"Who is out there in the rest of the cosmos? Are there lots of other cultures that have evolved in completely different ways from ours? Are there lots of civilisations potentially capable of communicating with us? Or are we all alone?"

"These questions have been asked often enough, but in trying to answer them most people have been searching for “extraterrestrial intelligence” and so, I suggest, have got the emphasis wrong from the start. From what I have said so far it will be clear that I want to put the emphasis elsewhere, on how replicators arise, and what happens when one kind of replicating entity builds on the products of the previous one. From this perspective, intelligence is a product of replicator power, not its precursor: it is not intelligence per se that forces a great leap forward in living creatures or creates the possibility of culture, but the appearance of a second level replicator. This second replicator creates an environment in which greater intelligence is adaptive. Intelligence therefore increases, helping to provide a situation in which a third level of replicator can arise."  

Cosmic Math

"In 1961, the astrophysicist, Frank Drake came up with his famous equation for estimating the number of intelligent civilisations in our galaxy capable of communication with us (Drake and Sobel 1992). He never intended his equation to provide quick answers, but rather to stimulate discussion and to direct research towards the important factors involved. In the same spirit I would like to suggest a different equation. Like Drake's it describes the number of intelligent civilisations in our galaxy capable of communicating with us, but it begins with a guess at the number of planets in our galaxy, ignores intelligence, and concentrates on the appearance of replicators. This equation is

N = n x fR1 x fR2 x fR3 x L
where N = the number of intelligent civilisations in our galaxy capable of communicating with us
n = the number of planets in our galaxy
fR1 = the fraction of planets in n where a first level replicator survives
fR2 = the fraction of planets with R1 where a second level replicator survives
fR3 = the fraction of planets with R2 where a third level replicator survives
L = the fraction of a planet's life for which a third level replicator persists

We know far too little to make sensible guesses about the values of most of these fractions. Even so, the equation provides a useful structure for thinking about the possibilities. I guess that the emergence of each new level of replicator marks a danger point at which the new replicator may simply fail, may wipe out the next level down, or may wipe out all previous levels. If this is right we can now make some further guesses about what may be happening elsewhere."

                            Culture As Residue

"Cultural evolution is a dangerous child for any species to let loose on its world. And the parent species, whatever it is like and wherever it arises, will have no insight into what it has done until its offspring is already grown and making its way in the world. By then it is too late to take it back. So I shall call this motherly species 'Pandoran', after the mythical first Greek woman whose box released all the evils of mankind. We humans are Earth's Pandorans, and have let loose cultural evolution, but on other planets quite different creatures might be playing this role....

"...if this danger point is passed, R2 can become established on its planet. To do this R2 must adapt to R1 and vice versa. In other words the two replicators must coevolve. This may be a kind of arms race with the R1 Pandorans striving to survive and multiply copies of R1, while R2 strives to transform the Pandorans into better machinery for multiplying R2. If the poor Pandorans are not wiped out by this process then they become simultaneously R1 machines and R2 machines (more specifically, they remain R1 vehicles while becoming R2 replicating machines). The information they copy one to another itself evolves and this is what we call culture."
 

Ben Goertzel's Metatopia

"The internet helps connect human minds together, allowing for vastly more efficient communication and information exchange than was possible before. Once AGI systems are built, might such networks facilitate the evolution of a distributed artificial consciousness?"

"You could have a mindplex formed solely out of software, which could emerge for instance from a bunch of separate Novamente systems collaborating very closely together and sharing mind-material, yet retaining their own separate goal systems. Or, you could have a mindplex formed from humans and AI systems interacting with each other frequently and deeply. What's interesting is the possibility that a higher level of awareness and intelligence emerges, which has us humans among its parts -- yet without forcing us humans into any kind of borg-like obedience or homogeneity. I think this is a very real possibility -- though I stress that it's not the most out-there and advanced possibility that a technological Singularity may bring us. In the end, an emergent global brain composed of humans is still a fairly primitive thing due to its reliance on humans."  

 Computer Math

A common problem with AI architecture is that there are typically many different learning algorithms written to handle the wide variety of cognitive processes, and they tend to "blow-up" when combined. You've used this fact to argue that whole AI systems should be designed, rather than separate components. Can you elaborate on this problem, and discuss your solution?

"Well, that's really a very technical question. It's hard to answer without going into an awful lot of detail. But Novamente does contain three key cognitive algorithms:

Probabilistic Logic Networks (PLN), which will be described in a book coming out in 2008 published by Springer. This is a logic engine that for the first time combines probability theory and formal logic in a systematic and coherent way.

MOSES, which synthesizes evolutionary theory and probability theory to enable very efficient learning of computer programs based on specifications. This started out as Moshe Look's PhD thesis (see metacog.org) but has already grown a fair bit
beyond there.

Economic attention allocation, a novel approach to deciding which pieces of knowledge and which procedures inside the Novamente system's mind deserve attention at any particular point in time.

And the point regarding integrative design and combinatorial explosion is that each of these algorithms, on itself,
A) would in principle be enough to lead to a thinking machine.

B) in practice, given a realistic amount of computational resources, would never be adequate to lead to a thinking machine, because as you feed them more and more complex problems, the amount of resources they use would scale up exponentially. This is called a combinatorial explosion, because as problems get more complex, the number of combinations of factors involved in them gets bigger exponentially....

The Novamente design explains how each of these three cognitive algorithms can help each other out -- basically delegating subproblems to each other -- in such a way as to avoid this kind of combinatorial explosion except for very, very large and complex problems. But to go deeper in this would require a lot of AI details. For example, MOSES helps PLN by enabling very efficient inference tree pruning. MOSES helps PLN by enabling it to carry out probabilistic modeling of evolving populations using background knowledge derived from long-term memory, etc..."

Culture As Obstacle

 "....human beings are incredibly held-back and tied-down by the cultural preconceptions that are pounded into their heads from childhood. Yes, culture is what makes us what we are -- without culture, each of us would be little more than a monkey -- but it also holds us back from manifesting the potential it has given us. Something like creating a thinking machine is outrageous from the perspective of mainstream culture -- and yet, using the technological, analytical and conceptual tools provided by human culture, it could have been done a decade or two ago if anyone had managed to marshall the resources together in pursuit of the right AGI design.

Kurzweil says the Singularity will come in 2045 --- some say sooner, some say later, some say never. But the point I want to make is that the date is really determined by cultural psychology, not by technology per se. We could have a Singularity in 5-10 years if we wanted one badly enough. Or we could delay it forever if we collectively get lazy and don't really try.

OK, Final Answers...(Sure they are) ;) 

 There's already a shift from local to glocal networks and vertical to virtual markets... 
            

 (link to rest of article)

post conference note: Notice how all four perspectives are pointing back to a form of 'oneness' whether it's Susan's temetic apocalypse, Ben's accelerated Singularity, Seth and Greg's winner take all social marketing or the somatic concepts of coherence and cotention. So rather than moving further out into chaos and the soupy realm of the strange attractor, temes are driving us to a stagnating fixed point - where the self is literally surrounded. Only somatics, a 1st person science, offers us a strategy to use our sentience to regulate the memes we adopt & advance, which includes of course the temes we embolden.

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