Misc. News Notes ...
- SETI ready to do some big eye sky patrolling, launching a funding campaign to gear up with specialized cameras. "The Laser SETI device "can look everywhere simultaneously. The technology has been
prototyped and subjected to preliminary tests, and consists of a robust
assembly of straightforward optical and mechanical components. It can
be easily and inexpensively) replicated."
With the "$100,000 campaign launched on Indiegogo, the institute hopes to develop the first two cameras, allowing them to localize targets and validate the algorithm and distribution of potential signals." - Read more: Daily Mail
- Laser SETI on Indiegogo from SETI on Vimeo.
- Incentive: Mystery Radio Signal from Nearby Star. RawStory
- AI Stone Cold Alert from Elon Musk. Newsweek Regarding potential impact of wide scale societal integration, Jobs are not the primary concern. At issue: National Security.
- "Musk's bigger concern has to do with AI that lives in the network, and which could be incentivized to harm humans. “[They] could start a war by doing fake news and spoofing email accounts and fake press releases, and just by manipulating information," he said. "The pen is mightier than the sword.” Fortune
- Dejavu. We've already had a trial run with this. AI elevates the game level to pro.
As one might imagine, coming face-to-face with a transcended version of yourself in a near death experience might trigger an intense reconfiguring of "reality"... And that is what happened for Russell Brinegar. Russell shared details about that Experience on this video: Youtube
He thinks differently about life now, asking radically different questions and entertaining broader ranges of possibilities. Getting a glimpse of that expanded framework he's navigating to connect the dots involves tracking his footsteps. I thank him for giving me permission to share a bit of his work here. Enjoy.
Overlords of the Singularity:
The Manipulation of Humankind by Hidden UFO Intelligences and the Quest for Transcendence'- CreateSpace
UFOs and the Technological Singularity
The Manipulation of Humankind by Hidden UFO Intelligences and the Quest for Transcendence'- CreateSpace
Chapter
4, excerpt - 2/3
UFOs and the Technological Singularity
“I believe there is a machinery of mass manipulation behind
the UFO phenomenon.” - Dr. Jacques Vallee
The problem is, because the coming Singularity will propel us into completely unknown territory, there is really no way to predict the outcome. Some fear that, once machines are suddenly billions of times smarter than humans and self-aware, they might just decide to destroy humanity like a mere nuisance and take over the planet.
James Barrat, author of Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era, states (chapter 1 audible): If the ASI [artificial superintelligence] doesn’t care about us, and there’s little reason to think that it should, it will experience no compunction about treating us unethically, even taking our lives after promising to help us.
This is a daunting possibility, that self-aware machines
who are billions of times smarter than we are might just decide to get rid of
us, their creators.
Another strong voice of warning within the AI community who is concerned about the implications of self-aware artificial intelligence as we head into the Singularity is a Swiss philosopher from the University of Oxford - Dr. Nick Bostrom.
Another strong voice of warning within the AI community who is concerned about the implications of self-aware artificial intelligence as we head into the Singularity is a Swiss philosopher from the University of Oxford - Dr. Nick Bostrom.
Bostrom earned his Ph.D. from the London School of Economics and is the founder of the Oxford Martin Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology.
Bostrom considers the impending creation of self-aware AI one of the biggest existential threats to humanity.
Bostrom is the author of the New York Times best-seller, Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, and Strategies. At the time of this writing, Bostrom is a scientific activist who urges the AI community to immediately start implementing safety parameters now for the inevitable creation of artificial intelligence in possession of the sum total of all human knowledge before the monster in Mary Shelly’s novel, Frankenstein, becomes a reality.
Another brilliant individual who has already proved instrumental in the development of self-aware AI and is working diligently within the AI community at the time of this writing to prevent the very real existential threat of artificial intelligence that takes over the world and destroys humanity is Steve Omohundro.
Omohundro has conducted extensive research in the field of Hamiltonian physics. In this complex field, the Hamiltonian, H, has to do with the time-evolution of a given system. The Hamiltonian represents the sum total of kinetic energy within a system, plus the potential energy of all associated particles that comprise the system.
The spectrum of the Hamiltonian is the set of possible outcomes when the total energy of a system is measured. Omohundro studies dynamical systems in which a fixed, deterministic rule describes what future states might arise from the current state in a dynamical system, such as the swing of a pendulum or the flow of water. Using a deterministic rule, the future state of a dynamical system (referred to as a geometric manifold) can be determined for a particular future time interval.
Omohundro is also involved with machine language, machine learning, and machine vision, along with the societal implications of future artificial, self-aware superintelligence. Omohundro is the inventor of the “Best-first model merging approach” to machine learning, which proved useful in learning Hidden Markov Models. HMMs are the “Legos” of computational sequence analysis, a formal foundation of linear sequence labeling problems that provide conceptual tools for building complex models from an intuitive picture. Omohundro’s research and inventiveness has been instrumental in the development of modern machine languages.
Omohundro started Self-Aware Systems in Palo Alto, California, for research into the societal implications of self-improving artificial intelligence, and was an advisor to the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence. One of Omohundro’s concerns about artificial superintelligence is that rational machines possess certain intrinsic drives that must be countered somehow in their programming in order to create ASI that is human-friendly and safe.
Taking this idea into consideration, is there any reason to believe that an alien planetary search-probe would have been constructed by its builders with such safety parameters built in regarding human life? Possibly, but that seems doubtful. Steve Omohundro and associate Cliff Lasser also developed a programming language called Star Lisp, the first programming language used for the Connection Machine.
The Connection Machine was a series of supercomputers that provided an alternative to von Neumann computation architecture. Omohundro developed many parallel algorithm libraries and applications for the Connection Machine, along with another programming language called Sather, which further advanced the fast-growing field of machine language design.
Steve Omohundro is a key player at this time insuring that we will not fall victim to our own computational creations as the Singularity swiftly approaches, and has many lectures on the subject available to view online at this time that are quite worthy of the time and consideration.
The
aforementioned scientist, John von Neumann, speculated as far back as the 1950s
about the possibility of advanced alien civilizations who may have already
achieved a technological singularity millions of years ago. If such a civilization existed, they may have
sent out automated probes from their home planet into the universe at large
that were programmed to self-replicate. Such self-replicating ancient alien artifacts
of programmed artificial superintelligence are now referred to as von Neumann probes.
Many scientists now believe that some alien version of the von Neumann probe is the most likely intelligence to visit Earth. If such advanced alien civilizations existed long ago who wanted to learn more about the universe and ventured out from their native planet with a fleet of von Neumann probes, they could have been scouting out regions of the universe for a variety of purposes for aeons by now.
These purposes might include: searching for resources; seeking knowledge of the universe; terraforming other planets; reestablishing their own native life form on other worlds; self-replicating the next generation of advanced AI; or all of the above. Futurism/VonNeumann Probe
Perhaps all technological civilizations eventually reach a Singularity on their worlds, produce a new lifeform that is part biological and part technological, or even convert to a 100% electrical or energetic lifeform and embark on an exploration of the rest of the universe in a way that is not limited by time or space. This intelligence could either be a post-biological version of themselves, or, more disturbing, an independent, runaway form of artificial intelligence that set out to explore, or even conquer the entire universe on their own without their original creators, perhaps with an artificial intelligence agenda of their own that we cannot even imagine.
In other words, the entire universe might be populated by now with super-intelligent robots that have transcended their original biology aeons ago. Such an intelligence could easily travel throughout the universe and remain invisible to the pre-singularity biological life it encounters, unless there were some purpose, possibly comprehendible only to the AI, for revealing themselves or providing a glimpse of their presence to further their own goals.
Many scientists now believe that some alien version of the von Neumann probe is the most likely intelligence to visit Earth. If such advanced alien civilizations existed long ago who wanted to learn more about the universe and ventured out from their native planet with a fleet of von Neumann probes, they could have been scouting out regions of the universe for a variety of purposes for aeons by now.
These purposes might include: searching for resources; seeking knowledge of the universe; terraforming other planets; reestablishing their own native life form on other worlds; self-replicating the next generation of advanced AI; or all of the above. Futurism/VonNeumann Probe
Perhaps all technological civilizations eventually reach a Singularity on their worlds, produce a new lifeform that is part biological and part technological, or even convert to a 100% electrical or energetic lifeform and embark on an exploration of the rest of the universe in a way that is not limited by time or space. This intelligence could either be a post-biological version of themselves, or, more disturbing, an independent, runaway form of artificial intelligence that set out to explore, or even conquer the entire universe on their own without their original creators, perhaps with an artificial intelligence agenda of their own that we cannot even imagine.
In other words, the entire universe might be populated by now with super-intelligent robots that have transcended their original biology aeons ago. Such an intelligence could easily travel throughout the universe and remain invisible to the pre-singularity biological life it encounters, unless there were some purpose, possibly comprehendible only to the AI, for revealing themselves or providing a glimpse of their presence to further their own goals.
Continue? Read Overlords of the Singularity. Amazon
Related Posts
Russell Brinegar Intro - Link 1
Brinegar - Link 3
Join me for the live show or catch the podcast download 24/7
Wendy's Coffeehouse Archives. Thank you for listening and sharing!
Posts
