Here is how we could coexist with a superintelligence

The idea of a superintelligence might be frightening. I have touched the subject before and I also discussed why human values (hopefully) might be important to a superintelligence. But we don't know. Professor Nick Bostrom at the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University believes that superintelligence could put all humanity at risk, and he's...

Survival of the Fittest Technology

I already outlined the ideas of author and entrepreneur Ray Kurzweil, currently Engineering Director at Google, on exponentially accelerating technological change. His ideas are based on what he calls the Law of Accelereting Returns -- the fairly intuitive suggestion that whatever is developed somewhere in a system, increases the total speed of development in the whole...

Suppose Google plans to create a mind

I'm reading the latest book by Ray Kurzweil -- How to Create a Mind (2012). In his book Kurzweil pulls together different  pieces of cutting edge brain research and puts them in the context of his own experience of developing technology for voice understanding and character recognition. The result is the Pattern Recognition Theory of...

Autonomous cars highlight fundamental questions

I like the recent call from Molly Wood at Cnet News (where I used to work in 2009): “Self-driving cars: Yes, please! Now, please!”. She notes quite obvious advantages with autonomous cars – safety, efficiency and environmental improvements – and observes that the forces working against adoption are fear and love of driving, emotions so...

Why human values will be fundamental for a super intelligence

What do the ancient Greeks or fight for civil rights have to do with the destiny of the universe? More than you could believe. Or rather – they are a fundamental part of it. The short explanation is that without the experience gained through thousands of years of human civilization, a super intelligence wouldn't have...

2012 is a good year to start a blog

2012 is a good year to start a blog on a major transformation for humanity and of the world. Several theories based on the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar suggest that Dec 21, 2012, will either mark the beginning of a new era, or the end of the world. This blog has basically nothing to do...