Musings on Transhuman Dystopic Visions & Species Warfare

Artilects, Cosmists, Cyborgs, and Terrans…recent contributors on ieet.org (Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies) have opined on the possible (for some, impending) end of century species war.

Two distinct visions are explored there.  

Vision 1A: Dystopic visions of Artilect vs. Terran global species warfare leading to the extinction of humans (homo-meat sack-sapiens) and the accession of Artilects (AI, god-like, multidimensional entities) into the great black. A vision championed by Hugo de Garis.

 

Vision 1B: Semi-Utopic-Optimistic (if not bumpy) visions of negotiation and co-existence, where Artilects (& Cosmists) leave Terra for the great beyond, while remaining as benevolent overseers of Terrans.

Consider this approach: "The first Terran shots against the Cosmists," by Giulio Prisco.

"I am persuaded that artilects will feel no hostility toward old-style humans. The universe is a big place, and they will have other things to do. I am sure that Cosmists and artilects will be perfectly happy to leave the solar system to Terrans and move to the stars, and I hope that they will even keep a benevolent eye on the Terrans, and help them every now and then. The only realistic possibility of violent action from Cosmists and artilects will be in self-defense, for their own survival."

Benjamin Abbot provides delicate balance to the binary visions of techno-topias in "Transhumanism’s Dark Side: Tittle’s Regulation, Prisco’s “Progress,” and Scaruffi’s Austerity." 

The religious overtones in both narratives are pronounced. Consider the rise of robot-cultists and the increasing religiosity present in techno-futurists thinking. Do we replace the old gods of Terra with the new Artilect gods of space time.  

Prisco: "To me, Cosmism is a religion in an even stronger sense:  I believe future extremely advanced artilect Gods will be able to affect their past — our present — by means of spacetime engineering, and achieve, by scientific means, most of the promises of religions — and many amazing things that no human religion ever dreamed. Future Gods will be able to resurrect the dead by “copying them to the future.” For those who share this belief, building artilects is not only a “philosophical” duty, but a very practical one."

Consider the third option: John Smart's Transcension Hypothesis, which derives its theoretical propositions from Moore’s law (in part), wherein human-techno interface, post singularity, will accelerate to a point where the external (outer-space) becomes the internal (inner-space), driving transhumanstic existence ever inward until dimensional black holes (driven by STEM compression) transport us (now as virtual minds) out of the physical existence,  into more complex dimensions of existence, where we will find the rest of the universe(s) waiting. 

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. Now taking reservations. Thanks for the Fish.

Seeing and Understanding: The Importance of Perception in the Development of Artificial Intelligence

The development of “systems of knowing and understanding” provide universal languages researchers can employ to tackle the myriad challenges presented in the development of Artificial Intelligences.  

In the video posted here, Andrew Ng offers a brief ontological examination of the keys issues surrounding Artificial Intelligence in his presentation, “The Future of Robotics and Artificial Intelligence” (Stanford University, STAN 2011).

Gruber (1992) argued that, “An ontology is an explicit specification of a conceptualization. The term is borrowed from philosophy, where an Ontology is a systematic account of Existence. For AI systems, what "exists" is that which can be represented. When the knowledge of a domain is represented in a declarative formalism, the set of objects that can be represented is called the universe of discourse” (Link).

In his presentation, Ng suggested that two main issues are paramount in the development of AI: Control and Perception. Control refers to a robot’s abilities to navigate and interact in physical spaces. Perception refers to a robot’s abilities to “see and understand” the world around it. The exposition of the narrative focused mainly on the dynamic issues related to robotic perceptions of environment, ability to contextualize information it gathers, and abilities to “read and understand” its social environments.  

Ng draws from neuro-scientific approaches to argue for the development of foundational, simple algorithms that can drive robotic AI abilities to “perceive.” AI neural networks can be crafted, informed by and patterned after, human neuro-biological systems that control visual and auditory processing. This draws out an interesting area of inquiry that I will explore in future posts: namely, how does our “human” understanding of AI, our collective cultural technological competencies and cultural technological value structures, inform they we actually conceptualize and create AI?         

In his 2006 presentation at the Human-Robot Interaction Seminar (Fachberriech Informatik Universitat Dortmund) titled, “Recognition and Simulation of Emotions,” Kleine-Cosack discussed the exigencies surrounding AI perception and emotion recognition. I will examine the issues of emotion perception in AI presented in his paper in future posts. In sum, he argued that “the acceptance of autonomous and especially humanoid robots will be directly dependent on their ability to recognize and simulate emotions.” An especially useful context to place Ng’s overview of AI cognitive perception. (Link).

AI abilities to place sensory information (perceptual information) in social context, and the development of unique AI responses to those sensory stimuli, are a whole other ballgame. Yet, the formalization of “systems of knowing” provided here take a large step toward integrating robots into human experiences.

Philosophical inquiry has demonstrated the traps inherent in developing formalized (ontological) systems and vocabularies, yet I am reminded of a phrase from my favorite science-fiction opus, Dune, when Thufir Hawat (one of the many characters in the Dune series that characterizes the dynamic range of transhumanistic expression) states, “the first step in avoiding a trap, is to know that the trap exists.”

Innovation will be key component in Google’s Response to Apple’s entry into Map Applications

In the wake of Apple WWDC 2012 (commentary), a few notable changes are likely to occur in the mobile landscape, especially in regard to mapping solutions and applications - maybe. Apple’s announcement to integrate its own mapping software into iOS6 (Apple devices) signals that a new player has emerged in the mapping techno-marketplace…a marketplace that has been traditionally dominated by Google, and in the minor key, AOL via Mapquest.

A useful comparison of Google and Apple map functionality has been put together by Casey Chan at Gizmodo.  This overview provides sufficient context for the discussion that follows here on how Apple’s entry into this particular area of technology will impact Google Maps in the narrow frame, and map technology innovation in the larger frame.  

    Google                              Apple

    (image courtesy of Gizmodo).

Tale of the Tape: 

Google: significantly more depth and detail

Apple: Turn by turn voice navigation (which is available for Google Android users)

Winner: Google. Depth and detail in data is more important than the promise of “shiny” things.

Content. Innovation.

Apple’s new map solutions in iOS6 (granted in beta) will spur greater competition in the map marketplace for user share, which may in the long-run drive innovation.  Google’s history of collaborative innovation will likely mean we will see some exciting upgrades and enhancements to its current map solutions, which are already robust. These changes will be exciting.

We have seen a trend of making maps more interactive. Might we see Google add-in more social media features to map solutions, whereby users can scroll over areas on maps and pull up user comments on the locations shown. Social comments on locations in the map could be added to existing drop-down menus that allow users to get deeper feedback on the maps they are developing and viewing.

E.G.: Want the local skinny on a route and locations therein? Looking at 101 North as you head to San Francisco? Scrolling over locations on the route in Google Maps, we might be able to find user comments on a variety of topics – traffic, quickest routes, roadwork, best places to eat, and shortcuts.  Yes, these are available on a number of other sites and stand-alone applications – will these features be more integrated into a complex, yet easy to navigate, elegant single map solution?

Google can mix map solutions, with social media commentary (re: useful user tips/advice), with Wiki style background information tied into SM applications such as Yelp.

One thing we can be sure of….Google will innovate and end users will reap the benefit of more robust, interactive, and interesting map solutions.