Singularity Summit

A glimpse of the Singularity Summit beamed to you from San Jose.
Vernor Vinge has a replacement for the Turing Test, more practical by far.


The Vinge Test for human level AI...

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Omega Point

Ryan Kuder brought up Teilhard, the Omega Point and the Noosphere at the Social Media Club, so it wasn't really a detour yesterday after all.
I think it's fascinating that a Jesuit Priest, Teilhard, was heavily involved in Paleontology and embraced evolution into his own framework to arrive at a concept of a shared mind or noosphere back in the 30s. Oh yes, he had his issues with the church...

Today, a rudimentary example of the power of the net can be seen with the oft maligned Twitter. Beyond simple "what am I doing" updates, Shel Israel is able to use Twitter for real-time restaurant recommendations, and research pointers. While this sounds like a nice convenience, no big deal, it's a rudimentary example of tapping into local domain knowledge while he is traveling. This exhibits just a taste of the power of things to come, for those who are tightly networked together.
Imagine legal expertise being on tap as needed, medical, financial, etc. Each member of the group benefits from the specific expertise of domain experts. The noosphere is the endpoint of that merging, expanding the base of knowledge. I boldly predict that the next level of networking will support these interactions. (probably already here but I'm just not aware of them!)

The noosphere includes a spiritual element as well, and the darker wolf in sheep's clothing Shel vs. Loren is a good example for that prerequisite, for in order for the noosphere to arrive, a simultaneous need for better reconciliation and attenuated aggression is needed. When energy, creativity and hostility are wasted on a feud (a mini- "Hell Realm" from Buddhism), it prevents the networked benefits from fully applying, despite the perceived entertainment value. The real loss is to the rest of the network, from the lost or diverted participation of talented individuals. As Teilhard writes, the connectedness of individuals should induce "the pervasion of the human mass by the power of sympathy". Not quite there yet...but this is one particular social aspect of the singularity that has been largely passed over in the rush to detail the technology advances. I'd like to look at this aspect in more detail in future posts.

Interesting that many respond to the singularity in terms of predictions that have failed to materialize, (former AI predictions cited here!). That's just the point. So a prediction that we will be unable to predict is perhaps circular. Taking the case of Teilhard with the "Omega Point" and H.G. Welles with the "World Brain", their predictions appear to be prescient, (although the timing of their fulfillment was wisely not included in their predictions).

While it is amazing that they were accurate in their predictions 80 years back, are there predictions being put forth today that will also seem prescient in another 80 years? Given accelerated change, it is argued that it is easier to foresee earlier in the curve, before the knee is hit.

Social Media Club

A brief detour from the singularity, joining the Social Media Club at British Bankers Club for drinks and discussion.

Social Media Club

...photos...


Kristie Wells, organizer




Shel Israel




Mike McGrath, Janet




LeeAnn Prescott




Shel and
Ryan Kuder



Darryl Ohrt of the Plaid Tour

Recap: Social Aspects of the Singularity

On the off chance of anyone reading this in mid-stream, here is a recap of the subjects which have been touched upon. Follow the links in the individual entries to really dig into the specifics of each topic.
If you haven't heard of the singularity before, here is a lead in from a couple years back, given by a leading exponent of it's early arrival, Ray Kurzweil.

Ray's World

..and a seminal article from Vernor Vinge back from '93.


Vernor


The recap of my blog in forward chronological order:

1) Approaching Singularity:
The impending singularity is near, I intend to focus on social and group dynamics rather than the technology that will bring forth the accelerated change.

2) Wisdom of Crowds:
I touch upon the ability of crowds to arrive at an answer that is better than that given by an individual expert. Reference James Surowiecki's book for details.

3) Cinematrix: Will of the Audience:
I describe a technology that demonstrates that a crowd can control a flight simulator with just a little bit of training.

4) Nirvana:
I point to some studies on rats that suggest we might just tap into our pleasure centers and dead end there. On the other hand, we could do something similar with drugs today, but we don't.

5) Into the Void:
I show some recent advances where we are already starting to meld our physical bodies with machines, leading to my belief that machines will not become our overlords, but that we will merge into them. I also bring up the very real possibility that an authoritarian control will emerge to tightly control human behavior and possibly even our very thoughts.

6) Old Age and Wisdom
I point out that wisdom may be harder to apply in the future, as change becomes more rapid, and that we haven't been so adept at using it in any case.

7) Where Did the Time Go?:
I bring up the mystery of what exactly time is, and why it seems to only go forward. I talk a bit about why our fear of death is pretty silly when set against the great sweep of time.

Given a prospect for living eternally, I wonder how that will effect our shorter term behavior? Will we stop taking risks with more at stake, or having merged into a collective mind, will we sacrifice our lives for the greater good with less identification of the individual self?

Where Did The Time Go?

Time, the fourth red-headed stepchild dimension, is a curious thing.

It's inexorable progress leads us towards old age and death.

Yet, how do we even perceive its passage? We remember the way we were.
In the absence of memory, how does time perception change. There is one examples of someone who lost the functioning of their hippocampus, or more broadly the medial temporal lobes. That is to say, it was surgically removed in 1953.

H M

While this event stamped out his new memory formation, he still has momentary or working memory, and an apparent perception of time passing, along with long term memories from childhood. If all memory were to be removed, perhaps the internal resulting feeling would be a timeless sense of bewilderment.

On a related note, if you want to experience a taste of time reversal, I recommend watching the film "Memento".

Having brought up time reversal, it is interesting to note that physics tends to work equally well backwards in time, as it does forwards, (thermodynamic batteries not included).

Back in time to Discover

Another aspect of time is the incredibly brief flash our lives comprise when put in context of the calculated life of the universe. This has been given as 13 or 14 billion years. By some dictate of evolution and the arrow of time, we fear our future death, but are not concerned at all that we have been dead for all those years preceding our birth. When we go to sleep, those who don't remember their dreams may as well be dead for that time, due to the memory gap. Yet who mourns the dead time lost to the night? Curious creatures, these humans!

"Time, time, time, see what's become of me!"
Another curious thing about time, is that as it passes, our body cells are being replaced so rapidly that the body we call our own has been mostly replaced every four years or so. If you are wondering what it would be like to transplant your consciousness into a computer, look no further. You transplant it into a new vessel all the time, albeit in tiny pieces. You might be more comfortable easing slowly into the computer over a year or two, when the technology arrives. Well, you're already spending enough time in front of one anyway, what's the hangup?!

Old Age and Wisdom in Life Extension

Life Extension

As the banishment of disease marches on, there may be some debate over how long it will be until we frail humans become immortal on earth, but there will likely come a time when death by 'natural' causes will be abolished. There is a lot of discussion about extending life until technology can 'bridge' us into this future, and it may not be as far out as one might (linearly) think.

Life Retread

Of course, if you are a US Supreme Court Justice appointed for life, that could be an even sweeter deal than it already is today. Others may not be so lucky, retirement planning depends on you actually expiring at a certain point, in most cases. (although there is an 'escape velocity' for your nest egg where it keeps growing despite your withdrawals, once you've saved up a very healthy amount)

While many will want to have these life extensions when they become available, I imagine they won't come free of charge, so there will be a pretty clear divide between the haves and have-nots, possibly triggering a massive social upheaval. Perhaps the concurrent advances in technology will save the day, and everyone will have a plethora of resources and opportunities available to them. It's more likely that governments will have a tighter grip on their populations, and will be able to control the disgruntled, or even provide a lottery system that is perceived as fair.

There has been a quite a bit of discussion over the technology needed for these future life extensions, but not as much about the social implications. There may just be too many unknowns to conjecture what civilization will look like as people are tightly joined together, and then freed from their mortal coil. Such is the nature of exponential growth that it will only get harder to see the future as time passes, because change will be accelerating even as our collective intelligence advances.

The crux of the dilemma is that old age might not provide wisdom, because the lessons of the past won't apply to the present. Hopefully, at a sufficient level of abstraction, wisdom will still be relevant to making vital decisions. On the other hand, even if it's relevant today, it is rarely applied. Maybe we better start working out some self-correcting mechanisms instead!

Into the Void

The Singularity. It sounds pretty foreboding, and it just might be. There has been a lot of discussion about how 'strong AI', AI that is smarter than human, may just take over life as we know it. At that point it is just a matter of deciding if humans will be fondly treated as pets, or removed altogether. This is probably a red herring, or will come to pass only by gross miscalculation. (umm, aka human error!)
It is abundantly clear that humans will take advantage of any enhancement possible to improve their competitive standing: steroids, face lifts, breast implants, vitamin supplements, and a host of herbal enhancements that have no scientific standing at all. If a memory chip were available to improve our recollection, I have no doubt there would be a line around the block to use it. (with the notable exception of Alberto Gonzalez, who may be better off without it, plausible deniability).
There are already a number of 'chip implant' pioneers that have surgically placed devices into their bodies, even beyond the routine replacement joints, stents, and such.
ancient Wired article

Monkeys at least have been trained to control a robotic arm with a thin needle sensor slid into their motor cortex.
Monkey Business


Raytheon is developing an exoskeleton for the army that amplifies strength, and it's getting closer to deployment.
Starship Trooper

Can anyone argue that it's not just a matter of time, barring a complete Luddite revolution?
Humans will merge with the machines and participate in the rapid increase in intelligence. I believe there will no longer be a clear distinction between human and machine intelligence, that it will be a unified, connected whole. (possibly a loosely connected set of tightly connected subpartitions of the whole, ok, even a disjoint set of tightly connected subpartitions or various combination thereof). Well, I didn't say exactly when, so I'm still pretty safe in this (non)prediction(!)

A danger of the Singularity that bears particular attention is that of authoritarian rule, possibly even a "tyranny of the majority". Even under current conditions, a large portion of humanity live under authoritarian rule. With the degree of control that a tightly knit network of integrated electronic and biological beings allows, the temptation for one class of beings to dictate the very thoughts of others, may completely dominate the network, long before the Singularity has truly arrived. It's possible that it won't matter, as the great leap in intelligence eventually attained will arrive at the same enlightened destination regardless of the social structure. That is a branch that I would prefer not to test, however(!) Even now, some European countries are drawing up lists of internet websites to be blocked. It is a slippery slope to expand the definition of the blacklist to include those in disfavor to the government's way of thinking, or obstacles to their ambitions.

So far, examples of network collaboration such as Wikipedia, digg, and other social sites have shown great promise in avoiding the pitfalls of anarchy. It remains to be seen how the will of the net behaves as more power is diverted to its control, or if the will of the net will be diverted and controlled by the existing powers that be. These are crucial times indeed.

Nirvana

A big question about the singularity is what will life be like afterwards. Ignore for the moment three different main schools of what exactly the singularity means, and take the position that humans will have direct control over their detailed body functions in any scenario. Why wouldn't people just hook up to their pleasure centers and spend all their time in absolute ecstasy? A famous experiment in the 1950s showed that rats would do exactly that, when given the opportunity.

Rat Rapture

It's quite possible that some humans will do just that as well, given the opportunity. This presumes that what passes for humanity at that point even has the same single point of experience such that the point of view of a single 'entity' even makes sense. On the other hand, even today it is possible to do something similar through drugs, and yet relatively few people take drugs to induce a constant state of euphoria. It is possible that the social structures that govern behavior today will still be not only active, but also enhanced, through tightly coupling peoples' identities together.

Another possibility is that when people are able to create a virtual reality that they prefer over the physical one, they will abandon their ties to the physical plane altogether. This may not be the direct equivalent to tapping into a pleasure center, but may be only a few steps removed from that. It really comes down to the purpose of existence, whether for the individual or for the collective mind. If there is a higher purpose, beyond pleasure, then virtual reality is a tool that can be an 'escapist' dead end, or alternatively used to learn, explore and drive towards a higher purpose.

I'd like to believe there is a higher purpose, although as illustrated in Peter Gabriel's song 'Shock the Monkey': "Don't like it but I guess I'm learning" as told by the monkey, perhaps we are only fooling ourselves! Poor monkey.

Future Shock

Cinematrix, Will Of The Audience

Having seen how groups can obtain good results by accumulating their independent knowledge, as in the "The Wisdom of Crowds", how well can they do through concerted effort?

Can people in a crowd will a pong controller to move correctly? How is it possible to coordinate that many inputs into a sensible and effective output? Cinematrix has demonstrated that not only is it possible, but it is universal. Imagine my surprise, as I was holding a red colored reflecting paddle up in an audience of a couple hundred, to see the pong paddle move to strike the incoming ball, as a laser scanned over the audience, counting the responses and guiding the movement. It was truly amazing that just enough people in the audience raised their paddle to control the paddle movement on the large screen in front of us. Further demonstrations have included behavior as complex as controlling a flight simulator. Imagine the possibilities at larger scale, with finer grained control and training? While the accomplishments of crowd coordination to date don't amount to performance above that of a single trained human, it would be interesting to see results after the audience was given extensive training.


Cinematrix

Wisdom of Crowds

"The Wisdom of Crowds", by James Surowiecki, is an interesting book. In a mathematical sense, the wisdom of crowds can be (grossly) summarized as the elimination of error through the random exclusion of outlying, erroneous information, leaving only the coherent truth remaining. It describes some pretty amazing examples, but endless reruns of "Who Want to be a Millionaire" audience voting lifelines are perhaps the most accessible.

Is this phenomenon true for political issues as well?
What about mob behavior, or someone shouting 'fire!' in a theater?
The wisdom of crowds is best extracted under friendly circumstances.

It would be an interesting experiment to see under what circumstances the crowd returns a better answer than, say, a less direct government structure. The US democracy creates a decision layer which 'represents' a constituency, after being elected. Of course the US government has departed from the ideal, given gerimandering, and special interest lobbying. In any case, the indirect representation created by the country founders was always geared towards the preferential treatment of the landed gentry. The 'town meeting' format is a closer comparison, with more participation of common citizens. It would be interesting for an experimental town meeting to take a silent vote prior to discussion, and compare the resulting decision to the one arrived at after extended discussion.

From Surowiecki, "There are four key qualities that make a crowd smart. It needs to be diverse, so that people are bringing different pieces of information to the table. It needs to be decentralized, so that no one at the top is dictating the crowd's answer. It needs a way of summarizing people's opinions into one collective verdict. And the people in the crowd need to be independent, so that they pay attention mostly to their own information, and not worrying about what everyone around them thinks."

The internet can provide an avenue to satisfy these conditions, no question. What can defeat this potential wisdom?
"Essentially, any time most of the people in a group are biased in the same direction, it's probably not going to make good decisions. So when diverse opinions are either frozen out or squelched when they're voiced, groups tend to be dumb. And when people start paying too much attention to what others in the group think, that usually spells disaster, too."
Hmmm, sounds like groupthink frequently exhibited in politics, religion, and corporations!
A mindless conformity can yield some pretty outrageous results...

Line in the Sand

Read the book for a lot more detail and some incredible examples. At our best, humans have some amazing abilities.
Will the coming singularity empower this potential, or muffle it among a barrage of shared biased opinions?

Wisdom of Crowds