Surviving and thriving in near-Singularity periods of history

[Brian Atkins]

rbfar@ebuilt.com wrote:
> 
> We've been around this earth for thousands of years and understand the earth
> and surroundings much better than just about anything else.
> 
> I am not quite sure if we're socially ready to deal with the technological
> advances we have today let alone putting a ton of money into
> nanotechnologies and AI so we have something that's far beyond our maturity
> level....

I agree with the maturity level statement I guess. What I don't agree
with is that we can ever use "society" to deal with these issues. These
issues are mainly about giving small groups or individuals increasingly
great powers of technology. I mean, it gives the power to governments and
big corporations too, but this is the first time it will be so available
to such small groups. It's very very different than nukes where you had only
a few parties on the planet with access to it.

So if you can't use traditional control measures, and technological
progress appears to be continuing to accelerate, pop quiz: what do
you do?

You could attempt to implement some ultra Big Brother-class monitoring
to prevent anyone from getting out of line and developing an AI or
some bad biotech, but no one wants that.

You could do what our governments do now, and make idiotic laws 2 years
or more after the issue becomes critical. That doesn't work very well
either, and will work worse in the near future.

Or you can take the SIAI approach: get there first, as safely as possible,
with an AI designed to serve as a Transition Guide to help us get through
this all safely and even more quickly than we could on our own.

> 
> I see it in a simple way:
> 
> When I was a kid, if my room was dirty because I was working on a project,
> my mom wouldn't let me do a cooler project because it was cooler.  I first
> had to clean up my room, then I could work on the cooler project.  Cleaning
> up our mess, I beleive, should be a priority to making things that make yet
> a bigger mess.

Your viewpoint seems skewed towards thinking technology can only bring
more problems.
-- 
Brian Atkins
Director, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
http://www.singinst.org/