ESSAYS
The Death of Sardanapalus and the Birth of AGI
We assume that the tech founders who are building artificial general intelligence (AGI) care about safety. The firms closest to creating AGI sure to talk about it a lot. If not for the safety of others, certainly for their employees. Even if they were recklessly...
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Closing the Human Reward Circuit
Today, Fulfilling Our Reward Circuits is "Hit or Miss": Our daily lives are an amble from one reward circuit to the next (from hunger, to boredom, etc), what we constantly desire is a change in our emotional state. Very frequently, the actions we take to satisfy our...
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Setting a Direction for AGI Ethics
How should we influence the "values" or "ethics" or "morality" of a future AGI? I'm not sure this kind of direction setting is possible, and it may be entirely futile, but I'll give it my best shot. I'd argue that there is no perfect answer to this question, but there...
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Your “Dystopia” is Myopia
I’m writing to you as a friend. Beliefs about the future are limiting your potential, and they're working against your future wellbeing and power. I don’t want that for you. Follow me for a minute. Imagine traveling back in time 60 years and telling your grandmother...
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Spires of Form – Emerson on Humanity Overcoming Itself
Many of my favorite quotes of Ralph Waldo Emerson seem to point to an important overarching idea: We exist as an arbitrary point in a grand scheme of intelligence and development - and that if there be “sacredness” at all, it is more in our ascension than in our...
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The Ambition Singularity – Controlling AGI as the Only Power Game Worth Playing
The hypothesis of the Ambition Singularity: At some point in the 21st century, over 90% of the most ambitious persons on Earth will be working directly or indirectly to either create or control AGI/post-human intelligence. (I've referred to this in jest as The Final...
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Why AI Will or Will Not Treat Humanity Well – A Conversation with Zarathustra Goertzel
Not that long ago I posted an article titled: Arguments Against Friendly AI and Inevitable Machine Benevolence, and it resulted in an interesting dialogue with Ben Goertzel (his comments, and mine, are included at the bottom of the article). This past week I posted on...
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Total Recall – What They Got Right and Wrong About the Future
Total Recall is a 1990 Schwarzenegger blockbuster that, until yesterday, I had never seen. The movie centers around the story of a construction worker who is treated by a company that claims to be able to "implant memories" of exciting or fulfilling experiences. From...
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Circuits – and the Arbitrariness of Beauty and Value
Some lines from Keats: Linger awhile upon some bending planks That lean against a streamlet's rushy banks, And watch intently Nature's gentle doings: They will be found softer than ring-dove's cooings. How silent comes the water round that bend; Not the minutest...
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The Simulation Argument Gets Us Nowhere
I have a great respect for Bostrom, and genuinely believe him to be one of the most important thinkers alive today. I agree with a great many of his ideas, and have been influenced my many of his essays over the last decade, from What is a Singleton? to Utopia and...
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