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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Opposition to Radical Life-Extension

You might think that the goal of extending our lifespans is a noble one. Not everyone agrees. BetterHumans points to a fascinating article on the Crisis web site called Superhuman: The Uncharted Territory of Transhumanism. Here's a sample:

The search for eternal youth is an ancient human impulse, going back to the world’s earliest recorded epic, Gilgamesh. But with modern medical technology, we now seem closer to achieving that end than ever before.

But does this go too far? Theological critics of anti-aging technology have pointed out that aging has long been considered a consequence of the Fall, and that we are undoing God’s command when we radically extend life through medical means. Leon Kass, former chairman of the President’s Council on Bioethics, sees other, more philosophical problems with anti-aging research: “The desire to prolong youthfulness is not only a childish desire to eat one’s life and keep it. . . . It seeks an endless present, isolated from anything truly eternal, and severed from any true continuity with past and future. It is in principle hostile to children, because children, those who come after, are those who will take one’s place; they are life’s answer to mortality” (First Things, May 2001). Meanwhile, in apparent agreement with Kass, a 2002 document edited by then–Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Communion and Stewardship: Human Persons Created in the Image of God, states, “Disposing of death is in reality the most radical way of disposing of life.”

Now, why would these theologians find fault with the idea of extending human life? The message we're used to hearing from them is that life is sacred. I guess it is sacred only so long as you don't have too much of it.

Here's my take on it. And I know some of you will vehemently disagree, but I'll go ahead anyway. It's about control. People are controllable by religious leaders essentially due to their instinctive fear of death. Take death away and the religious leaders lose their grip on their followers. Worrying about one's eternal destination, be it heaven or hell, will be cast aside, or so these theologians fear.

Of course many believers are religious for other reasons. They find comfort, solace and even transcendence in their beliefs. That motivation won't vanish if we can live longer, will it? I think not.

It's not hard to see, with only a cursory glance at history, a trend away from human religious authority. Not religious feeling or observance, mind you, but the slavish obeisance paid to religious leaders and institutions. There was a time when the Roman Catholic church was the only game in town. The regular Joe couldn't read, couldn't read Latin, and had no access to a Bible anyway. Knowing the will of God was the exclusive province of the Popes, Cardinals, Bishops and Priests.

If anyone tried to guide people to a different path, they were aggressively hunted, tortured and burned at the stake through an institution called the Inquisition. But then came Martin Luther. The Roman Catholic church now had Protestant competition for the fealty of the common man.

You see, the religious leaders of old wanted to maintain control. Perhaps some of them truly believed that maintaining control over people's beliefs and lives was the only way to save their souls. But control they did desire. The same is true in our day, I fear, leading some religious potentates to decry the possibility of radical life-extension. Perhaps what then-Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, should have said is that "Disposing of death is in reality the most radical way of disposing of our control of the church."

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Going All-Virtual: The Desire to Leave Reality Behind

Considering the implications of the singularity is a fascinating exercise. We will be facing choices and available enhancements that require of us quite a bit of imagination if we are to even tentatively understand them. In this article I will raise an issue that I think will confront society at large and ourselves as individuals within the next few decades: Should I go virtual and leave reality behind?

When we hear the term "virtual reality," what may come to mind is the bulky helmet and treadmill setup worn by Michael Douglas in the movie Disclosure. No one would be fooled by that kind of simulation, because their senses would be only partially engaged. They would feel the helmet, they would smell the room they were in, they would always be aware that they were standing, they could not feel the touch of a virtual person or object. The entire experience would never be mistaken for reality.

Skip now to the singularity, when nanomachines in our blood and in our brains can cut off all the data coming from our sensory organs and replace them with virtual data. Every signal being processed by your brain could be coming from the nanomachines, rather than from the outside world. You would not feel the chair that you are sitting on, you would not feel the warmth of the air surrounding your body, or smell the smoke coming from the fire that was started when your lit cigarette fell from your slack fingers onto the flammable carpet.

You see, we would be so completely engaged in our virtual world that it would be very easy to lose track of anything happening on the outside. This possibility raises for me two issues in particular that will have to be addressed in the design of such a virtual reality system.

First, there would have to be some connection with real reality left open. It would have to be unobtrusive in order to avoid ruining the fantasy of the virtual world in which we are enmeshed. But it would have to be able to alert us to messages coming from the outside, to warn us of danger, to remind us that we need to eat, or attend to other bodily functions. (Although we will probably have other means of taking care of those things automatically.) I'm reminded of occasions when I am listening to music from my phone through my earbuds. If someone is calling, I'll hear the alert over the music, so I won't miss the call. Something similar would need to be involved with our future VR system.

Second, when it becomes a simple thing to create a virtual world that we actually prefer to the real one, there will be a very powerful motivation to move our minds into the virtual and abandon the physical body we once called home. Certainly many would choose not to do such a thing, for various reasons, nostalgic, religious, phobic, whatever. But it seems to me that most people will choose to go virtual all the way and stop having to be burdened with the vicissitudes and vagaries of the material world.

I'd like to know what you thin, so feel free to leave a comment. In the meantime, stay tuned.

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What Do Nanomachines Look Like?

When you hear about nanotechnology (and you will hear about it more and more since it's moving into the mainstream of manufacturing), you might wonder what a nanomachine might look like. Since you can't see them with your unaided eye, you have to look at highly magnified images. But for the folks whose job it is to design the tiny parts for the nanomachines, some powerful design software comes into play.

Nano-sized machine parts are the size of molecules and are made up of atoms that are visible in the animated design views. They operate by virtue of the tiny forces that exist at the atomic level or matter. To help you visualize what some of these working parts might look like, here are a few examples:



This is a small bearing that has 2 components and 206 atoms.



Pictured above is a differential gear.



This is a neon pump.

These animations give an idea of what nanomachines will be made of and how they will work. Stay tuned. (More animations can be found at Nanorex)

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Multiple Concurrent Streams of Consciousness

One of the most onerous limitations against which we are forced to labor as human beings is our handicapped stream of consciousness. We seem to be capable of only one each. Why is that? It has been postulated that humanity as a whole may possess its own consciousness, of which its individual components are unaware and to which we are denied access. In the other direction, it has also occurred to some deep thinkers that several smaller components of our own nervous systems may have their own consciousnesses, together comprising the one of which we are aware. And again, they do not have access to our master consciousness, nor are we aware of theirs, if they exist.

But back to our problem. We can pay attention to only one thing at a time, think about only one thing at a time. Yes, it is certainly true that our brains are working at many other tasks, again that we are not aware of. Many difficult problems are sorted out by what we call our subconscious, and then presented to our conscious minds, solved and wrapped in a pretty bow. Another part of our brains responds instinctively to stimuli that our conscious minds haven't even had time to register, such as a sharp object headed at speed directly towards our eye. But still, we have only one stream of consciousness.

What would life be like if we were capable of multiple concurrent streams, all of which we were simultaneously aware? We could be working furiously at a difficult engineering problem and conversing with a colleague and trying to decide what to have for dinner, simultaneously. Think how much we could accomplish. And if each stream were aware of and could communicate with all the others? Sharing information back and forth? By the time we've solved the engineering issue, we have followed up with our colleague and planned our sure-to-be fabulous dinner. What a time saver that ability would be.

It seems to me, although I am no expert, that in addition to adding computer components to our brains in order to augment memory capacity and processing power, adding multiple concurrent streams of consciousness should be a most desirable goal. Sure, I could create multiple versions of myself, each of which could be working independently, but wouldn't it be more pleasing to be aware of each version's awareness simultaneously? I think so.

Consider that what we call "multi-tasking" really is not, in the sense that it is more accurately described as switching rapidly back and forth between tasks. I can only pay attention to one thing at a time. This is the reason why the use of a cell phone while driving presents such a danger to life, limb and auto. When my attention is focused on a conversation, it will necessarily be diverted from the road. Even though my reptilian brain will alert me to a rapidly decelerating vehicle directly in my path in order to get my attention back on the road, my conversation will have to be figuratively placed on hold while I deal with the traffic problem.

Performing a cursory web search on this topic, I was not successful at finding any useful information, so if you are aware of any good references, please pass them along in a comment.

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Raised Imperishable?

A bit of backstory is required here. I spent half of my life as a Christian minister. I am no longer a Christian, and obviously not a minister. Today I am an atheistic blogger, although the focus of my blogs is unrelated to atheism. I tell you this not to offend those of you who believe in God, not to curry favor with those of you who do not. I only mention it because I will quote some scripture in this post, but the post is not about religion. It is about the singularity, transhumanism, and radical life-extension. So please bear with me.

Ray Kurzweil, Vernor Vinge, and many others foresee technological advances in the near future that will make it possible to upload human beings' entire personality/mind-patterns, into machine substrates, whereupon these minds will continue the lives of the individual uploads potentially indefinitely. Michael Anissimov has an excellent article on these "uploads" here.

Now, here's the quote from the Bible I warned you was coming:

1Co 15:35-44 NASB But someone will say, "How are the dead raised? And with what kind of body do they come?" (36) You fool! That which you sow does not come to life unless it dies; (37) and that which you sow, you do not sow the body which is to be, but a bare grain, perhaps of wheat or of something else. (38) But God gives it a body just as He wished, and to each of the seeds a body of its own. (39) All flesh is not the same flesh, but there is one flesh of men, and another flesh of beasts, and another flesh of birds, and another of fish. (40) There are also heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is one, and the glory of the earthly is another. (41) There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory. (42) So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown a perishable body, it is raised an imperishable body; (43) it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; (44) it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.

I can't be the first person to have made this connection, probably not the 100th, but I know I haven't read it anywhere else before. It's fairly obvious, isn't it? I am not implying that the author of these verses had the technological singularity of the 21st century in mind, that would be silly. But the striking parallel between the religious and the secular concepts may be the result of a common motive: the simple human desire to rid ourselves entirely of the vicissitudes of the flesh.

It is clear to many that the future of mankind lies nestled comfortably in durable, replicable, machine substrates, rather than in biology. I am reminded of the wonderfully humorous science-fiction short story published in April 1999 in Omni magazine written by Terry Bisson, They're Made Out of Meat. It's worth a read if you've never heard of it, and it captures perfectly the sense that moving out of biological substrates is a virtual inevitability for any sentient race.

The biblical doctrine of bodily resurrection entails the instantiation of the "soul" (read personality/mind-pattern) into a "glorious" and "imperishable" new substrate. Isn't that the sort of thing we envision happening in the singularity? Without all the religious and supernatural accouterments, I mean. Makes you think. Stay tuned.

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Uncovering the Memory Molecule

For many years researchers have been attempting to understand how human memory works. Precisely how it works. Down to the specific molecules in play. That's what I call attention to detail. The researchers involved in a recent study at Brandeis University have, for the first time, identified the specific molecule involved in memory storage in the brain. As reported by Biology News Net:

For years, scientists have studied the molecular basis of memory storage, trying to find the molecules that store memory, just as DNA stores genetic memory. In an important study published this week in the Journal of Neuroscience, Brandeis University researchers report for the first time that memory storage can be induced and then biochemically erased in slices of rat hippocampus by manipulating a so-called "memory molecule," a protein kinase known as CaMKII.

So what does this mean? For one thing, it will be helpful in developing treatments for diseases where memory loss is a major factor, such as Alzheimer's. That wouldn't be too shabby an outcome, certainly.

There will be, however, additional benefits to humans beyond direct applications to fighting disease. There will also accrue the benefits of understanding how the human brain works, specifically the reverse engineering process. As we move inexorably towards duplicating the functioning, including consciousness, of the brain in a computer, advances like the one described in this article can only help speed the process along. Stay tuned.

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Will Humans Become Attached to Robots?

Many have speculated about how humanity will react to robots. There are researchers who are focused entirely on making robots look more like humans, adding facial expressiveness, gestures and head movements like nods and shakes, all designed to help us accept robots into our lives. But I don't think that's going to be a problem.

Humans, according to Rodney Brooks, director of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, co-founder and chief technology officer of the pioneering firm iRobot and author of "Flesh and Machines: How Robots Will Change Us," "...have evolved to recognize instantly when an entity behaves like it's alive."

Consider the bond that develops between humans and their animal companions. We even form attachments to our cars! How much of a leap will it be to assimilate robotic friends into our circles of love? Not much of one, it seems. Just take a peek at the emotional connections that are being manifested between war fighters in Iraq and Afghanistan and their robot helpers.

Ted Bogosh recalls one day in Camp Victory, near Baghdad, when he was a Marine master sergeant running the robot repair shop.

That day, an explosive ordnance disposal technician walked through his door. The EODs, as they are known, are the people who -- with their robots -- are charged with disabling Iraq's most virulent scourge, the roadside improvised explosive device. In this fellow's hands was a small box. It contained the remains of his robot. He had named it Scooby-Doo.

"There wasn't a whole lot left of Scooby," Bogosh says. The biggest piece was its 3-by-3-by-4-inch head, containing its video camera. On the side had been painted "its battle list, its track record. This had been a really great robot."

The veteran explosives technician looming over Bogosh was visibly upset. He insisted he did not want a new robot. He wanted Scooby-Doo back.

"Sometimes they get a little emotional over it," Bogosh says. "Like having a pet dog. It attacks the IEDs, comes back, and attacks again. It becomes part of the team, gets a name. They get upset when anything happens to one of the team. They identify with the little robot quickly. They count on it a lot in a mission."

The more advanced they become, the more intelligence they manifest, the more attached we will become to them. And then we will add them to ourselves and become them. Stay tuned.

Source: WashingtonPost.com

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Nanomedicine: Drug Delivery & Diagnostics Get a Boost

Nanotech is the key to some new methods of precision drug-delivery and diagnostics. Two spinoff companies in Austalia have announced some new products under development promise "to provide better health outcomes with reduced costs to the community." The specific projects currently in the pipeline at Interstitial NS are nanostructured medicines for diabetes and asthma whose nanoscale manufacture makes possible otherwise impractical delivery methods.

The Interstitial NS transdermal delivery patch for insulin has already been tested on animals by the Victorian College of Pharmacy and is expected to begin pre-clinical trials in September. Interstitial NS is working with Melbourne-based company Catapult to produce a portable prototype device to enable self administration. The patches are manufactured by the Victorian company MiniFAB, while the nanostructured drugs are formulated by Eiffel Technology.

Interstitial NS will also commercialize a device for pulmonary delivery of nanoparticulate drugs. The portable personal inhaler uses Surface Acoustic Wave (SAW) technology, with Melbourne-based Charlwood Design designing the prototype pump. Pre-clinical trials are anticipated to start in January 2008. The transdermal delivery technology used by Interstitial NS has already been recognized as "prime technological innovation" by analysts Frost & Sullivan.

At Quintain NanoSystems a rapid diagnostic test for the detection of meningitis is the initial focus.

The test uses nanoparticle technology to provide a rapid color-based readout, avoiding lengthy bacterial culturing for identifying the bacteria. Also in development are a number of other diagnostic tools. Nanoparticle-based imaging reagents will enable early detection of disease states in humans. Nanoarray biochips will offer a cost effective method of detection for both salmonella and bovine mastitis, and enzyme biosensor probes are under development for the measurement of sulfite in food and beverages.

These products represent only the first wavelets lapping at the shore of human disease and aging, foreshadowing a coming tsunami of healing and radical life-extension at the hands of nanotechnology. Otherwise known as the Singularity. Stay tuned.

(Source: Nanowerk)

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The Stagnation of the Star Trekian Future

I never liked Star Trek TNG. Even though the original Star Trek now looks cheesy by comparison, it's only the visuals and props that seem that way. At least the characters were real human beings with human failings, not like TNG's politically correct, personality-deprived mannequins. I could easily picture James Tiberius Kirk letting fly an expletive or two when things aren't going his way. But Picard? Heavens no. Not even Worf, for crying out loud.

But all that's neither here nor there. My focus in this article will not be the lifeless characters on that television series, but the technologically stagnant future portrayed therein. Think about it: TNG takes place in the 24th century, 300-plus years from now, and yet humans and computers have managed to merge not one iota. It is set 80 years or so after the original gang, and what's new since that time? The computer's a bit fancier, the transporter looks snazzier, the ship just a bit sleeker, the phasers...well they don't seem to have changed at all. Human life-expectancy is essentially what it is today. This is what we call stagnation. Nothing much happening. Except that now, everyone is polite to one another, women are respected and aliens are accepted. Peachy.

When viewed from the perspective of an understanding of the coming singularity and the law of accelerating returns, that scenario seems downright unimaginative and even unthinkable. But that is still the climate of thought among most of our society. Eventually, however, the accelerating pace of technological development will become less easily overlooked. I like how Michael Anissimov puts it in his excellent article, Superhumanism:

Like cell phones leapfrogging land lines in places like Chile, mature Kurzweilian transhumanism will leapfrog watered-down notions of transhumanism based on stem cells and gene therapy and go right to the “sending nanomachines in all directions at the speed of light”-type understanding of transhumanism. We already see this happening. It will continue to occur with anyone capable of reading and understanding technology news and a few basic arguments.

One might even place some of the blame on the creators of such pablum as TNG for the pallid vision of the future under the burden of which our culture now labors. This next comes from a transcript of Eliezer Yudkowsky's keynote address at the WorldFutures symposium, and it is on the nose:

There's a standard cultural mythology of a place called "the future". It has towering skyscrapers, flying cars, and, of course, slightly more advanced computers. It's strange, really; we have beliefs, sometimes strongly emotional beliefs, about a place we've never been. It's as if we all had definite opinions about the people and culture of Atlantis. This... is Hollywood's fault. Hollywood keeps showing us people living and working and having adventures in starships and space stations. Those movies become our vicarious memories; we remember what the characters said, and what they looked like, and what happened to them, in the world Hollywood tells us is "the future".

Fifty thousand years ago, there was no such thing as television; humans did not evolve in a world where you can actually see fictions. We don't have strong innate safeguards to prevent us from reasoning using fictional memories. When reporters write about advances in medical prostheses or brain-computer interfaces, they can never seem to resist mentioning the Borg. What are the Borg? A dream. Something a Star Trek scriptwriter made up. We've invented a new logical fallacy; generalization from fictional evidence. The Borg are slow, clumsy, uncompassionate, inexorable, deadly; so humans with a brain-computer interface must be like that as well. We've seen them... haven't we?

Think about the technology we have now that didn't exist when many of us were children. Video games. Pong was the first and I played it for the first time when I was about 14. VCRs. CDs. Computers. The Internet. Cell phones. Bluetooth. We didn't even have these things in our imaginations before they were introduced. The truth, I believe, is that when the future comes, there will be technology that most of us did not have even in our imaginations. And it will come at a pace so blindingly fast that we will be unable to keep up with it. Until we become it.

So long, Star Trek TNG. (Capt. Kirk can stay.)



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Understanding the Technological Singularity: Vernor Vinge Interview

For those of you who are new to the concept of the coming technological singularity, this NPR podcast, featuring Vernor Vinge (pronounced vin-gee), a retired San Diego State University Professor of Mathematics, computer scientist, and science fiction author, will be well worth your time. In it, he talks about AI as refering to "amplified intelligence" rather than artificial intelligence, among other highly visionary predictions. About Vernor Vinge:

He is best known for his Hugo Award-winning novels A Fire Upon the Deep (1992) and A Deepness in the Sky (1999), as well as for his 1993 essay "The Coming Technological Singularity", in which he argues that exponential growth in technology will reach a point beyond which we cannot even speculate about the consequences. (From Wikipedia)

The brief podcast gives a nutshell description, salient in spite of its brevity, of the singularity. A very worthwhile few minutes. Click here to listen.

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Warning! Warning! Quantum Computers Approaching!

Science Daily reports today the successful demonstration of the "world's first quantum bit (qubit) circuit that can control the strength of coupling between qubits. Technology achieving control of the coupling strength between qubits is vital to the realization of a practical quantum computer, and has been long awaited in the scientific field."

The quantum computer, when it is finally brought to fruition, is expected to far surpass the capabilities of even the most modern of today's supercomputers. Actual computing in a quantum computer is carried out by manipulating the quantum state of qubits in time sequence by external controls. To achieve such manipulation, it is necessary to control the: 1. States of individual qubits, 2. States of two qubits (logic operation), and 3. Ability to turn on /off the coupling between qubits.

NEC, JST, and RIKEN have already announced successful development of key technologies for the world's first solid-state qubit and the world's first two-qubit logic gate, based on solid-state technology that excels in its ability to integrate qubits. Following these achievements, the research group addressed the controllable coupling of qubits as the next logical step in realization of a practical quantum computer. Their new research result represents the world's first successful demonstration of controllably coupled qubits.

To date, the coupling of qubits has been difficult to control. In order to realize this control, the research group devised an original mechanism that employs another qubit in between the two qubits for coupling. The coupling qubit functions as a non-linear transformer that is able to turn on and off the magnetic coupling between the two qubits, and on/off control is achieved simply by inputting a microwave. Moreover, coupling operation has been achieved without shortening the lifetime of each qubit. Scalability is also realized through the repetition of coupled two-qubit units - a feature necessary for future quantum computers.

Of course my title, with its reference to the robot's stentorian warning from Lost in Space, is facetious, in that I don't believe that quantum computing is a bad thing. I do want you, the interested reader, to be aware that it is approaching, and that it will bring with it one of the new paradigms for extending the viability of Moore's Law into the foreseeable future, or up until the Singularity. Stay tuned.

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Computer Chips That Make Themselves

When you stop to think about it, they way our own bodies are built is by self-assembling nanostructures. Who copies the code from each cell's DNA and hands the right instructions to the guys who make the proteins? Who takes the proteins and folds them in three dimensions just right so that they can do their part in the ultra-complex task of assembling and operating each part and function of our bodies? No one. Our bodies are self-assembling on a minute scale.

But how do these nano-scale structures know how to assemble themselves? I mean, it's hard for the average human being to assemble a child's toy late at night on Christmas Eve. Well, they simple obey the laws of physics. It's not like they have any choice or discretion.

IBM has come up with a technique for using self-assembly to make ultrasmall features in computer chips. The process uses self-assembly to create air gaps as insulation between wires in microprocessors; early tests demonstrate a 35% increase in chip speed and a 15% decrease in power consumption as a result of this technique.

The new self-assembly approach ushers in to chip making an era of nanotechnology, says Daniel Edelstein, IBM fellow and chief scientist for the self-assembly air-gap project. Importantly, Edelstein says, IBM's process is designed to be compatible with current manufacturing facilities and materials.

One of the bottlenecks in the development of today's chips is the copper wiring that passes data between transistors and out of the chip. As chips shrink, these wires, which are about 70 nanometers wide, need to be fabricated closer together. However, the closer the wires are to each other, the more likely their electrical currents are to interfere with each other, sapping energy and slowing data flow. Insulation can help, but today's insulating material--glass--won't be good enough for future generations of chips. Engineers know that air is a better insulator, and they have been working to develop ways to create air gaps small enough--about 35 nanometers in diameter--to work. But the current state-of-the-art manufacturing equipment can't reliably produce air gaps that small.

So instead, IBM researchers used a new type of polymer to help them create the air gaps. The polymer is poured onto copper wires that are embedded in an insulating material. When the polymer is heated, the molecules pull away from each other to form a regular array of nanoscale holes. These holes are used as a template to etch hollow columns into the insulating material that surrounds the wires. Engineers then pump plasma, an electrically charged gas, through the holes to blast away the remaining insulating material. A quick chemical rinse leaves behind clear gaps of air on either side of the copper wires.

The new process is slated to be implemented in chip manufacturing by 2009. (Somehow I think Moore's Law will be safe for a while yet.)

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The Transformative Power of Self-Replication

Consider the power of self-replication. Biological systems are all products of self-replication, from the very first bit of self-replicating DNA, down through billions of years, entwined in every branch of the tree of life and our own DNA. A single cell of blue-green algae replicates itself geometrically over a summer and covers the entire pond. Our own cells replicate themselves over and over until the their lease on the blueprint runs out and we age and die. Biological self-replication is something we experience every day of our lives.

However, most of us are completely unaware of the development, right now as you read this, of our own brand of self-replication, using not the constraining materials of our biological heritage, but an entirely reinvented, technologically adaptive, system. Michael Anissimov writes in Accelerating Future:

Humanity’s task is to reinvent the technology of self-replication that the first single-celled organisms stumbled upon billions of years ago, but this time, do it right. Expand the range of possible forms. Boost the throughput and decrease the minimum duration of each self-replication cycle. Combine the adaptive elegance of the biosphere with the superior absolute performance and chemical flexibility of the technosphere. The final outcome is something far greater than both: the means to turn the inorganic to the organic and vice versa at arbitrary rates and generate new forms of more diversity and ability than either sphere could generate alone.

Of course, self-replication presents humanity not only with virtually unbounded opportunity to reshape our environment, end hunger, poverty and pollution and reinvent even ourselves; it also presents the greatest danger to our survival than any asteroid impact or pandemic ever could. The problem is that for nanomachines to be of any use, they must operate in enormous numbers. The generation of such numbers requires self-replication, and uncontrolled self-replication could easily destroy us.

To counter this danger, some propose a complete ban of such technology. But that would be a mistake, since unregulated development and deployment would certainly take place, and legitimate researchers and scientists would not be able to create defensive measures. Just think about the Internet as an example. There are threats and dangers that have been created by people with ill intent, but legitimate developers are able to stay ahead of them and effectively contain these threats. The same can be accomplished with self-replicating technology.

Right now there are serious people considering what defenses must be put in place to deal with any outbreaks of self-replicating machines, as well as methods of preventing or shutting down any such occurrences.

An article by Gregory Cochran, an adjunct professor of anthropology at the University of Utah, on Edge.org, titled "The Sorcerer's Apprentice," says, in part, the following:

"In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread"—it has always been that way.

Most men have been slaves of necessity, while the few who were not lived by exploiting others who were. Although mechanization has eased that burden in the advanced countries, it is still the case for the majority of the human race. Limited resources (mainly fossil fuels), as well as negative consequences of industrialization such as global warming, have made some people question whether American living standards can ever be extended to most of the human race. They're pessimists, and they're wrong.

Hardly anyone seems to realize it, but we're on the threshold of an era of unbelievable abundance. Within a generation—sooner if we want it enough—we will be able to make a self-replicating machine, first seriously suggested by John von Neumann.

Such a machine would absorb energy through solar cells, eat rock and use the energy and minerals to make copies of itself. Numbers would grow geometrically, and if we manage to design one with a reasonably short replication time—say six months—we could have trillions working for humanity in another generation. You might compare this process to a single cell of blue-green algae, which replicates over the summer until it covers the entire pond. But unlike algae, a self-replicating machine would be programmed and controlled by us. If it could make it its own mechanical and electronic parts, it would also be able to make toasters, refrigerators, and Lamborghinis, as well as the electricity to power them. We could make the deserts bloom, put two cars in every pot, and end world poverty, while simultaneously fighting global warming. It's closer than you think, since the key technologies are already being developed for use in rapid prototyping and desktop manufacturing. Aristotle thought that slavery would only end when looms weave by themselves: we're almost there.

I'm reminded of Mickey Mouse as the sorcerer's apprentice in Fantasia... He enchanted a broomstick to fetch water, but didn't know how to stop it. When he split the broom with an axe, over and over, each of the pieces took up a pail—and before you know he was in over his head. But where he saw a crisis, we see opportunity.

I believe that we would do well to become aware of both the dangers and the opportunities that are coming our way at breakneck speed through the transformative power of self-replication. Stay tuned.

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Magnetic Nano-Vortices: The Future of Data Storage?

If a group of scientists at Kyoto University is correct, magnetic vortices may be the future of data storage.

In an important step toward future data-storage technologies based on magnetism, a research group has determined how to control the magnetization of a “magnetic vortex,” a curling nanometer-sized magnetic structure present within tiny, millionth-of-a-meter-sized magnetic disks. Understanding the behavior of this type of structure is one of the main requirements of magnetic data-storage development.

Physorg.com reports that they have "found a way to manipulate the magnetization of the vortex's core without applying an external magnetic field to the disk. Instead, they applied a current."

Although the applied current is electrical in nature, being based on electrons, it isn't a stream of moving electrons. It is a “spin current,” a stream of moving spins. Spin is an intrinsic property of electrons that essentially imparts them with a tiny magnetic field, or magnetic “moment,” pointing either up or down. If several electrons are placed in a row, a spin can propagate down the line; many propagating spins produces a spin current.

Across the globe, teams of researchers are working to build viable spin-based electronic devices – spintronics – using spin currents. This group's work opens the possibility that simple magnetic disks can serve as the building blocks for spintronic devices like memory cells, where each bit of information would be stored as the direction of the vortex-core's field. Vortex-core switching could be an efficient way of writing data to a memory device.

Massive amounts of data will need to be practicably stored in order to contain the amounts of information in a human brain. This development will perhaps bring us closer to the capacity required. Stay tuned.

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