Video here, illustrated transcript here.

Contains a good sketch of Schmidhuber's Formal Theory of Fun and Creativity.

One TEDx passage in particular stuck with me, quoted with context:

In a few decades, such [creative] machines will have more computational power than human brains.

This will have consequences. My kids were born around 2000. The insurance mathematicians say they are expected to see the year 2100, because they are girls.

A substantial fraction of their lives will be spent in a world where the smartest things are not humans, but the artificial brains of an emerging robot civilization, which presumably will spread throughout the solar system and beyond (space is hostile to humans but nice to robots).

This will change everything much more than, say, global warming, etc. But hardly any politician is aware of this development happening before our eyes. Like the water lilies which every day cover twice as much of the pond, but get noticed only a few days before the pond is full.

My final advice: don't think of us, the humans, versus them, those future uber-robots. Instead view yourself, and humankind in general, as a stepping stone (not the last one) on the path of the universe towards more and more unfathomable complexity. Be content with that little role in the grand scheme of things.

New to LessWrong?

New Comment


1 comment, sorted by Click to highlight new comments since:

Man, his first section is a really good example of the difference between ordinarily convincing and true.