From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Mon Apr 29 2002 - 20:16:10 MDT
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
> Hal Finney wrote:
>
>>There was supposed to be a debate this past weekend at the Foresight
>>conference between Greg Stock and Ray Kurzweil about whether biological
>>or machine technology would be more important in the major changes ahead.
>>I was not present, but it seems to me that Kurzweil has the stronger
>>argument, that machine technology will continue to advance much faster
>>than biology can.
>>
>
> You would have thought so. However, Ray Kurzweil ended up arguing that
> humans and machines would be integrated throughout and AI would never pull
> ahead, while Gregory Stock much more sensibly argued that pure AIs would
> have a tremendous advantage over biology. The basis for Gregory Stock's
> argument for a human future is that machines will pull ahead so fast as to
> leave us to our own resources, and that uploading and brain-computer
> interfacing is a problem so hard as to be infeasible, especially by
> comparison with machine intelligence - thus leaving *us* with biology.
>
Thanks for the replay of this discussion. I just wish I could
have been there for it. Although I was signed and paid up I am
still not over this nasty all-so-biological bug that bit me just
over 2 weeks ago. It seems to hang on for 3 weeks in most
people. So I got halfway to the meeting on Saturday and felt so
bad I decided I really should go home and sleep most of the day
Saturday and Sunday.
Experiences like that sure make be more gung-ho for uploads and
medical nanotech!
It is an interesting twiste in the debate when both agree that
the AIs will march forward regardless and the debate turns on
wheter we will at least get augmentation out of it. Whilte that
might leave us "behind the machines" it certainly doesn't mean
that biological advances will be "most" important. The question
is not well-defined to start with as it doesn't nail down the
context of "important" - important in the number and scope of
overall advances of originally earth-based intelligences or most
import to us "orgas"? If it is the first then there is
probably much less question for many of us here that AIs will
far outstrip in terms of cognitive power and number of advances
in knowledge those who were once organic. If it is the second
then I would still argue that non-bioenginnering technological
improvements including medical nanotech and augmentation will do
more to increase our range and accomplishments than more purely
biological advances will. I don't see how Kurzweil could lose.
- samantha
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