[extropy-chat] Still confused:)

[Michael Anissimov]

Anna,

I have a summary of various transhumanist discussion lists here:

http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/michael/blog/?p=136

On 8/30/06, Daniel Wolfson <naogrist at yahoo.com> wrote:
> in the Principles of Extropy. Singulatarians believe
> in the probability and desirability of the
> Singularity, the predicted future event believed to
> precede immense technological progress in an
> unprecedentedly brief time.

Mispelled and misdefined Singularitarianism.  It has little to do with
technological progress, but rather smarter-than-human intelligence.
Even if technological progress were slowing down, we could still have
a Singularity, because it's fundamentally a *cognitive* advance, not
related to technology-in-general except insofar as it would be a
specific technological advance with cogntive results.

Here's my short summary:

http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/michael/works/singularitarianism.htm

On 8/30/06, Robert Bradbury <robert.bradbury at gmail.com> wrote:

>  Anna, the Sl4 list tends to have a greater focus on artificial intelligence
> and the singularity than the Extropian list.  I believe, very subjectively,
> this may be due to the fact that some (many?) of the Sl4 subscribers believe
> that an AI "overlord" may be essential to a "well managed" Singularity.  Or
> perhaps that they believe an AI will bring about the Singularity more
> quickly.

No, many of us believe AI will reach superintelligence first due to it
being technologically easier, so we *have* to focus on AI if we want
the Singularity to go well at all.  We're forced to.

Talking about AI "overlords" means you've been reading too much
science fiction.  In sci-fi, the AIs are almost always overlords, and
rarely anything else.  In the real world, we'd want AIs to be our
partners rather than overlords.

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