Claims that superintelligent AI poses a threat to humanity are frightening, but only because they distract from the real issues today, argues Mhairi Aitken, an ethics fellow at The Alan Turing Institute.
The 2023 edition of the exclusive Longevity Investors Conference is fast approaching, bringing together investors, companies and researchers in Gstaad, Switzerland in September. One of the speakers at this year’s conference is scientist, writer and presenter Dr Andrew Steele, the author of the best-selling book Ageless: The new science of getting older without getting old. When it comes to his views on longevity, Steele sits firmly in the camp that aging, like cancer, is something that humanity should be focused on curing.
Longevity. Technology: Last year, Steele told us he was “absolutely convinced” curing aging is possible, but that significant questions remain around how quickly we can get there. As he prepares to speak to more than 100 investors at LIC, we caught up with Steele to see how his views on longevity have evolved, and what he would say to those considering investing in the field.
First and foremost, Steele, who recently published a new, free chapter of Ageless on the moral, ethical and social consequences of treating aging, believes that longevity represents a huge “human opportunity” for investors.
AI is quickly becoming an essential part of daily work. It’s already being used to help improve operational processes, strengthen customer service, measure employee experience, and bolster cybersecurity efforts, among other applications. And with AI deepening its presence in daily life, as more people turn to AI bot services, such as ChatGPT, to answer questions and get help with tasks, its presence in the workplace will only accelerate.
Much of the discussion around AI in the workplace has been about the jobs it could replace. It’s also sparked conversations around ethics, compliance, and governance issues, with many companies taking a cautious approach to adopting AI technologies and IT leaders debating the best path forward.
While the full promise of AI is still uncertain, it’s early impact on the workplace can’t be ignored. It’s clear that AI will make its mark on every industry in the coming years, and it’s already creating a shift in demand for skills employers are looking for. AI has also sparked renewed interest in long-held IT skills, while creating entirely new roles and skills companies will need to adopt to successfully embrace AI.
Researchers have created synthetic human embryos using stem cells, according to media reports. Remarkably, these embryos have reportedly been created from embryonic stem cells, meaning they do not require sperm and ova.
This development, widely described as a breakthrough that could help scientists learn more about human development and genetic disorders, was revealed this week in Boston at the annual meeting of the International Society for Stem Cell Research.
The research, announced by Professor Magdalena Żernicka-Goetz of the University of Cambridge and the California Institute of Technology, has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal. But Żernicka-Goetz told the meeting these human-like embryos had been made by reprogramming human embryonic stem cells.
Here’s my new article for Aporia Magazine. A lot of wild ideas in it. Give it a read:
Regardless of the ethics and whether the science can even one day be worked out for Quantum Archaeology, the philosophical dilemma it presents to Pascal’s Wager is glaring. If humans really could eradicate the essence of death as we know it—including even the ability to ever permanently die—Pascal’s Wager becomes unworkable. Frankly, so does my Transhumanist Wager. After all, why should I dedicate my life and energy to living indefinitely through science when, by the next century, technology could bring me back exactly as I was—or even as an improved version of myself?
Sam Harris is an American author, philosopher, neuroscientist, and podcast host.
His work touches on a wide range of topics, including rationality, religion, ethics, free will, neuroscience, meditation, philosophy of mind, politics, terrorism, and artificial intelligence.
Continue reading “How Does Matter Give Rise To Consciousness?” »
The General Theory of General Intelligence: A Pragmatic Patternist Perspective — paper by Ben Goertzel: https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.15100 Abstract: “A multi-decade exploration into the theoretical foundations of artificial and natural general intelligence, which has been expressed in a series of books and papers and used to guide a series of practical and research-prototype software systems, is reviewed at a moderate level of detail. The review covers underlying philosophies (patternist philosophy of mind, foundational phenomenological and logical ontology), formalizations of the concept of intelligence, and a proposed high level architecture for AGI systems partly driven by these formalizations and philosophies. The implementation of specific cognitive processes such as logical reasoning, program learning, clustering and attention allocation in the context and language of this high level architecture is considered, as is the importance of a common (e.g. typed metagraph based) knowledge representation for enabling “cognitive synergy” between the various processes. The specifics of human-like cognitive architecture are presented as manifestations of these general principles, and key aspects of machine consciousness and machine ethics are also treated in this context. Lessons for practical implementation of advanced AGI in frameworks such as OpenCog Hyperon are briefly considered.“
Talk held at AGI17 — http://agi-conference.org/2017/#AGI17 #AGI #ArtificialIntelligence #Understanding #MachineUnderstanding #CommonSence #ArtificialGeneralIntelligence #PhilMind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_general_intelligenceMany thanks for tuning in!
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Continue reading “Ben Goertzel — Approaches Towards a General Theory of General AI” »
“Intelligence supposes goodwill,” Simone de Beauvoir wrote in the middle of the twentieth century. In the decades since, as we have entered a new era of technology risen from our minds yet not always consonant with our values, this question of goodwill has faded dangerously from the set of considerations around artificial intelligence and the alarming cult of increasingly advanced algorithms, shiny with technical triumph but dull with moral insensibility.
In De Beauvoir’s day, long before the birth of the Internet and the golden age of algorithms, the visionary mathematician, philosopher, and cybernetics pioneer Norbert Wiener (November 26, 1894–March 18, 1964) addressed these questions with astounding prescience in his 1954 book The Human Use of Human Beings, the ideas in which influenced the digital pioneers who shaped our present technological reality and have recently been rediscovered by a new generation of thinkers eager to reinstate the neglected moral dimension into the conversation about artificial intelligence and the future of technology.
A decade after The Human Use of Human Beings, Wiener expanded upon these ideas in a series of lectures at Yale and a philosophy seminar at Royaumont Abbey near Paris, which he reworked into the short, prophetic book God & Golem, Inc. (public library). Published by MIT Press in the final year of his life, it won him the posthumous National Book Award in the newly established category of Science, Philosophy, and Religion the following year.
Possibly a move to freeze and stall the tec, like the bio ethics clowns who were able to freeze bio tec. But, China wouldnt sign on to any freeze, thankfully. And the tec has already spread across 3rd world countries.
WASHINGTON, June 6 (Reuters) — Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said on Tuesday he has scheduled three briefings for senators on artificial intelligence, including the first classified briefing on the topic.
In a letter to colleagues on Tuesday, the Democratic leader said senators need to deepen their understanding of artificial intelligence.
Continue reading “U.S. Senate leader schedules classified AI briefings” »
The 2020 Nobel Prize for Chemistry was awarded to Dr. Jennifer Doudna and Dr. Emmanuelle Charpentier for their work on the gene editing technique known as CRISPR-Cas9. This gives us the ability to change the DNA of any living thing, from plants and animals to humans.
The applications are enormous, from improving farming to curing diseases. A decade or so from now, CRISPR will no doubt be taught in High Schools, and be a basic building block of medicine and agriculture. It is going to change everything.
