One major divide on both LW and Overcoming Bias is estimates about the probability of a Singularity in the near future. However, I'm a bit puzzled by your remark about efficiency. First of all, increases in efficiency can lead to otherwise impractical technologies becoming practical. For example, the portable tapeplayer when it originally came out was not an intrinsically new technology but rather much more efficient implementation of existing technology. Similarly, computer networks have been around since the 1960s but the internet became such a major impact because of the increasing efficiency (measured in cost and speed for example) of computing technologies. If one believes that a the advent of AI will lead to AI that are much smarter than humans, they should be able to quickly make many technologies much more efficient. To use one example, the primary problem with a space elevator is making carbon nanotubes cheaply and reliably enough. If an AI can come up with a solution for that then the cost of going from Earth to orbit will be reduced by a few orders of magnitude. That alone would have a lot implications. Now, apply the same logic to hundreds of potential technologies.
If you think that friendly even just moderately smart AI will occur, one can project that it will potentially result in lots of changes.
(I should probably add a disclaimer that I don't assign a Singularity-type event a high probability. If I'm not presenting the position well, please correct me.)
The Singularity Summit 2010 will be held on August 14th and 15th at the Hyatt Regency in San Francisco, and will feature Ray Kurzweil and famed Traditional Rationalist James Randi as speakers, in addition to numerous others. During last year's Summit (in New York City), there was a very large Less Wrong meetup with dozens of attendees, and it is quite possible that there will be one again this year. Anyone interested in planning such a meetup (not just attending) should contact the Singularity Institute at institute@intelligence.org. The Singularity Summit press release follows after the jump.
Singularity Summit 2010 returns to San Francisco, explores intelligence augmentation
Speakers include Futurist Ray Kurzweil, Magician-Skeptic James Randi
Will it be one day become possible to boost human intelligence using brain implants, or create an artificial intelligence smarter than Einstein? In a 1993 paper presented to NASA, science fiction author and mathematician Vernor Vinge called such a hypothetical event a “Singularity”, saying “From the human point of view this change will be a throwing away of all the previous rules, perhaps in the blink of an eye”. Vinge pointed out that intelligence enhancement could lead to “closing the loop” between intelligence and technology, creating a positive feedback effect.
This August 14-15, hundreds of AI researchers, robotics experts, philosophers, entrepreneurs, scientists, and interested laypeople will converge in San Francisco to address the Singularity and related issues at the only conference on the topic, the Singularity Summit. Experts in fields including animal intelligence, artificial intelligence, brain-computer interfacing, tissue regeneration, medical ethics, computational neurobiology, augmented reality, and more will share their latest research and explore its implications for the future of humanity.
“This year, the conference shifts to a focus on neuroscience, bioscience, cognitive enhancement, and other explorations of what Vernor Vinge called ‘intelligence amplification’ — the other route to the Singularity,” said Michael Vassar, president of the Singularity Institute, which is hosting the event.
Irene Pepperberg, author of “Alex & Me,” who has pushed the frontier of animal intelligence with her research on African Gray Parrots, will explore the ethical and practical implications of non-human intelligence enhancement and of the creation of new intelligent life less powerful than ourselves. Futurist-inventor Ray Kurzweil will discuss reverse-engineering the brain and his forthcoming book, How the Mind Works and How to Build One. Allan Synder, Director, Centre for the Mind at the University of Sydney, will explore the use of transcranial magnetic stimulation for the enhancement of narrow cognitive abilities. Joe Tsien will talk about the smarter rats and mice that he created by tuning the molecular substrate of the brain’s learning mechanism. Steve Mann, “the world’s first cyborg,” will demonstrate his latest geek-chic inventions: wearable computers now used by almost 100,000 people.
Other speakers will include magician-skeptic and MacArthur Genius Award winner James Randi; Gregory Stock (Redesigning Humans), former Director of the Program on Medicine, Technology, and Society at UCLA’s School of Public Health; Terry Sejnowski, Professor and Laboratory Head, Salk Institute Computational Neurobiology Laboratory, who believes we are just ten years away from being able to upload ourselves; Ellen Heber-Katz, Professor, Molecular and Cellular Oncogenesis Program at The Wistar Institute, who is investigating the molecular basis of wound regeneration in mutant mice, which can regenerate limbs, hearts, and spinal cords; Anita Goel, MD, physicist, and CEO of nanotechnology company Nanobiosym; and David Hanson, Founder & CEO, Hanson Robotics, who is creating the world’s most realistic humanoid robots.
Interested readers can watch videos from past summits and register at www.singularitysummit.com.