AI

Linda MacDonald Glenn on Singularity 1 on 1: Sentience Matters!

by Socrates
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Today I interviewed Prof. Linda MacDonald Glenn on Singularity 1 on 1. Linda is an American bioethicist, healthcare educator, lecturer, consultant, and attorney-at-law. Her academic research encompasses the legal, ethical, and social impact of emerging technologies and “evolving notions of personhood”. During our conversation with Prof. Glenn we discuss a variety of topics such as: the very personal and moving story behind her interest in bioethics;  women in technology; human rights versus sentience rights; the legal differences of being human vs being a “person”; the legal test (or lack thereof) for recognizing personhood; the problems of defining and measuring intelligence. (As always you can listen to or download the audio file above or scroll down and watch the adapted video interview in full. There is delay between my own video and audio, which are out of sync, but Linda Glenn’s end is very [...]

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Luke Muehlhauser on Singularity 1 on 1: Superhuman AI is Coming This Century

by Socrates
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Last week I interviewed Luke Muehlhauser for Singularity 1 on 1. Luke Muehlhauser is the Executive Director of the Singularity Institute, the author of many articles on AI safety and the cognitive science of rationality, and the host of the popular podcast “Conversations from the Pale Blue Dot.” His work is collected at lukeprog.com. I have to say that despite his young age and lack of a University Degree – a criticism which we discuss during our interview, Luke was one of the best and clearest spoken guests on my show and I really enjoyed talking to to him. During our 56 min-long conversation we discuss a large variety of topics such as: Luke’s Christian-Evangelico personal background as the first-born son of a pastor in northern Minnesota; his fascinating transition transition from religion and theology to atheism and science; his personal motivation and desire to [...]

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You Can’t Spell Paranoia Without AI: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and to Love Evil Artificial Intelligence

by Matt Swayne
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I have a theory: It wasn’t capitalism and democracy that won the Cold War. Popular Science won the Cold War. Popular Science and Popular Mechanics magazines — as well as other journals and magazines that took an awe-inspired, jaw-dropping look at science and technology — paid particular interest to military technology developed by Soviet block engineers in the 1950s and 1960s. The stories typically depicted Soviet military might as growing and unbeatable. Sort of like runaway artificial general intelligence (AGI). Soviet tanks had better armor. Soviet planes were faster and more maneuverable. Soviet subs dived deeper and plowed through the water more silently. Soviet nuclear ICBMs were poised to strike more accurately and more powerfully. (A great place to check out the above claims is the Popular Science Archive Search.) We can argue how the military industrial complex easily co-opts [...]

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Smart Homes: Is AI the Ghost in the Machine?

by Nikki Olson
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When we conceptualize AI, we often forget that it is not something that has to operate in a single location, or have intelligence qualities like our own. We are already surrounded by AI systems that are nothing like our own intelligence, that utilize many machines spread out over large distances, and are equally ‘present’ in many locations. In the future we will bring AI systems like these into our homes in the form of ‘smart environments.’  In doing so we introduce new and interesting relationships between man and machine. However, there may be some limits as to how ‘alive’ we want our AI homes to be. One of the most well-known depictions of the potential ‘terror’ of intelligent environments,  which happens to be a parody of 2001’s HAL and Dean Koontz’s Demon Seed, is the Simpson’s ‘Treehouse of Horror XII’ [...]

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Human Rights for Artificial Intelligence: What is the Threshold for Granting (Human) Rights?

by CMStewart
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It is the year 2045. Strong artificial intelligence (AI) is integrated into our society. Humanoid robots with non-biological brain circuitries walk among people in every nation. These robots look like us, speak like us, and act like us. Should they have the same human rights as we do? The function and reason of human rights are similar to the function and cause of evolution. Human rights help develop and maintain functional, self-improving societies. Evolution perpetuates the continual development of functional, reproducible organisms. Just as humans have evolved, and will continue to evolve, human rights will continue to evolve as well. Assuming strong AI will eventually develop strong sentience and emotion, the AI experience of sentience and emotion will likely be significantly different from the human experience. But is there a definable limit to the human experience? What makes a human [...]

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Ben Goertzel on Singularity 1 on 1: The Future Is Ours To Create

by Socrates
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Today my guest on Singularity 1 on 1 is Ben Goertzel. During our 40 min conversation we cover a wide range of topics such as: Ben’s original interest in time travel and science fiction; his decision to start working on artificial general intelligence and his views on the potential time-line thereof together with his evaluation of the software vs hardware requirements for building it; scientific funding for AI research in both the USA and China; the technological singularity and our chances of surviving it. (You can listen to or download the audio file above or you can scroll down and watch the full video of the interview below.) As attested by his short bio below, Ben is a brilliant AI scientist with an incredibly wide spectrum of interests and talents. Even more, I can’t help it but mention that he [...]

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Michael Anissimov at Foresight 2010: Don’t Fear the Singularity, But Be Careful

by Socrates
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This is an interesting video of Michael Anissimov at Foresight 2010. Michael is Media Director for the Singularity Institute and Fundraising Director, North America for the Lifeboat Foundation.  He is a science/technology writer and “futurist”, which, as stated on his popular blog Accelerating Future, means someone who makes educated guesses about speculative technological probabilities. Related articles by Zemanta Top 10 Singularitarians of All Time (singularityblog.singularitysymposium.com) Webcast: Foresight Institute conf on nanotech and artificial intelligence (boingboing.net)

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Artificial Intelligence: Its Meaning and Its Future

by Socrates
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Professors Noel Sharkey and Kevin Warwick discuss what AI is, and what it might become… Video: Artificial intelligence: Will machines ever out-think us? | silicon.com Related articles by Zemanta the Rise of Robotic Artificial Intelligence (singularityblog.singularitysymposium.com) Call for debate on killer robots (news.bbc.co.uk) Military killer robots ‘could endanger civilians’ (telegraph.co.uk)

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