Just a few days out from the international Singularity Summit in Manhattan. The fundamental areas of accelerating technology and science that will be covered by the conference include quantum computing, nanotechnology, whole brain emulation, and lifespan extension research, with a distinct unifying theme of the potential and the promise for creating strong artificially intelligent technologies, as well as the challenges and the risks of this developmental endeavor.
There is certainly an all-star lineup of fascinating and provocative speakers, each of whom is both a maverick and a maven in their field of specialty. Keynote speakers include:
As always, one of the major questions I will be contemplating during the conference is how we can leverage accelerating and convergent technologies to make our world not just a higher-powered planet, but a truly more enlightened, calmer globe, more affected by the realization of our interdependence and the impulse to alleviate suffering. Your thoughts on the topic are always welcome!
I was impressed by a teaching I read recently from the Dalai Lama about praise and criticism, and the respective pleasure and pain we tend to derive from being either praised or criticized:
As I am preparing to attend the international Singularity Summit in Manhattan this October, my mind is thinking a lot about artificial intelligence. The term “singularity” has come to mean a variety of things to different people. For my intents and purposes, “singularity” refers to the point at which human beings will be fully integrated with their technology, which will result in a massive spike in both the cognitive and—fingers crossed—the moral progress of the human species. Although singularity might often be thought of in terms of amoral information processing, I think that considerations about the moral co-development of the human species are an absolutely essential dynamic in serious dialog about accelerating and convergent technology, most especially when talking about strong AI.
This date will always be an unusually solemn and contemplative one. In the past I have tried to think of appropriate and meaningful ways to commememorate the anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Centers. Probably the most meaningful was last year’s 9/11, when my roommate and I stood on the roof of our Brooklyn apartment, looking at the beams of light that eminate from Ground Zero on the evening of 9/11, speaking to one another about our dreams and our wishes for how the world would change to be a better place. We spoke frankly to one another about the things that were wrong and out or order in our society, and felt a resolve as we stood there with one another that we were going to do better to be apart from the muck that only perpetuates the hatred, the anger, the reactivity.
I’ve been playing around in my mind with a postulate I picked up from a Ken Wilber audio lecture; namely, that cognitive development is necessary but not sufficient for moral development. In other words, Wilber is asserting that for a person to develop morally, it is essential for them to first develop cognitively—you cannot have an expansion of morality without first having some kind of expansion in cognition. However, just because a person develops cognitively, it does not intrinsically signify that they are going to develop morally in lockstep with their cognitive realizations.
Recent Comments