On the subject of the adoption, or not, of radical new directions, I'm now reading Richard Rhodes' _The Making of the Atom Bomb_ through Singularitarian eyes.
It is instructive to consider the analogies--and crucial differences--between the development of nuclear technology in the first half of the twentieth century, and AGI in the first half of the twenty-first. References: http://www.sl4.org/archive/0510/12520.html http://www.sl4.org/archive/0605/14689.html http://www.mail-archive.com/agi@v2.listbox.com/msg03251.html http://www.singinst.org/ourresearch/publications/cognitive-biases.pdf page 20 Similarities - From the very beginning, science and science fiction which fed into each other in predicting the Utopia of unlimited energy and the hell of world destruction which nuclear energy could bring. Some understood the existential risks and rewards; others just saw nuclear energy as a science or a technology. - The boundaries of physics arouse quasi-spiritual feelings more than most fields of science. - Even though from the first there was an understanding of the risks of nuclear science, Szilard had to run around in late 1938 imploring everyone not to spill the secrets. He had to pursue wealthy sponsors for private scientific funding. - Leading scientists, including some who were without doubt intellectually courageous, did not believe that the chain-reactions were possible. - The development went slowly, but the chain reaction went foom! - It seems to me that there was ongoing acceleration in scientific development on the way to the atom bomb. - Nuclear physics entered its home stretch to the bomb with a rising sense of urgency, just as a world war was brewing. Of course, no one knows if the struggle against today's extremist totalitarian anti-Semitic ideology is the precursor to a full-blown world war. Differences - Nuclear physics was the rock-star science of its time. Einstein was _the_ icon of the genius scientist. AGI doesn't seem to have anyone with this top pop-icon status. But perhaps Pinker, in cognitive science, is close. - Although some very intelligent people go into computing and AGI, it doesn't have the automatic draw for geniuses that cutting-edge physics did then and still does today. - Nuclear physics had the full support and funding of the scientific establishment. - In nuclear physics, there was never a roller-coaster of excessive promise followed by temporary disappointment, slowing down subsequent work, comparable to "AI Winter." (Dare I say "Nuclear Winter"?) - The Singularity's promise and peril is much greater than that of nuclear energy. - Nuclear energy never fulfilled its Utopian promise. Let's hope that AGI does. - Nuclear-reaction skeptics could reasonably have said that fission chain reactions are seen nowhere on earth, and would require extremely rare materials and massive hardware,.and that therefore that foreseeable technology might not be able to achieve physical phenomena known only in astronomy. Intelligence, on the other hand, exists in 6.5 billion meat blobs on earth . Joshua ----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?list_id=11983
