From: Colin Hales (colin@versalog.com.au)
Date: Mon Jun 10 2002 - 23:23:45 MDT
John Grigg wrote:
>> Colin Hales wrote:
>> I have quite often sat, doing the mall cafe thing, looking at
>> the .... I think someone in the list recently called them
>> 'strolling contented proles' or some such (I note in passing
>> that proles used to be without hap- their lot seems to have
>> improved somewhat :) )............. and wondered if any of
>> them had the slightest notion of what is soon to happen and,
>> in being an active contributor to such change, what I would
>> think of me after the event.
>> (end)
>
> Should any extropians be judging these people to be proles?
The use of the word is probably a little less kind than need be.
J.Public would have done just as well.
> And how are you or other extropes really more "evolved?"
I didn't say that. Speciation is afoot. Exactly what form it will take
remains to be seen.
> Finally, how are you personally an active contributor to the
> change you see blindsiding them?
There are a few (4 maybe 5) 'loner' AGI developers on Earth.
I'm one of them.
Gonna give it a good shot, anyway. I'm a believer in
the 'vision of one' approach .ie. that groups are less likely
to pull AGI off. Especially those moribund in the standard academic
milieu.
> At least I'm happy to hear proles today have at least some
> good fortune compared to the hapless proles of yesteryear!
> They really had it hard being the unlucky folks they were!
> As for your comment "soon to happen", I can only say these
> changes will take at least another decade or two to see
> fruition. That is not so soon in my mind.
10-20 is 'soon', to this prole. Within the scope of my
(currently bounded) lifetime. 21 Dec 2012 is my aim.
End of the Mayan calendar, just for the hell of it.
> As the years go by the mass media will continue to produce
> plenty of material covering nanotech, biotech, computing, and
> even in time, the oncoming Singularity. I don't see the
> public being "utterly taken unawares" by what obsesses and
> enthralls transhumanists! So I do think they have a "notion"
> of what is coming down the road. This awareness will
> increase as time goes by. I mainly see people in the third
> world being surprised by future events.
>
> The big concern among extropians should be the attitudes the
> public will be developing in response to these technologies,
> which will in time transform humanity.
>
> That is the matter to ponder.
And ponder it I do. Alongside my hellbent techhead machinations
and being 47yrs young I have concerns about the impact being
less chaperoned than it ought. We may end up with the sorts
of outcomes we have seen in GM foods and human reproduction.
AGI will make those seem like a picnic by comparison, IMO.
J.Public.au (at least), has little awareness of the issues that I can see.
I can see tiny signs... eg Mr Broderick actually got
the beginnings of it (the basic words) into the Weekend Australian.
This weekend. Woo-hoo!
In the main I find the lack of awareness
disturbing - even in our local Engineering Professions and Computer
Scientists. I attend a local Agents Seminar at Melbourne Uni most weeks and
even they exhibit no awareness.
I have begun a very gentle education process locally to try and get
people to understand that the very definition of what it is to
be human is going to change and that it needs thinking about. The legal
and moral issues are mountainous. I'm trying to form a tech committee
for the IEEE to begin the process but they're so tied up in status quo
and protocol I'm finding progress really slow. I'll keep bashing away,
though.
There is a safety issue underneath it all which I can't ignore:
The AGI version of the nanotech grey goo outcome. I see it
in the same risk category as asteroid collision. If I'm
to have anything at all to do with this, I figure I'd better work on
the big picture, not just the technical.
I suppose my awareness is over-heightened by my work. I believe that AGI
is a lot more possible than generally thought and that we don't have
that long to sort out the implications. At least that's what I
think I must assume until it proves otherwise - purely out of
a sense of ethics. So far, as I go, it gets daily more plausible
not less. This is very unusual in my experience. Usually my
projects do the reverse. Maybe I should stop thinking!
This is why Samantha's poem struck a chord with me.
cheers,
Colin Hales
*prole with hap, I am*
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