[ExI] How to pre-empt the singularity was Re: Column- "Why the Singularity isn't going to happen"

[Keith Henson]

On Sun, Oct 17, 2010 at 1:50 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki
<rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com> wrote:

Snip

> Eventually, it should be in this way possible to upload an adult human
> mind into a non-biological substrate while maintaining legal person
> continuity - have upload neural implant sprout through your aging
> brain and take over increasing fractions of processing, until your
> body is just a puppet your mostly uploaded and vastly expanded mind is
> using to make legal claims on its own behalf. At some point legal
> recognition of upload personhood would occur, and my cryonics policy
> could be allowed to lapse. If the upload can be achieved by more or
> less brute force reconstruction of my own neural network in an exaflop
> computer, I might be there even before AI's built from code up are
> potent enough to destroy me.

Adopting an EP mind set makes this path potentially scary.

Humans have evolved psychological mechanisms.  I make a case that one
of these detects a "bleak future," turns up the gain on xenophobic
memes that induce irrational behavior and this leads to wars between
groups.  (Which under some circumstances are rational from the
viewpoints of genes.)

Groups of xenophobic meme infested, weakly godlike enhanced humans is
a formula for disaster.  And who knows?  With a lot more smarts
perhaps the future is going to look really bleak.

If we were designing AIs from scratch, it's not likely that such
mechanisms would be included.

But enhancing a human, you are starting with these mechanisms.

I don't have a solution.

Keith



> This is so far the only plausible way I see of avoiding doom at the
> singularity, by diving very literally head-first into the maw.
>
> Does anybody have other specific plans for saving self?
>
> Rafal
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