More Intelligent Tomorrow: Imagining A Future With Conscious Robots

Details
Participants
Notes
Background
Hard Science
Economics
Big Questions
Consciousness
Ideas in the Book
What thinkers do you follow?
Immediate Problems
Solutions
What One Thing Would You Change?
Resources
Categories

Details

Podcast:

More Intelligent Tomorrow

Episode: Imagining A Future With Conscious Robots

Participants

Ari Kaplan

Gary F. Bengier

Notes

Background

He started with a BS in Computer Science.
Gary was the CFO of eBay during its IPO.
After leaving eBay, he returned to school and received a BS in Astrophysics, BS in Philosophy, then MS in Philosophy.
At that time started thinking about machine consciousness.

He is involved with the Santa Fe Institute and sits on the board.

Wrote the novel: Unfettered Journey

Set 140 years in the future, in 2061.
The book explores human meaning and purpose in the world.
The book has won many awards in various categories, including Sci-Fi, Spiritual, and Philosophical.

Hard Science

Gary prefers to stay in the realm of hard science. Things created are limited by what we know to be true now.
He sees the two most essential technologies facing humanity are:
Bioscience

He thinks we will have a cure for cancer.
We will see an increase in lifespans.
His view is that most people won’t notice this much. Your life of not getting cancer is not noticeable.
Living longer will be something that happens.

AI & Robotics

There is an engineering path for robots and AI to perform valuable tasks.
Those tasks that are economically viable and easier happen first.
It will take longer than the consensus thinking right now.
He thinks it will happen, and there will be robots walking among us.

Economics

As a CFO and capitalist, he thinks economics will drive the changes.
It is going to be the most significant shift in humanity since agriculture.
Automation - The first things solved are the easy things.

Roomba took ten years to develop.
Engineering projects take time.

Jobs
Automation will cause jobs to disappear.

He gives an example of the job hardness landscape described as an undulating topology. It’s not smooth. Then think of water rising in the topology, which is automation taking over the employment of the ‘land.’ When the land is covered, it has been automated.
Some things are complicated, and others are not.
There are lots of surprises ahead in what gets automated.

Once we get to the point of robots building robots unconstrained by human labor:

Capitalism becomes hard to sustain.
There is a high likelihood of social instability.
There’s a dangerous crossing from capitalism to what’s next.
What’s next is likely shared ownership of the factories and robots.
It’s not sustainable to continue having a large gap between the owners and the non-owners.
We will have lots of stuff at this point.

Ownership

Big Questions

He poses a few questions here:

Who owns the robot factories?
What happens when the jobs go away?
How to maintain economic/social mobility while allowing people to demonstrate the merit and usefulness of their skills, equality, and quality of life?

Consciousness

What is consciousness?
What is I?
He doesn’t have a lot of concern about the Singularity - where we get a general intelligence, and then it makes copies and exponentially outstrips our capabilities.
He doubts the ability to create consciousness in a machine with code.
It will improve and overcome the annoying part where automation is a slight hindrance.
The google engineer who said the google AI was sentient deserved getting dissed because we are far away from either consciousness or sentience. We can’t even define these things yet.
His view is that consciousness is an embodiment and is the relationship between us (a human) and our world.

Ideas in the Book

Everything is free except for the top 10% of goods—for those, you have to ‘pay.’
Two main devices:
Neural External System Translator (NEST)

It is a chip behind your ear giving access to the net (internet).
A cornea implant lets you see data, directions, names, etc.
You speak to it, and it provides you with answers.
It is much like a smartphone but faster and less noticeable.

Melo

Also, an implant monitors your body and doses you with anti-aging and other chemicals for your health.
It reports on how your body is doing.

Planters

These people are traveling between the planets of our solar system and have spent ten or more years off Earth.

Two classes of robots

Mecha are giant working robots.
Hepabots are smaller than human robots, which we interact with daily.

Jobs

Everyone is limited to only working 12 hours a week. Jobs have become a luxury.

Glossary

There’s a section on Quala and a section that covers different philosophical takes on consciousness.

What thinkers do you follow?

He enjoys Asimov and Bradbury but thinks most modern sci-fi writers have taken things to an absurd level.
These scenarios are not realistic, and they focus on the wrong things.

Immediate Problems

The problems he sees are:

Climate change - we need to get everyone together to focus on the things that will limit further greenhouse gases getting into the atmosphere.
Jobs - as automation increases, the jobs are going away, and they will become valuable.
How to navigate the social upheaval as the jobs go away to get to that more equitable, shared, economic future. There is going to be some chaos on the way.

Solutions

Crisper CAS-9 will allow us to feed a growing population with a different climate.
Policies and solutions will have to come from governments and private companies.
It depends on humanity coming together to create solutions. Gary is optimistic about this happening.
The Vulcans are not going to show up and save us. We are alone in this solar system.

What One Thing Would You Change?

He would ask the world to come together to solve climate change earlier rather than later.
Environmental groups overcome their fear of the atom and allow safer nuclear plants to come online, both fusion and fission.