Look Hard, Then Steer Slightly by Robin Hanson

Dear Professor Hanson,

Let me get this straight. According to some credentialed scientists, it has taken thousands of years of evolution for nature to produce the human brain. There appears to be about 7 billion human brains presently active on earth. Each of these human brains had to commence in a baby that was then born to a woman. You are saying that that was a waste of time for women. Here you are, you can fabricate a brain that is far superior to a natural born human one. The mighty Hanson brain only operates to Hanson's concepts of superior scientific knowledge. Hanson knows better than God what a brain should do.

Joe Fisher

No, Joe, you have got it wrong. Most artificial intelligence researchers want to create intelligence artificially, from scratch. Robin Hanson wants to read the soul, God's work, from actual human brains. If he can do it, God's work is not wasted. Indeed some speculate that God is using us to create heaven. The environment inside a computer would look a lot like what heaven is supposed be. The souls living there would live forever, or at least as long as computers could be kept running, perhaps until the heat death of the universe in 101000 years. "When we've been there ten thousand years; Bright shining as the sun; We've no less days to sing God's praise; Than when we'd first begun."

I really enjoyed your essay, Robin. I agree with your overall point that we have a limited ability to influence the future, so our interventions will have to be well thought out. I also agree that seeing the future--to an extent--is not impossible.

But as a fellow social scientist I'm skeptical about our ability to see the future in as much detail as you seem to. Your vision of an em future is plausible, but still seems to me to assume too many things that we can't know. I don't see how, for example, we can possibly what ems--who will in a way be quite alien to us--will feel over hundreds of years about members of their clan. It likewise strikes me as extremely unlikely that ems will stay recognizably the same for long while information technology is developing rapidly. And although the rise of ems would be an enormously important development, I think there are other important developments that could radically alter the trajectory of the future.

You're right that some of the predictions people have made in the past were pretty good. But when enough people make predictions some are bound to be right even if they're just throwing darts. So I don't think we should be too confident in our predictions when we're making plans for the future. We certainly should prepare and plan for something like the scenario you outline. But I also think it is just one of many possible futures we need consider.

Best,

Robert de Neufville

I think we are all over the place about speed because we are making unspoken assumptions about performance over cost. Here are a couple of real life examples. If an em runs on hardware with the same kind of profile as the HD 4870 (first graph), the economically optimal choice will be to run as fast as possible; if it's more like the GeForce GTX 260 (second graph) it will prefer to work at the lower "sweet spot" rate.

As long as we don't know what the hardware is like, we can imagine all sorts of profiles, including weird, monotonically decreasing ones. How much any of that will matter depends on how steep the graph is, i.e. on marginal cost. Larger slopes will cause more herding at the optimal rate. If I had to bet, I would bet on that kind of tight range, with ems down-clocking only if idle and up-clocking (if at all possible) only to cope with temporary spikes in workload too small to warrant delegation. But, who knows what the real profile will be like.

I dont't have a strong opinion (yet...) on the feasibility of scanning, but I think we should at least be aware of what the guy says who currently seems closest to actually doing it: "The key insights that allowed us to bring the HBP [Human Brain Project] to fruition were the realisation that it is just not possible to map the brain experimentally [...]". :/

James,

You honestly think that 7 billion women have given birth to 7 billion inferior brains? Then why did nature choose to create brains in this fashion? Why did nature create Hanson's brain that allowed Hanson to develop a superior brain to the one he was born with? Why did nature not grant you that same gift? The existence of God has never been proven in any court of law despite the fact that there is a standing reward of $1 million for the first parson that can provide such proof. Why do you need a fabricated intelligence to help you to prove that your God exists?

Joe Fisher

Robin,

What if there were a far larger and immediate problem such as a financial medium designed to siphon value out of virtually the rest of the economy and store it as notational promises and this system was going parabolic, resulting in ever more social and environmental resources being consumed to power it. Wouldn't this be a problem for the actual generation involved to deal with?

Wouldn't both social engineers and even mechanical engineers view this as the elephant in the room? Yet most entries seem obsessed with what amounts to science fiction.

Regards,

John Merryman

I certainly don't want to end the conversation, Robin. I would love to see the draft of your book. My point was not that we can't know the future and shouldn't bother speculating. In fact, I think it is very important to speculate in the way you do. My point was rather that we need to recognize that our speculation is speculation. We have a strong cognitive tendency to imagine that the plausible scenarios we invent are necessary futures. But because of our limited ability to see the future, we need to plan and prepare for a wide range of contingencies.

Robin,

That was the most fascinating essay so far. Thank you. I certainly agree with your log scenario too.

But one question; Do you think our real human brains are well enough developed to focus on ..cloning? from them, rather than focus on improving the way we use them, so improve their capability?

I think I perhaps see a long term plan hatching, 100 years to evolve our intellect more by better training us how to think, (to steer that log better), then when we're ready we'll have a much more useful em's!

I'll definitely look out for your book. I can't score at present for some reason, but look out for a boost when my powers return.

I see you have a physics masters so hope you'll read mine, a combination of.... well, you'll see I hope.

Well done and I hope your essay rises during the impending malestrom.

Peter Jackson

(full name given as though the system tells me I'm logged in I don't think AI's quite truthful enough yet!)

Robin,

True, but I propose we could be far more useful if we also learned to use our on-board computers properly, including by thinking outside the Earth-centric frame. You queried if steering to a 'quantum leap' in understanding of nature (unification of classical and quantum physics) answered the question (on my blog) I responded as below;

Robin,

I'm an enabler. I 'implement' near impossible projects, in energy, defence etc. See my post on Sabine's essay. I've learned that most of what mankind does, if not just theorising, is to treat symptoms. Unintended and reverse outcomes are common because we don't think deep enough or think through implications.

Many of the essays here either consider symptoms, or don't actually propose how to move ahead at all. Just saying; 'we must do this or that' is useless. That's why we stumble from crisis to crisis, one of which may be our end.

Uniting classical and quantum physics is now almost 100 years overdue. It will have the most fundamental effects on all scientific understanding, so also technology of any other discovery or advancement; certainly QG, and I'm afraid also AI, because it will enable major leaps in both. We will then understand exactly which of ALL the u isseus facing us must be addressed AND how to address them.

Also our most fundamental understanding is advanced. The same model informs cosmology at the widest level. Have read of this papers, just accepted (but not in a major journal), if you're interested in the first evolutionary sequence of galaxy types ever produced, and a credible re-interpretation of the so called 'big bang' with pre-'BB' condition logically implicit. The whole construct in empirical and coherent, resolving dozens of anomalies. Preprint; HJ Vol.6 2014.

Now this can all be 'action today!' But none of the 'discrete field dynamics' model will be accepted by mainstream science in the near future because physicists neural networks are imprinted with the present paradigm so reject alternatives despite evidence and logic. Of course that's no evidence that it's wrong. It is in fact self evident. So I (we) must find a clear cut 'way in' to get people used to the different concepts. Success would give a clear direction, impetus and certain advancement. Now how many other essays can do that? Despite many good ones, very very few. (please point any out I've missed so far.)

Best wishes

Peter

Hi Robin,

Great essay! I enjoyed your river analogy. I agree with you, the first step in solving humanity's problems is identifying those problems, and foreseeing their effect. In my essay , I touch upon a similar idea.

best regards,

Mohammed

P.S., I will use the following rating scale to rate the essays of authors who tell me that they have rated my essay:

10 - the essay is perfection and I learned a tremendous amount

9 - the essay was extremely good, and I learned a lot

8 - the essay was very good, and I learned something

7 - the essay was good, and it had some helpful suggestions

6 - slightly favorable indifference

5 - unfavorable indifference

4 - the essay was pretty shoddy and boring

3 - the essay was of poor quality and boring

2 - the essay was of very poor quality and boring

1 - the essay was of shockingly poor quality and extremely flawed

After all, that is essentially what the numbers mean.

The following is a general observation:

Is it not ironic that so many authors who have written about how we should improve our future as a species, to a certain extent, appear to be motivated by self-interest in their rating practices? (As evidence, I offer the observation that no article under 3 deserves such a rating, and nearly every article above 4 deserves a higher rating.)

Robin,

Interesting read and a novel approach to a daunting problem. Your parable of the river aptly describes our mindset concerning the environment, thinking we can remake our river (environment) rather than managing and predicting long-term damage -- in terms of survival and damage. Ems and AI implementation seems beyond a viable survival.

My essay speaks of "looking beyond" in terms of conventional science and Earth and "looking within" regarding the mind's untapped capabilities, the mind being a microcosm of the universe.

I would like to hear your thoughts.

Jim

Hi Robin,

I was looking at your bio and noted your stint at Lockheed. There is a chance that you worked with or met Doug Engelbart there. Doug was the founder of the ARC (Augmentation Research Center) at SRI International. The ARC group competed with the AI group at SRI. Doug's thesis was that AI was the stuff of science fiction, but computers were best used at augmenting human intellect, rather than imitating it. Doug was correct, his group essentially developed the personal computer in 1968, the AI group developed Robbie the robot which could stack boxes.

Now AI has improved and computer software (deep blue etc.) can beat a grand master in chess. But teams of human players using computers can beat any single computer in chess.... Augmentation still wins.

I have very real doubts about the current abilities and future abilities of EMS or Uploading.

Your essay had both a very practical suggestion for steering the future (Look Hard, Then Steer Slightly)

And it had a very science fiction aspect (Uploading). Making for a very interesting read.

Most impressive,

Don Limuti

Robin,

I am revisiting those reviewed and found that I rated yours on May 24th.

Jim