Responsible Nanotechnology

Singularity Summit LIVE! (4)

1:05 PM

We're back from lunch and Max More is the first speaker of the afternoon. He's discussing the challenges that humans have in making good group decisions and avoid serious dangers. Max is now proposing that the "Proactionary Principle" can be useful in overcoming our built-in biases and limitations. (Recently the Extropy Institute, which Max co-founded back in the 1980's, dissolved. Now he is spending his energy promoting the ProP, as he calls it.)

1:25 PM

Christine Peterson of the Foresight Nanotech Institute is the next presenter. She says that to protect humanity's values as we move through a technological singularity, greater intelligence is not the only answer. She lists various methods for managing power, securing property rights, and ensuring "secure operating systems." She is describing "smart contracts" that supposedly could lead to "automated mutual defense."

This was a good talk by Christine with a lot of interesting ideas. I wish she had more time and that there could be some audience interaction with her. Unfortunately, she finished her slot with some slightly distasteful advertising for Foresight (nobody else has done this kind of self-promotion).

1:36 PM

Taking the stage now is John Smart, president of the Accelerating Studies Foundation. He says he has 90 slides.

John says "intelligence is the driver of accelerating change." He is doing an overview of historical descriptions of accelerating change. You can tell that he is a teacher, because he's packing a lot of well-researched information into a short amount of time; so much information, however, that I can't possibly report it all here. But if you've seen him speak before, or if you've read his website, then you'll have a very good idea of what he's saying.

I love John's material, but he's got way too much for this limited time and format. This is, of course, one of the major weaknesses of an event like this one.

Yipes! He's just moved into the second of three parts of his talk, and he's already used 19 of his allotted 20 minutes...obviously, he had to cut it short and wrap up.

2:10 PM

Eliezer Yudkowsky, Research Fellow of the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence (the main group that worked to make this event happen) is speaking now. He's starting his talk with a definition and description of what he calls the "intelligence explosion."

What is intelligence?

• "Book smarts" versus cognition.
• The most powerful force in the known universe.
• Not a complete mystery.

You cannot trust your sense of how ridiculous things sound. -- A great quote from Eliezer. Interesting, funny, and insightful, he's always an entertaining speaker. I can't possibly keep up, so you may want to check out Dan Farber's review.

He finished with a typically beautiful, philosophical, even lyrical vision of the future of the human species.

Mike Treder

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

Singularity Summit LIVE! (3)

11:22 AM

Sebastian Thrun is director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and is a world expert on robot-driven automobiles.

He is describing the amazing work that he and others have done in the DARPA-sponsored "Grand Challenge." It's very cool stuff, and he's showing some fascinating videos, but -- I'm not sure yet how he is going to relate this to the topic of the Singularity, which is, of course, the whole reason everyone is here.

However fascinating this is, in comparison to molecular manufacturing or strong artificial intelligence, his vision of "Autonomous Cars for Everyone" is not revolutionary or disuptive.

It was a good talk, but it did not belong on this program.

11:42

Cory Doctorow is starting now. His talk is titled: "Singularity or Dark Age? How the copyright wars threaten technological progress."

Uh-oh, he's a non-user of PowerPoint. We've reached a point in public speaking, I'm afraid, where one almost cannot deliver an interesting talk simply using a voice. I'm surprised and a little disappointed that Cory would make this mistake. You just can't make the same connection with the audience or achieve the same level of communication and comprehension when you are limited to the audio band only.

Worse yet, Cory's talk, like the previous speaker's, seems to have little relevance to what the focus of this summit was supposed to be.

Fortunately, Eric Drexler is up next, and I'm confident that he will get this seriously dragging conference back on track.

12:01 PM

"An information-driven revolution in manufacturing" -- that's how Eric Drexler introduced his topic.

He showed a slide of designed million-atom nanoscale structures made by folding DNA. "Atomically-precise protein and DNA design are now becoming routine."

Now he is showing a sheet of graphite made by self-assembly in "solution-phase synthesis." Next, a few simulations of "advanced molecular machinery" which is the stuff that he and others are working on at Nanorex.

Ooh, and now a still frame from the Productive Nanosystems video. I hope he shows the whole movie. Nope, it looks like he won't have time. Too bad.

Eric says "bogus criticism has fallen out of fashion," and he mentioned that "a technology roadmap [to MM] is underway."

LUNCH BREAK

Mike Treder

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

Singularity Summit LIVE! (2)

10:10 AM

Douglas Hofstadter has just been introduced and is beginning his presentation.

Uh-oh, so far (after five minutes) he's just talking and not using any slides; that makes it a bit harder to follow what he's saying and also blog at the same time.

I see he is holding a few handwritten notes. Apparently he is not using PowerPoint.

Ah, finally! He's showing a slide that starts from the "Kurzweil/Moravec visions" and goes off in two directions:

• "Hofstadter's concerns" -- humanity being left in the dust by our technoprogeny

• "Bill Joy's concerns" -- we are smothered by self-reproducing technodust

He says he strongly recommends Ray's recent book, although he accuses Ray of doing quite a bit of "hand-waving" about how future technological progress will be achieved.

He says that computers achieving human-like common sense is, in his opinion, "pie in the sky."

Now he's showing a few slides containing simple cartoons he's drawn...I'm not sure I get the point he's trying to make...the cartoons are humorous, but, as he admits, they raise issues without expressing his opinion about the issues. So why bother? Hmm...

He's says that he does not necessarily doubt that so many remarkable changes will occur -- such as those suggested by Ray's book -- but he has strong doubts that they will happen on a scale of decades, as opposed to centuries.

He says that mixing so much of what he calls "science fiction" together with more "serious" speculation makes one wonder about the "sanity" of the author.

And that concludes Douf Hofstadter's talk.

10:45 AM

Nick Bostrom says he will speak about existential risk.

Risk can be measured by scope, intensity, and duration. The biggest and worst are existential, i.e., threatening the continued existence of humanity. He's also distingushing between anthropogenic (arising from human activity) and non-anthropogenic existential risks.

If you know Nick's work, then you'll be familiar with Bangs, Crunches, Shrieks, and Whimpers. He is listing and describing them now for the audience. Number one on the list of "Bangs" is nanotech-enabled global war.

He tried to cover a lot of very dense material in his talk. Unfortunately I think it was generally too much for his audience. Nick is fun to listen to, but his work is so academic that it takes a lot of concentrated thought to absorb.

: : : : : :

We're taking a short beak now...

Mike Treder

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

Singularity Summit LIVE! (1)

8:34 AM

I'm writing to you from inside Memorial Auditorium on the beautiful campus of Stanford University in California. It's taken me about a half hour to find the right spot for a good wireless connection, but now we're up and running.

So, are you ready for the Singularity Summit? Here goes!

8:41 AM

The organizers say they are expecting more than two thousand attendees. Right now the auditorium is only about half full (capacity is 2,060), but we're still about 20 minutes away from the planned start time of 9:00 AM.

8:55 AM

Among the familiar faces I've seen so far are J. Storrs Hall, Robert A. Freitas Jr., Christine Peterson, Ray Kurzweil, Neil Jacobstein, Michael Anissimov -- and, of course, Tyler Emerson, who is the tireless but largely unsung major organizing force behind this event.

9:20 AM

We've just finished the opening introductions and now Ray Kurzweil is beginning his talk. He began with a demonstration of a handheld text to speech translator; quite impressive. Ray says that just five years ago the software was not yet "feasible" to support such a powerful capability.

Can a computer tell the difference between a dog and a cat? Yes! Seven years ago this was not possible; today the software is better, but also today there is a huge repository of online images of cats and dogs (and other things), from which computers can learn.

He's discussing intuitive linear extrapolation [CRN PPT] versus exponential acceleration, with examples of the human genome project, serch engine adoption, etc. This first half of his talk, as expected, is pretty much Ray's standard presentation. We'll see if he introduces any new concepts or arguments in the second half, which, according to him, is supposed to address skeptics.

Even though I've heard Ray speak several times, and I've read his books, he is so excited about his what he says -- and so well informed -- that's it's always inspiring, enjoyable, and educational to attend his talks.

He's talking about expanding the "AI tool kit," with AI research, reverse engineering the human brain, cognitive science, etc.

Is the human brain too complex for us to understand?

"Models often get simpler at a higher level, not more complex."

Hm, it looks like he's running late, because he's skipping over several slides.

"The bulk of human intelligence is based on pattern recognition."

Now he's doing a demonstration of a proposed real-time verbal language translation system. We're not quite there yet, but getting much closer.

He's reviewing and adressing the standard objections. This is based on chapter 9 -- "Response to critics" -- from his book, The Singularity is Near.

He's issuing a challenge to Bill McKibben, author of Enough, as to whether we should establish some arbitrary limits to technological growth and human progress.

And that wraps us Ray's opening keynote.

Mike Treder

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

Singularity Blogging Tomorrow

Tomorrow is the day for the Singularity Summit at Stanford. I will be attending, and will be live blogging all day with reports and observations.

Here is the tentative schedule:

9:10 AM

Ray Kurzweil – The Singularity: A hard or soft takeoff?

I saw Ray last week and he told me he was trying to design a talk that would both deliver his ideas and also anticipate the objections of skeptics. I'll let you know how he does in real time.

9:50 AM

Douglas R. Hofstadter – Trying to Muse Rationally about the Singularity Scenario

10:20 AM

Nick Bostrom – Artificial Intelligence and Existential Risks

I share many of Nick's concerns about the existential perils introduced by emerging technologies like AI, robotics, and nanotech. Of course, both of us also see tremendous benefits and wish them to be achieved.

10:55 AM

Sebastian Thrun – Toward human-level intelligence in autonomous cars

11:15 AM

Cory Doctorow – Singularity or Dark Age? How the copyright wars threaten technological progress

Cory and I have corresponded but never met. I hope when I see him I'll get some wuffies.

11:35 AM

K. Eric Drexler – Productive Nanosystems: Toward a super-exponential threshold in physical technology

It's always exciting to hear one of the rare public addresses from the father of nanotechnology.

12:55 PM

Max More – Cognitive and Emotional Singularities: Will super-intelligence come with super-wisdom?

I hope so because we'll need it!

1:15 PM

Christine L. Peterson – Bringing Humanity and the Biosphere through the Singularity

1:35 PM

John Smart – Searching for the Big Picture: Systems Theories of Accelerating Change

2:10 PM

Eliezer Yudkowsky – The Human Importance of the Intelligence Explosion

In addition to my own opinions about Eliezer's controversial work, I'll try to fill you in on the reaction he gets from others.

2:40 PM

Bill McKibben – Being Good Enough

Bill is one of three speakers (Cory and Sebastian are the others) that I have not previously met. It will be interesting to see how much distance there is between his views and CRN's.

After the main speakers, there will be a panel presentation and some time for audience Q&A. If you're not able to be there in person, I hope you'll join me as part of a virtual audience.

Mike Treder

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

Toward Freedom and Security

Chris posted an entry today about the US government's data-mining of domestic telephone call records, and showed why we should be concerned about the implications of any goverment that possesses "a spy infrastructure" and that is "institutionally hostile to its people."

In the news, this revelation is being treated as a big deal. But to the average citizen on the street, apparently, it's just business as usual:

A majority of Americans initially support a controversial National Security Agency program to collect information on telephone calls made in the United States in an effort to identify and investigate potential terrorist threats, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll. . . Underlying those views is the belief that the need to investigate terrorism outweighs privacy concerns. According to the poll, 65 percent of those interviewed said it was more important to investigate potential terrorist threats "even if it intrudes on privacy."

Now, wait a minute! Did you notice the subtle shift there from freedom to privacy? These two concepts often are interchanged in common discussion, but the distinction between them is important, even crucial, and should not be overlooked.

Imagine being on a highway. Ahead of you is openness; behind you is secrecy. On one side of the road before you is more freedom, and on the other side of the road is more security. Depending on which side you steer toward, you may give up some freedom to gain security, or vice versa.

But here is the key point.

Moving forward, toward openness, also moves you closer to both freedom and security. Going back the other way, away from openness and toward secrecy, moves you away from both freedom and security.

We may always have to make choices and adjustments between freedom and security -- although some will challenge that idea as well -- but moving away from openness and toward secrecy is dangerous to both security and freedom, and should not be an option.

That's how I see it.

Mike Treder

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

Government Data-Mining

The US National Security Agency has been building a database of almost all phone calls made by Americans for the past few years. They know who was called, when, and how often...

The program "documents who talks to whom in personal and business calls, whether local or long distance, by tracking which numbers are called." The intent is "to look for any patterns that might suggest terrorist activity."

CNN reports on reactions from members of Congress. Both Democrats and Republicans are concerned, and express an urgent desire to know more about the program. The article notes President Bush's vow to do everything in his power to fight terror and quotes him saying: "We will do so within the laws of our country." But it also notes: "One big telecommunications company, Qwest, has refused to turn over records to the program, [USA Today] said, because of privacy and legal concerns."

Within a few years, thanks to molecular manufacturing and perhaps even earlier nanoscale technologies, we will have enough computer power to do face recognition, speech recognition, and object tracking on each of the then-ubiquitous public cameras. It will be possible for the government, and perhaps others, to track your in-person, on-the-street meetings.

So, let's say one day you're out shopping and you chat with a random person who happens to be the brother of someone who commits a crime later that day. The cameras saw you but couldn't hear what you said. Soon, someone from the government shows up at your home to ask you about your conversation. Do you cooperate fully? Do you act belligerent or defensive, and increase their suspicion?

In totalitarian states, people are afraid to talk to strangers or foreigners because they might be observed acting "suspicously" by government observers. This requires only two things: a spy infrastructure, and a government that is institutionally hostile to its people. The spy infrastructure is coming to Western democracies, more thoroughly than 20th century regimes could have wished for. That means we citizens need to be aware of the implications and possibilities, and work to ensure that our governments don't become institutionally hostile to us.

Chris Phoenix

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

Systems of Survival

Jane Jacobs, who died last month just shy of her 90th birthday, was one of the great sociologists of our time. Although she had no university degree and no official high-level position, her original thinking, creative writing, and passionate advocacy for humanist environments made her a world figure.

Among her many well-respected books, one in particular had a significant impact on CRN and our proposals for managing the impacts of advanced nanotechnology. In Systems of Survival: A Dialogue on the Moral Foundations of Commerce and Politics (1992), Jacobs showed what happens when the moral systems of commerce collide with those of politics. It's a landmark work, illustrating some of the fundamental underlying principles and motivations -- we call them Systems of Action -- used by people and organizations in different segments of society.

We adapted her basic framework and applied it to the Information Age, when we wrote "Three Systems of Action: A Proposed Application for Effective Administration of Molecular Nanotechnology." This paper, we believe, is one of CRN's most important contributions to understanding the delicate challenge of administering powerful technologies in a complex, interconnected world. We'll always be indebted to Jacobs for opening up these ideas to us.

In his tribute to Jane Jacobs, Stanford professor Lawrence Lessig said:

Jacobs understood that the point of urban planning was not planning for a moment, but trying to cultivate healthy, evolving cities that make people happy to live in. Much of the same can be said about information architectures -- the best planned networks don't overplan, but somehow manage to create a kind of life of their own.

If we, the global community, can find a way to cultivate a healthy, evolving nanotech-enabled world that makes people happy to live in, we will have achieved a great deal, and we will owe much to Jane Jacobs for helping us to see the way.

Mike Treder

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

Technocratical Arrogance

When nanotechnology hits the mainstream (and it's not there yet), how easy will it be for large-scale projects to win public approval? Here's a view from Australia:

Nanotech is starting with several big handicaps. First, it is highly complex and most people have only the vaguest idea what it is about. Much of the language is opaque and alienating.

Second, there are unanswered questions about the safety of (quantum) nano devices and how they will interact with living tissue.

Third, there has been a lot of hype about wonderful new applications -- and this makes the public nervous about the downsides they are not being told about. In other words, the communication has so far been one-sided and unbalanced.

Correct, correct, and correct. We've written before about the third point, one-sided hype.

Fourth, major investors include defence establishments who clearly hope it will deliver more efficient means to make war. In other words, like nuclear science, harmful applications of nanotech are already in contemplation -- and the public knows this.

Yep, the people ain't dumb.

Fifth, quantum computers and nanobots-nanosensors, once invented, will have undreamed-of power to amass data on every person living in an advanced society and to observe, store and analyse all their actions. This may become the gravest infringement of personal liberty in history.

Right again.

As with GM, while there are numerous benefits to industry there are, so far, few consumer benefits on offer (except maybe sunscreen and self-cleaning paint!). Nanotech has not made a very good fist of answering the public's question: "What's in it for me?"

There has been little or no dialogue to determine how society would wish nanotech to be applied or regulated. This smacks of technocratical arrogance and "we know what's best for you." Also, most nanotech research is publicly funded, but the results are likely to be privately appropriated.

These concerns add up to a perception of loss of control and freedom for the public to determine how technologies are used -- which is likely to generate concern and resistance, calls for regulation and even moratoria (loss of public sanction for the technology).

Julian Cribb, author of the quoted opinion piece, is right on target. It seems clear to us that candor about the risks plus openness about purposes and processes is the best way to avoid a public backlash.

Mike Treder

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

Military & Ethical Implications

Online now at KurzweilAI.net, and available for discussion through their MindX forum:

Considering Military and Ethical Implications of Nanofactory Level Nanotechnology
By Brian Wang

Nanofactory-level nanotechnology could make current weapons systems obsolete and make genocide and super-oppression easier. So the economic bounty from nanotechnology should be used to reduce motivations for conflict. For example, if nanotechnology makes a nation's economy grow at 24% per year, in three years, that nation will have twice as much stuff; they would have less incentive to attack an equal-size opponent and try to take their stuff.

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog