With moderator: Moira Gunn, of public radio's Tech Nation
KEY M: Moira Gunn | A: Ray Kurzweil's response | Q: Audience question
A snippet from this afternoon's Q&A:
[An AI entity...] Is that a machine like a character in a video game? Is it conscious? Consciousness is at the core of our moral and legal systems. But there is not human agreement on consciousness, for instance, are animals conscious?
KEY M: Moira Gunn | A: Ray Kurzweil's response | Q: Audience question
[I just stepped in from break and we're talking about sex...]
A: Will need virtual reality to affect sexual relations. Would need tactile communication, VR in the nervous system.
VR will also enable new art forms.
Safe as far as STD, pregnancy, a violent outcome; you can change who you are (you can change who you are); you can project yourself as the other person; accountability matters - wouldn't want people to masquerade as a teenager that is a pedophile
Really explore interpersonal relationships
M: Is there anything about intimacy?
A: Everything I've talked about is communication. Emotional intelligence is the cutting edge of human intelligence - that's the last frontier in AI. Spindle cells - special type of neurons - involved in emotions. We have about 80,000. Chimps have 3-4,000. Humans don't have any spindle cells when they are born. But still, that's only behavior. Is that a machine like a character in a video game? Is it conscious? Consciousness is at the core of our moral and legal systems. But there is not human agreement on consciousness, for instance, are animals conscious?
This will be ongoing debate. I think we'll see them as conscious. They'll be mad if we don't believe them, so they'll be influential.
M: We build these systems. At that point as technology creators what should we program into those systems?
A: That's a good questions. Look at viruses - they're unleashed with unpredictable consequences. We can disallow self-replication but could be easily adverted. Need an immune system. The answer is we have a lot of responsibility. We can create more complexity than we started with - we see that with evolutionary genetic programming.
M: The rate of change is skyrocketing. All technology is a product of science and engineering. Peter Schwartz at Global Business Network says 92% of all scientists are alive today; 95% of all engineers are alive today. Doesn't say what kinds of technology will the new technologies create?
A: I don't see it as a distinction. We merge the two. Librarians use the tools - integrated into human civilization. All of our jobs routinely use technology. There must be a wall, people say, because humans can't handle all this.
M: Most of us don't know how the car works. But we adapt to use it. My question is idea that technology begets other technology. Will there also be humans [in the loop].
A: I believe technology is part of human civilization. This future civilization is emerging from our civilization. To me the purpose of life is creating knowledge - includes all the expressions including art and music and literature. We create knowledge and pass that from generation to generation - that is distinctly human.
M: Paradigm shifts - how we view the world. Humans love to timeshift, for instance when we first got email. TiVo interferes with broadcast TV [business model]. Books on tape worry book publishers.
A: These new paradigms don't eclipse others. We still have magazines. We still have plows. These become new business models in and of themselves - bigger pie, and profoundly democratizing.
Esther [Dyson in previous session] was right that Internet was there yet. Had fax machines. Now everyone knew what was going on. Information wasn't hidden anymore. That's what undid Soviet Union.
We will be able to harness a specific interest - if you are a musician, you can jam with a specific, complex ensemble.
M: Religious fundamentalists and even uninformed people are anti-technology. Can you paint dark & light scenarios?
A: It isn't just religious fundamentalists. It's also humanist movement: take the anti-GMO movement. Golden rice can save a lot of people; kids from going blind. Stem cells have moved ahead. Biotech is moving ahead quite obstentively. These tend to be stones in the stream and ultimately don't really change exponential trends.
M: Will politicians listen better to AI [simulated] models [reference to models and experts that described issues around levees in NOLA]?
A: Probably not. There's tremendous power in private hands. In 2020s, we'll have nanobots to clean up industrial revolution's waste.
Have/have not divide is huge issue. It's tragic what's been done in AIDS. If only the wealthy can use it, then it's not as useful. The law of accelerating returns [means that these come down in price in accelerated fashion]. In movie The Matrix the cellphone that was whipped out was only available to elite then - not that long ago.
Q: on education
A: At MIT, 60% of courses are online now. A school in Pakistan is taking its curriculum from MIT; watch the webcasts (isn't exactly like being there yet; maybe another eight years). That's the case in Africa, China. There are ambitious plans so don't need to have a teacher to teach in every subject in every village. Just about free in many languages.
Overcomes time-lapse, geography, etc.
Q: See from your slides earlier that our lives are being extended.
A: The law supports now that if they're healthy and in good shape, that's just fine. I often get question regarding population problems and issues around resources. Nanotechnology will help us create the material goods we need - so resources won't be issue. I'm asked: Won't boredom set in? But also an expansion in knowledge.
Q: Nuclear was supposed to solve all our energy problems. What will prevent nanotechnology going the way of nuclear power?
A: Nanotech is very distributed; nuclear power centralized.
Q: Semiconductor fabs cost millions of dollars.
A: A lot won't require multimillion dollar technology at all.
Q: Who will be accountable in this new type of intelligence?
A: We're going to have to redefine accountability.
M: We started off on the topic of sex. I really like a man with a sense of humor...until you get the humor part down, I'm going to wait out.
A: That's going to be last thing we can master.
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