Want a career in AI and robotics? One of the best ways to enrich your knowledge about the sector is to follow these AI influencers.
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A few ideas on self-awareness and self-aware AIs.
I’ve always been a fan of androids as intended in Star Trek. More generally, I think the idea of an artificial intelligence with whom you can talk and to whom you can teach things is really cool. I admit it is just a little bit weird that I find the idea of teaching things to small children absolutely unattractive while finding thrilling the idea of doing the same to a machine, but that’s just the way it is for me. (I suppose the fact a machine is unlikely to cry during the night and need to have its diaper changed every few hours might well be a factor at play here.)
Improvements in the field of AI are pretty much commonplace these days, though we’re not yet at the point where we could be talking to a machine in natural language and be unable to tell the difference with a human. I used to take for granted that, one day, we would have androids who are self-aware and have emotions, exactly like people, with all the advantages of being a machine—such as mental multitasking, large computational power, and more efficient memory. While I still like the idea, nowadays I wonder if it is actually a feasible or sensible one.
Continue reading “Scattered thoughts on self-awareness and AI” »
“Using survey data from a sample of senior investment professionals from mainstream (i.e. not SRI funds) investment organizations we provide insights into why and how investors use reported environmental, social and governance (ESG) information.”
A new well written but not very favorable write-up on #transhumanism. Despite this, more and more publications are tackling describing the movement and its science. My work is featured a bit.
On the eve of the 20th century, an obscure Russian man who had refused to publish any of his works began to finalize his ideas about resurrecting the dead and living forever. A friend of Leo Tolstoy’s, this enigmatic Russian, whose name was Nikolai Fyodorovich Fyodorov, had grand ideas about not only how to reanimate the dead but about the ethics of doing so, as well as about the moral and religious consequences of living outside of Death’s shadow. He was animated by a utopian desire: to unite all of humanity and to create a biblical paradise on Earth, where we would live on, spurred on by love. He was an immortalist: one who desired to conquer death through scientific means.
Despite the religious zeal of his notions—which a number of later Christian philosophers unsurprisingly deemed blasphemy—Fyodorov’s ideas were underpinned by a faith in something material: the ability of humans to redevelop and redefine themselves through science, eventually becoming so powerfully modified that they would defeat death itself. Unfortunately for him, Fyodorov—who had worked as a librarian, then later in the archives of Ministry of Foreign Affairs—did not live to see his project enacted, as he died in 1903.
Continue reading “Transhumanism: More Nightmare Than Dream?” »
Super-smart robots with artificial intelligence is pretty much a foregone conclusion: technology is moving in that direction with lightning speed. But what if those robots gain consciousness? Will they deserve the same rights as humans? The ethics of this are tricky. Explore them in the video below.
“As academics we can sign petitions, but it is not enough.”
As academics we can sign petitions, but it is not enough. Scott Aaronson wrote very eloquently about this issue after the initial ban was announced (see also Terry Tao). My department has seen a dramatic decrease in the number of applicants in general and not just from Iran. We were just informed that we can no longer make Teaching Assistant offers for students who are unlikely to get a visa to come here.
The Department of Homeland Security has demonstrated its blatant disregard for moral norms. Why should we trust its scientific norms? What confidence do we have that funding will not be used in some coercive way? What does it say to our students when we ask them to work for DHS? Yes, the government is big, but at some point the argument that it’s mostly the guy at the top who is bad but the rest of the agency is still committed to good science becomes just too hard to swallow. I decided that I can’t square that circle. Each one of us should think hard about whether we want to.
Here’s my take on why the overpopulation objection to rejuvenation is morally unacceptable.
In this article, I’ll try to show that the overpopulation objection against rejuvenation is morally deplorable. For this purpose, whether or not the world is overpopulated or might be such in the future doesn’t matter. I’ll deal with facts and data in the two other articles dedicated to this objection; for now, all I want is getting to the conclusion that not developing rejuvenation for the sake of avoiding overpopulation is morally unacceptable (especially when considering the obvious and ethically more sound alternative), and thus overpopulation doesn’t constitute a valid objection to rejuvenation.
I’ll start with an example. Imagine there’s a family of two parents and three children. They’re not doing too well financially, and they live packed in a tiny apartment with no chances of moving somewhere larger. Clearly they cannot afford having more children, but they would really like having more anyway. What should they do?
The only reasonable answer is that they should not have any more children until they can afford having them. Throwing away the old ones for the sake of some other child to be even conceived yet would be nothing short of sheer madness.
Posthumanists and perhaps especially transhumanists tend to downplay the value conflicts that are likely to emerge in the wake of a rapidly changing technoscientific landscape. What follows are six questions and scenarios that are designed to focus thinking by drawing together several tendencies that are not normally related to each other but which nevertheless provide the basis for future value conflicts.
Continue reading “Value Conflicts surrounding the Meaning of Life in the Trans/Post/Human Future” »
Growing organs in the lab is an enduring sci-fi trope, but as stem cell technology brings it ever closer to reality, scientists are beginning to contemplate the ethics governing disembodied human tissue.
So-called organoids have now been created from gut, kidney, pancreas, liver and even brain tissue. Growing these mini-organs has been made possible by advances in stem cell technology and the development of 3D support matrices that allow cells to develop just like they would in vivo.
Unlike simple tissue cultures, they exhibit important structural and functional properties of organs, and many believe they could dramatically accelerate research into human development and disease.
Continue reading “The Ethics of Organoids: Scientists Weigh in on New Mini-Organs” »
