This week I saw three pieces of news that greatly interested me (yes, I know that some of them are old news, but I only saw them this week).
At first, there's an editorial by the well-known physicist Freeman Dyson, about the end of the Darwinian era. I've been talking about this on the forums for a while, but nobody paid atention
This editorial, Darwinian Intelude , can be found at Technology Review. Just an excerpt:
And last, but not least, it seems like Peter Voss , from Adaptive AI Inc. will finally begin his efforts to build a true Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). He expects a team of up to 50 people, and 4 years of work. If he succeeds, the world will never be the same. In fact, life as we know it will end, for better or for worse. According to his News Page :
Well, I expect to see the know-nothings that the media loves to contact popping up to say that a) artificial life is impossible OR b) artificial life forms will lack souls, therefore will be incomplete beings. Needless to say that both propositions are preposterous, but... whatever.
At first, there's an editorial by the well-known physicist Freeman Dyson, about the end of the Darwinian era. I've been talking about this on the forums for a while, but nobody paid atention
This editorial, Darwinian Intelude , can be found at Technology Review. Just an excerpt:
On the same vein, it seems like a Los Alamos scientist got $5 million to build an artificial life-form, able to reproduce and possibly evolve. Read the news here: Life Built to Order . And it'll not be a mere Frankenstein, built from other organisms' parts. It'll be a novel lifeform, built from scratch. I think we'll finally see a demonstration of Dawkins's "evolution of evolvability" concept.Now, after some three billion years, the Darwinian era is over. The epoch of species competition came to an end about 10 thousand years ago when a single species, **** sapiens, began to dominate and reorganize the biosphere. Since that time, cultural evolution has replaced biological evolution as the driving force of change. Cultural evolution is not Darwinian. Cultures spread by horizontal transfer of ideas more than by genetic inheritance. Cultural evolution is running a thousand times faster than Darwinian evolution, taking us into a new era of cultural interdependence that we call globalization.
And last, but not least, it seems like Peter Voss , from Adaptive AI Inc. will finally begin his efforts to build a true Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). He expects a team of up to 50 people, and 4 years of work. If he succeeds, the world will never be the same. In fact, life as we know it will end, for better or for worse. According to his News Page :
Yes, we're plunging headlong into the future, notwithstanding the conservatives.The Next Phase
I’m happy to report that the last three years’ efforts have propelled our project to a point where a new, bold initiative is warranted.
Having satisfied ourselves that we’ve cracked the key issues required for building a system with general intelligence, we are ready to move beyond our current exploratory (internal) proof-of-concept prototype, and to embark on the extremely ambitious task of actually building a fully functional, high-level AGI. We estimate that this will require a team of up to 50 people, and about four years.
In order to properly showcase our approach and technology to future strategic partners, we are dedicating the next several months to the development and construction of a demonstration system. We are currently working on its specification.
Well, I expect to see the know-nothings that the media loves to contact popping up to say that a) artificial life is impossible OR b) artificial life forms will lack souls, therefore will be incomplete beings. Needless to say that both propositions are preposterous, but... whatever.