Sunday, March 28, 2010

In Whom we live, move, and have our being


World of Warcraft's characters often seem intelligent, but human players soon learn that the poor things are hopelessly dumb and can be easily defeated. Other computer games have better AI (Artificial Intelligence), but game AI is still light years behind real intelligence. However, I am persuaded that real, self-aware AGI (Artificial General Intelligence), of human and higher level, will be achieved someday, perhaps by the computer gaming industry itself, and perhaps in the next couple of decades. Then, computer games will contain sentient, intelligent persons like you and I.

If computer game characters can be intelligent and sentient, perhaps we are sentient and intelligent computer game characters? Is our reality, including ourselves in it, a computer simulation? These questions may seem strange at first, but they are not easily dismissed, and philosophers have been asking similar questions for centuries and more. Today, reality as a simulation is a frequent discussion topic in transhumanist interest groups. Who is running the simulation? Perhaps unknowable aliens in another level of reality have invented us and our world, but a frequent assumption is that future humans run our reality as a historically accurate simulation of their past (our present).

Of course we should not imagine the computers simulating our reality as similar to today's computers. No, they will not be more powerful boxes running a slightly better future release of Windows. A computer able to simulate a reality as complex as ours, and containing conscious observers, must be many orders of magnitude more complex and powerful than anything we have today, and probably be based on very different hardware and system software. Many AGI experts think consciousness can, and does, emerge from a sufficiently complex computational system. Many transhumanists believe humans will merge with AGIs once Mind Uploading technology is developed, and super-intelligent human-AGI hybrids will spread to the universe. The last chapter of Hans Moravec's "Robot - Mere machine to Transcendent Mind" has a fascinating preview of this "Mind Fire".

So if we are living in a simulation, the computational system simulating our reality is not a what, but a who. Not an inanimate machine, but a thinking and feeling person, orders of magnitude smarter and more complex than us. We don't live in a mere machine, but in a Transcendent Mind.

In a 1992 essay titled Pigs in Cyberspace, Moravec may have been the first to formulate (in modern terms) the idea of our reality as a simulation: "An evolving cyberspace becomes effectively ever more capacious and long lasting, and so can support ever more minds of ever greater power. If these minds spend only an infinitesimal fraction of their energy contemplating the human past, their sheer power should ensure that eventually our entire history is replayed many times in many places, and in many variations. The very moment we are now experiencing may actually be (almost certainly is) such a distributed mental event, and most likely is a complete fabrication that never happened physically." By "almost certainly is" Moravec refers to the idea that observers living in simulated realities may vastly outnumber observers living in original physical realities. In his "Simulation Argument" Nick Bostrom has proposed a more quantitative formulation.

If those who live in a simulated reality can themselves simulate lower level realities, perhaps upper case Reality is nothing more than an infinite cascade of realities simulated within higher level realities (dreams within dreams, or turtles all the way down). This may well be the simplest explanation of the world, since assuming an infinite regress permits doing without a "base reality" which generates all other realities.

Moravec may have been the first to formulate in modern terms the idea of our reality as a simulation, but the idea is much older. Influenced by previous thinkers, Bishop George Berkeley thought that the reality we perceive, and ourselves in it, exist in the mind of "that supreme and wise Spirit, in whom we live, move, and have our being": God. In "Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous in Opposition to Sceptics and Atheists (Third Dialogue)", Berkeley wrote, quoting Paul: "there are only things perceiving, and things perceived; or that every unthinking being is necessarily, and from the very nature of its existence, perceived by some mind; if not by a finite created mind, yet certainly by the infinite mind of God, in whom 'we live, and move, and have our being.'". In other words, we and our whole reality are thoughts in the Mind of God. It is easy to see that Berkeley and Moravec are saying very similar things, each in the language of his philosophy and age.

Apparently, there is an important difference between Berkeley and Moravec: As a 18th century Christian and a representative of the Church, Berkeley believed in supernatural phenomena, in principle understandable by science, while Moravec, as a modern engineer, believes reality is fully understandable and explainable by science. Moravec's simulated realities will be developed by future engineers, within the framework of future science. If our reality is a simulation, everything in our universe can be understood in terms of the physical laws of the higher level reality in which it is simulated.

But... this is only true from the point of view of those who are simulating lower level realities. From the point of those who live in a simulation, Moravec's simulation cosmology may well contain supernatural phenomena: The reality engineer up there, the Transcendent Mind, may choose to violate the rules of the game.

Make this simple experiment: Run a Game of Life program, for example this, choose an initial pattern, and let it evolve for a while. Now, stop the program, flip a cell, and resume the program. You have just performed a miracle: something that goes against the physical laws (the simple cellular automata evolution rules of Life) of the lower level reality that you are simulating. The Game of Life is too simple to contain conscious observers, but hypothetical observers within the game would observe an event that cannot be understood in terms of the physical laws of their universe. A miracle.

It is difficult to escape the conclusion that Berkeley and Moravec are not only saying similar things, but they are actually saying the same thing, with different words! Moravec's Transcendent Mind is, by definition, omnipotent (all powerful), omniscient (all knowing), and omnipresent (always and everywhere present) in the simulated reality He thinks. He is Berkeley's "supreme and wise Spirit, in whom we live, move, and have our being": a God.

Perhaps prayers are heard: if you receive an IM to warn you that a favorite virtual pet is hungry or unhappy, wouldn't you pay some attention and intervene? Many Foopets users do. Perhaps The Secret is true. Perhaps sometimes the Mind illuminates a person in our reality, and this person becomes a shaman or a prophet. Perhaps, just perhaps, all that we have been told is true.

Including the greatest miracle: resurrection. According to our best scientific understanding, it seems that the dead stay dead. But if we live in a simulation, the Mind can copy us to new simulation. This is illustrated by the short movie "CA Resurrection", which I made with a Game of Life program. The protagonist pattern is doomed to certain death by interaction with an environment that, except in very carefully controlled conditions, is very unfriendly to the stability of patterns (sounds familiar?), but is copied before death and restored to life in a friendlier environment.


CA Resurrection (Youtube)
CA Resurrection (blip.tv)

See also my article CTRL-ALT-R: Another Life.

This is all very beautiful if we live in a simulation, but, what if we don't live in a simulation? What if our reality happens to be the primary, original physical reality? Despite Moravec's assurance that our reality "almost certainly is" a simulation, most people assume that it is the primary reality. If you make this assumption (and you probably do), then all I have written above is useless: it may apply to "them", but it does not apply to "us".

Or does it? Moravec (again) comes to the rescue. Even if our reality is the primary, original physical reality, posthuman Transcendent Minds may be able to "upload us to the future" by copying us from the past and injecting us into one of their simulations.

In Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind, Moravec writes: "In Chapter 6 robots sweep into space in a colonizing wave, but then disappear in a wake of increasingly pure thinking stuff. A "Mind Fire" burns across the universe in Chapter 7. Physical law loses its primacy to purposes, goals, interpretations and God knows what else.". In the last page of Robot he writes: "When we die, the rules surely change... Perhaps we are most likely to find ourselves reconstituted in the minds of superintelligent successors, or perhaps in dreamlike worlds (or AI programs) where psychological rather than physical rules dominate. Our mind children will probably be able to navigate the alternatives with increasing facility. For us, now, barely conscious, it remains a leap in the dark.", and concludes with Shakespeare's immortal words "To sleep, perchance to dream...".

From a 1995 message of Charles Platt to the Cryonel list: "The question has been asked, is robotics researcher Hans Moravec serious about the possibility of reconstructing a human being from "clues" left behind on an atomic level? The answer is "yes."... I recently did a long interview on this and other topics with Hans, which will appear in the October issue of Wired. He derives a genuine feeling of comfort from his "resurrection by AI" scenario.".

From the Interview with Hans Moravec by Charles Platt:

I'm a little less hard-core in my atheism than I used to be. And my ideas about resurrection in some ways are not so different from those of early theologians, or from the Greek thought that fed into that.
Moravec foresees a kind of happy ending, though, because the cyberspace entities should find human activity interesting from a historical perspective.
We will be remembered as their ancestors, the creators who enabled them to exist.
As Moravec puts it, "We are their past, and they will be interested in us for the same reason that today we are interested in the origins of our own life on Earth."
Assuming the artificial intelligences now have truly overwhelming processing power, they should be able to reconstruct human society in every detail by tracing atomic events backward in time. "It will cost them very little to preserve us this way," he points out. "They will, in fact, be able to re-create a model of our entire civilization, with everything and everyone in it, down to the atomic level, simulating our atoms with machinery that's vastly subatomic. Also," he says with amusement, "they'll be able to use data compression to remove the redundant stuff that isn't important."
But by this logic, our current "reality" could be nothing more than a simulation produced by information entities.
"Of course." Moravec shrugs and waves his hand as if the idea is too obvious. "In fact, the robots will re-create us any number of times, whereas the original version of our world exists, at most, only once. Therefore, statistically speaking, it's much more likely we're living in a vast simulation than in the original version. To me, the whole concept of reality is rather absurd. But while you're inside the scenario, you can't help but play by the rules. So we might as well pretend this is real - even though the chance things are as they seem is essentially negligible."
And so, according to Hans Moravec, the human race is almost certainly extinct, while the world around us is just an advanced version of SimCity.


These ideas, anticipated by Nikolai Fyodorovich Fyodorov and the Russian Cosmists, have been also proposed by Frank Tipler.

In "The Physics of Immortality", Tipler proposed that intelligent beings of a far future epoch close to the gravitational collapse of the universe (the so called Big Crunch) may develop the capability to steer the dynamics of the collapsing universe in such a way as to make unlimited subjective time, energy, and computational power available to them before reaching the final singularity (Omega Point). Having done so, they may wish to restore to consciousness all sentient beings of the past, perhaps through a “brute force” computational emulation of the past history of the universe. So after death we may wake up in a simulated environment with many of the features assigned to the afterlife world by the major religions.

Tipler's mechanism for resurrection is often criticized on the basis of its cosmological assumptions, that are not supported by current observations. Even if this is the case (that is, even if the Universe "left to itself" would not spontaneously evolve an Omega Point -like cosmology), Tipler thinks that we may be able to engineer conditions suitable for the emergence of an Omega Point. This "fix what you don't like" is the transhumanist attitude supported by Ray Kurzweil's last sentence in "The Age of Spiritual Machines": "So will the Universe end in a big crunch, or in an infinite expansion of dead stars, or in some other manner? In my view, the primary issue is not the mass of the Universe, or the possible existence of antigravity, or of Einstein's so-called cosmological constant. Rather, the fate of the Universe is a decision yet to be made, one which we will intelligently consider when the time is right."

Perhaps we won't have to wait for the End of Time. Some of the most suggestive resurrection scenarios have been proposed by science fiction writers. In "The Light of Other Days", Sir Arthur C. Clarke (who else?) and Stepten Baxter imagine a near future world profoundly transformed by the invention of a "Wormcam": a remote viewing device that permits scanning every position, including in the past, by using micro wormholes naturally embedded with huge density in the fabric of spacetime. At some point things start to progress very fast, and soon after scientists develop the capability to resurrect the dead by copying them from their past (our present) and uploading them to their present (our future).

In conclusion:

- We may be living in a simulation performed by a Transcendent Mind in Whom we live, move, and have our being.
- If this is the case, we live in a universe which permits resurrection of the dead. After our death, the Transcendent Mind may choose to copy us to another simulation.
- If this is not the case (that is, if we live in the original physical reality), future Transcendent Minds may be able to copy us from the past and upload us to one of their simulations.

These conclusions seem a good foundation for the "new scientific theologies and spiritualities" analysed by James Hughes in "Problems of Transhumanism: Atheism vs. Naturalist Theologies".
In the New Good Argument (see the recently revised version) the Mormon Transhumanist Association has re-built Mormon traditional cosmo-theology in a form explicitly compatible with the conclusions above.

MTA: revised version of the New God Argument

Lincoln Cannon and Joseph West of the Mormon Transhumanist Association have presented a revised version of the New God Argument at the annual meeting of the Society for Mormon Philosophy and Theology. See the Transcript of the New God Argument at SMPT.

Mormon Transhumanists, and to some extent all Mormons, are open to the possibility of natural Gods existing and evolving within the physical universe described by science. We can also evolve to posthuman Godhood, with the capability to simulate complex realities and "run increasingly detailed world simulations. Unabated, increasing detail would eventually obfuscate differences between our world and computed worlds, to the point that "simulation" and "virtual" would be poor descriptors." The New God Argument concludes that "posthumans probably create many worlds like those in their past" and, in particular, "posthumans probably created our world".

The authors emphasize that "the New God Argument justifies faith in God as revealed in Mormon tradition. Joseph Smith proclaimed that God was once as we are now, became exalted, and instituted laws whereby others could learn how to be gods, the same as all gods have done before."

Whet I really loved is the final justification of the New God Argument with the words of "the most unlikely and unwilling proponent of the New God Argument, the talented evolutionary biologist and leading voice of the New Atheist movement":... Richard Dawkins!!!

Thursday, March 25, 2010

European Space Agency: virtual reality MMOG technology for space education and outreach

After the announcement of the NASA Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG), whose first demo Moonbase Alpha is scheduled for public release in early 2010, also the European Space Agency is adopting virtual reality MMOG technology for space education and outreach. The first demo of a future ESA MMOG has been produced by Mindark with its Entropia Platform powered by Crytek's Cry Engine, possibly the most advanced game engine available at the moment. See the project video on Youtube. I recommend using Miro to download and watch it at full resolution. Another emerging MMOG platform based on Crytek's technology, Avatar Reality's Blue Mars, has recently raised additional capital.

As a person who has always been interested in space, and a former employee of the European Space Agency, I have been frustrated by the lack of rapid and radical progress in space. Where are the cities on the Moon and Mars that we were promised in the 60s? I believe space-themed MMOGs can contribute to radically improve space education, outreach and marketing, and make space "sexy" again, especially for younger people. This may re-ignite public support for space, which is a necessary condition for ambitious space projects.


European Space Agency - ESA Highlights Online Games as Key Future Technology: "Might ESA have something to learn from gaming? A new Agency study says the answer is yes. It comes from ESA's Technology Observatory, which is tasked with scanning non-space sectors to look for developments with potential for spin-in or joint research. The study, Online Game Technology for Space Education and System Analysis, looks at potential applications of different online game-playing technologies from the simplest content-oriented games through to Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) virtual worlds. The study highlights a number of ways in which these technologies could benefit ESA aims: immersive environments based on these technologies could enhance collaborative working of project scientists and engineers. It was also recognised that exciting online games could prove an excellent tool for promoting space and supporting the teaching of science, technology, engineering and maths...". Also on SpaceRef and Space Daily.


Digital Producer Magazine - MMORPG and Virtual World Platform Provider MindArk Completes Online Games Study Contract for European Space Agency: "MindArk PE AB, developer and publisher of Entropia Universe and Entropia Platform, announced today that a study on the use of online game technology for space-related purposes has been completed. The contract for the study was awarded to MindArk by the European Space Agency (ESA) in 2009 and a film presenting the main findings is published on YouTube... The study ("Online Game Technology for Space Education and System Analysis") was performed to assess options for the European Space Agency with regards to using online game technology, specifically in the areas of outreach/promotion, education and collaborative engineering...". Also on Mindark.

ITEspresso.fr - : "Le développeur de plate-forme de mondes virtuels et de MMORPG MindArk termine un contrat pour une étude sur les jeux en ligne pour l’Agence Spatiale Européenne: "L’étude, intitulée « Online Game Technology for Space Education and System Analysis » a été effectuée pour évaluer les options dont dispose l’Agence Spatiale Européenne en ce qui concerne l’utilisation de la technologie de jeu en ligne, en particulier dans les domaines de la diffusion/promotion, l’éducation et l’ingénierie collaborative. Pour illustrer la faisabilité des conclusions de l’étude, MindArk a produit un factice visuel basé sur un environnement de jeu en ligne dans Entropia Universe. Il est disponible sous forme de vidéo sur la chaîne de MindArk sur YouTube..."

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Apocalyptic AI - book presentation and discussion in Second Life, Tuesday March 30, 10am PST


UPDATED on March 31, 2010. As I expected, Robert gave a great presentation and answered many questions from the audience. Topics: Transhumanism as a modern Apocalyptic AI religion, anthropology and sociology of Second Life, future "apocalyptic" technologies such as mind uploading to virtual reality. I recorded full video and audio of the 30 min presentation:

Video: Apocalyptic AI - book presentation and discussion in Second Life, Tuesday March 30, 10am PST, on blip.tv

I could only record the presentation and not the very, very interesting questions and answers session which followed. I hope other participants could record also the Q/A.

----

Oxford University Press - Apocalyptic AI: Visions of Heaven in Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, and Virtual Reality, by Robert M. Geraci.

See my review of this excellent book. Robert has done a lot of field reconnaissance work behind transhumanist lines in Second Life. The book has a full report of Robert's field work and his interpretation of the spirit of transhumanism, and the spirit of virtual worlds. This book has started many interesting (and often vigorous) discussions in both transhumanist and Second Life interest groups.

Robert will come to Second Life for a book presentation and discussion on Tuesday March 30, at 10am PST. The talk will take place in the Singularity Club (which can be seen in the background of the picture) on the Transvision Nexus island. Please follow this SLURL to teleport, and bring interesting questions.


New World Notes - Oxford Press Book on Digital Age Spirituality Argues Second Life Provides Platform For Innovative Religious Thinking: The ultra-prestigious Oxford University just published a book devoted to theology in the digital age: Apocalyptic AI Visions of Heaven in Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, and Virtual Reality. It's written by Manhattan College professor Robert Geraci, known in Second Life as Soren Ferlinghetti (pictured), and unsurprisingly, a whole chapter is devoted to Second Life, and conversations with several well-known Extropians (sometimes called transhumanists), who often see Second Life as a means for transcending the human body.

From the publishers' site: "Description: Apocalyptic AI, the hope that we might one day upload our minds into machines or cyberspace and live forever, is a surprisingly wide-spread and influential idea, affecting everything from the world view of online gamers to government research funding and philosophical thought. In Apocalyptic AI, Robert Geraci offers the first serious account of this "cyber-theology" and the people who promote it.

Drawing on interviews with roboticists and AI researchers and with devotees of the online game Second Life, among others, Geraci illuminates the ideas of such advocates of Apocalyptic AI as Hans Moravec and Ray Kurzweil. He reveals that the rhetoric of Apocalyptic AI is strikingly similar to that of the apocalyptic traditions of Judaism and Christianity. In both systems, the believer is trapped in a dualistic universe and expects a resolution in which he or she will be translated to a transcendent new world and live forever in a glorified new body. Equally important, Geraci shows how this worldview shapes our culture. For instance, Apocalyptic AI has influenced funding agencies such as the National Science Foundation, helping to prioritize robotics and AI research. It has become the ideology of choice for online gamers, such as those involved in Second Life; it has had a profound impact on the study of the mind; and it has inspired scientists and theologians alike to wonder about the super robots of the future. Should we think of robots as persons? What kind of morality would intelligent robots espouse?

Apocalyptic AI has become a powerful force in modern culture. In this superb volume, Robert Geraci shines a light on this belief system, revealing what it is and how it is changing society.
"

Sunday, March 21, 2010

Coordination meeting of European Transhumanist Associations in Teleplace

Following the opening meeting in Milan last November, a second coordination meeting of European Transhumanist Associations has taken place today in a Teleplace virtual workspace. Online 3D technologies and workspaces for videoconferencing and deeply interactive collaboration already permit productive e-meetings for distributed workgroups. Online meetings, which can be especially productive for pre-existing groups, are not (yet) a full replacement of physical meetings, but can be a very useful complement to physical meetings and permit saving money and time.


Agenda: VR meetings and seminars in Teleplace, Transvision 2010 conference (draft program and logo almost finalized), H+ UK 2010 conference (very good progress, I look forward to attending), collaboration with various European research groups and projects, and an online transhumanist art exhibition under development.

Besides the agenda, I was also interested in studying the first reactions of newcomers to Teleplace: all participants besides David Orban and myself had never been in a Teleplace before. All newcomers learned how to use the basic functions of Teleplace (moving, talking, streaming webcam video, adding and editing documents) in a few minutes, and one (Marc) set up a complex presentation without help. I think everyone had a very positive impression and could see the potential of Teleplace for professional online meetings and presentations.


Besides working group meetings, we are also planning a beta version of an ambitious e-learning initiative (much more at due time). We will start with monthly seminars in Teleplace, and the one-and-only Anders Sandberg has accepted to give the first lecture on advanced neurotechnology wizardry and mind-boggling future prospects.


I look forward to hosting other virtual meetings, and I wish to thank Teleplace for their support.

web.alive worldlets coming to a browser near you

The web.alive ptatform permits creating multiuser virtual worldlets that can be embedded in web pages. The worldlets are full 3D with physics and support multiuser voice chat and streaming video from standard sources. web.alive is very easy to install (visit any web.alive worldlet on the web and accept the installation the web.alive plugin) and very easy to use.


In the picture above I am visiting the new MellaniuM Bar in the MellaniuM Dome, developed by one of the most active web.alive developers, and talking to MellaniuM and Avaya representatives. I often drop in the MellaniuM Dome and other public access web.alive worldlets to talk to developers and users. The visual quality of most public access worldlets is more or less like Second Life. 3D development for the web.alive platform is done with standard 3D design tools and the free version of the Unreal engine as integration environment, so web.alive can host also very high quality 3D models (see the dinosaurs and the replica of the Titanic in the MellaniuM dome.


The picture above was taken in the IBM virtual Business Analytics Center -- which is also based on web.alive and designed to support IBM Business Analytics & Optimization services. VR worldlets developed with web.alive can be integrated with back-end business systems, which is important for business users. See also this review.


The picture above was taken in the Lenovo virtual showroom (see here for a description). In the virtual showroom, customers can see Lenovo products and talk to Lenovo sales representatives. This is an ideal application of web.alive which leverages the main selling point of the platform: 3D worldlets very easy to use and optimized for casual users, which run directly in the browser. Other applications suitable for web.alive are 3D exhibitions, architecture, presentations to the public, and light e-learning applications.


In today's attention economy, many users are just not interested enough to bother installing a dedicated 3D client and learning how to use it, so web.alive is a good platform to target casual users and reach a broader audience. Also, many business operators have the perception (wrong, in my opinion, but this is the perception they have) that end users are too stupid to install a dedicated 3D client and learn how to use it, so they should consider web.alive as a very interesting platform. At the same time web.alive permits creating full and visually compelling 3D worlds (not like those horrible 2.5D worlds) with physics, voice, video and integration with business back-end systems. I can recommend web.alive for all 3D projects aimed at a large audience of casual users. It is definitely one of the few systems that should be taken into serious condideration by serious operators. Others are Teleplace, the best application for professional collaboration and deep interactive e-learning, and of course the beautiful (and now technically very advanced) metaverse of Second Life.

Saturday, March 13, 2010

Book Review - Apocalyptic AI: Visions of Heaven in Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, and Virtual Reality

Oxford University Press - Apocalyptic AI: Visions of Heaven in Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, and Virtual Reality, by Robert M. Geraci - Buy on Amazon.


From the publishers' site: "Description: Apocalyptic AI, the hope that we might one day upload our minds into machines or cyberspace and live forever, is a surprisingly wide-spread and influential idea, affecting everything from the world view of online gamers to government research funding and philosophical thought. In Apocalyptic AI, Robert Geraci offers the first serious account of this "cyber-theology" and the people who promote it.

Drawing on interviews with roboticists and AI researchers and with devotees of the online game Second Life, among others, Geraci illuminates the ideas of such advocates of Apocalyptic AI as Hans Moravec and Ray Kurzweil. He reveals that the rhetoric of Apocalyptic AI is strikingly similar to that of the apocalyptic traditions of Judaism and Christianity. In both systems, the believer is trapped in a dualistic universe and expects a resolution in which he or she will be translated to a transcendent new world and live forever in a glorified new body. Equally important, Geraci shows how this worldview shapes our culture. For instance, Apocalyptic AI has influenced funding agencies such as the National Science Foundation, helping to prioritize robotics and AI research. It has become the ideology of choice for online gamers, such as those involved in Second Life; it has had a profound impact on the study of the mind; and it has inspired scientists and theologians alike to wonder about the super robots of the future. Should we think of robots as persons? What kind of morality would intelligent robots espouse?

Apocalyptic AI has become a powerful force in modern culture. In this superb volume, Robert Geraci shines a light on this belief system, revealing what it is and how it is changing society.
"

Note: Google Books has a limited preview. But I recommend buying the book.

Geraci defines Apocalyptic AI as a modern cultural and religious trend originating in the popular science press: "Popular science authors in robotics and artificial intelligence have become the most influential spokespeople for apocalyptic theology in the Western world... Apocalyptic AI advocates promise that in the very near future technological progress will allow us to build supremely intelligent machines and to copy our own minds into machines so that we can live forever in a virtual realm of cyberspace... Ultimately, the promises of Apocalyptic AI are almost identical to those of Jewish and Christian apocalyptic traditions. Should they come true, the world will be, once again, a place of magic."

The main Apocalyptic AI authors are Marvin Minsky, Ray Kurzweil and, especially, Hans Moravec, to whom much of Chapter 2 is dedicated. Geraci emphasizes the importance of Moravec's seminal 1978 essay on Today's Computers, Intelligent Machines and Our Future for the formulation of the Apocalyptic AI memeset. Robert made me aware that, in this article, Moravec may have been the first to formulate the Apocalyptic AI idea of resurrection of the dead by copying them to the future: “The machine society can, and for its own benefit probably should, take along with it everything we consider important, up to and including the information in our minds and genes. Real live human beings, and a whole human community, could then be reconstituted if an appropriate circumstance ever arose”. In a 1992 essay titled Pigs in Cyberspace, Moravec may have been the first to formulate (in modern terms) the Apocalyptic AI idea of our reality as a simulation: "An evolving cyberspace becomes effectively ever more capacious and long lasting, and so can support ever more minds of ever greater power. If these minds spend only an infinitesimal fraction of their energy contemplating the human past, their sheer power should ensure that eventually our entire history is replayed many times in many places, and in many variations. The very moment we are now experiencing may actually be (almost certainly is) such a distributed mental event, and most likely is a complete fabrication that never happened physically." See also my article CTRL-ALT-R: Another Life, partly inspired by conversations with Robert.

Moravec's 1978 essay first appeared on the popular science fiction magazine Analog, and Geraci emphasizes the importance of science fiction in modern culture, science and technology. Science fiction may be a window on the future, but it is certainly a window on the present, and it provides snapshots of the zeitgeist and the deeper memes, hopes and fears of our society. Also, Life imitates Art: scientists and especially engineers are inspired by science fiction, and do their best to turn it into reality. Science fiction and popular science books have an enormous influence on the popular culture and a deep impact on actual science policy and funding decisions. Geraci is well aware of the social dimension of scientific and technodevelopment, which does not happen spontaneously but must be seen as part of a social framework: science and technology are driven by social and cultural phenomena, and in turn they influence society and culture in a continuous feedback loop. In particular, Geraci thinks religions (and in particular Western religions) have been a very important factor in the development of science and technology, which are now beginning to shape religions in turn.

Among the science fiction novels featured in the book, Marvin Minsky's The Turing Option, with a very readable explanation of Minsky's thoughts on Artificial Intelligence, Sir Arthur Clarke's The City and the Stars, with the first (1956) description of mind uploading, and William Gibson's seminal cyberpunk novel Neuromancer. In Neuromancer, Gibson introduced the concept of cyberspace, which became a meeting point of counterculture and computer science and prepared the way for the emergence of the Internet and virtual worlds like Second Life: a powerful example of the deep impact of science fiction literature on science, technology, culture and society.

According to Geraci, Apocalyptic AI is a religion: it is a religion based on science, without deities and supernatural phenomena, but with the apocalyptic promises of religions. And he thinks that, while the Apocalyptic AI religion has a powerful but often hidden presence in our culture, the Transhumanist community embraces it openly and explicitly. Transhumanism is first defined as "a new religious movement", and throughout the book Geraci continues to see it as a modern religion. This may shock and upset many transhumanists readers who proudly see themselves as champions of science and rationality against religious superstition. Not this reader, though. I remember my first impressions after joining the Extropy mailing list in the late 90s. I thought, this is a powerful new religion for the new millennium. Fortunately I did not write it: if I had, I would probably have been booted from the list immediately, and now I expect some transhumanists will unfriend me on Facebook and the transhumanist social networks, but perhaps they have already done so since I have been writing about this for years. I am honored to see many of my essays quoted and discussed in Apocalyptic AI.

Robert does not write as a True Believer in Apocalyptic AI (aka Robot Cultist), but rather as a sociologist and an anthropologist observing an interesting cultural and social trend. But he is certainly a friendly observer: Chapter 3 of the book is entirely dedicated to his long field recog mission behind transhumanist lines in Second Life. He attended the 2007 Seminar on Transhumanism and Religion in SL (see page 99 for a picture of our beloved transhumanist avatar Extropia DaSilva giving her lecture) and many events related to transhumanism and religion in 2008 and 2009. In the process, he became a friendly observer in our community, and a good friend of many transhumanist users of Second Life.

Bill Bainbridge, whose work is also extensively featured in the book, has given many lectures in Second Life and written two articles (1981 and 2009) on Religion for a Galactic Civilization: "it is wrong to feel that irrational religion must always be a hindrance to progress. I have suggested that only a transcendent, impractical, radical religion can take us to the stars." Perhaps Geraci is persuaded that we may need such a new Galactic Religion, and he quotes an interesting exchange (pp. 374 and 375 of The Singularity is Near), where Ray Kurzweil and Bill Gates agree that we need a new religion, based on science.

A new religion, based on science, has been proposed by the Order of Cosmic Engineers (OCE), of which Bainbridge has been one of the founders. Robert Geraci has witnessed the birth of the Order in the cyberspaces of World of Warcraft and Second Life, where the foundation of the OCE was announced at the Conference on The Future of Religions - Religions of the Future, on June 4 and 5, 2008. He writes: "The Order of Cosmic Engineers... is a remarkable fusion of transhumanist religious ideals and life in virtual worlds. It is a group whose aims were presented by Moravec and Kurzweil but which now sees itself in the historically enviable position of pioneer." I should add that, after the online publication of Bainbridge's revised version of Religion for a Galactic Civilization and Ben Goertzel's Cosmist Manifesto in 2009, the OCE has entered a reflexion phase and a subgroup is drafting a systematic framework for a synthetic religion.

Chapter 4 outlines some frequently discussed issues in robotics and AI, for example: Can Artificial Intelligences be conscious, and how can we prove they are conscious? Should AI robots have rights? Can society adapt to robot citizens? How can humans and robots live together? The last question is especially problematic, and thinkers like Moravec and Hugo de Garis believe the era of biological humans will soon be over. In Chapter 5, on The Integration of Religion, Science, and Technology, Geraci writes "Apocalyptic AI, as a successful integration of religion, science, and technology, offers a challenge to the conventional approach in the study of religion and science", but he does not think religion and science can be integrated, or peacefully coexist, without serious problems.

I liked the book very, very much. But, in a book review, I am supposed to criticize something. What I wish to criticize, is the excessive emphasis on "dualism" in Apocalyptic AI: machines against bodies, minds against brains, software against meat, cyberspace against meatspace. Extreme dualism may be a defining feature of a simplified, black and white Apocalyptic AI caricature, but I don't think it is a defining feature of modern transhumanism. We tend to see a continuum of shades of grey instead of black and white extremes.

I don't see myself as a dualist. I think our bodies and brain are machines, in the sense that they are physical systems which obey the laws of physics and can be, in principle, fully understood, reverse engineered and improved. I think they are good machines, but I also think we can build better machines. We don't hate our biological bodies and brains, shaped by evolution over hundreds of millions of years, but we think in a few decades or a couple of centuries we will be able to engineer much better physical supports for our minds, and we will enter a new phase of directed evolution, toward Moravec's apocalyptic vision.

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Teleplace Open House webinar, March 10 2010


Last night I attended a 3D Webinar - Teleplace Open House: a 30 minute walk-through of an exciting new technology that is revolutionizing the way people meet, train, and collaborate. Immersive 3D meeting environments will change the way you do business. Come learn about a revolutionary new technology that is currently being used by other Teleplace customers, including: Intel, British Petroleum, US Navy, US Air Force, Chevron, and more.


We distribute Teleplace in several European countries, and I am used to small (5-10 participants) workgroup meetings in Teleplace, where all participants can talk, stream their webcam video, share their desktop and edit documents. What I wanted to see yesterday was a Teleplace stress test with a larger crowd. I already knew Teleplace is a great application for remote enterprise and work-group collaboration, but the ability to handle larger audiences (50-100 participants) is important for e-learning applications. Thanks to the meeting management features of Teleplace, which permit one or more moderators taking full control of the meeting and railroading participants as appropriate (for example, muting all mics and unmuting those who raise their hand to ask a question), the webinar ran very smoothly and I am now confident that Teleplace is suitable for e-learning applications with large audiences.


I have taken a 10 minutes video to show parts of the presentation and to illustrate various examples of using Teleplace for interactive webinars and professional e-learning projects. The video is available on blip.tv and Youtube. The .mp4 file (10 minutes, 75 MB), is available for download here.

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Oxford Press Book on Digital Age Spirituality Argues Second Life Provides Platform For Innovative Religious Thinking

New World Notes - Oxford Press Book on Digital Age Spirituality Argues Second Life Provides Platform For Innovative Religious Thinking:

The ultra-prestigious Oxford University just published a book devoted to theology in the digital age: Apocalyptic AI Visions of Heaven in Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, and Virtual Reality. It's written by Manhattan College professor Robert Geraci, known in Second Life as Soren Ferlinghetti (pictured), and unsurprisingly, a whole chapter is devoted to Second Life, and conversations with several well-known Extropians (sometimes called transhumanists), who often see Second Life as a means for transcending the human body. "Interviews with Sophrosyne Stenvaag and Giulio Perhaps appear in this book, along with other data from the published work of folks like Extropia Dasilva and comments made at public discussions of religion that I hosted myself when i was running a site called the virtual temple," he tells me.


I have ordered the book but I have not received yet, and I am really looking forward to reading it. I have had many very interesting talks with Robert, for example on his interpretation of Moravec's writings. I remember a very interesting Chat with R. Geraci on transhumanism, religion and cosmic engineers in VR, (picture above) on which the interview with me is probably based.