Re: Look out you ubly ladies<==Proof that Prowar Alex is a fuckwit.

On transhumanism: I don't think we are smart enough to build a strong
AI intelligence in the sense that people thought in 50s thru even the
90s. There is some work out there thay may lead to a Hollywood
"skynet" scenario. Consider the Abstract I pasted at the bottom of
this post.

The problem of evolving humans into transhumans is a much simpler
problem. We don't have to create strong AI beings from scratch. We
have, rather, to master the bio/nano engineering that nature provided
us, and improve on it. We are getting there fast. Just recently,
flagellum were attached to red blood cells. We essentially created a
nanobot, not from scratch, but from adding a flagellum to a red blood
cell. We might load that bio/nanobot with a virus or drug that can
then seek out and destroy cancer cells, or fix cells that have some
genetic defect, or clean out clogged arteries, or repair damaged nerve
tissue, and so on. Or we might turn such cells into nano-assemblers to
produce nano-computers or spin out useful molecules or molecular
complexes or whole tissues. We began doing this in the 80s, by making
bacteria into insulin factories, and this technology is poised to blow
up into making bacteria make all sorts of useful molecules for us, and
not just bacteria, but even turning, say, cows, into makers of useful
molecules in their milk. There is now an extensive body of literature
in the use of DNA to manufacture nanowires and primitive nano-circuits.

Biology is becoming so much software that we can manipulate to control
the nano world. We are becoming very adept at making chimeras, beings
that are the product of two or more genomes, and we are becoming very
adept at watching the processes in cells: keeping tracking of which
genes are activated, which proteins are being produced, where in the
cell these proteins concentrate, and so on with all manner of
diagnostics: gene chips, phospholuminescent tags, and so on. Our
understanding of the cell is such that pharmaceutical companies are
entering the age of in-silico biology, wherein cells, their entire
chemistry is modelled on supercomputers so that the effect of
rationally designed drugs can be tested. The codes are validated
against lab results.

In contrast to the difficulties of making a strong AI being from
scratch, I can see medical science making bio/silico nanobots that are
designed to rebuild, or extend the neural networks of our brains and
connect them to the wireless world-wide net. Primitve, but working
artificial retinas are in the lab, and in some clinical trials. These
retinas need not be limited to capture images in front of a patient's
face, but can take signals transmitted from Mars, or anywhere a live
cam is located.

The difference between cyborgs and strong AI beings and hypersonic jets
versus mastering the bio/nano technololgy of nature's vast array of
molecular assemblers: bacteria and viruses is simple to understand.
Making a hypersonic jet requires pushing materials to physical limits.
Making fusion happen on Earth requires pushing materials to physical
limits. Making a strong AI being requires, so far, far more ingenuity
than we have been able to muster. Making nature's bio/nano bots do
what we want them to do is not about pushing materials to physical
limits. It is about tweaking and observing, and it will be limitless
in the sense that software, like 3 minute rock songs, is limitless.
Just look at the variety of life nature has made using DNA software by
"dumb" old evolution. Now the process of making products out of DNA
software is becoming driven by our (questionable) intelligence. We may
either kill ourselves off with some nasty man-made bug around the
aforementioned 2018 apocolypse of KR, or become transhuman. I'm
optimistic.

Abstract:

Sources:

http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/Einmag_Abstr/JBollen.html

http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/Einmagsy.html

Knowledge like all other systems evolves by the laws of variation and
selection. Ideas, chunks of isolated knowledge, survive in competition
with other ideas through the principles of mutation, recombination and
reproduction. A strict precondition for the survival and reproduction
of ideas and knowledge is communication among its carriers. The
Internet as a world wide system of information storage and
communication is as such the ultimate 'breeding' ground for the
mutation and recombination of ideas. The most popular Internet paradigm
at present is that of the World Wide Web: a hypertext and hypermedia
protocol in which knowledge is represented by a large, distributed and
world wide network of nodes and their interconnections. The evolution
of knowledge and ideas on the WWW takes place by the continuous process
of changing and replacing of links between related nodes. The knowledge
stored and communicated is not fixed and rigid, but continuously
changing and adapting. This process is not autonomous but relies almost
completely on the interventions of human web designers.

This paper discusses our attempts to devise algorithms that can make
knowledge networks as the WWW autonomously reorganise the knowledge
they contain, using and finally absorbing the common semantics of its
users. These algorithms consist of a number of very simple and locally
applied learning rules that operate on the connections between the
nodes in the network. The paths human browsers follow are used to
update the strength of the links in the hyper-network, so that an
evolutionary process of variation and selection can take place. Every
user of the network contributes only a small amount of his/her
semantics to the network which will finally resemble the common
semantics of all its users.

We believe these algorithms can make the Internet and more specifically
the WWW a truly self-organising system that will finally encompass the
whole of human knowledge. This body of knowledge can develop itself,
not only by the explicit engineering of its contributors and designers
but by the spontaneous and complex interaction among the users and the
self-organising knowledge network. We also believe this kind of
networks can develop and cultivate original ideas. They will not only
store and distribute information, they will actively participate in the
process of the formation and evolution of knowledge.

.