From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Sun Apr 08 2001 - 04:15:20 MDT
Spike Jones wrote:
>
> Brian Atkins wrote:
>
> > So you think Foresight's effort to come up with some nanotech guidelines
> > is futile?
>
I don't believe it is futile. It would be bad policy to place all our
future eggs in the FAI basket alone. Having MNT development within a
set of acceptable safety guidelines will give room for andvancement in
this area with perhaps more safety for longer than would otherwise be
the case. In addition fforts to design blue goo, nanotech to fight off
nanotech level attacks or to build nanotech defense shields could be
quite essential to our future safety and well-being.
> There are nanotech researchers who will have no interest in
> Foresight's guidelines. Note that the name Drexler is seldom
> mentioned in the increasingly mainstream study of nanotech.
>
It is not the individual researchers but the heads of the countries,
corporations and grant committees that need to be convinced that these
protocols are necessary for the safety of themselves as much as everyone
else.
> > Do you think SIAI spending time to promote FAI to other AI
> > designers would also be a waste of time, and that we should stay almost
> > 100% focused on working on our own code (assuming a very harsh limit on
> > our available resources) ?
>
Working on your own code is very, very important. But preparing the
people, in and outside of AI, for what is coming is also important.
Those that have an idea or two about this and some notion of
sociological structures and memes that might make the coming transitions
less chaotic and dangerous are also very needed.
> I commend all efforts to bring about the inevitable coming
> spike in a way most conducive to the salvation of post-humanity,
> however I do not claim to have the foggiest idea what that future
> will be, or exactly what is meant by "safe" implementation of
> AI/nanotech. Perhaps this is an inappropriate admission for this
Perhaps it is not that we have much idea of what the future will be as
it is that we project what kind of future we desire to have and look for
the the technological and other means to bring that into reality. I
think it is up to us to design and create a future more than to be come
expert prognosticators.
> group, dedicated to post-singularity discussions, but it is an
> honest one, for which I have received some mild off-list
> scolding: I havent a clue what kind of future is waiting for
> us post-AI, post singularity, and post nanotech. Hell, I cannot
> even define exactly what I mean by the term "us".
That is simply honest. But we don't need to see into the future but see
how to create a future that is viable.
- samantha
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