Waiting for the Great Leap… Forward? J. Hughes - Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies - Trinity College

Animal, Human, Cyborg The human- machine distinction is not about createdness but about preserving valued feelings and cognition in posthumans Human-racism Personhood

Singularity Accelerating technology Radical historical discontinuity, like the emergence of homo sapiens The invention of greater- than-human intelligence Sublimated millennialism: Rapture of the Nerds But that doesn’t mean they are wrong

Scenarios TransHuman Augmentation (Kurzweil) Friendly Super-AI Emergent Global Brain(s) Bad “Hard take- off”: Terminator

Acceleration and Discontinuity Technology is accelerating There will be radical civilizational change Utopian and apocalyptic possibilities

Enhancement & Brain-Machine Smart drugs, gene therapy, tissue engineering, nanorobots Exocortex Already “extended minds” Direct brain-machine connections Back-ups and uploads

Self-Aware AI Consciousness is material, reproducible Sentient, self- willed, greater- than-human machine minds are very likely in the coming fifty years.

Self-willed AI Is Very Dangerous Steps must be taken to ensure its safety.

Self-aware AI Will Be Radically Alien Empathy for human beings is the product, at least, of embodied mammalian brains.

Attempt Empathetic Robots even though attempt is likely futile -Affective computing inadequate -Human experience, emotional reactions, mirror neurons

Emergent, Designed, Evolved Self-willed minds may evolve from primitive a- life in the infosphere ecosystem

Technoprogressive Policy Many techno-futurists are libertarians (albeit ironic Marxists) Many progressives are Luddites Policies to maximize likelihood of safe, equitable outcomes

Human Intelligence Augmentation Keeping up with HAL

Global Regulation of Dangerous AI Cybersecurity monitoring of criminal worms, cyberwarfare and emergent a-life Techs of mass destruction require transnational regulation

Structural Unemployment Necessary wage slavery vs. self-chosen occupations Need for expanded social wage, reform of Social Security, basic income guarantee

Robot Rights Which minds have which rights and responsibilities? Engineering slave minds vs. Flourishing minds, but within social limits

Aug-Cog & Uploads as Safer AI Perhaps all advanced self- aware AI should be reverse-engineered human brains, or controlled by meat brains

Licensing Superpowers If you need a license to own a gun and drive a car, why not an AI- powered brain? If only governments should have nukes, what about S^AIs?

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