Humanity+

This is an interesting piece in the BBC about how complex tasks enhance the structure of the brain.  Time to take up juggling!

Hat tip to Ramez Naam who posted this earlier today on Facebook.

Oddly this article in Forbes has the T-word in the title even though it is never mentioned in the body, which is about Singularitarianism. Does this mean Forbes editors think transhumanism now needs no explanation?

Michael Vassar, the president of the institute, gives the Singularity just under a 25% chance of happening by 2040 and a 70% chance by 2060. When we do cross that line, Vassar says nothing will be the same. “Humans living in the post-Singularity world will be as powerless as jellyfish are in today’s world,” he says. His odds don’t take into account the chances of the world plunging into rapid technological decline due to a nuclear war or a worldwide collapse into barbarism.

Vassar’s six staffers at the Singularity Institute… publish papers with titles such as, “Uncertain Future Project,” “Global Catastrophic Risk Project” and “Economics and Machine Intelligence,” and have developed software that supposedly predicts technology’s trajectories and generates odds on the occurrences of global catastrophes like nuclear war and global warming.

Singularists fall into optimist and pessimist camps. Optimists, such as Kurzweil, look forward to living in an age in which human intelligence is enhanced by brain implants that extend our memories, enhance our senses and allow us to solve problems faster and with greater accuracy.

The pessimists, and Vassar is one of them, see threats to humanity from the rise of an unfriendly machine intelligence that will want to enslave humans….

The most radical thought experiments entertained by transhumanists often involve some reference to Artificial Intelligence (AI) and/or Virtual Reality (VR), and can be classed as Extreme Simulation Scenarios (ESS). Such scenarios can be equal parts attractive and disturbing. They describe conditions of radical liberation from traditional human constraints, but also open up entirely new categories of potential risk. Evaluations of ESS frequently conflate assessments of promise, risk, technological credibility, and congruence with extant belief systems.

This presentation will disentangle the various threads within ESS evaluation as follows: (1) explaining key ESS concepts such as uploads, utility fog, and virtual autonomous zones; (2) describing the principal extreme simulation scenarios and their historical roots; (3) evaluating specific criticisms of ESS; and (4) considering the degree to which assessments of ESS are often a matter of opposed assumptions and worldviews rather than the unprejudiced examination of evidence.

This lecture was recorded on 11th of July 2009 at the UKH+ meeting. For information on further meetings please see: http://extrobritannia.blogspot.com/

This is the first part of the lecture. View the rest of the lecture here.

About the speaker: Amon Twyman is a cognitive scientist and artist based in London. His work within cognitive psychology at University College London has investigated the role of conscious awareness in decision making, and he has explored transhumanist themes as a member of electro-industrial band Xykogen.

2009 WOODSTOCK FILM FESTIVAL ENGAGES THE FUTURE HEAD-ON!

(Woodstock, NY USA) August 26, 2009: The 10TH Anniversary Woodstock Film Festival boldly goes where it has never gone before with an unprecedented focus on ethics and the rapidly developing field of artificial intelligence and transhumanism.

With two futuristic narrative premieres and intellectually star-studded panels exploring radical new technologies, this years “fiercely independent” festival offers rare insight into the not-so-futuristic world of artificial intelligence, technohumanity, and other bio-technologies, which could become the norm within the next fifty years.

“We are thrilled to spotlight the future explorations of men and machine in this year’s festival,” stated Meira Blaustein, co-founder and executive director of the Woodstock Film Festival. “In a year where we celebrate the mark of our 10th anniversary and we all stand at the eve of a new decade, setting an eye into our future is not only our privilege, but a necessity.”

2B, directed by Richard Kroehling, is a World Premiere future narrative film portraying a decaying world on the cusp of great transformation. Based upon real science and evolving technologies, 2B’s script brings to life the ‘technohuman’ conundrum. Designed to confront the most controversial topic of the 21st century, 2B explores moral and religious questions raised by the biotech revolution, forcing its audience to deeply question their definitions of life itself.

Partnered with the Syfy Channel, WFF will also present the feature length pilot of Syfy’s upcoming, hotly anticipated new series Caprica. The film is presented in connection with a Syfy Screenwriting Panel, pertaining to future narrative writing and other different genres of screenwriting as well.

From the mind of Battlestar Executive Producer, Ronald Moore comes Caprica. Humanity’s storyline takes completely new twists in Caprica as two rival family patriarchs, Daniel Graystone (Eric Stoltz) and Joseph Adama (Esai Morales) compete and thrive in the vibrant realm of the twelve Colonies, a society recognizably close to our own. This original, stand-alone series will feature the passion, intrigue, political backbiting, and family conflict alive and well in an omnipotent society that is, even at the height of its blind power and glory, unknowingly on the brink of its fall.

Designed to accompany the issues raised by 2B and Caprica, the Woodstock Film Festival engages the future head-on with the presentation of a ground-breaking panel, Redesigning Humanity – The New Frontier: If artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, genetic engineering and other technologies will, within the next 50 years, allow human beings to transcend the limitations of the body, how will our world fundamentally change under those conditions?

Moderated by Dr. James J. Hughes, Executive Director of the Institute for Emerging Ethics and Technologies and bioethicist at Trinity College, this revolutionary panel features futurist Raymond Kurzweil, the author of four best selling novels, and an inventor responsible for many breakthroughs in biotechnological fields; Dr. Martine Rothblatt, lawyer, author and entrepreneur, responsible for several satellite technology companies, along with Terasem Media and Films, which produces independent narrative and documentary films that deal with biotechnologies; and author Wendell Wallach, regarded as one of forefront thinkers in the field of Machine Ethics who, after co-authoring Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right from Wrong, is working on a new book examining what humans might become through emerging technologies.

The full 10th Anniversary Woodstock Film Festival line-up of films, panels and events, will be announced in early September.

Extrobritannia / UK Transhumanist September 2009 Meeting

Quantum Computers and the creation of human-level artificial intelligence – Uploading Schrodinger’s Cat?!

This talk will put forward a case that quantum computers might help those who wish to achieve the goal of whole-brain emulation and exotic neural networks, and will review how this may provide insight into the currently hotly-debated topic of the role played by quantum mechanics in the brain and consciousness.

2pm-4pm, Saturday 12th September.
Speaker: Dr Suzanne Gildert,
Research Fellow at University of Birmingham, UK

Room CL 101, Clore Management Centre, Birkbeck College, Torrington Square, London WC1E 7HX

The talk in more detail

This talk will explain the fundamental concepts of the quantum computer (QC) and how these systems might be able to perform certain tasks that classical computers find incredibly difficult. The talk will also explain why QCs might be useful for some very interesting problems with applications to a wide variety of fields such as biology, microprocessor design, pharmaceuticals, economics, transport, chemistry and business. More importantly, the talk will also explain what they can’t do! Quantum computers are sometimes wrongly portayed by the media as being replacements for desktop machines, whereas the reality is that they are more like fast co-processors.

There will be a review of some of the experimental challenges involved in building QCs, and a focus on a particularly promising version known as the Superconducting Flux-based Quantum Computer. The devices involved in this type of QC are defined using a process similar to semiconductor technology, but using Niobium and Aluminium rather than Silicon. There will be a brief overview of the physics which causes these devices to demonstrate ‘Macroscopic Quantum Coherence’- an effect which allows us to scale up quantum effects to a size where we can manipulate them easily, and why the devices must be cooled to millikelvin temperatures for them to work properly.

Finally, the talk will look at several ‘controversial’ applications which may arise as Quantum Computing (and classical High Performance
Computing) begins to cross into the field of neuroscience and neural networks.

About the speaker

Dr Suzanne Gildert is a Research Fellow and Experimental Physicist at the University of Birrmingham. She is currently working on the design and testing of novel superconducting devices (specifically Josephson
Junctions) using non-conventional materials and processing techniques.
Her physics webpage.

There is no charge to attend and everyone is welcome.

General discussion is likely to continue after the event, in a nearby pub, for those who are able to stay. Why not join some of the Extrobritannia regulars for a drink and/or light lunch beforehand, any time after 12.30pm, in The Marlborough Arms, 36 Torrington Place, London WC1E 7HJ. To find us, look out for a table where there’s a copy of the book displayed, “A Shortcut Through Time: The Path to the Quantum Computer”.

About the venue:

Room CL 101 is on the first floor of the Clore Management Centre, which is on the opposite side of Torrington Square from the main Birkbeck College building. Torrington Square is a pedestrian-only square and is about 10 minutes walk from either Russell Square or Goodge St tube stations.

http://extrobritannia.blogspot.com/

http://www.transhumanist.org.uk/