I’ve met Eliezer Yudkowsky
a number of times at various conferences. I once joked with him
about his search for “friendly AI”. He has often talked about the
possible rapid emergence of a super-intelligence, and how we will want
to be involved to ensure our survival.
In my mind, if there is a super-intelligence that emerges, and it
chooses to neglect humans or to allow for our extinction, then isn’t
that the “super-intelligent” thing to do? C’mon Eliezer, it’s a
super-intelligence … it only does super-intelligent things! If
it thinks that humans are irrelevant … it’s super-intelligent … we
must be! 
Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics unsafe?.
The Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence launched today
its “3 Laws Unsafe” Web site — timed for the July 16 release of the
f… [KurzweilAI.net Accelerating Intelligence News]
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I really like some of the posts on kuro5hin … and this is a good
one. I have been following the work of Long Now for a while now,
and believe that they are pursuing some very interesting goals.
I’d love to assist in the work they are doing to create the clock …
Although the name of “The Church of the Long Now” might sound strange,
this post really touches on some very good thoughts. Seldom in
our daily lives do we stop to think about the universe, and who we are
within it …
The Church of the Long Now.
July 02004 I believe that the folks over at the Long Now project are
onto something, although they don’t seem to quite realize it. They
point out that civilization has a “pathologically short attention span”
and are addressing this problem by building a 10,000 year clock that
“ticks once a year, bongs once a century, and the cuckoo comes out
every millennium”. They have a charming way of prepending a zero onto
the date (so that 2004, for example, becomes 02004) to emphasize this
point of view. Their goal is an admirable one - to focus humanity’s
attention on timescales that extend beyond a single life, but they
don’t seem to have thought very deeply about the underlying philosophy.
I propose that the Long Now has profound implications for our species -
implications that range from the mundane to the practical to the
spiritual. What better way to organize and direct such implications
than to form a new religion? All rational thinkers, hear me: Welcome to
the Church of the Long Now. [kuro5hin.org]
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