ESSAYS
State of Nature, or Solidarity? The Birth of Artificial General Intelligence
The advancement of the sciences will, at some point in the decades of centuries ahead, lead humanity to a place where we can expand our cognition and sentience, and potentially build artificial general intelligences vastly beyond our own. Exactly how that transition...
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As Much as Humanity Can Hope for in the Long Term
As human beings we are propelled by our varied hopes, our lives are in many ways driven by them. On the day-to-day, we hope to make the sale, to avoid traffic, to feel better after a good night's sleep. In the context of our lifetime, we hope to finish our book, sell...
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“AI for Good” as AI Power and Nothing Else
Once the grand vision of artificial general intelligence (or the general importance of AI Power in the years ahead) is seen or, there are only two main responses from extremely ambitious persons: . Response 1: Build Power Quietly "I will pursue technological...
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Arguments Against Friendly AI and Inevitable Machine Benevolence
Superintelligence holds the promise of potentially unlocking the secrets of nature or truth, alleviating suffering on earth, or destroying us all. I have long argued that the emergence of post-human intelligence will almost certainly imply to end of humanity as we...
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Where Should Humanity Steer Sentience? Examining 8 Potential Directions
Ask a politician, businessperson, or friendly neighbor what their hopes are for the future and the odds are, they'll tell you they hope that the world is a better place. Maybe they mean an end to hunger, or better education for all, or more religious freedom (or less...
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Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Dating and Love
The future of AI in dating isn't about finding better "matches" on online apps. The impact of AI and emerging tech on dating will ultimately lead to a transhuman condition where "love" as we know it is hardly pursued at all. Dating (more broadly: Sex, companionship,...
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Preventing Suffering After Mind Uploading – A Commentary on Yampolskiy and Ziesche
If mind uploading becomes possible, how can we prevent uploaded minds from suffering? While uploaded minds might be able to experience a hyper-intense range of super-bliss, it is obviously possible that the opposite could also happen under the wrong conditions (or...
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Cognitively Enhanced Humans Will be More Valuable Than Unenhanced Humans – and We Need to Talk About it
[If that title comes across as shocking or offensive, bear with me. Before you make assumptions about my opinions on post-human morality and moral stratification, please read the article.] I was recently reading an article by Nayef Al-Rodhan called The Sustainable...
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Does the Environment Matter After the Singularity?
The environment matters only insomuch as it is required to support sentient life. Granite, molten lava, clouds, and puddles all seem unlikely to be aware of themselves. If a granite planet the size of a billion earths was destroyed tomorrow in some far away and...
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The Posthuman Transition in 7 Phases – The Slippery Slope of 1998 Mariah Carey
The transition from biological to non-biological will come in phases, and it will be driven by our own human drives. I’ve written about this at length back in 2014 in an essay called “Human Ideals Will Tear Us From Humanity”, but that essay only fleshed out the...
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