mind uploading

Prof. Massimo Pigliucci: Accompany science and technology with a good dose of philosophy

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I have previously interviewed a few fantastic scientists and philosophers but rare are those strange birds who manage to combine together both deep academic training and the living ethos of those separate disciplines. Prof. Massimo Pigliucci is one of those very rare and strange people. He has 3 Ph.D.’s – Genetics, Evolutionary Biology, and Philosophy, and is also the author of 165 technical papers in both science and philosophy as well as a number of books on Stoic Philosophy, including the best selling How to Be A Stoic: Using Ancient Philosophy to Live a Modern Life.

During this 80 min interview with Massimo Pigliucci, we cover a variety of interesting topics such as: why Massimo is first and foremost a philosopher and not a scientist; the midlife crisis that pushed him to switch careers; stoicism, [virtue] ethics and becoming a better person; moral relativism vs moral realism; the meaning of being human; what are the biggest issues humanity is facing today; why technology is not enough; consciousness, mind uploading and the technological singularity; why technology is the how not the why or what; teleology, transhumanism and Ray Kurzweil’s six epochs of the singularity; scientism and the philosophy of the Big Bang Theory.

As always you can listen to or download the audio file above or scroll down and watch the video interview in full. To show your support you can write a review on iTunes, make a direct donation or become a patron on Patreon.

Who is Massimo Pigliucci?

Prof. Pigliucci has a Ph.D. in Evolutionary Biology from the University of Connecticut and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Tennessee. He currently is the K.D. Irani Professor of Philosophy at the City College of New York. His research interests include the philosophy of science, the relationship between science and philosophy, the nature of pseudoscience, and the practical philosophy of Stoicism.

Prof. Pigliucci has been elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science “for fundamental studies of genotype by environmental interactions and for public defense of evolutionary biology from pseudoscientific attack.”

In the area of public outreach, Prof. Pigliucci has published in national and international outlets such as the New York Times, Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal, among others. He is a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and a Contributing Editor to Skeptical Inquirer. He blogs on practical philosophy at Patreon and Medium.

At last count, Prof. Pigliucci has published 165 technical papers in science and philosophy. He is also the author or editor of 13 books, including the best selling How to Be A Stoic: Using Ancient Philosophy to Live a Modern Life (Basic Books). Other titles include Nonsense on Stilts: How to Tell Science from Bunk (University of Chicago Press), and How to Live a Good Life: A Guide to Choosing Your Personal Philosophy (co-edited with Skye Cleary and Daniel Kaufman, Penguin/Random House).

 

The Age of Em: Robin Hanson on Work, Love and Life When Robots Rule the Earth

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The Age of Emthe-age-of-em by Robin Hanson is the best worst book I have read in a very long while. It is the best because Robin has a very effective, efficient and eloquent writing style and a personality to match it. Thus he is able to say utterly horrendous things – like “the 3rd Reich will be a democracy by now” or “Humanity will starve,” while keeping a smile and remaining the very likable fellow that he is. It is the worst because The Age of Em is an efficiency utopia: a place where democracy is inefficient [sic]; one person one vote doesn’t work [does it ever?], ems live to work and not the other way around [because currently, we can’t get enough work out of people], citizenship and voting are both for sale, leisure is to be taxed, and humanity has either starved to extinction or has become a tool of our tools.

The Age of Em is a book which has entirely forgotten that technology [or economics for that matter] is only a how but it isn’t and it shouldn’t be a why or a what. That technology is not what we seek but how we seek. And that technology, while necessary, is not enough.

And so, The Age of Em is a book where efficiency and effectiveness reign supreme at the expense of all else. In short, after reading the final version of the book, my opinion has not changed much since my previous interview with Hanson. Though, somehow and paradoxically, I like Robin personally more than last time and really enjoyed having a conversation with him. And the fact that he was happy to send me the final book to review and discuss speaks volumes about the kind of open-minded person and academic that he is. [He also told me he felt I was holding back during the interview – which I did, and so I hope he forgives me that I am not doing that in this preamble to our conversation ;-] And that is all very commendable indeed. But unfortunately, it doesn’t make for a good or insightful book. What it does make for is a good conversation about a future scenario I believe is dangerous and I hope is as far from reality as Robin estimated himself – i.e. 1 in 1,000.

As always you can listen to or download the audio file above or scroll down and watch the video interview in full. To show your support you can write a review on iTunes, make a direct donation or become a patron on Patreon.

Who is Robin Hanson?

robin-hansonRobin Hanson is an Associate Professor of economics at George Mason University, & research associate at Future of Humanity Institute of Oxford University. He has a Caltech social science Ph.D., physics & philosophy masters from the University of Chicago, 9 years as A.I. researcher at Lockheed & NASA, 3200 citations, 60 academic publications, 560 media mentions, 250 invited talks, & 8 million visits to his blog OvercomingBias.com.

Oxford University Press published The Age of Em: Work, Love and Life When Robots Rule the Earth in June 2016, and in fall 2017 publishes The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life, coauthored with Kevin Simler. A prediction market pioneer since 1988, Hanson was the architect of first internal corporate markets, at Xanadu in 1990, of the Foresight Exchange since 1994, of DARPA’s Policy Analysis Market, from 2001 to 2003, and of IARPA’s DAGGRE and SCICAST from 2010 to 2015.

Can Consciousness Be Uploaded?

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Mind-UploadingIn Arthur C. Clarke’s 1956 novel, The City and the Stars, the residents of Diaspar have their minds stored as information patterns in the city’s Central Computer as they go between lives in cloned bodies. While Clarke’s concept of mind uploading was set a billion years in the future, in a recent interview, author, computer scientist and Artificial Intelligence Scholar Dr. Keith Wiley says actual mind uploading could become a reality much sooner.

Despite his definite belief that that we will one day be able to upload consciousness, Wiley qualifies his optimism by admitting that, in spite of a great deal of research, this potential reality is still a ways off. More progress has been made over the last decade, however, in the philosophical outlook.

“People have been trying to figure this out for awhile. From a research point of view, we haven’t figured it solidly yet, but we’re still figuring out how the brain works,” Wiley said. “From a philosophical view, the main lines of arguments have been advanced to some extent.”

Wiley cited John Searle’s biological theory of consciousness, where consciousness is a type of biological process that we can’t meaningfully conceive outside the biological system. He also noted that the work of Penrose and Hameroff, who (with no allusion to being for or against artificial consciousness) believe it requires a quantum phenomenon in order to produce consciousness. The larger discussion, he adds, usually centers around two questions, the first one being: Can consciousness occur or arise from non-biological systems like computers?

On a different train of thought, the second question is, can an individual person’s identity be re-associated with some other system such as a computer? “Those are separate questions,” Wiley said. “Maybe we can conceive that consciousness really can occur in computers. We can make artificial intelligence that is genuinely conscious and yet we still don’t take the position that any one person’s personality could ever move into a computer system. There are definitely professional, well respected scientists who don’t have the stance that either one of those systems (can occur).”

Wiley argues that one must assume we can replicate consciousness in a computer to make the leap to the idea that a person’s identity can be transferred. It follows then, that consciousness must be unstanchable to a computer in the first place, he said.

In defense of his position that consciousness can work in systems that are not like brains, Wiley notes that we don’t really know what consciousness is, and therefore can’t make the counter argument that uploading a consciousness is not possible. “Because we don’t currently understand how that process works, people often say that to even suggest it is relying on magic and superstition,” he says.

One of the prevailing theories is that consciousness, for reasons we don’t yet understand, emerges out of very complex information passing through networks, but that’s where the tangible concept ends. Even if we don’t know how consciousness works, there is a prevailing philosophical stance that it emanates from this chaotic exchange. Our lack of understanding, however, still creates some doubters.

One philosophical stance that Wiley is quick to rebut is the theory of substance dualism, which states that the brain also needs the soul for the mind to work and that, if you only have one part, you don’t have all the pieces. Given the degradations in neurological and psychological performance associated with brain injuries that we can now observe, and our ability to see how physiological behavior in MRI scans correlate with psychological or behavioral aspects of a subject, he said it’s perfectly clear that the brain is very closely associated with what we call the “mind” or “consciousness”.

Looking forward, Wiley said that, since we’re only at the beginning stages of mapping the brain, significant breakthroughs in mind uploading research are still in the distant future.

The bigger leaps will come from artificial intelligence, and that progress will benefit the larger brain research projects such as the Blue Brain Project, the White House BRAIN Initiative, and others.

“To make computers intelligent, you kinda’ gotta’ do it the way brains do it. The more capable artificial intelligence becomes, the larger role it’s going to play in our brain mapping projects,” Wiley said. “I think we’re just going to be throwing hordes of data at things like Watson to find the statistical interpretations (that will) tell us what is actually going on in the brain. I think AI is going to advance brain research and, in its own way, help bring about mind uploading somewhere down the road.”

 

About the Author:

Daniel-Faggella-150x150Dan Faggella is a graduate of UPENN’s Master of Applied Positive Psychology program, as well as a national martial arts champion. His work focuses heavily on emerging technology and startup businesses (TechEmergence.com), and the pressing issues and opportunities with augmenting consciousness. His articles and interviews with philosophers / experts can be found at SentientPotential.com

 

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Mind Uploading and Identity

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Like many of you here, I saw the recent interview on Singularityweblog with Dr Natasha Vita-More about her idea of the Whole Body Prosthetic. The article raises many interesting questions, not least what it would mean to have an uploaded mind and a physical body, whether natural or prosthetic. In this article I want to explore some of these ideas, in particular what identity means for an uploaded mind.

Identity and continuity

Identity wordThe idea of uploading a mind to a supercomputer is commonplace in singularity discussions. Assuming that a “mind map” could be extracted from a biological brain and transferred to a computational substrate without loss of information, what would this mean for the individual? If the self is just a pattern, and uploading preserves the pattern, then is the uploaded mind still you, or is it merely a copy? After all, if we can create one copy, we can create many copies. Is each copy the same person, or they just replicas? What is the self in such a scenario?

Identity is a tricky issue to untangle even without the complication of uploading. Are you the same person now that you were when you were 18? Clearly not. The pattern of your mind has changed as a result of your experiences. And yet you are still you. Your identity has changed, but it persists. So is uploading any different?

The key to preserving identity is continuity. Your 18 year old self changed continuously until you reached your current self. Although the current you is different to the old you, they are the same you. You just changed over time.

If that continuity is broken by uploading, then you are no longer you. The uploaded you is just a copy, even though it may be functionally identical to the old you. “You” are still in the body. You could make a copy of your 18 year old mind and freeze it in time. Now that uploaded self is an exact copy of you, whereas the real you has become quite different with the passing of the years. So which is really you?

If this sounds too abstract to worry about, try the following thought experiment.

The black box uploader

Uploading illustrationPicture this. One day in the not-too-distant future you accompany your best friend to have his mind uploaded to a supercomputer. He’s really excited as he steps into a big black box. “See you on the other side!” he calls. Into the box he goes and the technician presses a big red button. Seconds later, his face appears on the screen in front of you. “Awesome, dude!” he says, “I’ve been uploaded.”

You’re about to leave, when you notice the technician sweeping some ashes out of the black box and into the waste. “What’s that?” you ask.

“Oh,” he says. “That’s just the waste left over from the uploading.”

These ashes bother you. You’re worried about this uploading process. You reach for your smartphone and call your friend. Sure enough, his face appears on your phone. He’s all smiles. He appears to be on some kind of virtual beach, drinking a virtual cocktail. He seems happy. You ask him some questions that only he could possibly know the answer to, and he answers them correctly. It’s definitely him. But what about the heap of ashes left over in the black box. Was that him too?

You ask him about the uploading process and how it felt. He says it felt good. “Was there any pain?” you ask. He says not. And yet, somehow your friend got turned into waste. He’s now in the garbage pile. You saw that with your own eyes. So who is this guy on the screen who claims to be your friend?

Sleep tight

All this thinking has made you tired. You switch out the light and try to sleep. But a nagging thought won’t go away. What happens when you go to sleep, you wonder? Continuity of consciousness is broken. When you wake up, you’ll feel like a new person. But will you in fact be a new person? The old one – did he die in the dark hours? Is the lifespan of the average human less than 24 hours? Have you already died a thousand deaths before? Are we a species of replicants?

Today is the day for your own uploading. Somehow, your concerns about the process have evaporated with the arrival of the new day. You head off to the lab and soon you’ve joined your friend in cyberspace. The process didn’t hurt at all. Soon the technician is sweeping away another pile of ashes.

Identity & multiplicity

What I’ve described is the usual concept of uploading. I’m sure you can see the problem. Would you step into the black box? I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t.

But there are other more interesting scenarios we can explore.

In her interview with Socrates, Dr. Vita-More suggests the possibility of a future mind being capable of inhabiting multiple bodies (or substrates) simultaneously. She suggests a central mind and sub-minds.

But let’s take this idea further. Why not have many minds of equal status? After all, the human brain resembles a collection of semi-independent systems working to create a whole.

The man with two brains

Instead of uploading a biological mind into a computer, why not start by enhancing the biological brain with additional capacity in some kind of artificial substrate? We don’t necessarily need to carry this hardware around with us. Some kind of wireless interface would do the trick.

So now you have your original biological brain plus an artificial one that you could use for storing data or running extra thought processes. It could be massively more powerful than the biological component and distributed in the cloud. No loss of identity is involved here. Provided that the two brains can communicate, like the two hemispheres of the biological brain, all is well. Once you get used to the experience, you might even find that the artificial brain starts to feel like the real you.

But why stop at two brains? From here, expansion into multiple biological and computational substrates is a trivial and logical next step. Multiple brains, multiple bodies, but a single distributed mind. And a single identity too.

Of course, life in the real world can be dangerous and unpredictable. Bodies can get lost or damaged. They may not all be able to communicate with each other all the time. But a well-designed network should be able to handle this. If one part of the mind goes offline, the rest of the system would have to manage without it for a time, and then synchronize again when it comes back online. That’s a little like what happens now when we go to sleep.

Having several bodies would be a good insurance policy against disaster. It would also enormously expand our capabilities and experiences. Some bodies could be male, some female, and others distinctly non-human. They could carry out different tasks at the same time, or work together as a team. And all the really hard thinking could be done on a cloud-based computational substrate.

Of course, this is not a human mind I’m describing, but a network of semi-autonomous super-intelligences. But if handled correctly, it could still be you.


About the author:

Steve-Morris-thumb11

Steve Morris studied Physics at the University of Oxford and is now managing editor of tech review website, S21. He blogs about science, technology and life in general at Blog Blogger Bloggest.

 

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The Final Moments of Karl Brant: Short Sci Fi Film about Mind Uploading

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The Final Moments of Karl Brant is a 15-minute short film about mind uploading. The movie profiles a scientist who is working on a cutting edge whole brain emulation technology and gets murdered right after copying his memory onto a hard drive. Then two police detectives revive Karl Brant’s mind upload in order to catch his killer.

According to Cory Doctorow the movie is “quite poignant and sharp”. I would also add that it is well written, produced and acted, and I enjoyed greatly not only watching it but also listening to its final credits music score.

The film raises a number of interesting questions such as:

The-Final-Moments-of-Karl-BrantAre our memories what makes us who we are?

How should we treat mind uploads?

Do we have the right to turn them off?

Can mind uploads be/come self-aware?

The Final Moments of Karl Brant was written and directed by M. Francis Wilson and features Paul “Pee-Wee Herman” Reubens, Janina Gavankar, Fay Masterson, Jon Sklaroff and Pete Chekvalastarring.

 

Other cool science fiction films

Robin Hanson (part 2): Social Science or Extremist Politics in Disguise?!

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My second interview with economist Robin Hanson was by far the most vigorous debate ever on Singularity 1 on 1. I have to say that I have rarely disagreed more with any of my podcast guests before. So, why do I get so fired up about Robin’s ideas you may ask?!

Well, here is just one reason why I do:

The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly believed. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas. Soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.

John Maynard Keynes,  The General theory of Employment, Interest and Money

To be even more clear, I believe that it is ideas like Robin’s that may, and often do, have a direct impact on our future.

And so I am very conflicted. Ever since I finished recording my second interview with Hanson I have been torn inside:

On the one hand, I really like Robin a lot: He is that most likable fellow, from the trailer of The Methuselah Generation: The Science of Living Forever, who like me, would like to live forever and is in support of cryonics. In addition, Hanson is also clearly a very intelligent person with a diverse background and education in physics, philosophy, computer programming, artificial intelligence, and economics. He’s got a great smile and, as you will see throughout the interview, is apparently very gracious to my verbal attacks on his ideas.

On the other hand, after reading his book draft on the Em Economy, I believe that some of his suggestions have much less to do with social science and much more with his libertarian bias and what I will call “an extremist politics in disguise.”

So, here is, the way I see it, the gist of our disagreement:

I say that there is no social science that, in between the lines of its economic reasoning, can logically or reasonably suggest details such as policies of social discrimination and collective punishment; the complete privatization of law, detection of crime, punishment and adjudication; that some should be run 1,000 times faster than others, while at the same time giving them 1,000 times more voting power; that emulations who can’t pay for their storage fees should be either restored from previous back-ups or be outright deleted (isn’t this like saying that if you fail to pay your rent you should be shot dead?!)…

Merging theater masksSuggestions like the above are no mere details: they are extremist bias for Laissez-faire ideology while dangerously masquerading as (impartial) social science.

During the 2007 OSCON conference Robin Hanson said:

“It’s [Bias] much worse than you think. And you think you are doing something about it and you are not.”

I will go on to claim that Prof. Hanson himself is indeed a prime example of exhibiting precisely such a bias, while at the same time thinking he is not. Because not only that he doesn’t give any justification for the above suggestions of his, but also because, in principle, no social science could ever give justification for issues that are profoundly ethical and political in nature. (Thus you can say that I am in a way arguing about the proper limits, scope and sphere of economics, where using its tools can give us any worthy and useful insights for the benefit of our whole society. That is why the “father of economics” – Adam Smith, was a moral philosopher.)

I also agree with Robin’s final message during our first interview – namely that “details matter.” And so it is for this reason that I paid attention and was so irked by some of the side “details” in his book’s draft.

The two quotes that I will no doubt remember – one from Robin’s book draft and another one, that frankly shocked me during our second interview, are the quotes that I respectively, absolutely like and agree with, and totally hate and find completely abhorrent:

We can’t do anything about the past, however. People often excuse this by saying that we know a lot more about the past. But modest efforts have often given substantial insights into our future, and we would know much more about the future if we tried harder.

The Third Reich will be a democracy by now! (Yes, you can give Robin the benefit of the doubt for he said this in the midst of our vigorous argument. On the other hand, as Hanson says – “details do matter.”)

So, my question to you is this: Is Robin Hanson’s upcoming book on the Em Economy social science or extremist politics in disguise?!

To answer this properly I would recommend that you see both the first and the second interview, read Robin’s book when it comes out, and be the judge for yourself. Either way, don’t hesitate to let me know what you think and, in particular, where and how I am either misunderstanding and/or misrepresenting Prof. Hanson’s work and ideas.

As always you can listen to or download the audio file above or scroll down and watch the video interview in full. To show your support you can write a review on iTunes, make a direct donation, or become a patron on Patreon.

 

Who is Robin Hanson?

Robin-HansonRobin Hanson is an associate professor of economics at George Mason University, a research associate at the Future of Humanity Institute of Oxford University, and chief scientist at Consensus Point. After receiving his Ph.D. in social science from the California Institute of Technology in 1997, Robin was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation health policy scholar at the University of California at Berkeley. In 1984, Robin received a masters in physics and a masters in the philosophy of science from the University of Chicago, and afterward spent nine years researching artificial intelligence, Bayesian statistics, and hypertext publishing at Lockheed, NASA, and independently.

Robin has over 70 publications, including articles in Applied Optics, Business Week, CATO Journal, Communications of the ACM, Economics Letters, Econometrica, Economics of Governance, Extropy, Forbes, Foundations of Physics, IEEE Intelligent Systems, Information Systems Frontiers, Innovations, International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Journal of Evolution and Technology, Journal of Law Economics and Policy, Journal of Political Philosophy, Journal of Prediction Markets, Journal of Public Economics, Medical Hypotheses, Proceedings of the Royal Society, Public Choice, Social Epistemology, Social Philosophy and Policy, Theory and Decision, and Wired.

Robin has pioneered prediction markets, also known as information markets or idea futures, since 1988. He was the first to write in detail about people creating and subsidizing markets in order to gain better estimates on those topics. Robin was a principal architect of the first internal corporate markets, at Xanadu in 1990, of the first web markets, the Foresight Exchange since 1994, and of DARPA’s Policy Analysis Market, from 2001 to 2003. Robin has developed new technologies for conditional, combinatorial, and intermediated trading, and has studied insider trading, manipulation, and other foul play. Robin has written and spoken widely on the application of idea futures to business and policy, being mentioned in over one hundered press articles on the subject, and advising many ventures, including GuessNow, Newsfutures, Particle Financial, Prophet Street, Trilogy Advisors, XPree, YooNew, and undisclosable defense research projects. He is now chief scientist at Consensus Point.

Robin has diverse research interests, with papers on spatial product competition, health incentive contracts, group insurance, product bans, evolutionary psychology and bioethics of health care, voter information incentives, incentives to fake expertize, Bayesian classification, agreeing to disagree, self-deception in disagreement, probability elicitation, wiretaps, image reconstruction, the history of science prizes, reversible computation, the origin of life, the survival of humanity, very long term economic growth, growth given machine intelligence, and interstellar colonization.

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Robin Hanson: Details Matter… And For That You Need Social Science

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Robin Hanson is not just a well known economist with seminal work in prediction markets. He is also a physicist, philosopher and AI researcher. Besides being a polyglot he is also an extremely likable fellow and both of those make him very hard to argue against. Add up the fact that it’s been over a decade since my study of economics and you will get a better idea as to why I struggled to keep up with him during our conversation. Well, regardless of my poor performance, I have to say that I enjoyed talking to Hanson very much. So I plan to bring him back for a follow up interview where we can spend more time talking exclusively about his upcoming book on the economics of brain emulations.

During this Singularity 1 on 1 interview with Robin we discuss a variety of topics such as: his wide spectrum of interests such as physics, phylosophy, economics and artificial intelligence; the general lack of academic engagement with issues related to the singularity; why cheap energy will not be a panacea to our problems or even a major boost to our economy; the singularity and his definition thereof; the two major ways to Artificial Intelligence; the economics of brain emulations (what he calls Ems)…

As always you can listen to or download the audio file above or scroll down and watch the video interview in full. To show your support you can write a review on iTunes, make a direct donation or become a patron on Patreon.

 

Who is Robin Hanson?

Robin-HansonRobin Hanson is an associate professor of economics at George Mason University, a research associate at the Future of Humanity Institute of Oxford University, and chief scientist at Consensus Point. After receiving his Ph.D. in social science from the California Institute of Technology in 1997, Robin was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation health policy scholar at the University of California at Berkeley. In 1984, Robin received a masters in physics and a masters in the philosophy of science from the University of Chicago, and afterward spent nine years researching artificial intelligence, Bayesian statistics, and hypertext publishing at Lockheed, NASA, and independently.

Robin has over 70 publications, including articles in Applied Optics, Business Week, CATO Journal, Communications of the ACM, Economics Letters, Econometrica, Economics of Governance, Extropy, Forbes, Foundations of Physics, IEEE Intelligent Systems, Information Systems Frontiers, Innovations, International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Journal of Evolution and Technology, Journal of Law Economics and Policy, Journal of Political Philosophy, Journal of Prediction Markets, Journal of Public Economics, Medical Hypotheses, Proceedings of the Royal Society, Public Choice, Social Epistemology, Social Philosophy and Policy, Theory and Decision, and Wired.

Robin has pioneered prediction markets, also known as information markets or idea futures, since 1988. He was the first to write in detail about people creating and subsidizing markets in order to gain better estimates on those topics. Robin was a principal architect of the first internal corporate markets, at Xanadu in 1990, of the first web markets, the Foresight Exchange since 1994, and of DARPA’s Policy Analysis Market, from 2001 to 2003. Robin has developed new technologies for conditional, combinatorial, and intermediated trading, and has studied insider trading, manipulation, and other foul play. Robin has written and spoken widely on the application of idea futures to business and policy, being mentioned in over one hundered press articles on the subject, and advising many ventures, including GuessNow, Newsfutures, Particle Financial, Prophet Street, Trilogy Advisors, XPree, YooNew, and undisclosable defense research projects. He is now chief scientist at Consensus Point.

Robin has diverse research interests, with papers on spatial product competition, health incentive contracts, group insurance, product bans, evolutionary psychology and bioethics of health care, voter information incentives, incentives to fake expertize, Bayesian classification, agreeing to disagree, self-deception in disagreement, probability elicitation, wiretaps, image reconstruction, the history of science prizes, reversible computation, the origin of life, the survival of humanity, very long term economic growth, growth given machine intelligence, and interstellar colonization.

Tracy R. Atkins on Aeternum Ray: Don’t Wait For The Singularity

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Tracy R. Atkins is not only a contributor to Singularity Weblog but also the author of a brand new singularity book titled Aeternum Ray.

Aeternum Ray is rather unique because it is openly and whole-heartedly utopian in character. It is written in the epistolary literary tradition of classic science fiction works such as Frankenstein and is structured as a mémoire – a series of letters from a father to his son.

The book is also interesting from a technical point of view: It also comes in a Dyslexia Edition which has been formatted to include a special typeface that may assist readers who have a developmental reading disorder (DRD or Dyslexia). The open-source font – OpenDyslexic by Abelardo Gonzalez, utilizes weighting at the bottom of many characters in an effort to prevent letter inversion while reinforcing the line of text. This typeface modification technique has been shown to increase reading accuracy for some forms of DRD.

During our conversation with Tracy R. Atkins we cover a wide variety of topics such as his definition of the technological singularity; how Star Trek inspired Tracy to love science fiction and how Transcendent Man inspired him to write a singularity novel; growing up in a home that marveled in science and technology; what the title Aeternum Ray stands for and what the novel is all about; whether the future of humanity is digital or if there are benefits to biology; writing dystopia versus writing utopia; human nature and the potential for a pre-singularity global war…

As always you can listen to or download the audio file above or scroll down and watch the video interview in full. To show your support you can write a review on iTunes, make a direct donation, or become a patron on Patreon.

 

More About Aeternum Ray:

“Poverty, terrorism, murder, disease, homelessness, hopelessness, hunger, and death; all cease to exist in 2049.”

Aeternum Ray is a sweeping, yet intimate story of mankind’s next renaissance that will appeal to fans of visionaries Isaac Asimov, Gene Roddenberry, and Ray Kurzweil.

The novel is a collection of emotional personal letters written by 240-year-old William Babington to his newborn son Benjamin. Having lived a full life, William has experienced everything from death to his rebirth into the utopian Aeternum; an advanced computer system shepherded by the omnipotent artificial intelligence Ray. William pens the highlights of his existence, love, and loss while reflecting on the centuries of wonder he has witnessed firsthand. His humble letters form a detailed memoir that is intertwined with humanity’s greatest triumphs, the technological singularity, and the solemn burden of surviving Earth’s darkest night of terror.

Through the light and dark times of the near future, Aeternum Ray departs from dystopian themes and brings back the uplifting notion of utopian speculative ideals.

 

More about Tracy R. Atkins:

Tracy R. Atkins has been a technology aficionado since a young age, proclaiming with lighthearted glee that it began when he first saw DOS in kindergarten. By fifteen, Tracy had already written and sold software as well ran a pre-internet era bulletin board system, which put many residents of his hometown of Madison, WV online for the first time. At the age of eighteen, he played a critical role in an internet startup, cutting his tech-teeth during the dot-com boom. After the bust, Tracy hit the books and graduated college at the top of his class with a degree in Business Information Systems. Throughout his fifteen-year career, he has earned numerous professional-level tech-industry certifications, which he pursued out of a misguided sense of fun.

As a man whose life is intertwined with technology, he has not let it define him. That same sense of fun and exploration that propelled his career has also driven his desire to live life to the fullest. Tracy’s interests have run the gamut from writing, traveling, and attempting to set a record by eating a cheeseburger the size of his head, to bringing home a World Champion trophy for his car stereo. His interests may be eclectic but at the core, Tracy is a family man first, with four wonderful children and a supportive wife. All of these multi-faceted experiences coalesce in his writing, creating interesting stories full of excited wonder and humanity.

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Welcome to Life – The Singularity, Ruined By Lawyers (video)

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Welcome to Life – the Singularity, Ruined by lawyers is a video that is as funny as it is smart. For this reason, even though it has been making the rounds on the internet for quite some time now, I decided to repost it below for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy!

 

Welcome To Life: 

Hello, and welcome to Life. We regret to inform you that your previous existence ended on January 14, 2052 following a road traffic accident. However, your consciousness was successfully uploaded to the Life network by your primary care provider. You may be experiencing some confusion. Please remain calm. Life contains *ting sound* Your mental state is being temporarily adjusted in order to calm you. Please do not be alarmed. Life contains over thirty thousand unique activities, networking with millions of other digitized minds, and the ability to contact undigitized friends and family. Please accept these terms and conditions in order to continue Life. Your attention is particularly drawn to Section 2: Usage Rules and Limitations, Section 9: Privacy, and Section 11: Restricted Mental Activities. Thank you.

Please select a Life plan.

Terms and conditions

THE LEGAL AGREEMENTS SET OUT BELOW ARE BETWEEN YOU AND LIFE DIGITAL PERSONALITY MANAGEMENT INCORPORATED (HERAFTER “THE PROVIDER”) AND GOVERN YOU USE OF THE PROVIDER’S SYSTEMS WHICH INCLUDE, BUT ARE NOT LIMITED TO, THE COMPILATION AND SIMULATION OF YOUR DIGITAL PERSONALITY UNDER THE DIGITAL PERSONALITIES (RIGHTS OF DECEASED PERSONS) ACT 2050.

THE AGREEMENT APPLIES WITHOUT PREJUDICE TO ANY PREVIOUS AGREEMENTS AND CONTRACTS THAT YOU MAY HAVE ENTERED INTO WITH THIRD PARTIES, IMPORTANT” ACCEPTING SIMULATION AS A DIGITAL PERSONALITY MEANS YOU WAIVE YOUR RIGHT TO POST-MORTEM RELEASE OF DEBTS AND OBLIGATIONS. YOUR LIFE MAY BE AT RISK IF YOU DO NOT KEEP UP REPAYMENTS ON A LOAN SECURED ON IT.

1. PAYMENTS AND REFUNDS POLICY

You agree that you will pay for services purchased from the Provider, as well as upgrades, enhancements and experience (“Apps”) selected from third-party simulation enhancement entities (“App Providers”). The Provider accepts payment by direct transfer from bank accounts in the US, UK, France, Germany and Australia. In the event your payments become significantly in arrears, the Provider reserves the right to a) search your digital personality for the details, locations, and access requirements for assets that you owe in relation to its services (see: Section 9, Privacy) and/or b) terminate your simulation without notice (see: Section 13, Notice of Termination).

! Rejecting these terms will result in termination of your simulated personality.

Accept

Reject

Welcome To Life

Tier One is our premium offering, allowing full uninterrupted simulation of your pre-terminal state. It includes unlimited modification of your body plan, accelerated learning and recall, and full personal backup facilities. Tier Two is our advertiser-supported offering. It contains many of the features of Tier One, but at a significantly reduced cost. Some areas of the environment, such as the sky, may be replaced with targeted advertising, and your personal brand preferences may be altered to align with those of our sponsors. Tier Three is our value offering. Thanks to our commercial partners, your experience at this tier is unlimited. However, some activities, senses, and visual rendering options may be subject to a Fair Use Policy. More complicated mental processes, including subconscious thought, creativity and self-awareness, may be rate-limited or disabled at times of significant server load. Thank you.

Your stored mind contains one or more patterns that contravene the Prevention of Crime and Terrorism Act of 2050. Please stand by while we adjust these patterns. Your stored mind contains sections from 124,564 copyrighted works. In order to continue remembering these copyrighted works, a licensing fee of $18,000 per month is required. Would you like to continue remembering these works? Thank you.

Legal compliance
UNDER INTERNATIONAL TRACE AND COPYRIGHT LAWS, WE ARE UNABLE TO STOR WHOLE OR PART COPYRIGHTED WORKS AS PART OF A DIGITAL PERSONALITY WITHOUT THAT PERSONALITY TENDERING A LICENSING FEE DETERMINED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER. THE FOLLOWING COPYRIGHTED WORKS ARE WHOLLY OR PARTLY CONTAINED WITHIN YOUR STORED PERSONALITY TO A DEGREE THAT CONTRAVENES THE RIGHT OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY HOLDERS:

MUSICAL WORKS OR PERFORMANCES: 57,384
VISUAL WORKS OR PERFORMANCES: 43,586
OLFACTORY WORKS OR PERFORMANCES: 124
OTHER WORKS OR PERFORMANCES: 23,470

You have insufficient funds in an financial reserves to pay this licensing fee.

! Copyrighted works are being deleted.

Welcome to Life.

Please stand by. Welcome to Life. Do you wish to continue?

© Published By Enyay tomscott.com

Randal Koene on the Ethics of Mind Uploading

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This is my second interview with Dr. Randal Koene for Singularity 1 on 1.

Dr. Koene is perhaps one of the world’s foremost neuroscientists. He is director of analysis at Halcyon Molecular, co-founder of Carbon Copies, and co-founder of and director at the Neural Engineering Corporation of Massachusetts.

Randal’s research objective is whole brain emulation, creating the large-scale high-resolution representations and emulations of activity in neuronal circuitry that are needed in patient-specific neuroprostheses.

During our first interview, Dr. Koene argued that Mind Uploading Is Not Science Fiction and gave a general overview of his personal and professional background as well as the challenges in working on whole brain emulation.

This time around I wanted to focus our conversation primarily on the ethics of mind uploading so we cover topics such as ethical dilemmas in whole brain emulation; legal and ethical frameworks and constraints; access to mind uploading technology; R.J. Sawyer‘s fantastic sci-fi book Mindscan; the computing requirements behind whole brain emulation; the brain in a vat scenario; brain prosthesis; personal identity and multiple uploads; intelligence rights.

As always you can listen to or download the audio file above or scroll down and watch the video interview in full. To show your support you can write a review on iTunes, make a direct donation, or become a patron on Patreon.

Who is Randal Koene?

Randal A. Koene is heading up Analysis at nanotechnology company Halcyon Molecular in Silicon Valley. Previously, Randal A. Koene, Ph.D., was Director of the Department of Neuroengineering at Tecnalia, third largest private research organization in Europe. He is a former Prof. at the Center for Memory and Brain of Boston University, and co-founder/owner of the Neural Engineering Corporation of Massachusetts. His research objective is whole brain emulation, creating the large-scale high-resolution representations and emulations of activity in neuronal circuitry that are needed in patient-specific neuroprostheses.

Koene has professional expertise in computational neuroscience, psychology, information theory, electrical engineering and physics. He organizes neural engineering efforts to obtain and replicate function and structure information that resides in the neural substrate for use in neuroprostheses and neural interfaces. And based on NETMORPH (netmorph.org), Koene’s computational framework for the simulated morphological development of neuronal circuitry, his lab is creating a Virtual Brain Laboratory to give neuroscientists, neuroengineers and clinicians large-scale high-resolution quantitative tools analogous to the computational tools that have become essential in fields such as genetics, chemistry or the aero-space industry. This effort bridges scales and will help determine how significant functions are encoded robustly in neural ensembles, and how those functions can nevertheless depend in specific ways on the detailed biophysics of particular component physiology.

Koene earned his Ph.D. in Computational Neuroscience at the Department of Psychology at McGill University, and his M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering with a specialization in Information Theory at Delft University of Technology. He is a member of the Oxford working group that convened in 2007 to create a first roadmap toward whole brain emulation (a descriptive term for the technological accomplishment of mind transfer to a different substrate that was first coined by Koene on his MindUploading.org website).

Visit Koene’s personal website rak.minduploading.org, carboncopies.org, MindUploading.org or watch Koene present and discuss “Scope and Resolution in Neural Prosthetics and Special Concerns for Emulation of a Whole Brain”.

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Philosopher David Chalmers: We Can Be Rigorous in Thinking about the Future

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Yesterday I interviewed philosopher David Chalmers.

David is one of the world’s best-known philosophers of mind and thought leaders on consciousness. I was a freshman at the University of Toronto when I first read some of his work. Since then, Chalmers has been one of the few philosophers (together with Nick Bostrom) who has written and spoken publicly about the Matrix simulation argument and the technological singularity. (See, for example, David’s presentation at the 2009 Singularity Summit or read his The Singularity: A Philosophical Analysis)

During our conversation with David, we discuss topics such as: how and why Chalmers got interested in philosophy; and his search to answer what he considers to be some of the biggest questions – issues such as the nature of reality, consciousness, and artificial intelligence; the fact that academia in general and philosophy, in particular, doesn’t seem to engage technology; our chances of surviving the technological singularity; the importance of Watson, the Turing Test and other benchmarks on the way to the singularity;  consciousness, recursive self-improvement, and artificial intelligence; the ever-shrinking of the domain of solely human expertise; mind uploading and what he calls the hard problem of consciousness; the usefulness of philosophy and ethics; religion, immortality, and life-extension; reverse engineering long-dead people such as Ray Kurzweil’s father.

As always you can listen to or download the audio file above or scroll down and watch the video interview in full. To show your support you can write a review on iTunes, make a direct donation, or become a patron on Patreon.

 

Who is David Chalmers?

David Chalmers is a philosopher at the Australian National University where he is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Centre for Consciousness. Chalmers is also Visiting Professor of Philosophy at New York University and works in the philosophy of mind and in related areas of philosophy and cognitive science. He is particularly interested in consciousness, but also in all sorts of other issues in the philosophy of mind and language, metaphysics and epistemology, and the foundations of cognitive science.

Randal Koene: Mind Uploading is not Science Fiction

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

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Last week I interviewed Dr. Randal Koene for Singularity 1 on 1.

Dr. Koene is perhaps one of the world’s foremost neuroscientists. He is director of analysis at Halcyon Molecular, co-founder of Carbon Copies, and co-founder of and director at the Neural Engineering Corporation of Massachusetts.

Randal’s research objective is whole brain emulation, creating the large-scale high-resolution representations and emulations of activity in neuronal circuitry that are needed in patient-specific neuroprostheses.

During our 70 min conversation, we discuss a large variety of topics such as Randal’s early childhood and interest in science fiction; his lack of time to do all the things that he wanted to; his fascination with neuroscience; the distinction between whole brain emulation, whole-brain simulation and complete understanding of the human brain; his work at Halcyon Molecular, Carbon Copies, and Neuro Engineering; the roadmap and benchmarks on the path of mind-uploading; the best and worst-case scenarios that could result from Dr. Koene’s work; some of the ethical implications of mind uploading; the relationship between mind-uploading and the technological singularity.

As always you can listen to or download the audio file above or scroll down and watch the video interview in full. To show your support you can write a review on iTunes, make a direct donation, or become a patron on Patreon.

Who is Randal Koene?

Randal A. Koene is heading up Analysis at nanotechnology company Halcyon Molecular in Silicon Valley. Previously, Randal A. Koene, Ph.D., was Director of the Department of Neuroengineering at Tecnalia, third largest private research organization in Europe. He is a former Prof. at the Center for Memory and Brain of Boston University, and co-founder/owner of the Neural Engineering Corporation of Massachusetts. His research objective is whole brain emulation, creating the large-scale high-resolution representations and emulations of activity in neuronal circuitry that are needed in patient-specific neuroprostheses.

Koene has professional expertise in computational neuroscience, psychology, information theory, electrical engineering and physics. He organizes neural engineering efforts to obtain and replicate function and structure information that resides in the neural substrate for use in neuroprostheses and neural interfaces. And based on NETMORPH (netmorph.org), Koene’s computational framework for the simulated morphological development of neuronal circuitry, his lab is creating a Virtual Brain Laboratory to give neuroscientists, neuroengineers and clinicians large-scale high-resolution quantitative tools analogous to the computational tools that have become essential in fields such as genetics, chemistry or the aero-space industry. This effort bridges scales and will help determine how significant functions are encoded robustly in neural ensembles, and how those functions can nevertheless depend in specific ways on the detailed biophysics of particular component physiology.

Koene earned his Ph.D. in Computational Neuroscience at the Department of Psychology at McGill University, and his M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering with a specialization in Information Theory at Delft University of Technology. He is a member of the Oxford working group that convened in 2007 to create a first roadmap toward whole brain emulation (a descriptive term for the technological accomplishment of mind transfer to a different substrate that was first coined by Koene on his MindUploading.org website).

Visit Koene’s personal website rak.minduploading.org, carboncopies.org, MindUploading.org or watch Koene present and discuss “Scope and Resolution in Neural Prosthetics and Special Concerns for Emulation of a Whole Brain”.

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