“People Are Particular Computations That Currently Run In Human Wetware”

August 15, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

A couple of segments from a new Ask Me Anything on Reddit that was conducted by Singularity Institute CEO Luke Muehlhauser.

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Question:

Given the rate of technological development, what age do you believe people that are young (20 and under) today will live to?

Luke Muehlhauser:

That one is too hard to predict for me to bother trying.

I will note that it’s possible that the post-rock band Tortoise was right that “millions now living will never die” (awesome album, btw). If we invest in the research required to make AI do good things for humanity rather than accidentally catastrophic things, one thing that superhuman AI (and thus a rapid acceleration of scientific progress) could produce is the capacity for radical life extension, and then later the capacity for whole brain emulation, which would enable people to make backups of themselves and live for millions of years. (As it turns out, the things we call “people” are particular computations that currently run in human wetware but don’t need to be running on such a fragile substrate. 

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Question:

I’ve had one major question/concern since I heard about the singularity.

At the point when computers outstrip human intelligence in all or most areas, won’t computers then take over doing most of the interesting and meaningful work? All decisions that take any sort of thinking will then be done by computers, since they will make better decisions. Politics, economics, business, teaching. They’ll even make better art, as they can better understand how to create emotionally moving objects/films/etc.

While we will have unprecedented levels of material wealth, won’t we have a severe crisis of meaning, since all major projects (personal and public) will be run by our smarter silicon counterparts? Will humans be reduced to manual labor, as that’s the only role that makes economic sense?

Will the singularity foment an existential crisis for humanity?

Luke Muehlhauser:

At the point when computers outstrip human intelligence in all or most areas, won’t computers then take over doing most of the interesting and meaningful work?

Yes.

Will humans be reduced to manual labor, as that’s the only role that makes economic sense?

No, robots will be better than humans at manual labor, too.

While we will have unprecedented levels of material wealth, won’t we have a severe crisis of meaning… Will the singularity foment an existential crisis for humanity?

Its a good question. The major worry is that the singularity causes an “existential crisis” in the sense that it causes a human extinction event. If we manage to do the math research required to get superhuman AIs to be working in our favor, and we “merely” have to deal with an emotional/philosophical crisis, I’ll be quite relieved.

One exploration of what we could do and care about when most projects are handled by machines is (rather cheekily) called “fun theory.” I’ll let you read up on it.

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