From: Zero Powers (zero_powers@hotmail.com)
Date: Mon Apr 30 2001 - 00:11:34 MDT
>From: Anders Sandberg <asa@nada.kth.se>
>On Sat, Apr 28, 2001 at 07:57:57AM -0700, J. R. Molloy wrote:
> >
> > Come the singularity, it will be a felony to infect innocent
> > children with irrational beliefs.
>
>Anybody see the big problem with that? :-)
<snip>
>What I would like to see is a bit more discussion about the problems in
>the present and near future that does not end in "The singularity will
>make it irrelevant", "The government/illuminati will stop all such
>attempts", "People are too stupid to get it" and "Oh, it is trivial to
>fix".
Problem is, as much as many of us are focused on dealing with the problems
of the day, we are all to some extent or another looking forward to the day
when our hopes for the future become reality. My guess is that for most on
this list that hope for the future is summed up in the term "Singularity."
Some have said that predicting what follows the Singularity is akin to
predicting what becomes of the laws of physics past the event horizon of a
black hole. Maybe so, I don't know. But it does seem to me that the best
hope for solution to problems that so far seem intractible (religious
hatred, world hunger, poverty, incurable disease, etc.) would be the
application of a good dose of super-intelligent friendly AI.
Of course nothing's guaranteed. And (despite Eli's assurances) I'm not sure
we'll be able to persuade a being whose own intelligence dwarfs our
collective intelligence to put our interests ahead of (or even on a par
with) its own interests. And I'm not saying "Hey let's give up trying to
solve our problems because Eli & Co. are in fact going to make HAL our pal
and HAL will then solve everything." But I am saying: try as you might to
cure AIDS and talk some sense to those idiots in the middle east, you may
well find in the end only our pal HAL can come up with workable solutions.
-Zero
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