renowned futurist Ray Kurzweil and Xprize founder Peter Diamandis officially announced the launching of The Singularity University. As KurzweilAI noted, "With the support of NASA, Google and a broad range of technology thought leaders and entrepreneurs, a new university will launch in Silicon Valley this summer with the goal of preparing the next generation of leaders to address 'humanity's grand challenges.'"

As part of the launch, Kurzweil released this promo video:


SU will feature a number of prominent futurists and intellectuals, including the IEET's very own Ben Goertzel (who is also on the Board for Humanity+) and Aubrey de Grey.

The launch of SU has kindled considerable debate about their offering, mission and purpose. I've compiled some highlights:

Jamais Cascio of the IEET and Open the Future: "Flunking Out":

For an institution that claims to be "preparing humanity for accelerating technological change," it sure seems to be spending a lot more time talking about nifty gadgets than about the connection between technology and society.

To put it another way: this is all about the symptoms of "accelerating technological change," and almost nothing about the consequences.

For a trade show or a business workshop, that's fine. For something calling itself a university, it's amazingly short-sighted. Given the nature of the subject matter, that's especially ironic/tragic.

Bob Mottram of The Streeb-Greebling Diaries: "The Singularity University: where's the beef?":

So, if there is to be a Singularity University you would expect them to be doing...research, boldly going where other universities can't or won't, right?

Wrong!

The description of what the Singularity University will be doing, as described in their FAQ, looks very disappointing and I tried in vain to locate information on any particular research which they'll be doing.

Brian Wang of Next Big Future: "Debating Singularity Education Programs":

This site has noted that the term "University" has some getting their expectations messed up. By examining the program and its stated model, International Space University, we can see that is a crash program and startup bootcamp with team projects.

Alvin Brigis: Memebox/Future Bogger: "Asocial Singularitarianism - Breeding an Incomplete View of Convergent Accelerating Change":

By taking the emphasis off of social acceleration, dynamics and punctuated change, the HTAE [Hard-Tech Attribution Error] increases the tendency for inaccurate and/or incomplete forecasting. Sure, it's still very important to spread the word about accelerating technological change, but I think we've now been provided with enough data (massively valuable social networks, rise of the prosumer, the impact of abstractions on intelligence, Reed's Law, etc) to recognize the importance of social intelligence and dynamics in the equation. By not giving these threads their due, we fail to develop the most comprehensive view of what is going on (which hurts our collective intelligence, behavior and economics).

If the goal of SU is to focus on "the exponential growth of information technology and how it can solve the major problems of the world", as Kurzweil summarizes in the promotional video...then the curriculum as currently presented will 1) fail to bring in minds from explosive social fields, 2) attract non-critical tech-Singularity devotees, and ultimately 3) fail to provide a comprehensive picture of acceleration.

What do you think?
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As an interesting aside, David Orban (who is involved with SU) writes:

It hasn’t been reported by the numerous articles covering the announcement of the Singularity University, but Ray confirmed to me, and it is rather important, that all the lectures, and the course materials that are going to be developed and delivered at its sessions are going to be made available online under a liberal license. This is going to be equivalent to or more liberal than the license applied to the Open Courseware Consortium’s content, of which famously MIT’s courses are also a part. This means that all the materials of the Singularity University are going to be published under Creative Commons Attribution license!