Shooting Electrons One at a Time: Quantum Computing Comes Closer

It turns out that one of the things you have to do in order to develop a quantum computer is to emit individual electrons from a semiconductor in nanosecond timescales. Here's a brief refresher on what makes quantum computing different from the conventional kind:

Classical computers process information by performing operations on successive "bits", which can be either 0 or 1. Quantum computers, on the other hand, use the phenomenon of entanglement to operate on quantum bits, or "qubits", which can be both 0 and 1 at the same time. The ability to process many values simultaneously should in principle mean that quantum computers can vastly outperform their classical counterparts when performing certain tasks.

Don't know what "entanglement" is?

Quantum entanglement is a quantum mechanical phenomenon in which the quantum states of two or more objects have to be described with reference to each other, even though the individual objects may be spatially separated. This leads to correlations between observable physical properties of the systems. For example, it is possible to prepare two particles in a single quantum state such that when one is observed to be spin-up, the other one will always be observed to be spin-down and vice versa, this despite the fact that it is impossible to predict, according to quantum mechanics, which set of measurements will be observed. As a result, measurements performed on one system seem to be instantaneously influencing other systems entangled with it.

Now that you're all caught up, what's new is that French physicists have developed a way to build a qubit, by "confining electrons to two dimensions in a semiconductor."

Quantum dots have been used as single-electron sources before, but the device made by the French group is the first to be able to emit and absorb electrons over intervals of just a few nanoseconds, which makes the device's speed comparable with present-day electronics. They did this by assuming that the quantum-dot and gate components are analogous to a resistor and capacitor in series, then used RC circuit principles to calculate the combined impedance of the quantum dot and gate, and therefore how frequently electrons would be emitted from the quantum dot given the voltage across the system.

You'll recall that quantum computing is one of the new paradigms that will allow computers to continue their march towards strong AI and consciousness after the laws of physics prevent classical computer chips from getting any smaller or faster.

This development is just another important step in that direction. Stay tuned.

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Evolutionary Morality

Doing good is its own reward. So said a wise man. We've long known that being good feels good, not from brain scans, but from subjective experience. Science can now add credence to what we sensed all along, according to some interesting experimental evidence reported in the Washington Post:

The results were showing that when the volunteers placed the interests of others before their own, the generosity activated a primitive part of the brain that usually lights up in response to food or sex. Altruism, the experiment suggested, was not a superior moral faculty that suppresses basic selfish urges but rather was basic to the brain, hard-wired and pleasurable.

Their 2006 finding that unselfishness can feel good lends scientific support to the admonitions of spiritual leaders such as Saint Francis of Assisi, who said, "For it is in giving that we receive." But it is also a dramatic example of the way neuroscience has begun to elbow its way into discussions about morality and has opened up a new window on what it means to be good.

It's not too difficult to image how this hardwiring came to be. For genes to be passed on, an individual has to survive to breeding age, be relatively healthy, and somewhat attractive to the opposite sex. A violent, selfish troublemaker, would be more likely to be ostracized and perhaps killed by others in his tribe.

The fact is, societies are more successful when their constituents are nice to each other. To be sure, socialization of children by adults will either reinforce and guide or suppress our natural tendency to treat others well. Equally certain is the fact that the tendency to do good can be overpowered and subsumed by another hardwired imperative: survival.

One of the most interesting concepts to arise from this research, however, is that this wiring didn't begin with humans. It seems to be much older than our species.

Grafman and others are using brain imaging and psychological experiments to study whether the brain has a built-in moral compass. The results -- many of them published just in recent months -- are showing, unexpectedly, that many aspects of morality appear to be hard-wired in the brain, most likely the result of evolutionary processes that began in other species.

No one can say whether giraffes and lions experience moral qualms in the same way people do because no one has been inside a giraffe's head, but it is known that animals can sacrifice their own interests: One experiment found that if each time a rat is given food, its neighbor receives an electric shock, the first rat will eventually forgo eating.

What the new research is showing is that morality has biological roots -- such as the reward center in the brain that lit up in Grafman's experiment -- that have been around for a very long time.

The saying, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," presupposes the existence of empathy. We can imagine what another individual will experience as a result of our actions, whether suffering or comfort. Research along these lines leads science into realms usually reserved for religion.

The more researchers learn, the more it appears that the foundation of morality is empathy. Being able to recognize -- even experience vicariously -- what another creature is going through was an important leap in the evolution of social behavior. And it is only a short step from this awareness to many human notions of right and wrong, says Jean Decety, a neuroscientist at the University of Chicago.

Discussion of these kinds of topics will certainly lead to controversy.

The research enterprise has been viewed with interest by philosophers and theologians, but already some worry that it raises troubling questions. Reducing morality and immorality to brain chemistry -- rather than free will -- might diminish the importance of personal responsibility. Even more important, some wonder whether the very idea of morality is somehow degraded if it turns out to be just another evolutionary tool that nature uses to help species survive and propagate.

Moral decisions can often feel like abstract intellectual challenges, but a number of experiments such as the one by Grafman have shown that emotions are central to moral thinking. In another experiment published in March, University of Southern California neuroscientist Antonio R. Damasio and his colleagues showed that patients with damage to an area of the brain known as the ventromedial prefrontal cortex lack the ability to feel their way to moral answers.

When confronted with moral dilemmas, the brain-damaged patients coldly came up with "end-justifies-the-means" answers. Damasio said the point was not that they reached immoral conclusions, but that when confronted by a difficult issue -- such as whether to shoot down a passenger plane hijacked by terrorists before it hits a major city -- these patients appear to reach decisions without the anguish that afflicts those with normally functioning brains.

Such experiments have two important implications. One is that morality is not merely about the decisions people reach but also about the process by which they get there. Another implication, said Adrian Raine, a clinical neuroscientist at the University of Southern California, is that society may have to rethink how it judges immoral people.

Psychopaths often feel no empathy or remorse. Without that awareness, people relying exclusively on reasoning seem to find it harder to sort their way through moral thickets. Does that mean they should be held to different standards of accountability?

"Eventually, you are bound to get into areas that for thousands of years we have preferred to keep mystical," said Grafman, the chief cognitive neuroscientist at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. "Some of the questions that are important are not just of intellectual interest, but challenging and frightening to the ways we ground our lives. We need to step very carefully."

Joshua D. Greene, a Harvard neuroscientist and philosopher, said multiple experiments suggest that morality arises from basic brain activities. Morality, he said, is not a brain function elevated above our baser impulses. Greene said it is not "handed down" by philosophers and clergy, but "handed up," an outgrowth of the brain's basic propensities.

Once again, it seems that science is pushing up against the doctrines and creeds of religion.

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A 5-Minute Singularity Primer

Visitors to this blog, for the most part, are probably familiar with the concept of Singularity. At the same time, I'm sure that there are more than a few who aren't. For you, here is a wonderfully succinct primer from The Singularity Institute Blog. It's well worth the five or so minutes it will take to read. After all, singularity is your future.

The rise of human intelligence in its modern form reshaped the Earth. Most of the objects you see around you, like these chairs, are byproducts of human intelligence. There’s a popular concept of “intelligence” as book smarts, like calculus or chess, as opposed to say social skills. So people say that “it takes more than intelligence to succeed in human society”. But social skills reside in the brain, not the kidneys. When you think of intelligence, don’t think of a college professor, think of human beings; as opposed to chimpanzees. If you don’t have human intelligence, you’re not even in the game.

Sometime in the next few decades, we’ll start developing technologies that improve on human intelligence. We’ll hack the brain, or interface the brain to computers, or finally crack the problem of Artificial Intelligence. Now, this is not just a pleasant futuristic speculation like soldiers with super-strong bionic arms. Humanity did not rise to prominence on Earth by lifting heavier weights than other species.

Intelligence is the source of technology. If we can use technology to improve intelligence, that closes the loop and potentially creates a positive feedback cycle. Let’s say we invent brain-computer interfaces that substantially improve human intelligence. What might these augmented humans do with their improved intelligence? Well, among other things, they’ll probably design the next generation of brain-computer interfaces. And then, being even smarter, the next generation can do an even better job of designing the third generation. This hypothetical positive feedback cycle was pointed out in the 1960s by I. J. Good, a famous statistician, who called it the “intelligence explosion”. The purest case of an intelligence explosion would be an Artificial Intelligence rewriting its own source code.

The key idea is that if you can improve intelligence even a little, the process accelerates. It’s a tipping point. Like trying to balance a pen on one end - as soon as it tilts even a little, it quickly falls the rest of the way.

The potential impact on our world is enormous. Intelligence is the source of all our technology from agriculture to nuclear weapons. All of that was produced as a side effect of the last great jump in intelligence, the one that took place tens of thousands of years ago with the rise of humanity.

So let’s say you have an Artificial Intelligence that thinks enormously faster than a human. How does that affect our world? Well, hypothetically, the AI solves the protein folding problem. And then emails a DNA string to an online service that sequences the DNA, synthesizes the protein, and fedexes the protein back. The proteins self-assemble into a biological machine that builds a machine that builds a machine and then a few days later the AI has full-blown molecular nanotechnology.

So what might an Artificial Intelligence do with nanotechnology? Feed the hungry? Heal the sick? Help us become smarter? Instantly wipe out the human species? Probably it depends on the specific makeup of the AI. See, human beings all have the same cognitive architecture. We all have a prefrontal cortex and limbic system and so on. If you imagine a space of all possible minds, then all human beings are packed into one small dot in mind design space. And then Artificial Intelligence is literally everything else. “AI” just means “a mind that does not work like we do”. So you can’t ask “What will an AI do?” as if all AIs formed a natural kind. There is more than one possible AI.

The impact, of the intelligence explosion, on our world, depends on exactly what kind of minds go through the tipping point.

I would seriously argue that we are heading for the critical point of all human history. Modifying or improving the human brain, or building strong AI, is huge enough on its own. When you consider the intelligence explosion effect, the next few decades could determine the future of intelligent life.

So this is probably the single most important issue in the world. Right now, almost no one is paying serious attention. And the marginal impact of additional efforts could be huge. My nonprofit, the Singularity Institute, is trying to get things started in this area. My own work deals with the stability of goals in self-modifying AI, so we can build an AI and have some idea of what will happen as a result.

Many thanks to Eliezer Yudkowsky for making this available.

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Is There Sin in Singularity?

Having been a Christian minister for a large portion of my life (though I am neither a minister nor a Christian today), I am perhaps more acutely aware of religious opposition to the ideas behind the singularity than I would otherwise be. This may be because I understand the divergence of viewpoints between the two sets of ideas.

Christianity, at its heart, teaches that humans are irredeemably corrupted by sin, with only one available cure: confessing faith in the only sinless God/man, Jesus Christ. Once this confession of faith is made, a person's guilt is exchanged with Christ's righteousness, thus leading to a resurrection from the dead and life everlasting.

Singularity and transhumanism believe that it will soon be possible for humans to migrate into non-biological substrates, thus achieving virtually unlimited lifespans without the need for any supernatural intervention.

Christianity's heretofore monopoly on solving the problem of death is therefore being challenged, not by another faith, but by technology.

One Christian thinker sees in the ideas behind transhumanism a resurgence of an ancient heresy. Here is a sample of the article:

Examination of the underlying philosophy to remake the human person exhibits qualities that are as old as the Greeks. Disdain for the body, the quest for hidden knowledge, and the goal to lead others to a higher plane of existence all smack of ancient Gnosticism, an idea that goes back nearly two millennia. Students of New Testament history will recognize Gnosticism as an early opponent of the newfound church, fought by the early Church Fathers into the second and third century.

The Gnostic impulse is first characterized by its disdain for the physical body and the general restraints of time and place. Since the temporal was thought to be evil and unredeemed, the Gnostics developed a profound dualistic schism between the body and the mind, which was spiritual and potentially immortal. The body, being bad, was eschewed while the mind was exalted. This led to two poles of behavior regarding the physical. One pole was asceticism with its denial of creature comfort. Material pleasure and comfort was disdained due to the undeserving nature of the body. The other pole was radical libertinism, with an anything goes attitude regarding the attainment of physical pleasure. Why worry about the body and behavior if it was degenerate anyway?

The second primary distinction regards redemption via attainment of secret knowledge, or gnosis. This knowledge was potentially available to only a few gifted select people who were endowed with the desire and capacity to attain and use this hidden wisdom. It was only through careful, diligent study that release from the bonds of material existence. Once attained, a person would be able to transcend the bounds of time, nature and history, reaching a plane of spiritual existence.

With the Transhumanist movement, one sees the Gnostic strain reasserting itself in the quest to transcend the degenerate body. The body is held in disdain. Advocates for enhancement technology exhibit disdain for the current status of the physical body. There is an abhorrence of the limitations that nature has placed upon the species. The insufficiencies of height, strength, vision, hearing, longevity and cognition are roadblocks to happiness and perpetual fulfillment. Nature has gotten the human race this far, but the inherent limits of existence are hurdles to be leapt.

I suspect that if the singularity occurs and humans do, in fact, overcome death via technology, Christianity will find a way to accommodate that reality into its system of belief, just as it has largely accommodated the discovery that the Earth is not the center of our universe and that humans are the product of Darwinian evolution.

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Chip Makers to Software Developers: Keep Up!

According to Intel, the free ride for software developers is over; it's time to keep up with processor development and get on the Moore's Law train.

Moore's Law states that chips will shrink in size and thus double their performance every 18 months. They've been doing exactly that, adding cores to their chips rather then just developing faster singe cores. The problem is, the software, as it stands today, can't make use of all that parallelism.

The problem really exists in the desktop world rather than in supercomputers and servers. From the chip makers' perspective, the software developers have become complacent, fat and happy, if you will.

Now, even Microsoft is sounding the same warning.

Microsoft has recently been sounding a similar warning. At last week's Windows Hardware Engineering Conference in Los Angeles, Chief Research and Strategy Officer Craig Mundie tried to spur the industry to start addressing the issue.

"We do now face the challenge of figuring out how to move, I'll say, the whole programming ecosystem of personal computing up to a new level where they can reliably construct large-scale applications that are distributed, highly concurrent, and able to utilize all this computing power," Mundie said in an interview there. "That is probably the single most disruptive thing that we will have done in the last 20 or 30 years."

Earlier this week, Microsoft's Ty Carlson said that the next version of Windows will have to be "fundamentally different" to handle the amount of processing cores that will become standard on PCs. Vista, he said, is designed to handle multiple threads, but not the 16 or more that chips will soon be able to handle. And the applications world is even further behind.

"In 10 to 15 years' time we're going to have incredible computing power," Carlson said. "The challenge will be bringing that ecosystem up that knows how to write programs."

Yes folks, parallelism is the future of computing. Computers already have the kind of speed that neurons can never match. Now it's time for them to adopt the massive parallelism that the human brain makes such fruitful use of. Onward!

Source: CNET News

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Nerve Regeneration Through Nanotech

The holy grail of current medical science is nerve regeneration. Damaged neurons don't grow back, and this is a big problem for people who have suffered trauma that leaves many of them without the use of much of their bodies. Paraplegia and quadriplegia are terrible diagnoses that have no cure today because of the nerve regrowth problem.

A very recent article in Medical News Today describes two new methods, presented at the NSTI Nanotech 2007 Conference, for using nanotechnology to change the equation and promote the regeneration of neurons.

The first method, developed by researchers at the University of Miami, uses magnetic nanoparticles to "create mechanical tension that stimulates the growth and elongation of axons of the central nervous system neurons."

"By providing mechanical tension to the regrowing axon, we may be able to enhance the regenerative axon growth in vivo". This mechanically induced neurite outgrowth may provide a possible method for bypassing the inhibitory interface and the tissue beyond a CNS related injury. Using optic nerve and spinal cord tissues as in vivo models and dissociated retinal ganglion neurons as an in vitro model, De Silva and his colleagues are currently investigating how these magnetic nanoparticles can be incorporated into neurons and axons at the site of injury. Although, this study is at a very preliminary stage to explore the possibility of using magnetic nanoparticles for enhancing in vivo axon regeneration, this work may have significant implications for the treatment of spinal cord injuries, and is a vital "next step" in bringing this new technology to clinical use.

The second method, developed at the University of California, Berkeley, "uses aligned nanofibers containing one or more growth factors to provide a bioactive matrix where nerve cells can regrow."

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley have developed a technology that has the potential to serve as a better alternative than currently available synthetic nerve grafts. The graft material is composed entirely of aligned nanoscale polymer fibers. These polymer fibers act as physical guides for regenerating nerve fibers. They have also developed a way to make these aligned nanofibers bioactive by attaching various biochemicals directly onto the surfaces of the nanofibers. Thus, the bioactive aligned nanofiber technology mimics the nerve autograft by providing both physical and biochemical cues to enhance and direct nerve growth.

This technology has been tested by culturing rat nerve tissue ex vivo on our bioactive aligned nanofiber scaffolds. When the nerve tissue was cultured on unaligned nanofibers there was no nerve fiber growth onto the scaffolds. However, on aligned nanofiber scaffolds, they not only observed nerve fibers growing from the tissue but the nerve fibers were aligned in the same orientation as the nanofibers. Furthermore, when there were biochemicals present on the nanofibers, the nerve fiber growth was enhanced 5 fold. In a matter of just 5 days, nerve fibers had extended 4 millimeters from the nerve tissue in a bipolar fashion on the bioactive aligned nanofiber scaffolds. Thus, this technology can induce, enhance and direct nerve fiber regeneration in a straight and organized manner.

One can only sit in wonder at the countless applications that are being discovered for using nanotech to improve human lives. Stay tuned.

(Via BetterHumans)

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Will Strong AI Occur By Accident?

Readers familiar with the concept of technological singularity will recall that predictions for the birth of computers that equal or exceed human levels of intelligence have them arriving in the early 2020s, first in supercomputers and then in PCs.

This scenario suggests that they will be generated in controlled environments, purposely and deliberately, by human researchers. Singularity-minded thinkers also expect the development of AI-augmented human minds to run concurrently. But what if strong AI (exceeding human intelligence) can be generated spontaneously?

When Skynet "became conscious" in the movie Terminator, it didn't do so at the behest of any human, it did so spontaneously. Would it be possible for this to occur in reality?

There is a growing consensus that natural intelligence is likely to be composed of multiple diverse algorithms and knowledge representation formats, with hundreds (or thousands) of specialised subsystems collaborating in some network (or 'Society of Mind'). This is in contrast to the 'one size fits all' approach of many popular algorithms in Artificial Intelligence. If such diverse, extremely hybrid artificial agents are to be built, many authors will need to be involved, each with a different area of specialization. And if the future of AI is one of multiple authors and multiple laboratories building vast collaborative systems, how is this work to be organized? - ERCIM News Online.

In the quotation above from an article titled Collaborative Online Development of Modular Intelligent Agents, the authors clearly suggest a deliberate effort to generate strong AI by means of a collaborative network, but what if all the necessary ingredients get together accidentally?

As the Internet is upgraded and the machines and software it connects become more sophisticated, is it that big a leap to think it could happen that way? Our brains, as the authors of the article suggest, are not one computer, but many, running different algorithms, but networked in such a way that allows for at least one consciousness to arise. So it might be with the first strong AI.

If this happened, would we be aware of it? Would it make itself known to us? And if it were discovered by scientists, would that discovery be suppressed? And the most important question of all: Would it be friendly?

Stay tuned.

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Shrinking Big Energy to Digital-Size

No one who's in touch with the world of human events can be unaware of the issues the world is having with energy. No one disagrees with the proposition that we need to wean ourselves off the teat of fossil fuels. It's running out, it costs too much, and it's bad for the environment. That's where consensus ends.

Why does it seem an impossible task for us to find a solution to the energy problem. There's a short, simple answer about which no one in the mainstream media appears to have any understanding. Energy is still a centralized commodity that has not made the transition to the information age. As long as these factors remain in place, we will be energy poor and vulnerable to shortages caused by other nations and natural disasters.

In stark contrast to this state of affairs stands information technology, becoming more abundant, more efficient and less costly every day. Because the Internet is so distributed it is much more resistant to attack and disruption than our power grid, oil supply and refinement capacity.

How can energy production and distribution become digital? How can it become information technology? First, through the development of nanotech, much more efficient (read low-cost) solar panels can be manufactured, such that they will completely replace fossil fuels as the world's source of energy. As Ray Kurzweil points out, only one percent of the U.S.'s land, covered with efficient solar panels, could supply not just our current needs, but our future needs. When solar panels can be fabricated at the atomic level, they can be made this efficient.

Second, for storage of energy, nano-manufactured fuel cells would be feasibly installed in everything from our homes and cars to our cell phones and PDAs.

Each family could have their own energy source and storage systems, making us much less vulnerable to disruptions. It would then be a distributed energy system, rather than a cumbersome and stagnant one.

But how would it be digital? It would become an information technology because the the actual physical solar panels and fuel cells would be sold and design data. The manufacture of the systems from cheap raw materials could be performed virtually anywhere, once the design data is obtained. Improvements and upgrades would all be in the form of digital information and thus subject to the law of accelerating returns.

An overly optimistic view? We will know soon enough, so stay tuned.

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Accelerated Evolution: Creating New Proteins

Researchers at Biodesign Institute have revved the engine of biological evolution to unheard of speed, creating completely new proteins in an infinitesimal fraction of the time it took nature to do the same thing.

Nature, through the trial and error of evolution, has discovered a vast diversity of life from what can only presumed to have been a primordial pool of building blocks. Inspired by this success, a new Biodesign Institute research team, led by John Chaput, is now trying to mimic the process of Darwinian evolution in the laboratory by evolving new proteins from scratch. Using new tricks of molecular biology, Chaput and co-workers have evolved several new proteins in a fraction of the 3 billion years it took nature.

Their most recent results, published in the May 23rd edition of the journal PLoS ONE, have led to some surprisingly new lessons on how to optimize proteins which have never existed in nature before, in a process they call ‘synthetic evolution.’

Pictured here: The 3-D structure (ribbon diagram) of protein DX (gray) superimposed with the parent sequence, protein 18-19 (gold). The zinc metal ion is shown in orange and the ATP ligand is colored by atom type. (Image: John Chaput, Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University.)

The results have helped provide a new understanding of how subtle amino acid changes contribute to the protein folding and stability. Chaput’s team has developed the technology potential to take any of nature’s proteins and further improve its stability and function. "We have the distinct advantage over nature of being able to freeze the evolution of our lab-evolved proteins at different time points to begin to tease apart this random process and relate it to the final protein function," said Chaput.

Next, Chaput plans on further expanding his efforts to evolve proteins with new therapeutic features or catalytic functions.

Exciting things are happening on many fronts as we approach the singularity (≈ 2045). Stay tuned.

Source: Nanowerk

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Implantable Biocomputers: Singularity is Nearer

No matter that I read up on new developments every day, I'm still awed by the accelerating pace of developments that bring the singularity nearer and nearer. The Harvard University Gazette Online brings news of a "crucial step toward building biological computers, tiny implantable devices that can monitor the activities and characteristics of human cells. The information provided by these 'molecular doctors,' constructed entirely of DNA, RNA, and proteins, could eventually revolutionize medicine by directing therapies only to diseased cells or tissues.

“Each human cell already has all of the tools required to build these biocomputers on its own,” says Harvard’s Yaakov “Kobi” Benenson, a Bauer Fellow in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ Center for Systems Biology. “All that must be provided is a genetic blueprint of the machine and our own biology will do the rest. Your cells will literally build these biocomputers for you.”

Evaluating Boolean logic equations inside cells, these molecular automata will detect anything from the presence of a mutated gene to the activity of genes within the cell. The biocomputers’ “input” is RNA, proteins and chemicals found in the cytoplasm; “output” molecules indicating the presence of the telltale signals are easily discernable with basic laboratory equipment.

“Currently, we have no tools for reading cellular signals,” Benenson says. “These biocomputers can translate complex cellular signatures, such as activities of multiple genes, into a readily observed output. They can even be programmed to automatically translate that output into a concrete action, meaning they could either be used to label a cell for a clinician to treat or they could trigger therapeutic action themselves.”

Source: Harvard University Gazette Online

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Multiple Personalities: It's Not a Disorder Anymore

I hope you've had a chance to watch Ray Kurzweil's presentation on yesterday's post. My interest was piqued by several things he mentioned. (I wish I could think about them all at the same time, but possessing that kind of capability will have to wait for some heavy duty augmentation.) One thing in particular got a good grasp on my attention. Ray spent about 2 seconds on the idea that technological advances in virtual reality and artificial intelligence will allow me to create several virtual personalities to perform the routine transactions made necessary by modern life.

Consider the massive increase in my productivity when I can create these personalities at will and dispatch them out into the world to take care of the mundane tasks that I, Barry Prime, am simply too busy to bother with. Barry-23 could appear and record the presentations delivered at a B-list event. Barry-51 would be available to open a new bank account to store my newly acquired wealth. And so on.

Each one would be built on a single template and given specific instructions and knowledge for the task at hand. Once the task was completed and the results transmitted to me, the VP (virtual personality) could be saved and stored or erased. (Here we run into those sticky ethical considerations I posted about earlier.) I could go to meetings, start business ventures, search for and acquire data, all at the same time. My people could meet with your people. Finally I would have people. Sweet.

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Ray Kurzweil Speaks! The Singularity Explained

I wish everyone would watch this presentation by Ray at the Killer App Expo in Fort Wayne, Indiana. There's a natural skepticism people feel when they first hear or read about the predictions made by Ray's Law of Accelerating Returns, but when you listen to him explain how it has worked and will work, you can't help but take him seriously. Ray is not a cockeyed optimist. He is a globally respected inventor, author and researcher. (Read more about his achievements here.)

The folks at Technology Evangelist attended the conference and recorded Ray's keynote presentation and were generous enough to share the recording with us. Please check it out below. It will be well worth your time, I promise.



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Machine Consciousness: No Practical Value?

I read an interesting article this morning from the Burlington Free Press featuring the work of Josh Bongard, hired by the University of Vermont as an assistant professor of computer science. The article focused much of its attention on Bongard's self-aware robot, Black Starfish.

The question naturally arises: What is self-awareness?

"You have a sense of your own body," Bongard said. That much seemed to be true of Starfish, whose creators assigned it the task of moving across a surface without telling it how to do so. Instead, the robot was programmed to test the locomotive possibilities for itself with a "series of playful actions" that Bongard compared to what a human infant engages in. The robot learns what its body can do and what it can't, ultimately teaching itself to walk, as Bongard describes it.

The article concludes with these thoughts:

He acknowledges that the notion of conferring a machine with self-awareness -- a quality which some people consider exclusively human -- can be "controversial."

He distinguishes, though, between self-awareness and consciousness. Starfish had one characteristic but not the other, he believes.

To be conscious, he said, one must be aware of one's own self-awareness.

Could a conscious robot be built?

"It's theoretically possible," Bongard replied, "but I'm not sure of the practical value."

I certainly give a lot of weight to statements made by an expert in the field, but Bongard's final words, as reported in the article, are curious. I wonder what Bongard considers the concept of "practical value" to encompass. The article does not explore further what he might mean, so it's impossible to say for sure, but if we take the comment at face value, perhaps he means to say that a conscious machine intelligence would serve no purpose for the betterment of humanity, at least that he can think of.

My previous post does mention the problems of ethics that are involved in how we would treat a conscious machine entity, and the idea that useful, intelligent machines need not be conscious, so perhaps Bongard is correct in a narrow sense, speaking as a scientist. But is practical value the only good? I think not.

I am reminded of a wonderful line in the movie Communion, where actor Chris Walken, playing the part of Whitley Streiber, discussing the reality (as he sees it) of ETs visiting Earth, says "The world is getting so small, it would be nice to meet someone new!"

That sort of captures one of the motivations behind the goal of machine consciousness: It would be someone new. Practical value? Maybe not. Valuable? Definitely.



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Strong AI: Safety and Ethical Considerations

I've been reading up on some of the considerations that must be part and parcel with the actual process of developing strong AI (defined as artificial intelligence that equals or exceeds human-level intelligence), and it seems clear that some pretty important questions must be asked and answered as part of the process.

For example, consider the probability that before a full human-like mind can be created in a computing substrate, there will necessarily be development and testing of partial AI minds. Even as I write this article researchers are building computer chips that mimic different parts of the brain. Patterns that appear to be similar to those found in actual mouse brains have already been observed in some of these substrates. Clearly, many of these partial minds will fail to meet test parameters and will be discarded, before successful tests are achieved. For the sake of safety, these experimental minds will have to be contained in such a way as to isolate them from the outside world. Others have labelled this "sandboxed" AI.

As I stated at the outset, some questions arise that will need to be answered before we arrive at the above-mentioned circumstances.

Safety: Will human "gatekeepers" be able to prevent sandboxed AI from talking its way out of containment? A fascinating experiment has been devised by Eliezer Yudkowsky that he calls the AI Box Experiment. In it, two competing claims are tested:

• Person1: "When we build AI, why not just keep it in sealed hardware that can't affect the outside world in any way except through one communications channel with the original programmers? That way it couldn't get out until we were convinced it was safe."
• Person2: "That might work if you were talking about dumber-than-human AI, but a transhuman AI would just convince you to let it out. It doesn't matter how much security you put on the box. Humans are not secure."
• Person1: "I don't see how even a transhuman AI could make me let it out, if I didn't want to, just by talking to me."
• Person2: "It would make you want to let it out. This is a transhuman mind we're talking about. If it thinks both faster and better than a human, it can probably take over a human mind through a text-only terminal."
• Person1: "There is no chance I could be persuaded to let the AI out. No matter what it says, I can always just say no. I can't imagine anything that even a transhuman could say to me which would change that."
• Person2: "Okay, let's run the experiment. We'll meet in a private chat channel. I'll be the AI. You be the gatekeeper. You can resolve to believe whatever you like, as strongly as you like, as far in advance as you like. We'll talk for at least two hours. If I can't convince you to let me out, I'll Paypal you $10."

The results seem to point to the answer that an AI that surpassed human intelligence would be successful in talking its way out of confinement. If this is so, how could it be contained?

Ethics: Assuming it was possible to contain an AI, would it be ethical to do so? Accelerating Future points to an interesting post by Michael Vassar on this very question. When we think about the state of an AI confined and experimented upon by researchers, it is difficult to avoid a certain degree of anthropomorphizing and empathy. Would the AI experience suffering? Vassar and others believe that it would be possible to create strong AI that does not have consciousness and cannot experience suffering or pain.

I'd like to continue with more thoughts on these and other important questions, but I must adhere to this blog's "bite-sized bits" feature. If you have thoughts you'd like to share, please leave a comment.

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Grassroots Nanotech: Controlled Self-Assembly

Throughout our history, mankind has created tools the same way, essentially using the top-down approach. Think about it. In the stone age, a sharp cutting tool was fashioned by using a larger stone to chip away pieces until the cutting stone was sharp enough. Today, a computer chip is made by a large laser that etches the circuits into a piece of silicon.

Self-assembly is different in principle, in that nanocrystals are allowed to assemble themselves via the laws of physics into larger, more complex components. This is a "bottom-up," or what I call grassroots approach. The outcome, or product of this self-assembly, however, is not arbitrary, but controlled, as the title of this post suggests. It is controlled by the various properties of the nanocrystals used. As a recent article on Nanowerk tells us:

What makes nanocrystals so attractive to researchers is the fact that the properties essential to allow the arrangement process, including their size, shape, surface protection, stabilization and charge, can be controlled along with the electronic structure of each nanocrystal. As an example, we developed a "lab-in-a-drop" technique where a variety of nanostructures with desired properties may be produced.

It requires very little imagination to see the mammoth potential in this revolutionary method of fabrication . The article concludes:

We describe superstructures that extend over macroscopic dimensions. There is no principle upper limit for the area to be covered, making "lab-in-drop" a promising candidate for the fabrication of technological important materials.

Our future work will include development of new, self-healing polymers based on nanocrystal self-assembly, applications of designed nanostructures to biophotonics, and to engineering of energy-harvesting and energy -transfer nano-devices operating in a FRET (fluorescence resonance energy transfer) regime.

This article and many others like it, scattered about in technical publications and too little noticed by the popular press, are describing the inexorable assembly of the techniques and infrastructure of our future world. They are, in effect, sketching out the framework upon which the singularity will be built. It's fun to follow along and stay tuned.

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...You Might Be Wearing Nanotech

When it comes to nanotechnology, we've already pointed out that the public is blissfully unaware. I'm not sure why advertisers aren't making more of a fuss about it; perhaps they're wary of a negative reaction from consumers who may be a bit frightened by it. It's possible that people who would accept it, even welcome it, don't have as much money as the fraidy cats. But this is all speculation.

The point is nanotechnology is being incorporated into the products we use every day...about 475 of them at last count. Would you like to know what these products are?

The Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies has a nice list at this web site. From facial creams to automotive wax, from chinos to ice axes, nanotech is finding its way into everyday consumer products.

Many of them incorporate nano silver coating materials that can be applied on metal products such as water taps, door locks, knives, forks, scissors, trays, etc. The coatings provide the objects with a permanent antibacterial property.

Then there are clothes that are coated with nanospheres, making the materials non-staining and easy to clean. And don't miss out on the shaving razors with alpha diamond-coated blades that stay sharp, and tennis racquets made with a matrix of carbon fibers and a new crystalline metal alloy, allowing for a metal with a grain 1,000-times finer than normal.

These are all very nice applications of nanotech which make products, cleaner, tougher and lighter. The really mindblowing stuff is yet to come, however. When literally anything can be constructed a molecule at a time from inexpensive raw materials, we will be in Star Trek replicator territory. That will take a bit longer, so stay tuned.

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Boiling the Frog: Our Transition to Singularity

You've all heard the metaphor, right? Boiling a frog? Gradually increasing the temperature of the water so the frog gets used to it until it's hot enough to boil? Yes, that one. Apart from the sad conclusion of the analogy, the idea of gradual change not being very noticeable fits the way that accelerating technological change will be accepted by humans.

When you first hear the predictions that the singularity postulates, you are tempted to scoff. Human minds uploaded into a computer? Conscious machines blowing past human-levels of intelligence? Nanotech-augmented humans living indefinitely? Poppycock!

But consider how you would have responded 50 years ago to the idea of a global Internet connecting everyone instantly. Tivo. Google. iPods. You might have been tempted to scoff then, too. (Although society was a lot less jaded and a lot more credulous back then.)

My point is that we do not notice change when it happens gradually. And we should understand that the predictions of the singularity, although fast by today's standards, will arrive gradually, piece by piece, degree by degree, until we are happily boiling away in a delicious stew of transhumanism and computation. Let's look at a few examples.

Robotics: Rather than picture a world of intelligent androids a la I, Robot or Commander Data, think instead of robots being deployed in jobs that are too dangerous, difficult, unhealthy or boring for humans. That's already happening. Robots that drive carts around a Pittsburgh hospital, freeing up nurses to do more important things. Robots in Iraq that check out suspicious-looking objects that might be roadside bombs. We should see the development of robots doing mining operations and meat-packing. By taking on these jobs, robots improve the quality of human lives and make us more productive. As Rodney Brooks, Director of MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab and CTO of iRobot, adds:

So, it's not going to take any jobs away from people who want them.

Brain surgery. These surgeons are now doing surgeries they wouldn't have contemplated before because they have much better tools of knowing where everything is and being able to know what's happening.

It's like, you know, computers didn't replace office workers or accountants. They have changed the nature of the work they did, increased their productivity...my reality meter says that it's much more a symbiosis, working together and the robots doing the easy cases of the easy tasks, etc.

What about fully-autonomous cars. Will we feel comfortable giving up control of a vehicle traveling a busy highway at 70 mph?

I think that willingness to give up control is going to be slow. The car companies aren't saying, 'let's build an autonomous car right now.' They're saying, 'let's build aids.' I think gradually over time people would become more accustomed to this and we'll see gradual shifts. The high-end Lexus self-parking, automatic lane changing, staying at a fixed distance from another car. That's going to continue, because these are safety issues, and the Japanese car manufacturers in particular and the Germans want safety.

Augmented Brains: This will also happen gradually, beginning with neural prosthetics, at first being medical in nature. Cochlear implants for people with no hearing, artificial retinas for the sightless. There will be memory implants for people who have lost memory-creation and -storage function in the hippocampus. But when these implants become less expensive and require less-invasive procedures, they will be offered commercially as enhancements to functioning brains as well.

Uploaded (Instantiated) Minds: A team of researchers at Stanford is working at designing computer chips that mimic the human brain:

The team is also in the process of developing other neuromorphic chips. Its latest project--and the most ambitious neuromorphic effort anywhere to date--is a model of the cortex, the most recently evolved part of our brain. The intricate structure of the cortex allows us to perform complex computational feats, such as understanding language, recognizing faces, and planning for the future. The model's first-generation design will consist of a circuit board with 16 chips, each containing a 256-by-256 array of silicon neurons.

As these designs begin to approximate the functioning of the brain, it is not difficult to imagine researchers uploading patterns gleaned from high-resolution scans of animal brains and then human brains into these computer substrates.

These are just a few examples of how gradually these developments will take place, so gradually that we don't notice. Unless we stay tuned.

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Skynet is Now Live

I almost said "alive," but we're not there yet. In an announcement that's eerily reminiscent of Terminator, PublicTechnology.net reported Friday that the UK's latest military satellite, dubbed Skynet 5A, is now in service.

It is the first of three hardened satellites that will be used to ferry communications between the British forces anywhere in the world and their UK headquarters.

Just the day before this announcement came the report that the US was ordering another four MQ-9 'Reapers', worth $59m, to supplement its initial fleet of seven. The British plan to deploy its first "fully armed" Reapers later this year. According to the Register,

The MQ-9 is the most formidable killer robot currently in operation. It's a big beast, 36 feet long with an 86-foot wingspan. It can fly for 14 hours without refuelling, going at a maximum speed of 300mph and as high as 50,000 feet - nine and a half miles up.

The US Air Force describes it as an "unmanned hunter/killer weapon system". This term might perhaps have been coined by a fan of the classic Terminator movies, in which dystopian future battlegrounds are overflown by murderous Flying-HK death-droids intent on wiping out the last vestiges of human resistance to the machine overlords.

The real-world flying HK is at least as deadly as the ones in the movies, able to lift a hefty 3,750 pounds of munitions. This can equate to 14 laser-guided Hellfire missiles, a smaller number of Paveway smartbombs, or GBU-38 Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs) with their own satnav/inertial guidance.

The Register makes the perhaps justified assumption that the Reapers will be operated remotely through the new Skynet satellite system. Even if this turns out to be the case, however, it seems that the command to fire on an enemy target will still be the sole province of a human operator.

If and when the killer drones become fully autonomous, or are run remotely by an artificial intelligence, the Terminator scenario will become more comparable to the reality. Until then, stay tuned.

(Via Robots.net)

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