Michael Sean Wright of Nice Fish Films recorded a podcast with me today. Billed as “a discussion with really big thinkers”, we talked about The Singularity Summit and some of my favorite emerging technologies. You can hear the podcast below.
Still considering attending the Singularity Summit this weekend? We’ve got fewer than 50 seats remaining for the main event on Saturday, and the Friday emerging technology workshop is over subscribed. Here is a teaser of what the day will be about. Hope you can join us!
January 1st, 2008 was the first day for SciVestor, my research and consulting firm focused on understanding emerging technologies that might change the world. We’ve accomplished a lot in the last 9 months, but I am most excited about our first upcoming event.
8:30am Doors open
9:00am Registration – coffee and breakfast bar available
9:30am Opening Keynote – Jonas Lamis, SciVestor
10:00am Semantic Web panel + Q&A
11:00am Break
11:15am Introducing CLIMOS
11:40am Introducing m2mi
12:00pm Lunch (offsite)
1:15pm Nanotechnology Panel + Q&A
2:15pm Break
2:30pm Introducing Piryx
2:50pm Robotics panel + Q&A
3:50pm Closing Keynote – Jamais Cascio, IFTF
Jonas Lamis Exec Director SciVestor
Jamias Cascio Analyst Institute for the Future
Josh Dilworth Manager Porter Novelli
Chris Morrison Editor Venturebeat
Thomas Dietterich Professor University of Oregon
Dag Kittlaus CEO stealth-company.com
Andrew Braswell Director of Research iNano Capital
Christine Peterson President Foresight Institute Nano panelist
Jamais Cascio Director Center for Responsible Nanotechnology
Douglas Jamison President Harris & Harris Group
Christopher Anazalone President & CEO Arrowhead Research Corp
Jonas Lamis Exec Director SciVestor
Dan Kara CEO Robotics Trends
Bruce Hall President Velodyne LIDAR
Chetan Kapoor CEO AgilePlanet
Trevor Blackwell CEO Anybots
Dan Whaley CEO Climos
Geoff Brown CEO m2mi
Tom Serres CEO Piryx
Press release from Lamar University
Within the College of Business, students can major in entrepreneurship receiving a bachelor in business administration — general business entrepreneurship. New curriculum has also led to the creation of a minor in entrepreneurship for non-business majors, which is open to all disciplines on campus. Courses offered to the public to assist in developing business ideas, networking and finding venture capital help put wings to inspiration for students, entrepreneurs and small businesses alike.
The Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies presents lectures twice each year that adhere to the institution’s mission statement: “to stimulate economic development and diversification in Southeast Texas by addressing the needs of current entrepreneurs and small businesses, while simultaneously enhancing the education of tomorrow’s entrepreneurs.”
J. Storrs Hall is a noted scientist and author. He is chief scientist at Nanorex and has published extensively on the subject. His most recent book is titled Beyond AI: Creating the Conscience of the Machine (2007).
Hall spoke at The Singularity Summit this morning on the topic of revising Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics. As a refresher, Asimov’s laws follow:
With Asimov, the 3 laws were “hardwired into the circuitry.” He envisioned the laws being codified in the circuitry. Alas, according to Hall, the Robotic AGIs (Artificial General Intelligence) of the future will be software and wetware. And “Asimov’s robots didn’t Improve Themselves. Our AIs, we hope, Will.”
So, Hall posed the question, “how can you imagine writing a law that is to govern in an environment you can’t predict. Like Hammurabi writing laws that predict the Enron scandal.” Our new “laws” have to be much more abstract and flexible – more like a conscience. According to Hall, we’ve done this for ages – it’s called raising children.
To punctuate his perspective, Hall predicted “by 2050 – most corporations will be run by their management information systems. Their first law will be ‘make a profit’.”
Hall’s New Laws of Robotics:
Hall referenced Socrates – “there is no good but knowledge, and no evil but ignorance” as a basis for morality across cultures. The same should apply to AGI.
o Law 1a – in particular a robot shall understand mimetic evolution.
Mimetic evolution is the reflective or representative of actuality or reality of human experience (derived from Aristotle’s concept of mimesis or imitation). This is important because evolution is where morals come from.
We live in a world largely run by artificial organizations that have no conscious – Corporations and Governments. But corporations are required by law to have an “open-source motivational system” – Auditing – because Money is their Emotion. Transparency to robot motives and capabilities will be critical with an AGI.
Our economic environment is the necessary outcome of evolution. We must train our AGIs to understand and appreciate the power of economics so that they will drive toward optimal decisions.
“We’re all machines,” says Rodney Brooks. “Robots are made of different sorts of components than we are — we are made of biomaterials; they are silicon and steel — but in principle, even human emotions are mechanistic.” A robot’s level of a feeling like sadness could be set as a number in computer code, he said. But isn’t a human’s level of sadness basically a number, too, just a number of the amounts of various neurochemicals circulating in the brain? Why should a robot’s numbers be any less authentic than a human’s?”
The close timing of three developments reflects a sudden upswing in international awareness that the pace of progress in robotics is rapidly propelling these fields into uncharted ethical realms
The paper looked at Britain in 2056 and suggests that fully sentient robots will be commonplace by that time.
UK research calls for robot rights - vnunet.com
