Lifeboat Foundation

Written By: Cameron Scott — Singularity Hub

Even the most adamant techno-optimists among us must admit that new technologies can introduce hidden dangers: Fire, as the adage goes, can cook the dinner, but it can also burn the village down.

The most powerful example of unforeseen disadvantages stemming from technology is climate change. Should we attempt to fix a problem caused by technology, using more novel technology to hack the climate? The question has spurred heated debate.

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Dick Pelletier — IEET

What can we expect when machines surpass humans in intelligence; a point in time that futurists predict could become reality by 2045.

The concept for the Singularity goes something like this: researchers are convinced that technology will eventually supersede human intelligence creating an amazing world filled with ‘smart’ machines. These machines will not only defeat us in chess and games like Jeopardy, but will also drive cars, write books and replace humans in customer service, and one day, emulate consciousness.

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Overmanagement by Mr. Andres Agostini

This is an excerpt from the conclusion section o, “…Overmanagement…,” that discusses some management strategies. To read the entire piece, just click the link at the end of article:

BEGINNING OF EXCERPT.

Question: What other contemporary issues particularly concern you? Do you find signs of
hope or resistance around these issues that, perhaps, you finding heartening?

Continue reading “Overmanagement” »

Zoltan Istvan — Huffington Post Visionary; Philosopher; Author of bestselling novel ‘The Transhumanist Wager’

For a few billion people around the world, Christmas is the most important and relished holiday of the year. It’s the day with the most gift-giving, the most family get-togethers, the most religious activities, and the most colorful fairy tales that children and adults almost universally embrace with sacred fervor. For many nations, no other day comes close to being as special. For this reason, it seems almost unimaginable that another day — especially an unknown one looming on the horizon — will soon unseat Christmas as the most important day in the world. Nonetheless, for humanity, the course is set. The birth of an artificial intelligence equal or greater than that of human intelligence is coming. It’s called AI Day. And once it arrives, it will rapidly usher in a new age.

For decades, the concept of a man-made intelligence matching or surpassing our own — technically called AGI (artificial general intelligence) or Strong AI — has been steeped in science fiction. Upon hearing the term AI, many people immediately think of the sentient computer HAL in Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece film 2001: A Space Odyssey. However, what most people fail to grasp is that once AI becomes self-aware and joins with the internet, it could grow its intelligence thousands of times in just mere days, perhaps hours. Frankly, it could quickly surpass all measurements of intelligence that humans are even capable of monitoring and recognizing.

“I think that Ray Kurzweil’s estimate that we will achieve human-level Artificial General Intelligence by around 2029 is a reasonable guesstimate,” says Dr. Ben Goertzel.

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By: Eray Ozkural - h+

During writing a paper for the 100 Year Starship Symposium, I wished to convince the starship designers that they should acknowledge the dynamics of high-technology economy, which may be crucial for interstellar missions. Thus motivated, I have made a new calculation regarding infinity point, also known as the singularity. According to this most recent revision of the theory of infinity point, it turns out that we should expect Infinity Point by 2035 in the worst case. Here is how and why.

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By Jane Wakefield

He knows this because when he had his genetic code read, he found out that he was likely to get age-related macular degeneration (AMD).

The disease leaves the sufferer with a very narrow field of vision.

As head of bio-technology at the world’s most futuristic learning institution, Singularity University, he found the news “burdensome” at first.

Continue reading “Singularity: Reading our genes like computer code” »

http://youtu.be/HL9ati3TGfE

Two leading computer scientists work toward their goal of Technological Singularity, as a radical anti-technology organization fights to prevent them from creating a world where computers can transcend the abilities of the human brain.

Reuven Cohen,

It’s that time of the year again. You know, that time of year when technologists, pundits and bloggers get into the festive spirit and share technology predictions for the coming year. Being partially curious and possibly not wanting to be left out of the fun, I thought I’d throw my hat into the ring with my own set of prognoses. In terms of timeframe, whether it’s 2014 or 2050 is another story. Alas, this is a story about intersecting trends, asking the simple yet infinitely complex question of where is technology taking us?

The famous computer scientist Alan Kay can best sum up my opinion on technology predictions in his famous 1971 quote; “Don’t worry about what anybody else is going to do… The best way to predict the future is to invent it. Really smart people with reasonable funding can do just about anything that doesn’t violate too many of Newton’s Laws!”

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