[extropy-chat] Forbes Magazine on Robotics

[Michael Anissimov]

On 8/21/06, Keith Henson <hkhenson at rogers.com> wrote:

>     "The growth of wealth on this scale might make the sum of all the
> technological and social changes since we started chipping flint look
> tame.  What the technological applications will permit us to do is easier
> to predict than what we might actually do: the options seem limitless at
> this point.  For example, the human race (or some significant fraction of
> it) might use nanotechnology to move into hardware where thinking and
> social interaction went on a million times faster.  Such a society might
> "collapse" into 600 foot spheres to minimize speed-of-light communication
> delays, . . ."
>
> (Article originally written in 1987, this was added before paper
> publication in 1990)

And I thought I was being original.  In 1987, here I am being all
excited about being able to count to 100, and meanwhile you're talking
about all of human civilization collapsing into a computronium sphere
600 feet in diameter.

My preferred name for such a concept is "Rainbow Sphere", because of
the huge multitude of cultures, individuals, objects, and experiences
that would all be encompassed within that small space.

> This has been discussed here and on the SL4 list without a definitive
> resolution.  Smaller is better for communications, but engineers worry
> about cooling.  Other places I have mentioned sinking uploaded societies in
> the deep ocean for cooling.

The deep ocean is extremely hot relative to the best engineered
cooling solutions (liquid helium for example), and I don't see any
reason why this sphere can't be suspended in the vacuum of outer
space.

Also keep in mind reversible computation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reversible_computing

And Robin Hanson's excellent paper on reversible agents:
http://hanson.gmu.edu/reverse.html

When a civilization has control of every atom, waste heat need not be
produced.  Waste heat is defined as atoms getting out of place and
bumping into each other.  In a civilization with atomic control over
its own matterspace, you can simply catch the atoms and reroute them
before they bump into each other destructively.

> The problem is *when.*  If it is clear that humankind will leave flesh
> behind in ten years there is no need to embark on an energy project to feed
> 6+ billion people.  If uploading takes 30-40 years then we need a massive
> energy source coming on line to displace the current ones.

It could happen very quickly with recursively self-improving
intelligence.  From the perspective of the gaian biosphere's
evolutionary processes, "this human thing" exploded everywhere in the
blink of an eye.  Intelligence building intelligence could easily do
the same.

It is unknown how long this will take though.  So let's cross our
fingers that ITER goes online smoothly.  And that we build cars and
power plants that can take ethanol.

> Given that war memes do well in societies seeing a bleak future, it might
> be worth starting even if you think uploading will come before a full scale
> space elevator could be completed just to keep the war memes down.  An
> unfriendly AI emerging as the result of desperate war research is not the
> stuff of pleasant dreams.

I'm not too excited about advanced weaponry and UAV swarms being mass
produced using Phoenix nanofactories, neither.

-- 
Michael Anissimov
Lifeboat Foundation      http://lifeboat.com
http://acceleratingfuture.com/michael/blog